he
could not make head against a rabble of pirates and Moors with the army at
his disposition. Sandoval does not attempt to minimise the defeat, which,
of course, would have been impossible; he contents himself with the
following delightfully quaint reflection: "But many, many times Homer nods;
this disaster must have come upon us for our sins, upon which it is most
important that we should always think and meditate."

Who so triumphant now as Uruj Barbarossa? It is true that the fortress of
Pedro Navarro still remained in the hands of its splendid and undaunted
garrison, and was destined so to remain for some years to come; but they
were impotent for harm, and the conqueror of Don Diego now turned his arms
in another direction. Kheyr-ed-Din was at Jigelli when he heard of the
victory gained by his brother, and sailed at once with six ships to his
support. The town of Tenes fell into the hands of the brothers, with an
immense booty, and then Uruj marched on Tlemcen. The Sultan of Tlemcen, the
last of the royal race of the Beni-Zian, did not await the coming of the
corsair. All through the northern coasts of Africa the name of Barbarossa
was a synonym of terror; the sad fate of Selim Eutemi, of Kara-Hassan, of
the twenty-two conspirators of the mosque, had been noised abroad, and the
superstitious tribesmen firmly believed that these red-bearded corsairs
were the accomplices of Shaitan, even if they did not represent him
themselves in their own persons. Who were these men, they asked one another
tremblingly, who feared neither God nor devil, and who caused even the
redoubtable Spaniards to fly before them like the leaves in front of an
autumn gale?

When men begin to talk and to think like this there is not much fight left
in them, and so it came about that, after the most feeble of resistances,
the Sultan of Tlemcen fled to Fez. Thus, almost without striking a blow,
Uruj found himself master of a province from which the Spaniards were
accustomed to draw the necessary provisions for the upkeep of the garrison
of Oran. But Tlemcen is but some seventy miles from Oran, and Oran is so
close to Spain as to be easily reinforced; in consequence Uruj was soon
blockaded by the Spaniards, and remained so for seven months. But no
blockade could keep Uruj Barbarossa for long within stone walls; sortie
after sortie did the gallant corsair lead against the foe, and it was in
one of these that he characteristically came by his death. E