Page:Decisive Battles Since Waterloo.djvu/105

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BATTLE OF STAOUELI AND FALL OF ALGIERS.
75

any circumstances. On the 5th of July the French entered Algiers in great pomp and took possession of the place; they respected private property, and in a proclamation General Bourmont offered amnesty to all who had opposed him, provided they laid down their arms at once.

The spoils of war were such as rarely fall to the lot of a conquering army, when its numbers and the circumstances of the campaign are considered. In the treasury was found a large room filled with gold and silver coins heaped together indiscriminately, the fruits of three centuries of piracy; they were the coins of all the nations that had suffered from the depredations of the Algerines, and the variety in the dates showed very clearly that the accumulation had been the work of two or three hundred years. How much money was contained in this vast pile is not known; certain it is that nearly fifty million francs, or two millions sterling, actually reached the French treasury, and it is not known that the French officers and soldiers added any thing to the original amount from their private purses.

On the walls and ships-of-war fifteen hundred and forty-two cannon were found, of which six hundred and seventy-were of bronze, and the entire value of the public property turned over to the French government was estimated at fifty-five million francs. The cost of the war was much more than covered by the captured property; in fact; the money alone that was found in the treasury was sufficient for that purpose. Many slaves were liberated, among them the crews of two French brigs that had been captured not long before. The total loss of the French in the campaign was six hundred killed and seventeen hundred wounded, while that of the Algerines was estimated at double those figures, the proportion of the killed being greater in consequence of the deadly fire of the French artillery.

The Algerine power was forever broken, and from that