Persia may now be considered not as a monarchy, but a Federative State, all the King’s sons being independent Princes.

Colonel Monteith was at Algiers—­the only Englishman in the army.  There may have been twenty foreigners in all.  He had letters of introduction and got there in a transport, taking his chance of being sent back.  He was with the intendant of the army, and at the siege was attached to a division.  Bourmont offered to receive him in his family.  Bourmont was hated and despised.  He seemed to take very little trouble about the army, and to leave everything to the generals of division.  On the 19th, the day of the battle, he lost 600 men by not advancing sooner.  The moment he advanced the enemy fled.  The loss was 2,200 men in all, yet fifty were never to be seen dead and wounded together.  The loss was by skirmishing at long shots along the whole of the line.  This sometimes lasted all day, and the troops, being young, were too foolhardy.  The Arabs are a miserable race, half naked.  Everything beyond Algiers seems a desert.  For eight miles round Algiers the cultivation is beautiful, and the villas more numerous than near any town he ever saw.  A profusion of water.  The town, miserable in the extreme, inhabited by Moors and the descendants of Turks, about 50,000.  The port is formed by one pier which hardly protects two or three frigates.  There is no safety in the bay.

There were 3,000 Turkish soldiers in Algiers, and about 7,000 in the country.  These kept order.  Now they are sent away the French may colonise extensively, but they cannot keep the country with the present inhabitants.

The Dey had ten millions sterling in gold and silver, a treasure which had been accumulating since the time of Barbarossa. [Footnote:  A famous corsair of the sixteenth century.] He claimed 400,000L as his own, and was allowed to carry it away.  The French enquired about the jewels of the Regency.  The Dey said there were no jewels but those which belonged to his wives, and la galanterie Francaise would respect them as private property.  So they did.

There was a magazine containing 250,000L of things in the trinket line.  There were 150 ornamental daggers, all the presents of European princes, &c.  Colonel Monteith saw one officer coolly put into his pocket a watch set in diamonds, which had evidently been given by a King of England, worth, he supposed, 2,000L.

General Lavardo pillaged more openly than any one.  He had thirty soldiers employed in carrying off his pillage.

The affair at Belida was accidental.  Bourmont went out with 1,600 men and invited the chiefs to meet him.  They were coming peaceably; but some Arabs saw the French artillerymen taking their horses down to water without their guns, and they could not help attempting to steal.  The artillerymen beat them off; but the firing having begun was soon converted into a battle.  Bourmont beat them off, but thought it expedient to retreat.