Meanwhile, France had plied Algiers with embassies and bombardments. In 1635 three hundred and forty-seven Frenchmen were captives there. Monsieur de Sampson was despatched on an unsuccessful mission, to procure their liberation. They were offered to him "for the price they were sold for in the market;" but this he refused to pay.[48] Next came, in 1637, Monsieur de Mantel, who was called "that noble captain, and glory of the French nation," "with fifteen of his king's ships, and a commission to enfranchise the French slaves." But he also returned, leaving his countrymen still in captivity.[49] Treaties followed at a later day, which were hastily concluded, and abruptly broken; till at last Louis the Fourteenth did for France what Cromwell had done for England. In 1684, Algiers, being twice bombarded[50] by his command, sent deputies to sue for peace, and to surrender all her Christian slaves. Tunis and Tripoli made the same submission. Voltaire, with his accustomed point, declares that, by this transaction, the French became respected on the coast of Africa, where they had before been known only as slaves.[51] [Footnote 48: Osborne's Voyages, vol. ii. p. 468; Relation of Seven Years' Slavery in Algiers.] [Footnote 49: Ibid. p. 470.] [Footnote 50: In the melancholy history of war, this is remarked as the earliest instance of the _bombardment_ of a town. Sismondi, who never fails to regard the past in the light of humanity, says, that "Louis the Fourteenth was the first to put in practice the atrocious method, newly invented, of bombarding towns,--of burning them, not to take them, but to destroy them,--_of attacking, not fortifications, but private houses,--not soldiers, but peaceable inhabitants, women and children, and of confounding thousands of private crimes, each one of which would cause horror, in one great public crime, one great disaster, which he regarded only as one of the catastrophes of war_." Sismondi, _Histoire des Français_, tom. xxv. p. 452. How much of this is justly applicable to the recent murder of women and children by the forces of the United States at Vera Cruz! Algiers was bombarded in the cause of _freedom_; Vera Cruz to extend _slavery_!] [Footnote 51: _Siècle de Louis XIV._ chap. 14.]