Chapter IV: The Conquest of Tunis by Charles V

The descendants of Abou Abd Allah Muhamed el Mostancer soon forgot to pay their tribute to the kings of Sicily, and the Beni Hafs continued to enjoy absolute power in their dominions till nearly the middle of the sixteenth century, when they succumbed to the successive attacks of the Spaniards and the Turks. The invasion of Tunis by Charles V. was incontestably one of the most celebrated _gesta_ of the age in which it occurred; it has been celebrated alike in poetry, painting, and even on porcelain, and its traces have hardly yet entirely disappeared. The emperor brought in his train one Jan Cornelis Vermeyen, who painted ten pictures of the most striking episodes in the campaign. Six of the original paintings were discovered by the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and they were subsequently restored and brought to England by the late Prince Consort. The localities depicted in them can be easily recognised by any one well acquainted with the principal features of the country, and I have been enabled to place before the reader the drawings representing the capture of Tunis and the bombardment of the Goletta forts. The remains of the ramparts thrown up by the captains of Barbarossa are still visible. They consist of a triple wall with the intervening spaces filled up by layers of sand, stones, and rubbish. This line of fortification passed from shore to shore, across the neck of land which divides the Mediterranean from the Tunis lake, close to the railway terminus erected by an English company in 1872. In making some improvements in 1874, the lake end of the rampart was cut through. Nearly two hundred skeletons were found outside it. Several pieces of Spanish money, a heap of cannon balls, and some broken weapons were picked up. The bones were afterwards re-interred in the adjoining burial-ground. A skull, pierced apparently by a conical bullet, is still preserved in Tunis. A short time afterwards I pointed out these remains to Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, who remained some time in Tunis and visited all the ruins of the Spanish fortifications. He much regretted he had not seen them before writing his charming book on “The Cloister Life of Charles V.,” and his untimely death alone, I believe, prevented him from becoming the most modern chronicler of the Spanish emperor’s African conquest. One of the finest known specimens of majolica ware is covered with a painting of the storming of Goletta, which Joseph Marryat erroneously describes as “an island in the Mediterranean Sea.”[17] It bears the following inscription:—

M.D. XXXI (?)

“Da Carlo d’Austria Imperatore potente

_L’alta Goletta_ inespugnabil tanto

Astretta e presa con furor repente

In Urbino nella bottega di Francesco Silvano.”

From the picture by Jan Cornelis Vermeyen, in the possession of Her Majesty Queen Victoria.

Reproduction by Maclure & Macdonald.]

From the picture by Jan Cornelis Vermeyen, in the possession of Her Majesty Queen Victoria.

Reproduction by Maclure & Macdonald.]

From the picture by Jan Cornelis Vermeyen, in the possession of Her Majesty Queen Victoria.

Reproduction by Maclure & Macdonald.]

From the picture by Jan Cornelis Vermeyen, in the possession of Her Majesty Queen Victoria.

Reproduction by Maclure & Macdonald.]

From the picture by Jan Cornelis Vermeyen, in the possession of Her Majesty Queen Victoria.

Reproduction by Maclure & Macdonald.]

The story of the Spanish invasion of the kingdom of the Beni Hafs has been written by at least a score of Moorish and Spanish annalists. The voluminous records of the Knights of St. John contain the minutest details of the great enterprise. In the carefully preserved archives of the Order I discovered the original MS. instructions issued by the Grand Master to the captains of the Maltese contingent.[18] In the public library I happened to light on a brief but curious narrative of the expedition compiled by a French knight in 1612.

“Mouley Muhamed, king of Tunis,” writes the Chevalier Boyssat, “died in 1533. He was, it is believed, poisoned by one of his wives, by name Geisa, who desired to secure the throne for her son, Mouley Assem (Hasan), and who at once put twenty-two of his brothers to death. One alone, by name Rascit (Rachid), contrived to escape, who took refuge with the corsair Kheir-ed-Din at Algiers. They went together to Constantinople, and there the Captain Pacha proposed to the Sultan Suleiman the conquest of Tunis, under the pretext of the restoration of Rascit. A fleet was at once prepared, but when it was on the point of sailing Rascit mysteriously disappeared. Kheir-ed-Din, however, reached Tunis, and took it almost without a blow. It was not till he arrived in the very midst of the _castel_ of Tunis that he confessed to the absence of Rascit, and boldly proclaimed the downfall of the Beni Hafs and the authority of the Grand Signor. Mouley Assem then fled to Europe and asked the powerful aid of the Emperor Charles.”

The Emperor agreed to assist him. He found in this romantic enterprise the means of carrying out a project he had long before contemplated, and of furthering his ideas of becoming the Defender of Christendom. “Charles,” says Sir W. Stirling-Maxwell, “stood between the days of chivalry which were going out, and the days of printing which were coming in,—respecting the traditions of the one, and fulfilling many of the requirements of the other. Men of the sword found in him a bold cavalier. Like his ancestors, with lance in rest, he led knights against the Moorish hosts amongst the olives of Goletta.”

The allied fleet assembled in June 1535 off the coast of Sardinia. “The Pope,” says Boyssat, “sent twelve galleys. The King of France sent twenty more to guard the rivers of Christendom,[19] and the Religion[20] four ships and the great _carraca_,[21] commanded by Touchebœuf Clermont, with two hundred Knights. Anthony de Grolée commanded a reserve of seventy Knights, and a regiment of infantry. The Chevalier Botigella directed the sea-forces. On arriving in Sardinia the Emperor received the Knights with the highest honours, and the Prior of Pisa presented to him one Sherif, the envoy sent to the Grand Master by Mouley Hasan. Sherif was able to address the Emperor in good Spanish, being descended from the Moors expelled by Ferdinand from the kingdom of Granada. On the 28th June the fleet anchored off the harbour of Utica, now called Porto-Farina. The Emperor’s galley stuck fast in the sand, but Prince Doria managed to release it, and the circumstance was hailed as a good omen denoting the desire of the African soil to voluntarily submit to the will of His Majesty.” On the appearance of this formidable flotilla of 600 ships before Goletta, Barbarossa repented having withdrawn his vessels into the Tunis lake, and put to death one Louis Pressida, a Genoese gentleman, who had assured him that the Emperor would never come to Tunis in person. The soldiers disembarked _between Goletta and the salt-pits_. There an entrenched camp was formed. The Goletta garrison made frequent sorties against the invaders, in one of which their leader, Jiaffer, was killed. The Maltese _carraca_, “St. Anne,” was then brought as near as possible to the Goletta fort, and her artillery in a short time demolished the greater part of it. The Turkish cannon, not being mounted on wheels, were consequently almost useless. An attack by sea was next organised, in which the Maltese ships occupied the position and precedence invariably conceded to the Order. The barque of the “St. Anne” carried three small cannons, and, approaching the shore, greatly harassed the besieged. At last the Emperor ordered a general assault, which was led by the Knights. The Chevalier Copier, carrying the banner of St. John, was the first to enter the Goletta, and it was his flag which first floated from the half-ruined battlements. The Turks fled towards Tunis by way of the lake, and Goletta was sacked by the Spaniards. Charles then moved along the right side of the lake (_estang_) towards Tunis. Kheir-ed-Din met him, a league from the town, at the head of eight thousand Moors or Turks and a strong force of Arabs. After a desperate engagement, Kheir-ed-Din was forced to fall back on Tunis. At that time there were several thousand Christian slaves in the dungeons beneath the citadel, which is now called the Kasbah. Kheir-ed-Din felt the danger of having to resist a double attack, and proposed to massacre them. This plan was successfully opposed by his subordinates. The slaves, headed by the Maltese Knight, Paul Simeoni, induced their keepers, two Spanish renegades, to open the doors of the prison. Having pillaged the arms in the guardhouse, they expelled the Turkish governor, and afterwards obtained complete possession of the fortress. They found the standard captured by the Turks at Sarmiento, and, hoisting it on the highest tower of the citadel, communicated the news of their victory to the Spaniards outside the walls. Kheir-ed-Din fled towards Bone, where he had prudently left some of his ships. Then followed a time of rapine and murder, the almost indescribable atrocities of which it is impossible to relate. Charles did not call off his followers from their prey until they began to slay each other in the quarrels which arose over the division of their booty. Then and then only did the generals endeavour to restore order in the army, the conduct of which had, during three days, resembled that of “a hideous band of brigands.” When Mouley Hasan endeavoured to protect a Moorish slave-girl, she indignantly spat in his face. The Tunisians could never forgive even the restoration of a Beni Hafs purchased at such a price.

The treaty by which Charles gave back the throne of his fathers to his protégé was a very short one. The following were its conditions:—(1.) The release without ransom of all Christian slaves. (2.) Freedom of faith and commerce to Christians. (3.) The Tunisians to abstain from piracy. (4.) Goletta to be ceded to Spain. (5.) An annual tribute of 12,000 piastres to be paid to the Spaniards. (6.) The suzerainty of Spain to be recognised by a yearly present of twelve horses and twelve falcons. (7.) Spain to protect Tunis against all foreign attacks. (8.) The castle at Tunis to be occupied by a Spanish guard until the country was completely pacified. Charles remained a few days at Rades, but before quitting the capital is said to have instituted an order of chivalry to commemorate his victory. The “Cross of Tunis” consisted of a flint and steel suspended from a golden chain bearing the word _Barbaria_.[22] The Emperor sailed for Italy, leaving a garrison of a thousand men and ten galleys at Goletta. While Italian historians were recording and Italian poets were singing the deeds of Charles and the glories of the Spanish arms, Kheir-ed-Din appeared before Mahon, reduced many of its inhabitants to slavery, and returned laden with booty to Algiers.