Part 3

It is a remarkable fact that, notwithstanding the desperate fighting which characterized this battle, the _Constellation_ had only two of her crew killed and three wounded, while the French loss was nearly twenty times that number. Lieutenant Rodgers and Midshipman Porter were immediately sent aboard the captured vessel with a prize crew of only eleven men. After the dead had been buried at sea, the wounded cared for by the American surgeons, and about half of the prisoners transferred to the _Constellation_, Rodgers set such sails on _l'Insurgente_ as the wrecked rigging would permit, and laid his course for St. Christopher, it being understood that Truxtun would keep within hail in case his assistance was needed. During the night a heavy gale set in, however, and when day broke upon the heaving ocean the _Constellation_ was nowhere to be seen. It was a ticklish situation in which the thirteen Americans found themselves, for they had their work cut out for them to navigate a leaking, shattered, and dismasted ship, while below decks, awaiting the first opportunity which offered to rise and overpower their captors, were nearly two hundred desperate and determined prisoners. There were neither shackles nor handcuffs on board, and the hatchcovers had been destroyed in the action, so that the prisoners were perfectly aware that, could they once force their way on deck by a sudden rush, the ship would again be theirs. But they reckoned without Rodgers, for the first men who put their heads above the hatchway found themselves looking into the muzzles of a pair of pistols held by the American lieutenant, whose fingers were twitching on the triggers. During the three days and two nights which the voyage to St. Christopher lasted, a guard of American bluejackets stood constantly around the open hatchway, a pile of loaded small arms close at hand, and a cannon loaded with grape-shot trained menacingly into the prisoner-filled hold. On the evening of the third day, after Truxtun had given her up for lost, _l'Insurgente_ limped into port with the flag of the United States flaunting victoriously above that of France.

The 1st of February of the following year found the _Constellation_, still under the command of Commodore Truxtun, cruising off Guadaloupe in the hope of picking up some of the French privateers which were using that colony as a base from which to prey on our West Indian commerce. While loitering off the port of Basse Terre, and praying that something would turn up to pay him for his patience, Truxtun sighted a vessel coming up from the southeast, which from her size and build was evidently a French frigate of the first class. As she approached, the keen-eyed American naval officers, scanning her through their glasses, recognized her as the fifty-two-gun frigate _La Vengeance_, one of the most formidable vessels in the French Navy. It was evident from the first, however, that she would much rather run than fight, this anxiety to avoid an encounter being due to the fact that she had on board a large number of officials, high in the colonial service, whom she was bringing out to the colonies from the mother country. No sooner did she perceive the character of the _Constellation_, therefore, than she piled on every yard of canvas and headed for Basse Terre and the protecting guns of its forts. Never had the _Constellation_ a better opportunity to display her remarkable sailing qualities, and never did she display them to better advantage. It was well after nightfall, however, before she was able to overhaul the flying Frenchman, so that it was by the light of a full moon, which illumined the scene almost as well as though it were day, that the preparations were completed for the combat. The sea, which was glasslike in its smoothness, as is so often the case in Caribbean waters, seemed to be covered with a veil of shimmering silver, while the battle-lanterns which had been lighted on both vessels swung like giant fireflies across the purple sky.

Seeing that escape was hopeless, the French commander hove to and prepared for a desperate resistance. Now, Truxtun had made up his mind that this was to be no long-range duel, in which the Frenchman's heavier metal could not fail to give him an advantage, but a fight at close quarters, in which the smashing broadsides which the _Constellation_ was specially designed to deliver could not fail to tell. Just before the beginning of the battle the stout commodore, red-faced, white-wigged, cock-hatted, clad in the blue tail-coat and buff breeches of the American Navy, descended to the gun-deck and walked slowly through the batteries, acknowledging the cheers of the gunners, but emphatically warning them against firing a shot until he gave the word. No one knew better than Truxtun the demoralizing effect of a smashing broadside suddenly delivered at close quarters, and it was this demoralization which he intended to create aboard the enemy. "Load with solid shot," he ordered, and added, speaking to his officers so that the men could hear: "If a man fires a gun before I give the order, shoot him on the spot." Then with boarding-nettings triced up, decks sanded, magazines opened, and the tops filled with marines whose duty it was to pick off the French gunners, the _Constellation_, stripped to her fighting canvas, swept grandly into action. As she came within range the French commander opened with his stern-chasers, and in an instant the ordered decks of the American were turned into a shambles. The wounded were carried groaning to the cockpit, where the white-aproned surgeons, their arms bared to the elbow, awaited their grim work, while the dead were hastily ranged along the unengaged side--rows of stark and staring figures beneath the placid moon. Again and again the guns of _La Vengeance_ belched smoke and flame, and redder and redder grew the sand with which the _Constellation's_ decks were spread, but she still kept coming on. Not until she was squarely abreast of the Frenchman did Truxtun, leaping into the shrouds, bellow through his speaking-trumpet: "Now, boys, give 'em hell!" The American gunners answered with a broadside which made _La Vengeance_ reel. The effect was terrible. On the decks of the Frenchman the dead and dying lay in quivering, bleeding heaps. But not for an instant did the French sailors flinch from their guns. Broadside answered broadside, cheer answered cheer, while the men, French and American alike, toiled and sweated at their work of carnage. So rapidly were the American guns fired that the men actually had to crawl out of the ports, in the face of a withering fire, for buckets of water with which to cool them off.

The different tactics adopted by the two commanders soon began to show results, for, whereas Truxtun had given orders that his men were to disregard the upper works and to concentrate their fire on the main-deck batteries and the hull, the French commander had from the first directed his fire upon the American's rigging in the hope of crippling her. Shortly after midnight the French fire, which had grown weaker and weaker under the terrible punishment of the _Constellation's_ successive broadsides, ceased altogether, and an officer was seen waving a white flag in token of surrender. Twice before, in fact, _La Vengeance_ had struck her colors, but owing to the smoke and darkness the Americans had not perceived it. And there was good reason for her surrender, for she had lost one hundred and sixty men out of her crew of three hundred and thirty, while the _Constellation_ had but thirty-nine casualties out of a crew of three hundred and ten. Though the French fire had done small damage to the _Constellation's_ hull, and had killed a comparatively small number of her crew, it had worked terrible havoc in her rigging, it being discovered, just as she was preparing to run alongside her capture and take possession, that every shroud and stay supporting her mainmast had been shot away, and that the mast was tottering and about to fall. The men in the top were under the command of a little midshipman named James Jarvis, who was only thirteen years old. He had been warned by one of his men that the mast was likely to fall at any moment, and had been implored to leave the top while there was still time, which he would have been entirely justified in doing, particularly as the battle was over. But that thirteen-year-old midshipman had in him the stuff of which heroes are made, and resolutely refused to leave his post without orders. The orders never came, for before the crew had time to secure it the great mast crashed over the side, carrying with it to instant death little Jarvis and all of his men save one. Though his name and deed have long since been forgotten by the nation for which he died, he was no whit less a hero than that other boy-sailor, Casabianca, whose self-sacrifice at the battle of the Nile has been made familiar by song and story.

The falling of the _Constellation's_ mast reversed conditions in an instant, for the surrendered frigate, taking prompt advantage of the victor's temporary helplessness, crowded on all sail and slowly disappeared into the night. By the time the wreck had been chopped away any pursuit of her was hopeless. A few days later she put into the Dutch port of Curaçao in a sinking condition.

Thus continued until February, 1801, an unbroken series of American successes, French war-ships, French privateers, and French merchantmen alike being sunk, captured, or driven from the seas. France's trade with her West Indian colonies was paralyzed, and the prestige of her navy was enormously diminished. Napoleon, as First Consul, had abolished the Directory, and was now the virtual ruler of France, having entire command of all administrative affairs, both civil and military. Forced to admit that from first to last his ships had been out-sailed, out-fought, and out-manoeuvred by the despised Americans, and that a continuance of the war could only result in further disaster and loss of prestige, he began negotiations which led, about the time that the nineteenth century passed its first birthday, to a suspension of hostilities.

During the two and a half years of this unofficial war with the most powerful military nation in the world our infant navy had captured eighty-four armed French vessels, mounting over five hundred guns--a success all the more remarkable when it is remembered that our entire naval establishment at the outbreak of hostilities comprised but twenty-two vessels, with four hundred and fifty-six guns. In other words, we had captured almost four times as many ships as we possessed. Not only had we practically destroyed French commerce on this side of the Atlantic, but our own commerce had risen, under the protection of our guns, from fifty-seven million dollars in 1797 to more than seventy-eight million dollars in 1799. Most important of all, however, we had shown to France and to Europe that, when occasion demanded, we both would and could, in the words of our national song, defend our rights and defend our shore.

WHEN WE CAPTURED AN AFRICAN KINGDOM

Did you ever, by any chance, leave the Boston State House by the back door? If so, you found yourself in a quiet and rather shabby thoroughfare, cobble-paved and lined on the farther side by old-fashioned red-brick houses, with white, brass-knockered doors, and iron balconies, and green blinds. That is Derne Street. Though a man standing on Boston Common could break one of its violet-glass windows with a well thrown ball, it is, as it were, a placid backwater of the busy streams of commerce which flow so noisily a few rods away. I wonder how many of the smug frock-coated politicians who hurry through it as a short cut daily have any idea how it got its name; I wonder if any of the people who live upon it know. Though the exploit which this Boston byway was named to commemorate has been overlooked by nearly all our historians, perhaps because its scene was laid in a remote and barbarous country, yet it was a feat which, for picturesqueness, daring, and indomitable courage, is deserving of a more generous share of the calcium light of public appreciation. Though I am perfectly aware that history only too often makes dull reading, this chronicle, I promise you, is as bristling with romance and adventure as a hedgehog is with quills.

You must understand, in the first place, that the declining years of the eighteenth century found a perfectly astounding state of affairs prevailing in the Mediterranean, where the four Barbary states--Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli--which stretched along its African shore, collected tribute from every nation whose vessels sailed that sea as methodically as a street-car conductor collects fares. Asserting that they were no common, vulgar buccaneers who plundered vessels indiscriminately, the Barbary corsairs, claiming for themselves the virtual ownership of the Mediterranean, turned it into a sort of maritime toll-road, and professed themselves at war with all who refused to pay roundly for using it. Nor was their boast that they were the masters of the Middle Sea a vain one, scores of captured merchantmen and thousands of European slaves laboring under the African sun proving indubitably that they were amply capable of enforcing their demands. As far as the question of economy was concerned, it was about as cheap for a nation to be at war with these bandits of the sea as at peace, for so heavy was the tribute they demanded that their friendship came almost as high as their enmity. It cost Spain, at that time a rich and powerful empire, upward of three million dollars to obtain peace with the Dey of Algiers in 1786. Though England boasted herself mistress of the seas, and in token thereof English admirals carried brooms at their mastheads, she nevertheless spent four hundred thousand dollars annually in propitiating these African despots. Previous to the Revolution there were close on a hundred American vessels, manned by more than twelve hundred seamen, in the Mediterranean, but with the withdrawal of British protection this commerce was entirely abandoned. The ink was scarcely dry on the treaty of peace, however, before we had despatched diplomatic agents to the Barbary coast to purchase the friendship of its rulers, and had taken our place in the line of regular contributors. We were in good company, too, for England, France, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Denmark, and the Italian states had been paying tribute so long that they had acquired the habit. Think of it, my friends! Every great seafaring nation in the world meekly paying tribute to a few thousand Arab cutthroats for the privilege of using one of the seven seas, and humbly apologizing if the payment happened to become overdue!

Our friendly relations with the Dey of Algiers were of short duration, however, and by 1793 his swift-sailing, heavily armed cruisers had captured thirteen American vessels, and sixscore American slaves were at work on the fortifications of his capital. In his prison-yard, indeed, one could hear every American inflection, from the nasal twang of Maine to the drawl of Carolina. After two years of procrastination, Congress, spurred to action by public indignation, purchased the liberty of the captives and peace with Algiers for eight hundred thousand dollars, though the Dey remarked gloomily, as he scrawled his Arabic flourish at the foot of the treaty: "If I keep on making peace at this rate, there will soon be no one left to fight. Then how shall I occupy my corsairs? What shall I do with my fighting men? If they have no one else to rob and slaughter, they will rob and slaughter me!"

The Bashaw of Tripoli at this time was a peculiarly insolent and tyrannical Arab named Yussuf Karamanli, who had gained the throne by the effective method of winning over the body-guard, quietly surrounding the palace one night, and deposing his elder brother, Ahmet, whom he promptly exiled. Despite the annual tribute of twenty-two thousand dollars which we were paying to the Bashaw, not to mention the seventeen thousand dollars' worth of presents which we presented biennially to the officers and officials of his court, he complained most bitterly to the American consul at Tripoli that he was not getting as much as his neighboring rulers, and that unless the matter was remedied immediately, he would have to get some American slaves to teach him English. Now, Yussuf was a bad man to have for an enemy, for his cruisers were numerous and loaded to the gunwales with pirates who would rather fight than eat, and he had, in addition, the reputation of being most inconsiderate to those sailors who fell into his hands, sometimes going so far as to wall a few of them up in the fortifications which he was constantly building. To put it bluntly, he was not popular outside of his own circle. As Mr. Cathcart, the American consul, did not take his demands for a larger tribute very seriously, the Bashaw wrote to President Jefferson direct, mincing no words in saying that the American government had better grant his request, and be quick about it, or American seamen would find the Mediterranean exceedingly unhealthy for them.

Incredible as it may seem in this day and age, the authorities at Washington ordered a vessel to be loaded with the arms, ammunition, and naval stores demanded by the Bashaw, their total value being thirty-four thousand dollars, and hurriedly despatched it to Tripoli, with profuse apologies for the delay. A few months later the Bashaw, who evidently knew a good thing when he saw it, suggested that a token of our esteem for him in the form of jewels would be highly acceptable, whereupon the American minister in London was instructed to purchase jewelry to the value of ten thousand dollars and have it hurried to Tripoli by special messenger. Emboldened by his undreamed-of success in shaking the republican tree, the Bashaw reached the very height of audacity by again sending a peremptory note to President Jefferson, demanding that the United States immediately present him with a thirty-six-gun war-ship! As no attention was paid to this modest request (and in view of the other outrageous concessions made by our government, it is somewhat surprising that this demand was not granted also), the Bashaw ordered the flagstaff of the American consulate to be chopped down as a sign of war, and turned his corsairs loose on American commerce in the Mediterranean. The war opened most disastrously for the United States, for a few months later the frigate _Philadelphia_ ran aground in the harbor of Tripoli, the Tripolitans capturing Captain Bainbridge and his entire crew. No wonder the Bashaw went to the mosque that day to give thanks to Allah, for had he not received an even larger war-ship than he had demanded, and did he not have two hundred American slaves to instruct him in the English tongue? "God is great!" exclaimed the Bashaw devoutly, as he knelt on his silken prayer-rug, and "God is great!" echoed the rows of corsairs who knelt behind him.

It was shortly after this American misfortune that William Eaton, soldier, diplomat, and Indian-fighter, swaggered upon the scene, and things began to happen with a rapidity that made the Bashaw's turbaned head whirl. By birth and upbringing Eaton was a Connecticut Yankee, and he possessed all the shrewdness, hardihood, and perseverance so characteristic of that race. The son of a schoolmaster farmer, before he was sixteen he had run away from home to join the Continental Army, which he left at the close of the Revolution with the chevrons of a sergeant on his coat-sleeve. Far-sighted enough to see the value of a college education, he went from the camp straight to the college classroom. Graduating from Dartmouth in 1790, he re-entered the army as a captain, served against the Indians in Georgia and Ohio, and in 1798 received an appointment as American consul at Tunis. Resolute, energetic, and daring, impatient with any one who did not agree with his views, no better man could have been selected for the place. Thoroughly understanding the Arab character, from the very outset he took a high hand in his dealings with the Tunisian ruler. He alternately quarrelled with and patronized the Bey, bullyragged his ministers, and actually horsewhipped an insolent official of the court in the palace courtyard, for five years keeping up an uninterrupted series of altercations, provocations, and procrastinations over the payment of tribute-money. He acted with such energy and boldness, however, that he secured to the commerce of his country complete immunity from the attacks of Tunisian cruisers, and made the name American respected on that part of the Barbary coast at least. In 1801, as I have already remarked, the American flagstaff in the adjoining kingdom of Tripoli came crashing down at the Bashaw's order, and war promptly began between that country and the United States. Two years later the Bey of Tunis, harried beyond endurance by the half-insolent, half-patronizing fashion in which Eaton treated him, ordered that gentleman to leave the country.

Returning to the United States, Eaton went immediately to Washington and laid before President Jefferson and his Cabinet a scheme for bringing the war with Tripoli to a successful conclusion, and exchanging our humiliating position as a contributor to a gang of pirates for one more consistent with American ideals. The plan which he proposed was, briefly, that the United States should assist in restoring to the Tripolitan throne the exiled Bashaw, Ahmet Karamanli, on the understanding that, upon his restoration, the exaction of tribute from the American government and the depredations on American commerce should cease. Eaton was outspoken in urging the desirability of carrying out this plan, arguing that the dethronement of one of the Barbary despots would impress the people of all that region as nothing else could do. I can see him standing there beside the long table in the Cabinet room of the White House, his lean Yankee face aglow with enthusiasm, his every motion bespeaking confidence in himself and his plan, while Jefferson and his sedate, conservative advisers lean far back in their chairs and regard this visionary half curiously, half amusedly, as he outlines his schemes for overturning thrones and reapportioning kingdoms. From the President and his Cabinet he received the sort of treatment which timid governments are apt to bestow on men of spirit and action. He was given to understand that he was at liberty to carry out his plans, but that, if he was successful, the government would take all the credit, and that, if he failed, he would have to take all the blame. The only way to explain the astounding apathy of the American government to events in the Mediterranean is that a bitter political struggle was then in progress in the United States, and that the very remoteness of the theatre of war probably lessened its importance in the eyes of the administration. At any rate, President Jefferson signed the appointment of Eaton as American naval agent in the Mediterranean, and, happy as a schoolboy at the beginning of the long vacation, at the wide latitude of action conferred upon him by this purposely vague commission, he sailed a few days later with the American fleet for Egypt. His great adventure had begun.