On March 8, 1805, at the edge of the Egyptian desert, an American named William Eaton was preparing to do what the United States had never done before: attempt regime change.
He had gathered an odd cadre of roughly 400 men: eight U.S. Marines, 38 Greek mercenaries, 25 European artillerymen, a band of Arab fighters and Bedouin, and an exiled former ruler whom Eaton hoped to restore to the throne in Tripoli. Now, with the help of the Americans, Hamet Karamanli was to unseat his younger brother, Yusuf, the reigning Pasha.
Their destination lay hundreds of miles away, across the unforgiving Libyan desert. Eaton’s ragtag army was to cross the desert, capture the strategic city of Derna, and ultimately overthrow Yusuf.
The United States was barely thirty years old. It could hardly afford to go to war or stage a coup. But for nearly 15 years, it had tried to find a diplomatic solution to its troubles in North Africa without success. The conflict with Tripoli had become one of the most pressing foreign-policy problems confronting America.
The problem began after the United States declared independence in 1776, when America lost the protection of the British Navy. From then on, U.S. merchant ships became targets for state-backed pirates, or corsairs, roaming the Mediterranean. They seized American vessels and took their crews as captives. To ward off these attacks, America paid tributes to Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli – the Barbary States. “Tribute” was a euphemism for hefty ransoms of money, goods, and lavish gifts of spices, fine cloths, and jewels in exchange for safe passage. The rulers themselves were brutally candid about what these payments meant. Mustapha Pasha of Algiers had famously told the captain of the USS George Washington warship: “You pay me tribute, by which you become my slaves.”
For a fledgling republic, buying peace in this way had become too expensive. In one instance alone, Algiers had demanded $1 million – a tenth of America’s annual budget.
So America decided to try something new. It turned to William Eaton, a diplomat by profession and a rebel by temperament, in the hopes that “regime change” could do what war and tributes had not done. What ensued transformed America’s view of war, diplomacy, and its own place in the world.
William Eaton had placed himself in the midst of trouble all his life. Short and stocky and reportedly bulldog-like, he had run away from his father’s farm to join the Continental Army when he was only 16. After the Revolution, he attended Dartmouth, then rejoined the Army. But his military career nearly ended in a court-martial over a feud with a fellow officer until President Adams sent him overseas as the U.S. consul to Tunis.
Eaton threw himself into the assignment. He met regularly with the Bey, the ruler of Tunis, and his ministers, mediated disputes, and negotiated the release of captured vessels and crews. But the more he saw, the more furious he became about the tribute policy.
To Eaton, tribute was extortion disguised as diplomacy. In one of his many letters, he protested, “Genius of my country! How art thou prostrate!” He even proposed sending a thousand Marines to invade Tunis, overthrow its regime, and frighten the other Barbary rulers into submission – an idea his superiors rejected. As his frustration grew, Eaton became convinced that when Washington’s orders conflicted with his own judgment, his judgment should prevail.
Then Eaton met the man who appeared to be the perfect conduit for his audacious plan: Hamet Karamanli, the elder brother of Yusuf, who had seized Tripoli’s throne and driven him into exile. To Eaton, Hamet was the ideal weapon against Yusuf. To Hamet, Eaton was his only hope of reclaiming the throne.
Finally, Washington gave Eaton partial authorization to act. The plan was to defeat Tripoli and liberate the nearly 300 Americans from the USS Philadelphia, a U.S. frigate that had been captured by Tripoli’s corsairs in 1803.
The Navy supplied a small detachment of Marines, led by First Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon. The terrain before them was brutal. Food and water were scarce. They were on the verge of collapse by the time they staggered into the Bay of Bomba. This was their last rendezvous point before Derna, where an American warship was supposed to be waiting for them with provisions.
But the ship was not there.
By then, hope had all but vanished. The next morning, the sail of the USS Argus appeared on the horizon, bearing food, water, and supplies. The men ate and drank and soon resumed their march west.
Before reaching Derna, Eaton sent a message to the city’s governor, demanding his surrender. The governor replied with a single, ferociously blunt line: “My head or yours!”
Eaton answered with ferocity of his own. Offshore, three American ships—the Nautilus, the Argus, and the Hornet — opened fire on Derna’s defenses. Smoke billowed over the city. Eaton drew his sword and signaled the attack; O’Bannon led the Marines forward. The attack had just started when Eaton took a shot in the wrist. But Eaton, being Eaton, fought on. The battle was now in close range — hand to hand. Two Marines were killed. Within hours, O’Bannon and his remaining men had taken the fort and raised the American flag over its ramparts. History was made in Derna: the first territory in the Old World that had been captured by the U.S. marines. After years of paying the humiliating tributes, the triumph was electrifying.
Marine Corps lore holds that Hamet marked the victory by presenting O’Bannon with a Mameluke sword in recognition of his bravery at Derna. More than two centuries later, the symbol endures: Marine officers still carry ceremonial swords modeled on the Mameluke design. Since then, generations of Marines have honored the battle in their hymn, which begins: “From the Halls of Montezuma / To the shores of Tripoli; / We fight our country’s battles / In the air, on land, and sea.” Yet it was not Tripoli but Derna that they had conquered.
For the Jefferson administration, Derna marked the end of the war. For Eaton, it was only the beginning. He wanted to march on Tripoli itself, finish what he had begun, and restore Hamet to the throne. Unbeknownst to him, another American diplomat, Tobias Lear, was pursuing a different kind of victory with Tripoli. A former personal secretary to George Washington and now America’s consul general in Algiers, he had been authorized by President Jefferson to reach an agreement with Yusuf and bring the American prisoners home.
On June 11, 1805, the USS Constellation arrived at Derna with orders for Eaton to stand down: Lear had struck a deal with Tripoli. The United States agreed to pay yet another payment of $60,000 for the release of its prisoners, five of whom had died in prison and another five had converted to Islam. The agreement also ended any prospect of restoring Hamet to the throne.
Eaton was ordered to evacuate Derna immediately. He took with him Hamet and his entourage along with the Americans and Europeans who had accompanied him from the start. All his Arab fighters were left behind to face whatever retribution Yusuf’s forces might bring.
Derna endures as America’s first attempt to bring about “regime change” using military force and a local political ally. Together, the Americans and Hamet won a remarkable battlefield victory. But once Washington could secure its prisoners, protect American commerce, and end the war through negotiation, Hamet’s restoration was no longer essential to American objectives.
While the settlement of 1805 was not the surrender Eaton believed it to be, it still did not address the larger question that had confronted America since independence: whether the United States would continue purchasing peace in the Mediterranean.
Eaton died at the age of forty-seven, still bitterly believing that America had given up a durable victory for an impermanent peace. And he proved to have been right. Four years after his death, President James Madison sent another American squadron to the Mediterranean. This time, Commodore Stephen Decatur defeated the Algerians and compelled them to renounce their demands for tribute. America had had it with the Barbary States and would no longer pay to navigate the seas freely.
What had begun when independence stripped American merchant ships of British protection became a 30-year struggle. Over those decades, nearly 35 American vessels were captured and some 700 Americans were taken captive. During this struggle, the young United States built its naval power and learned to project military influence thousands of miles from home. In doing so, it proved what tribute never could: American freedom would not be purchased from foreign rulers, but defended by American power.
Luca Guerzoni contributed to the production of this story
