THE expression "a galley slave" is equivalent to the extreme of fatigue and misery, yet few who use it definitely know what it implies. The war galley of the Mediterranean was a one-decked vessel, sometimes a hundred and fifty feet long and twenty feet broad. Its career was urged by twenty-five pairs of oars, forty feet long, each oar being pulled by six or seven pairs of arms. The rower sat on benches firmly fixed between the ship's side, and a central division passing from stern to prow. Along this division, on a level with the men's shoulders, ran a gangway from poop to forecastle. This pathway was occupied by the boatswain, his mate, and a driver, each armed with a heavy thong, which they plied at pleasure on the naked backs of the rowers, chained helpless to the benches, each by his foot. Speed in pursuit, or in the evolutions of battle, was the service expected from the galleys, and it was extorted from the slaves by the lash. At the boatswain's whistle, the oarsmen rose to their feet, pushing up the oar till its blade dipped in the sea; then, pulling it towards them, by clutching at iron handles attached to its side, they sat down, leaning back almost in the bosoms of those behind them, till it was time to rise again. This severe exercise, kept up for hours, made streams of sweat pour down the limbs of the rower, even in the severest weather, and, when continued a whole day or night, produced utter exhaustion. Morsels of bread soaked in wine were at such times put into the rowers' mouths; but, if one sunk from fatigue, he was whipped until it was plain no more work could be got from him, and then thrown into the hold to recover, or into the sea to perish. "That which adds to their misery," says Bion, a chaplain who had sailed several cruises in the French galleys (1703 and 1704), "is that they are not allowed the least sign of complaint, under strokes which are ushered in and followed by volleys of oaths and imprecations."
"If there be a hell in this world," said a rhymer of the sixteenth century, "it is in the galleys, where rest is unknown." Hard work, hard fare, hard usage, exposure by night and by day, experience of every insult and cruelty, were the every-day life of the whole year. Thirty ounces of biscuit, with three ounces of thin bean soup flavored with rancid oil or tainted meat, every other day, scarcely sustained their wretched life. Their clothing included each year two coarse canvas shirts, two pairs of linen breeches, two pairs of socks, and a long overcoat. For covering at night, while sleeping on bare boards, they had two blankets for each bench. As protection from the elements, an awning stretched above them in fair weather; but it was taken down at the approach of a storm, because it made difficult the handling of the vessel. If employed in blockade service, the slaves were exposed all winter to wind, rain, snow, sleet. Their only comfort then was in lying close together. Of course their clothing, worn so long, swarmed with vermin never dislodged but in port. Occasionally half the men would be sick at once. Their only hospital was a hold so dark, crowded, foul, and infested, that no slave who had been there, though ever so sick and weak, but would tug at his oar and expire under the lash rather than go back to so loathsome a place.
Who, now, were the tenants of these horrid prisons, and sat on these wretched seats? At the upper end of every one was a Turk or Moor, captive in war, and promoted to this sad pre-eminence because commonly stronger than a Christian. The most numerous class, however, were deserters from the army, or criminals, doomed for the worst outrages to perpetual slavery at the oar. Having nothing to hope, they often behaved as if they had nothing to fear. A third division were the victims of abominable laws, convicted of having purchased salt otherwise than as the king commands. A pint of salt cost inland about five francs; and it was the king's will that those who lived farthest from the sea should pay this highest price for the benefit of his revenue. If, then, a poor peasant, forced to deny his family soup six days in seven, because it costs so much to season it, ventured to buy salt where it was three times as cheap, he was condemned to the galleys for a term of years. But the most pitiable of all were those aspersed with the name of heretics, who read the Bible, and saw what Romanism had added to its teachings, and thought themselves bound in conscience to worship God otherwise than as the king and Jesuits bade.
After forty years of anarchy, massacre, and civil war, the strife between Catholics and Protestants in France was ended by the edict of Nantes, 1598, securing to the latter equal rights with the former in the exercise of their religion. That edict, the work of Henry IV. in the hour of his triumph, was his statesman-like acknowledgment of the strength of those in whose favor it was made, and of the impossibility of prosperity in France without justice to the Huguenots. Repeatedly was it confirmed by his successors, for they found their account in it, when new convulsions threatened the monarchy. But when those disorders were quieted, and the aggressive temper of Louis XIV. had filled Europe with contention, and his own kingdom with camps, his arrogant spirit forbade all dissent from his opinions. After many years of reported progress in seducing Huguenots from their faith, by offering worldly inducements to apostasy, he pretended that the edict was no longer necessary (Protestantism being nearly extinct), and might be revoked.
The immunity of a hundred years came to an end. Protestant worship was forbidden; Protestant churches were thrown down; Protestant preaching made an offense punishable by condemnation to the galleys; children of seven years were made competent to choose their religion; crowds of soldiers were billeted on Huguenot villages, and encouraged to wring adjuration from men, women, and children, by inflicting every indignity; and by the torture of utter denial of sleep; and even the attempt to escape and emigrate on the part of their wretched victims, made them liable to the galleys. This worst extremity of penal infliction, intolerable beyond all but the vengeance of the Inquisition, was made the doom of men guiltless of every offense, and often adorned with every virtue. Into the company of the worst felons, saintly and learned men were forced for life. Feeble and delicate men were compelled to exhausting exertions, and were visited with merciless scourging if they failed to do what they could not perform. Worst of all, if they refused to kneel at the chaplain's mass, they were liable to the bastinado. Moors and Turks might be absent from this sacrament, but those who at home had risked all losses and perils to avoid it, were compelled to be present and to comply. These sufferings were worse than those of the auto da fe (being burned as martyrs), because they lasted during life. Such atrocious injustice was attempted nowhere else, and never before. It was the wantonness of arbitrary power, setting reason at defiance, and holding compassion in contempt. Nothing could be gained by it except pretended uniformity in externals, accompanied by loathing and detestation at heart. Everything was lost by it, including manliness in the individual, contentment in the community, and prosperity in the State. France flung from her bosom nearly a million of her most intelligent, virtuous, and prosperous citizens.