The Pirate Coast(52)

Eaton weighed his options and decided his best chance lay in trying to convince the viceroy, that night at the reception, to help Hamet to abandon the rebel Mamelukes and leave the country. Eaton blithely added: “These obstacles overcome, everything else seemed feasible.”

At 8 P.M. a small detachment of mounted uniformed Turkish officers and attendants on foot entered the courtyard of the British House, leading six Arabian horses, richly caparisoned with the finest jeweled saddles. Eaton, in some kind of homemade general’s uniform, Presley O’Bannon, in the blue coat with scarlet collar and lace cuffs of a U.S. Marine lieutenant, and two blue-coated midshipmen with gold lace at their collars mounted up alongside Captain Vincent and Dr. Mendrici. The dozens of men on foot carried large flaming torches; immense crowds lined the mile-and-a-half path. Spectators, wrote Eaton, were curious to see “the men who had come from the New World.” (Presumably, they expected Native American Indians, not officers who resembled Europeans.)

At the gate of the citadel, more servants, grooms, and guards stood ready to help the men down from their horses and guide them inside the courtyard. The Pacha intended an ornate welcome. Albanian soldiers, in full uniform with a kind of chain-mail waistcoat and high leather buskins and red caps, paraded in the courtyard. The grand staircase to the Hall of Audience at the Citadel was lined with young turbaned Turkish officers in dazzling uniforms, carrying jeweled swords.

Eaton described the primary room of the court as surpassing in “magnificence” anything he had ever seen of this kind, that is, more sumptuous than those in Algiers or Tunis. The viceroy invited William Eaton, taking him by the hand, to join him on a large sofa of “embroidered purple and damask cushions.” Also attending were a host of long-bearded advisers comprising the government divan, or council.

First came elaborate hospitality and salutations: coffee, followed by pipes and sherbet. Since Islam forbade liquor, the drink on public occasions must be coffee. Many travelers crowned the Turks—in an age of heavy tobacco use—as the world’s leaders, with a pipe in their mouths most waking hours. As for the pipes used at the palace, these were no hubble-bubbles, but rather six-foot-long delicately carved poles of scented wood. “The tobacco of Turkey is the best and mildest in the world,” wrote one French traveler. “It has not the acrid taste which in our countries provokes a continual spitting; the length of the shanks in which the smoke rises, the odoriferous nature of the wood, the amber tube that is held in the mouth, the aloes wood with which the tobacco is scented, contribute to make it still milder and to render the smoke of it not unpleasant in a room.”

Eaton ate his fruit sherbet in a salle redolent of Arabian coffee beans and Turkish tobacco. An always quick—and often biased—judge of character, Eaton decided that the Turkish viceroy “was a man of much more frankness and liberality than commonly falls to the character of a turk.” Showing a genuine curiosity, the viceroy peppered Eaton with questions about the ongoing British-French war, the history of the United States. Is the United States at war or peace? With whom?

The viceroy decided to dismiss the courtiers and servants, and Eaton found himself alone with the viceroy and his interpreter. Eaton spoke in French, and the interpreter translated to Turkish. The viceroy, with a smile, told Eaton that he doubted that Eaton’s purpose was merely tourism.

Eaton, making a snap decision, decided to confide in the Pacha his true mission, even though Hamet was at that moment fighting along with the rebel Mamelukes.

Eaton labored to explain the entire history of U.S. diplomatic relations with Tripoli and the Barbary war, stressing Yussef’s betrayal of the treaty. Eaton artfully contrasted the duplicity of the Barbary rulers with the honorable conduct of other Turkish princes. (Nominally Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and Egypt were all regencies of the Ottoman Empire.) Eaton, laying it on thick, drew parallels between Islam and American Christianity: “Both taught the existence and supremacy of one God,” encouraged charity, and “forbade unnecessary bloodshed.” The viceroy agreed.

Eaton then explained that his mission was to restore Tripoli’s legitimate sovereign to the throne, and in so doing prove to the world “We do not unsheath the sword for conquest nor for spoil but to vindicate our rights.”

The viceroy replied that he had met Hamet and had even helped him out in time of need. (Hamet seemed to teeter from one handout to the next.) He said that he would like to help Eaton on his quest, but he added that if Hamet had indeed joined the Mamelukes, it would greatly complicate the situation. Eaton replied that it was holier to pardon a repenting enemy than to punish him.