Sheffield made his way,
rejoicing, to Naples. When the Dey heard how his subjects had been
handled, he threatened to put Lear in irons and to declare war. It cost
the United States sixteen thousand dollars to appease his wrath.
The cruise of the Americans against Tripoli differed little, except in
the inferiority of their force, from numerous attacks made by European
nations upon the Regencies. Venice, England, France, had repeatedly
chastised the pirates in times past. In 1799, the Portuguese, with one
seventy-four-gun ship, took two Tripolitan cruisers, and forced the
Pacha to pay them eleven thousand dollars. In 1801, not long before our
expedition, the French Admiral Gaunthomme over-hauled two Tunisian
corsairs in chase of some Neapolitan vessels. He threw all their guns
overboard, and bade them beware how they provoked the wrath of the First
Consul by plundering his allies. But all of them left, as we did, the
principle of piracy or payments as they found it. At last this evil was
treated in a manner more creditable to civilization. In 1812, the
Algerines captured an American vessel, and made slaves of the crew.
After the peace with England, in 1815, Decatur, in the Guerriere, sailed
into the Mediterranean, and captured off Cape de Gat, in twenty-five
minutes, an Algerine frigate of forty-six guns and four hundred men.
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