and union they had been cut off by the restless foe, whose piercing eyes watched, and whose daggers waited only _for the time_. In constant danger, they could not sink into that sloth that eats out the heart of Eastern and Southern nations; for it was only in unrest that safety lay;--he who slumbered on those burning plains, no less than the sleeper on Siberian ice, was lost utterly and without remedy. This body of troops, called the _Odjack_, elected or deposed Deys at pleasure; the Dey, nominally their ruler, was in reality their tool. In one period of twenty years there were six Deys, of whom four were decapitated, one abdicated through fear, and one died peacefully in the exercise of his governing functions. [Footnote: _Voyage pour la Rédemption des Captifs aux Royaumes d'Alger et de Tunis, fait en 1720._ Paris, 1721.] In 1629, they declared the kingdom free from the domination of Turkey; soon after, they expelled the Koulouglis, or half-breed Turks, and enslaved the Moors. Admitting some of the latter to service in the militia, they never allowed them to hope for advancement in the State, or, what was the same thing, the army. Only Turks, or in some instances renegade Christians, could lead the soldiers, whom thus no feeling of local patriotism mollified in their course of savage cruelty, grinding the face of the poor natives till spirit and hope were lost and resistance ceased to be a settled idea in their minds. Now when the French navy came up to the port of Algiers, June 12, 1830, the unity between the soldiers and their master, Hussein Pacha, was tottering on the verge of dissolution; a plot against his life had just been discovered, he had punished the ringleaders with death, and many who had been concerned in the conspiracy felt that there was no safety for them with him. Beaten constantly in every skirmish or battle, they conceived a high respect for the military genius of the invaders, and, ere the close of the summer campaign, offered their services in a body to General Clausel; this offer he promptly declined, and they thereupon withdrew, carrying their swords to the aid of other powers less scrupulous.