In March 1568, owing to the fall of Mohammed Basha, the Vice-royalty of Algiers became vacant, and, through the good offices of his old friend Piali, Ali became Governor. He thus returned to occupy a position of literally sovereign power to the city which he had first entered as a galley-slave.
That he was no negligent Governor and that he took an entirely intelligent view of his functions, is proved by an occurrence which took place in this same year in Spain. The Moriscoes in the Kingdom of Granada revolted against their Spanish Governor, by whom they were sorely oppressed. They sent messages to Ali at Algiers, begging for succour against their persecutor. But the Basha would send no expedition; he permitted all and sundry to go as volunteers, but gave out publicly that “it more concerned him to defend well his own State than to interfere in the affairs of others.” He even went farther than this, and when a number of Moriscoes, who were settled at Algiers, embarked a quantity of arms for transportation to the coast of Andalusia, he put an embargo on the vessels and would not allow them to sail, saying “he would never suffer the exportation of what was so necessary for the defence of his own dominions.” At last, after much importunity, he consented “that all such as had two of a sort—as muskets, swords, or other weapons—might, if they thought fit, send over one of them, provided they did it gratis and purely for the cause’ sake; but he would never allow any of them to strip themselves of their arms for lucre.”
Ali, being now firmly established at Algiers, took up arms against the neighbouring State of Tunis. For long years now the King of Tunis had been protected by the Spaniards—a nation whom the Sea-wolves always held in singular abhorrence as the most bigoted of the Christian Powers, and who held in thrall many of their co-religionists. Hamid, son of Hassan, who now ruled in Tunis, had reduced that unfortunate State to anarchy bordering on rebellion, and the whole country, torn by internal feud, was ready to rise against him. The Goletta was in the hands of the Spaniards; Carouan, an inland town, had set up a king of its own, while the maritime towns passed from the domination of the Sea-wolves to that of the Christians, and from the Christians back to the Sea-wolves, according to which party happened to be the stronger for the time being.
El Maestro Fray Diego de Haedo, “Abad de Fromesta de la Orden del Patriarca San Benito” and “natural del Valle de Carranca,” whose Topografia e Historia de Argel (or Algiers) was printed in Valladolid in the year 1612, gives an account of Hamid at this time in which he describes that monarch as an “unpopular tyrant who sadly persecuted his vassals and the friends of his father; who could by no means suffer his tyrannies and those of his ministers, the scum of the earth (“hombres baxos”), to whom he had given the principal offices of the kingdom. Accordingly, since the time that Ali had become Basha of Algiers, letters had been written to him importuning him to come to Tunis that he might possess himself of that city and kingdom.”
There were three principal conspirators—the Alcaid Bengabara, General of the Cavalry, the Alcaid Botaybo, and the Alcaid Alcadaar. Ali, however, was too shrewd a man to move until he had satisfied himself by reports from his own adherents; he, therefore, awaited the result of investigations made by spies from Algiers. At last, in the beginning of the year 1569, when the offers from the Alcaids had been three times renewed and the Basha was assured that the people in Tunis were sincere in their offer to him of the sovereignty of the kingdom—which they begged him to conquer and hold in the name of the Ottoman Empire—the ex-galley-slave no longer hesitated. He left Algiers in the month of October, leaving that city in charge of one Mami Corso, a fellow renegado. Unlike Dragut, who would have gone by sea, he set out by land with some five thousand corsairs and renegadoes. On the way he was reinforced by some six thousand cavalry of the wild tribes of the hinterland, then as ever ready to join in a fray with promise of booty: doubly ready in this case, as it was to harass so unpopular a tyrant as Hamid. Passing through Constantine and Bona, he continued to march towards Tunis, his following augmenting as he proceeded, and adding to his forces ten light field-guns. Arriving at Beja, a town which Haedo describes as being but two short days’ march from Tunis, he came upon a fortress, recently erected by Hamid, mounting fourteen brass cannon. Here he halted, whereupon Hamid sallied out to give him battle at the head of some three thousand troops, horse and foot. The engagement had scarcely begun when the three Alcaids, who had been in communication with Ali, deserted with all their following. Hamid fled to Tunis, expecting to find shelter there, but he was hotly pursued by the corsairs, who followed him up to Al-Burdon, where his summer palace was situated. Hamid, finding that his people were everywhere in revolt, fled to the Goletta, carrying with him a quantity of money, jewels, and portable valuables, and placed himself under the protection of the Spanish garrison—not, however, without the loss of the major portion of his baggage, plundered from him by certain Moors in the course of his flight.
Like Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa, Ali was now lord of Algiers and Tunis, and as he was, for a corsair, a man of wide views, he treated his new subjects with consideration. He made, however, one curious mistake not to have been expected from one so politic: he demanded tribute from the tribes of the hinterland. In those days, particularly in Northern Africa, men paid tribute to an overlord because he was stronger than they; because retribution followed swiftly and suddenly upon refusal. To order tribute to be paid without being ready to strike was merely to expose the man making the demand to derision. Particularly was this the case with the fierce land-pirates of the desert, whose habit it was to exact and not to pay tribute. To Ali the Sheiks replied that “if he wanted tribute from them he must demand it lance in hand in the field, for there and nowhere else were they accustomed to pay: that their coin was steel lance-heads and not golden aspers.” After this, says Morgan, “the Basha thought it well to dissemble.”
Ali, being in no position to wage war in the desert against these people, had to swallow the insult and to turn his attention to regulating the internal affairs of his newly acquired kingdom. This he succeeded in doing sufficiently by the month of June in the following year to enable him to leave Tunis in the hands of one Rabadan, a Sardinian renegado, and to start himself for Constantinople. His reason for doing this was the old one of attempting to consolidate his power in Northern Africa by appealing to the Sultan for help. As long as the Goletta remained in the hands of the Spaniards no corsair could feel himself secure in either Tunis or Algiers. The object of Ali was to beg from the Grand Turk men and ships to assist him to chase the Spaniards out of Africa.
The month of June 1570, in consequence, saw Ali once more at sea in his “Admiral galley,” steering northwards to the Golden Horn. Carrying with them a favourable breeze from the south-east, the galleys spread their huge lateen sails, and the straining rowers had rest awhile. The squadron consisted of twenty-four galleys. Off Cape Passaro, in Sicily, a small vessel was captured which gave information that five galleys of the Knights of Malta were at anchor at Licata, a small harbour in the neighbourhood, and that they were on the point of sailing for Malta. The decision of Ali was taken on the instant: were he to go in and attack them with the overwhelming force at his command the crews might escape to the shore; even the Knights of Malta could hardly be expected to fight twenty-four galleys with five. He was anxious to capture the ships, but above all to capture those by whom they were manned: to have the satisfactory revenge of seeing the proud Knights stripped naked and chained to the benches of his own fleet.
The hot Mediterranean sun poured down out of a cloudless sky as the Sea-wolves made their offing; out of sight of land they lay, but right in the course which the galleys of the Christians were bound to take. The great yards, with their lateen sails, were got down on deck, and, oar in hand, the Moslems awaited their prey. Presently the Maltese galleys were discovered coming leisurely along, under oars and sails, and then—when it was too late—the Knights discovered the snare into which they had fallen. There was but scant time for preparation or deliberation, and who shall blame four out of the five if they decided to try to escape? for it was escape or annihilation.
But there was one which did not fly, “Una galera hizo cara a los Turcos” (One single galley turned her bows towards the Turks), says that faithful chronicler Haedo. She was named the Santa Ana, but the name of her heroic commander has not come down to us. Even as Grenfell “at Flores in the Azores,” stood upon the deck of the little Revenge on that memorable August day in 1591, when “he chose to die rather than to dishonour himself, his country, and her Majesty’s ship,” so also did this Knight of Malta bear down on the twenty-four that were his foes.