nd though supported by some of the Arab tribes he could
make no head against the Turkish guns. Tunis, like Algiers, had been
added to the Ottoman Empire, against its will, and by the same
masterful hands. It may be doubted whether the Sultan's writ would
have run in either of his new provinces had their conqueror gainsaid
it.

[Illustration: TUNIS, 1566.

(_From a Map in the British Museum._)]

Tunis did not long remain in the possession of Barbarossa. The
banished king appealed to Charles V., and, whatever the emperor may
have thought of Hasan's wrongs, he plainly perceived that Barbarossa's
presence in Tunis harbour was a standing menace to his own kingdom of
Sicily. It was bad enough to see nests of pirates perched upon the
rocks of the Algerine coast; but Tunis was the key of the passage from
the west to the eastern basin of the Mediterranean, and to leave it in
the Corsairs' hands was to the last degree hazardous. Accordingly he
espoused the cause of Hasan, and at the end of May, 1535, he set sail
from Barcelona with six hundred ships commanded by Doria (who had his
own grudge to settle), and carrying the flower of the Imperial troops,
Spaniards, Italians, and Germans. In June he laid siege to the
Goletta--or _halk-el-w[=e]d_, "throat of the torrent," as the Arabs
called it--those twin towers a mile asunder which guarded the channel
of Tunis. The great carack _St. Ann_, sent, with four galleys, by "the
Religion" (so the Knights of Malta styled their Order), was moored
close in, and her heavy cannon soon made a breach, through which the
Chevalier Cossier led the Knights of St. John, who always claimed the
post of danger, into the fortress, and planted the banner of "the
Religion" on the battlements[30] (14 July). Three desperate sallies
had the besieged made under the leadership of Sin[=a]n the Jew; three
Italian generals of rank had fallen in the melley; before they were
driven in confusion back upon the city of Tunis, leaving the Goletta
with all its stores of weapons and ammunition, and its forty guns,
some of them famous for their practice at the siege of Rhodes, and
more than a hundred vessels, in the hands of the enemy. Barbarossa
came out to meet the emperor at the head of nearly ten thousand
troops; but his Berbers refused to fight, the thousands of Christian
slaves in the Kasaba (or citadel), aided by treachery, broke their
chains and shut the gates behind him; and, after defending his rampart
as long a