Denis," or misreckoning the ships of Sir R. Mansell's expedition,
or turning San Lucar into "St. Lucas."

[72] _Several Voyages_, 58-65.

[73] This brief account of Cervantes' captivity is abridged from my
friend Mr. H. E. Watts's admirable Life, prefixed to his translation of
_Don Quixote_. The main original authority on the matter is Haedo, who
writes on the evidence of witnesses who knew Cervantes in Algiers, and
who one and all spoke with enthusiasm and love of his courage and
patience, his good humour and unselfish devotion (Watts, i. 76, 96).

[74] _Don Quixote_, I., chap. xl. (Watts): "Every day he hanged a
slave; impaled one; cut off the ears of another; and this upon so
little animus, or so entirely without cause, that the Turks would own
he did it merely for the sake of doing it, and because it was his
nature."

[75] H. E. Watts, _Life of Cervantes_, prefixed to his translation of
_Don Quixote_, i. 96.

[76] _Histoire de Barbarie et de ses Corsaires_, par le R. P. Fr.
Pierre Dan, Ministre et Superieur du Convent de la Sainte Trinite et
Redemption des Captifs, fonde au Chasteau de Fontaine-bleau, et
Bachelier en Theologie, de la Faculte de Paris.

A Paris, chez Pierre Rocolet, Libraire et Imprimeur ord^{re} du Roy, au
Palais, aux Armes du Roy et de la Ville. Avec Privilege de sa Majeste.
1637.

[77] _Several Voyages to Barbary_, second ed., Lond., 1736.

XIX.

THE ABASEMENT OF EUROPE.

16th to 18th Centuries.

It is not too much to say that the history of the foreign relations of
Algiers and Tunis is one long indictment, not of one, but of all the
maritime Powers of Europe, on the charge of cowardice and dishonour.
There was some excuse for dismay at the powerful armaments and
invincible seamanship of Barbarossa or the fateful ferocity of Dragut;
but that all the maritime Powers should have cowered and cringed as
they did before the miserable braggarts who succeeded the heroic age
of Corsairs, and should have suffered their trade to be harassed,
their lives menaced, and their honour stained by a series of insolent
savages, whose entire fleet and army could not stand for a day before
any properly generalled force of a single European Power, seems
absolutely incredible, and yet it is literally true.

Policy and pre-occupation had of course much to say to this state of
things. Policy induced the French to be the friends of Algiers until
Spain lost her menacing supremacy; and even later, Lou