The Barbary States on the northern littoral of Africa were a motley conglomeration of city states, separated by warring tribes who relied almost entirely on systematic piracy for their livelihoods. In their glory days the city’s corsairs had performed such memorable feats as the sack of Barcelona, but by this time in their history – nominally under the control of the crumbling Ottoman Empire – they were in precipitous decline. They were still known, however, as the ‘Scourge of Christendom’. Bruce’s job in Algiers was to maintain the treaty that had been forged in 1682 which allowed Britain to trade in the area without fear of molestation by the pirates of Algiers. Occasionally he would be asked to intercede on behalf of people who had been captured and taken into slavery but his main role – and the most important one in the eyes of his government – was that of maintaining the treaty. This was something that he managed to overlook in his treatment of the Algerians and it was to land him in a great deal of trouble. Believing, as he did, that Britain was the greatest country in the world, he tended to ignore the importance of maintaining the treaty when he was petitioning for the release of slaves or the compensation of widows (something that took up more and more of his time). To the British government the treaty was all, but to the inadequately briefed Bruce, the recipient of constant begging letters from the relations of enslaved Europeans, the treaty was of secondary importance to his humanitarian role. Moreover, he and the equally unprepared vice-consul William Forbes had no one to show them the ropes. An Irish merchant, Simon Peter Cruise, the man who should have been most helpful, had been consistently defrauding the unfortunate petitioners for years. As soon as Bruce discovered this, the pair became mortal enemies. For the first year, though, all was relatively peaceful.
The new consul kept himself occupied by perfecting his grasp of the Arabic language and Arabic customs. He gave the occasional dinner party for Aga Mahomet, the Dey’s brother, and his then friend Mr Brander, the Swedish consul. He also learned modern Greek from Father Christopher, a Greek Orthodox monk, who, having fallen upon hard times, came to live in the consulate as a chaplain-cum-tutor. He met with the traders to whom he had special access through Masonry (Algiers would become even more of a hotbed of Masonry in the early nineteenth century). Now and again he sued an Algerian for the return of enslaved Englishmen. It was a pleasant start to his term of office. He wrote long, chatty letters to his friends Strange and Lumisden and even to Mr Charron, a caterer in Leghorn who kept Bruce’s larder stocked with cases of wine and huge quantities of Parmesan cheese. It was not long before he forgot young Margaret Murray. Indeed, he seems to have made no contact with her in all his travels. Within a few months of his arrival, he was complaining to Charron about the lack of women, a predicament with which Charron sympathized:
I am sorry that you are so badly off for your carnal callings [replied the victualler] but comfort yourself in your thoughts to make it up with interest when you return to Christendom. But if you should tarry longer in that cursed country then you ought to write to your friends to send you a pretty housekeeper.
To Bruce, this seemed a magnificent idea and soon came news of just such a housekeeper wending her way towards Algiers. Amazingly she had the same name as his former mother-in-law – Bridget Allen – but judging by the ‘fondest wishes’ that are sent to her by Bruce’s many correspondents with whom she stayed on her way to Algiers, she was somewhat more winsome. Her presence was brief. She died in childbirth (we can only guess who had fathered the child), in November 1765, and Bruce was once more left on his own.
He devoted the time to preparation. Dr Richard Ball, the consulate’s surgeon, spent many hours teaching his ever-curious superior the rudiments of medicine so that he would be able to look after himself in the interior. Bruce also decided that he was going to need someone to help him record the things he saw. Accordingly he wrote to Andrew Lumisden and Robert Strange – the latter having just been made an academician in Bologna – asking them to find a suitable young artist who could accompany Bruce on his travels. A search began throughout Italy for someone willing to drop everything to go travelling with an irascible Scot in unexplored country. Unsurprisingly, it took a long time. Meanwhile, Bruce was encountering problems in Algiers. He had intended to put the consulate in ‘the hands of a vice-consul, who is very able, and much esteemed’, but Forbes never had the opportunity, for Bruce was never given permission to travel whilst still consul, a source of great irritation to him since that was his sole purpose in accepting the £600 a year position in the first place. The only real difficulty in his first year would be his relations with his predecessor.
Simon Peter Cruise had been acting consul in the years between the departure of the previous office holder and Bruce’s arrival. Most of the community had united behind Cruise in his opposition to Bruce and he spent his days persuading friends to lobby for Bruce’s removal in London and spreading rumours about him in Algiers. Bruce received little support for he refused to indulge in the corruption that had enriched Cruise and the other merchants. This was a society where everyday corruption oiled the wheels of business: Bruce’s moral stance thus had a stagnatory effect on trade and met with a hostile reception from almost everyone. He took on Cruise over what most would have regarded as a trifle: a debt owed to the widow of a merchant captain which had gone missing during Cruise’s period of office. Cruise tried to fend off Bruce’s ever more virulent letters on the subject.
I said, and now repeat it to you, that if you do not furnish me with an account, or if you furnish a false one, the consequences will fall upon yourself or, as it is oftener called, upon your head. The consequences of false accounts, Mr Cruise, are not capital, but whatever they are, do not brave them. Remember what your behaviour has been to His Majesty’s consul, and to every British subject here in Algiers. In consideration of your family, I give you warning not to begin shuffling with me.
In one of Cruise’s many replies, he revealed that Bruce had challenged him to a duel: ‘I receiv’d your letter which you may believe surprised me much, as it contains nothing less than a challenge to fight you at your or my garden.’
Worse was to come. The previously peaceful posting was about to dissolve into anarchy.
As has been mentioned, Algiers was ruled by a Dey – on behalf of the Turks – and under him was a divan (a type of cabinet of advisers). In previous centuries, the Dey had been an all-powerful figure – obeyed on pain of death and utterly ruthless in his dealings – but as the strength of the city state began to ebb away, so too did the power of the office. By Bruce’s time the Dey was as good as subject to the wishes of the divan and the divan, whilst still high-handed, was at least conscious of the wishes of the people. At this time, the people – already victims of famine – were growing increasingly angry with the British. Britain conducted a great deal of trade in Algiers and the Mediterranean but by virtue of the treaty of 1682 they paid very little for the privilege. British ships were issued with passports (known as passavants) that were recognized by the Algerian corsairs. Any ship that could not produce a passport was legitimate bounty for the pirates. The French and Spanish, however, had found a way around this and thus the people of Algiers, who survived primarily on piracy, were earning less and less every year.
In 1756, the French had briefly captured Mahon, then a significant British port. Admiral John Byng was executed for failing to hold it, thus inspiring Voltaire’s joke in Candide: ‘il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres’. The French captors discovered some passavants in the commander’s office, copied them and gave them to their own and their allies’ ships. Spanish and French sailors had been sailing unmolested under British passavants ever since. Each time a French or Spanish ship was stopped by pirates or boarded in port they would produce their British passavants and the Algerians would grudgingly have to let them through. It was soon noticed, though, that none of them spoke English.
One such ship was brought to Algiers under tow and Bruce told the Algerian corsairs that indeed they were right, this was not an English ship, thereby condemning the entire crew to slavery. This he described as a ‘disagreeable necessity’ but it was not disagreeable enough to stop him from repeating