Note 3 — Chapter IX

When at Derna I was unable to obtain information concerning the origin of the American battery which seemed here so strangely out of place. I am indebted to Edwin De Leon, Esq., Consul-General for the U.S. in Egypt, for the following account of it. Achmed, Pasha of Tripoli, having been deposed by his brother Yusuf in 1801, took refuge in Tunis. Before long the new pasha found himself embroiled with the U.S., through capturing some vessels bearing their flag. Determined to punish him, they offered the ex-pasha the means of recovering his throne, but after long negotiations he left Malta without effecting anything, and retired to Egypt. His American allies had not, however, lost sight of him, and they induced him, by a grant of supplies and the nomination of an officer in their service, General Eaton, who took the command of his forces, to march upon Derna. Of this place he easily got possession, and it was then that this battery was erected. After a few months, being deserted by his allies, who made a treaty with Yusuf Pasha, in which his interests seem to have been little cared for, he retired to Malta, and thence to Syracuse, where he lived, partly supported by occasional sums granted by the Government of the U.S., partly by a small pension which their representative obtained for him from his brother. After various vicissitudes, he returned to Egypt, where, as the guest of Mohammed Ali, he enjoyed a liberal income. On his death a part of this was transferred to his only son, but was suppressed by Abbas Pasha. I found the son, now an old man, bedridden with palsy, in a state of frightful destitution, dependent for his support on the charity of servants. Mr. De Leon applied to the present Viceroy to obtain a restoration of the pension the son had so long enjoyed, and by his recommendation induced the Minister of the U.S. at Constantinople to ask the Porte to restore a small property in Tripoli, once belonging to his father, and of which he had enjoyed the revenue during the late Pasha’s reign, but which the Ottoman Government seized for its own benefit after his deposition. Hussein Bey Caramanly, the surviving son of Achmed Pasha, is, as his father was before him, an American protégé, up to the present time a very useless title, but from which he is now, thanks to Mr. De Leon’s energy, likely to obtain some advantage. His father’s story, in all its details, is told in the Acts of Congress, 1807-8.