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Updated: May 2, 2025
This they surrounded, and after a very hard struggle the frigate was captured, but not until the English captain had ascertained that all the fleet of which he had been in charge had entered the Thames and were safe. In the above encounter with the English frigate Marteilhe had nearly lost his life.
The bench on which he was seated, with five other slaves, was opposite one of the loaded guns of the frigate. He saw that it must be discharged directly upon them. His fellows tried to lie down flat, while Marteilhe himself stood up.
Nice at that juncture had just been returned by France to the safe-keeping of Savoy, so that in order to escape from French territory, Marteilhe sailed for Nice in a tartane, and not feeling too safe even there, hurried thence by Smollett's subsequent route across the Col di Tende. Many Europeans were serving at this time in the Turkish or Algerine galleys.
Marteilhe, as we have already stated, was disembarked when he had sufficiently recovered, and marched through the entire length of France, enchained with other malefactors. On his arrival at Marseilles, he was placed on board the galley Grand Réale, where he remained until peace was declared between England and France by the Treaty of Utrecht.
A long time passed, during which the fight was still going on, and then Marteilhe came to himself, towards dark. Most of his fellow-slaves were killed. He himself was bleeding from a large open wound on his shoulder, another on his knee, and a third in his stomach. Of the eighteen men around him he was the only one that escaped, with his three wounds. The dead were all thrown into the sea.
The men were about to throw Marteilhe after them, but while attempting to release him from his chain, they touched the wound upon his knee, and he groaned heavily. They let him remain where he lay. Shortly after, he was taken down to the bottom of the hold with the other men, where he long lay amongst the wounded and dying.
The rowers benches were often filled with dead, before the soldiers and mariners on board had been touched. Marteilhe, while a galley-slave on board La Palme, was engaged in an adventure which had nearly cost him his life.
After serving in the docks at Dunkirk, Marteilhe, as a confirmed protestant, makes the journey in the chain-gang to Marseilles, and is only released after many delays in consequence of the personal interest and intervention of Queen Anne. If at the peace of Utrecht in 1713 we had only been as tender about the case of our poor Catalan allies!
Queen Anne of England, at the instigation of the Marquis de Rochegade, then made an effort to obtain the liberation of Protestants serving at the galleys; and at length, out of seven hundred and forty-two Huguenots who were then enslaved, a hundred and thirty-six were liberated, of whom Marteilhe was one.
The captain of the galley in which Marteilhe was, said, "Oh, he is coming to surrender!" The frigate was so near that the French musqueteers were already firing full upon her. All of a sudden the frigate tacked and veered round as if about to fly from the galleys. The Frenchmen called out that the English were cowards in thus trying to avoid the battle.
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