by Giles Milton
Moulay Ismail hoped to secure the throne for his chosen son, and the few courtiers present at his deathbed had been forced to swear that on no account was news of his passing to percolate through the palace. It was imperative for the court to continue functioning as normal, in order to retain the pretense that Moulay Ismail was still alive. The sultan’s kaids—ignorant of his death—were greeted at the palace as if nothing had happened. Although they were denied an audience, their presents were accepted by the chief eunuch. Messengers came and went. Orders were proclaimed in the sultan’s name. A full eight weeks passed without anyone except the courtly elite knowing anything about the sultan’s death.
Moulay Ismail had originally nominated his son Abdelmalek as successor. But Abdelmalek’s recalcitrance had infuriated him, and he offered the throne instead to another son, Ahmed ed-Dehebi. Ahmed was secretly informed of his father’s death and hurried to Meknes in order to quietly take control of the reins of power. Abdelmalek remained ignorant of events, but he watched his brother’s movements with increasing suspicion. Convinced that a courtly conspiracy was afoot, he forced his way into the palace in order to discover the truth. When he was evicted by his father’s courtiers, he knew that something was seriously amiss.
The courtly inner circle now realized that the deception could no longer be maintained, especially as rumors were spreading throughout Meknes. “The people who suspected something, having not seen the emperor for some time, began to murmur,” wrote Braithwaite. He added that large crowds began to gather outside the palace gates, “in a very tumultuous manner, desiring to see their king.”
Knowing that it was time to proclaim Ahmed ed-Dehebi as sultan, the chief eunuch decided to do this in as dramatic a fashion as possible. He spread a rumor that Moulay Ismail was much recovered and would soon be paying a state visit to the nearby shrine of Moulay Idris. “Accordingly, at the day appointed, a covered coach drove thither in which the king was supposed to be, attended by the whole court.” The route was thronged with onlookers who flung themselves into the dust as he passed. All believed that the great Moulay Ismail was alive and well, and they were eager to catch a glimpse of this veteran survivor when he reached the shrine. “When the coach arrived,” wrote Braithwaite, “the people began to be impatient to see their concealed emperor.” They yelled his name and urged him to step out of the carriage. For several minutes, the assembled courtiers lay prostrate on the ground. The bodyguards stood rigid. The crowds waited in suspense. Suddenly, the doors of the sultan’s coach were flung open by a guard, and the hideous truth was revealed. Inside the carriage, Moulay Ismail’s putrid corpse was propped up with silken cushions.
As the gasps faded away, the chief eunuch delivered an address to the crowd. He explained that his stratagem had been designed to assure the smooth succession of Ahmed ed-Dehebi and added that the new sultan was finally in control. Civil war had been averted, and Meknes was in safe hands. The corpse could now be buried in the mausoleum that Moulay Ismail himself had constructed.
News of the sultan’s demise was proclaimed throughout the kingdom, reaching remote garrisons and kasbahs with remarkable speed. Thomas Pellow was still at Kasbah Temsna when he received a visit from one of Moulay Ismail’s officers, Kaid el-Arbi ben Abbou ould ej-Jebli. Pellow, initially suspicious of the kaid’s arrival, told him “that in case he had anything to say to me, he should advance with a few [troops] only to the foot of the wall.” But the kaid assured him that he had nothing to fear. “[He] told me that the old emperor was actually dead, and that Ahmed ed-Dehebi was, by the general consent of the black army, proclaimed at Meknes.”
The new sultan consolidated his position with remarkable speed. He was formally presented with the keys to Meknes on the same day that Moulay Ismail’s death was made public, and entered the city a few hours later. His first act was to present the black army with 220,000 gold ducats—a gift that was greeted with great enthusiasm. They saluted their new sultan and, according to Pellow, threatened “death and destruction to everyone who would not acknowledge him.” The sultan also took control of the treasury and began compiling an inventory of all the golden objects scattered throughout Meknes palace. He stripped his father’s wives of all their jewelery and added it to his treasury. He even toyed with the idea of selling his white slaves, in the hope of augmenting his treasury coffers. To this end, he ordered two slaves from each European nation to return to their homelands “to encourage the princes which ruled there to buy back those of their subjects which were enslaved.”
News of Moulay Ismail’s death was greeted with much rejoicing in the imperial capital. “The moment his death became known,” wrote Pellow, “all the inhabitants of Meknes retired every one to their houses, abandoning all the public works on which Moulay Ismail had unprofitably kept them incessantly employed.” But the sultan’s army of European slaves were not so fortunate. Ahmed ed-Dehebi soon decided against selling them back to their respective governments. He had inherited from his father a passion for building, and the captives now found themselves serving an equally megalomaniac master. “He embellished his Moroccan palace in surprising fashion,” wrote Adrian de Manault. “He covered the inside of the harem with gold leaf. The largest rooms were ornamented with marble basins, in which clear and transparent water ran, and in which a huge quantity of fish was placed.” The ceilings of these rooms were most extraordinary, covered with mirrored glass that reflected everything in the room below, “so that you could watch the fish swimming.”
Sultan Ahmed ed-Dehebi had acted with great prudence in securing the throne, but it quickly became apparent that he lacked the streak of ruthlessness that had enabled his father to remain in power for so long. Pellow said that he maintained control only by constantly distributing gifts to his crack troops. “[He] was a man of a most generous, though very sottish nature,” he wrote, “being almost ever drunk, giving the blacks a great deal of gold, and many other valuable presents, insomuch that their hearts were for the present entirely his.”
The new sultan was also a gourmet and dilettante, who devoted the greater part of each day to the pleasures of the table. “He didn’t find enough variety in the traditional Moorish cuisine,” wrote Adrian de Manault, “so he tasted all the foreign stews that could excite his sensuality and awaken his appetite.” Selecting four slaves from the most diverse areas of Europe, he ordered them “to prepare dishes according to the custom of their country.” It was not long before the new sultan had virtually abandoned affairs of state in favor of lengthy bouts of eating and drinking.
IT WAS MOST unfortunate for John Russell that his arrival in Morocco coincided with the death of Moulay Ismail. Although Ahmed ed-Dehebi’s accession had been engineered to avoid civil unrest, the countryside was soon swarming with brigands. Consul Russell stayed in Tetouan for six months, debating whether or not to travel to Meknes, before concluding that the potential benefits of doing so outweighed the risks. The Salé corsairs were threatening to seize yet more vessels, and it was imperative that the new sultan ratify the treaty that Moulay Ismail had signed six years earlier.
As Russell progressed toward Meknes, accompanied by attendants and porters, he was staggered by the number of European renegades he met en route, never realizing that so many slaves had chosen to apostatize rather than endure the miseries of hard labor. Anxious to learn more about life in the sultan’s service, he managed to speak with one of the British renegades, a man named Daws, when he arrived at Fez. “He turned renegade about forty-six years ago,” wrote Braithwaite, “ … and has had two wives in this country.” When Russell and Braithwaite asked why he had apostatized, Daws replied that “[it] was the late king’s threatning to kill him.” He added that “in those days there were no hopes of being redeemed.” Daws said that many of the English renegades were “carpenters, caulkers [and] sail-makers”—men with skills that Britain, with her rapidly growing navy, so desperately needed.
The city of Fez was in rebellion against the new sultan and under a
constant state of siege. Russell and Braithwaite were surprised to discover that numerous European renegades were serving in the ranks of the besiegers. “I was accompanied from the camp by one Nugent,” wrote Braithwaite, “an Irish renegado, and three English.” When he admired one of the heavy mortars, he was told that the gunner was a Frenchman. He was also taken to see an entire battalion of renegades—600 of them—who came from right across Europe. “[They were] mostly Spaniards, some French, some Portuguese, and about thirty English and Dutch.” All had been forced to do hard labor in Meknes and had converted to Islam in order to escape their chains. “As we returned home,” wrote Braithwaite, “we were led into a yard where we saw several Christian carpenters making carriages for cannon, under the direction of an old Spanish renegade.” He was horrified by the pitiful physical condition of the European renegades. “Those of them that I saw at Fez,” he wrote, “were sad, drunken, profligate fellows, half naked and half starved.” He said that many more had been “sent to garrison remote castles upon the confines of the country, where they are obliged to rob for their subsistence, until the country people knock them on the head.”
In the third week of November, Consul Russell and his entourage left Fez and headed toward Meknes. Russell had been assured that there were no British slaves in the imperial capital, but two captives managed to make contact with him soon after his arrival. Argalus Carter had been a slave for nine years and had served in the household of one of Moulay Ismail’s sons, while William Pendergrass had been plucked from a Dutch ship three years earlier.
Russell was ushered to court on the day following his arrival. He and Braithwaite immediately realized that the order and discipline so skillfully imposed by Moulay Ismail was a thing of the past. “We were kept waiting about an hour in this anti-apartment of the king’s,” wrote Braithwaite, who was alarmed to see courtiers fighting among themselves. “All [was] in such an uproar,” he wrote, “[that] one would have thought himself on the common side of a jail than in the palace of a great emperor.” At length, the Englishmen were informed that the sultan was ready to receive them. “Behold … two great wooden gates were flung open, and we discovered his imperial beastliness sitting under a wooden canopy.”
Consul Russell behaved with extraordinary gravitas, presenting the sultan with his gifts and condoling him on the death of his father. “But it might as well have been let alone,” wrote Braithwaite, “for his imperial highness was so drunk he could scarcely hold his head up.” He had to be helped to his feet by his eunuchs, who struggled to shuffle him across the room, while terrified courtiers crawled around on their hands and knees.
Russell and Braithwaite were disgusted by the depravity of the sultan. His skin was “very much pitted with the small-pox” and he was “very much bloated in the face.” His front teeth were missing, which gave him “a very ugly figure,” and his green silk turban was disheveled and “hung loose like a drunken man’s.” Russell’s audience was over before he had had a chance to mention the treaty. The sultan was carried away by his eunuchs, having uttered scarcely a word. His chief vizier was rather more effusive, clinging to Russell’s shirttail and assuring him that his demands would be met. “He protested how much he loved the English and promised mountains,” recalled Braithwaite. “He compared the English to the apple of his eye, and made several other odd and extravagant compliments.”
Russell had hoped to get restitution for the English vessels seized in contravention of the peace treaty. Instead, he and Braithwaite found themselves visited by a steady stream of European renegades in search of money or help. One of them—an Irish woman called Mrs. Shaw—recounted a woeful tale to the two men. She had been imprisoned in Moulay Ismail’s harem, and the sultan, “having an inclination to lie with her, forced her to turn Moor.” The ensuing sexual encounter was not a happy one, and the sultan gave her to a disreputable Spanish renegade who treated her with great brutality. “The poor woman was almost naked and starved,” wrote Braithwaite; “ … she had almost forgot her English, and was an object of great charity, having a poor child at her breast not above a fortnight old.” Russell, moved by her plight, said that she could visit him as often as she wished while he remained in Meknes.
On the day after Mrs. Shaw’s visit, Russell was told that a West Country renegade was waiting outside his lodgings. He invited him in and learned that his name was Thomas Pellow. “Today we were visited by one Pellow,” wrote Braithwaite, “a young fellow of a good family in Cornwall, but now turned Moor.” Pellow was now twenty-three years of age and had been out of England for twelve long years. Braithwaite already knew something of Pellow’s story from the slaves he had spoken with in Meknes. “The Christian captives gave this young man a wonderful character,” he wrote, “saying he endured enough to have killed seven men before his master could make him turn.” All in the slave pens respected Pellow’s bravado and resolution, and were no less impressed by his astonishing skills of survival.
Russell and Braithwaite were now able to hear the details of his capture and hardships directly from Pellow himself, who reveled in being able once more to speak in his native tongue. He talked of his adventures in the service of the late Moulay Ismail and bemoaned the fact that he had spent almost half his life in Morocco. With his sun-blackened skin and long beard, he must have struck the two newly arrived Englishmen as looking more Moroccan than English. “Pellow, being taken very young, spoke the Arabick language as well as the Moors,” recalled Braithwaite. He was impressed with Pellow’s eloquence and said that he spoke with great clarity about the events he had witnessed in the country, “giving a very good account of it.” Pellow also told them of his military escapades and his desperate bid to escape from Morocco after being left behind by Commodore Stewart. “He is at present a soldier,” wrote Braithwaite, “as all the renegadoes are who have no particular trade or calling.” He added that Pellow had done far better for himself than most of the other former slaves, whose “allowance of pay and corn is so small that they are in a starving condition, being obliged to rob and plunder for the greatest part of their subsistence.”
Pellow almost certainly introduced Russell and Braithwaite to the sultan’s chief weapons expert, the Irish renegade named Carr. This onetime slave had risen to a senior position in the courtly hierarchy and even had his own European slaves to attend to his needs. “Mr. Carr gave us a very elegant dinner after the English manner,” wrote Braithwaite. “We sat upon chairs, and eat out of pewter, with knives, forks and table linen etc.” The men had not eaten a square meal since leaving Tetouan, and Carr’s dinner party was most welcome. “We had wine, punch and a consort of musick played by Christian captives.” As the slaves struck up a merry tune, Russell and Braithwaite allowed their glasses to be filled and refilled by the hospitable Mr. Carr.
Consul Russell began to realize that his sojourn in Meknes was futile. Carr’s entertainment had provided a welcome diversion, but there was no escaping the fact that he was wasting his time. Russell’s woes multiplied when a tremendous rainstorm caused water to seep into his room. “It rained into Mr. Russell’s bed,” wrote Braithwaite, “and all over his chamber, so that there was scarce any walking in or out of it.” The next morning, shortly after Russell had left his chamber, the sodden ceiling came crashing down.
Russell hoped for one last audience with the sultan, but Ahmed ed-Dehebi was becoming increasingly temperamental. On 21 December, “[he] ordered the boy that looked after his pipes and tobacco to be flung down a precipice for stopping his pipe too hard.” Russell repeatedly requested a meeting with the sultan, but on every occasion he was refused. “The truth is,” wrote Braithwaite, “his majesty was drunk, and so he was likely to be the next day and the day after.” This was confirmed by the sultan’s physician, a Spanish ex-slave, who said that the sultan’s daily routine was a monotony of debauchery and hard drinking. “He drank with his ministers until he fell down, and then the eunuchs carried him to bed, until he had slept off his last debauch.”
On 10 January, more than five weeks since Consul Russell’s first meeting with the sultan, he was met by a flustered courtier within the compound of the imperial palace. The courtier said that the sultan wished to see him immediately and warned that he would be appearing in the next few minutes. Russell scarcely had time to compose himself before the great gates swung open and Ahmed ed-Dehebi entered the courtyard, clutching a large gun and flanked by statuesque guards carrying gold-tipped pikes. He stopped before Russell, muttered “buono Christiano” and asked to see the British king’s letter. Having expressed his pleasure that his own name was written in gold calligraphy, he promised not to capture any more British mariners. Then he made a majestic exit, offering Russell “a present of six captives” as he left.