The history of Algiers abounds in well-authenticated examples of _conspiracy against the government_ by Christian slaves. So strong was the passion for freedom! In 1531 and 1559, two separate plans were matured, which promised for a while entire success. The slaves were numerous; keys to open the prisons had been forged, and arms supplied; but, by the treason of one of their number, the plot was betrayed to the Dey, who sternly doomed the conspirators to the bastinado and the stake. Cervantes, during his captivity, nothing daunted by these disappointed efforts, and the terrible vengeance which awaited them, conceived the plan of a general insurrection of the Christian slaves, to secure their freedom by the overthrow of the Algerine power, and the surrender of the city to the Spanish crown. This was in the spirit of that sentiment, to which he gives utterance in his writings, that "for liberty we ought to risk life itself, slavery being the greatest evil that can fall to the lot of man."[66] As late as 1763, there was a similar insurrection or conspiracy. "Last month," says a journal of high authority,[67] "the Christian slaves at Algiers, to the number of four thousand, rose and killed their guards, and massacred all who came in their way; but after some hours' carnage, during which the streets ran with blood, peace was restored." [Footnote 66: Roscoe's Life of Cervantes, pp. 32, 310, 311. In the same spirit Thomas Phelps says: "I looked upon my condition as desperate; my forlorn and languishing state of life, without any hope of redemption, appeared far worse than the terrors of a most cruel death."--Osborne's Voyages, vol. ii. p. 504.] [Footnote 67: British Annual Register, vol. vi. p. 60.]