er so
conspicuous a failure; but Sin[=a]n preferred not to trust to the
chance. To wipe out his defeat, he sailed straight for Tripoli, some
sixty-four leagues away. Tripoli was the natural antidote to Malta:
for Tripoli, too, belonged to the Knights of St. John--much against
their will--inasmuch as the Emperor had made their defence of this
easternmost Barbary state a condition of their tenure of Malta. So far
they had been unable to put it into a proper state of defence, and
with crumbling battlements and a weak garrison, they had yearly
expected invasion. The hour had now come. Summoned to surrender, the
Commandant, Gaspard de Villiers, of the Auvergne Tongue, replied that
the city had been entrusted to his charge, and he would defend it to
the death. He had but four hundred men to hold the fort withal.

Six thousand Turks disembarked, forty cannons were landed, Sin[=a]n
himself directed every movement, and arranged his batteries and
earthworks. A heavy cannonade produced no effect on the walls, and the
Turkish admiral thought of the recent repulse at Malta, and of the
stern face of his master; and his head sat uneasily upon his neck. The
siege appeared to make no progress. Perhaps this venture, too, would
have failed, but for the treachery of a French renegade, who escaped
into the trenches and pointed out the weak places in the walls. His
counsel was taken; the walls fell down; the garrison, in weariness and
despair, had lain down to sleep off their troubles, and no reproaches
and blows could rouse them. On August 15th Gaspard de Villiers was
forced to surrender, on terms, as he believed, identical with those
which Suleym[=a]n granted to the Knights of Rhodes.[41] But Sin[=a]n
was no Suleym[=a]n; moreover, he was in a furious rage with the whole
Order. He put the garrison--all save a few--in chains, and carried
them off to grace his triumph at Stambol.

Thus did Tripoli fall once more into the hands of the Moslems,
forty-one years after its conquest by the Count Don Pedro Navarro.[42]

The misfortunes of the Christians did not end here. Year after year
the Ottoman fleet appeared in Italian waters, marshalled now by
Sin[=a]n, and when he died by Pi[=a]li Pasha the Croat, but always
with Dragut in the van; year by year the coasts of Apulia and Calabria
yielded up more and more of their treasure, their youth, and their
beauty, to the Moslem ravishers; yet worse was in store. Unable as
they felt themselves to cope w