Page:Daring deeds of famous pirates; true stories of the stirring adventures, bravery and resource of pirates, filibusters & buccaneers (1917).djvu/230

 enemy's batteries had been silenced, and in the morning the Dey was compelled to surrender.

The net result of Lord Exmouth's fine attack was as follows. Twelve hundred Christians were released from their terrible slavery, all the demands were complied with, the British Consul had been indemnified for his losses, and the Dey, in the presence of all his officers, made an apology for the insults offered. Even though, a few years later, the French had further trouble with these Algerines, yet Exmouth's expedition had the effect of giving the death-*blow to a monster that had worried Europe for about three centuries. The scourge of the tideless Mediterranean had been obliterated: the murders and enslavery of so many thousands and thousands of European Christians of past centuries had been avenged, and a universal enemy which neither Charles, nor Andrea Doria, nor many another had been able to exterminate was now laid low. The combined squadrons of those two historic maritime nations—Great Britain and Holland—had shown that even a race so long accustomed to the sea as the Algerine pirates could not resist for all time. In the history of the world few nations have ever done so much for the development of ships and sea-power as these two northern peoples, and the chance which enabled them to combine forces against a common evil of such antiquity was singularly happy.