On the corsair's arrival, Piali, provided with a heavier battering train, opened a more effective fire on the citadel. The works soon gave way, and the Turkish commander promptly returned to the assault. It was conducted with the same spirit, was met with the same desperate courage, and ended, like the former, in the total discomfiture of the assailants, who withdrew, leaving the fosse choked up with the bodies of their slaughtered comrades. Again and again the attack was renewed, by an enemy whose numbers allowed the storming parties to relieve one another, while the breaches made by an unintermitting cannonade gave incessant occupation to the besieged in repairing them. Fortunately, the number of the latter enabled them to perform this difficult service; and though many were disabled, and there were few who were not wounded, they still continued to stand to their posts, with the same spirit as on the first day of the siege.
DESPERATE DEFENCE OF GELVES.
But the amount of the garrison, so serviceable in this point of view, was fatal in another. The fortress had been provisioned with reference to a much smaller force. The increased number of mouths was thus doing the work of the enemy. Notwithstanding the strictest economy, there was already a scarcity of provisions; and, at the end of six weeks, the garrison was left entirely without food. The water too had failed. A soldier had communicated to the Spanish commander an ingenious process for distilling fresh water from salt.[1274] This afforded a most important supply, though in a very[{401}] limited quantity. But the wood which furnished the fuel necessary for the process was at length exhausted, and to hunger was added the intolerable misery of thirst.
Thus reduced to extremity, the brave Sandé was not reduced to despair. Calling his men together, he told them that liberty was of more value than life. Anything was better than to surrender to such an enemy. And he proposed to them to sally from the fortress that very night, and cut their way, if possible, through the Turkish army, or fall in the attempt. The Spaniards heartily responded to the call of their heroic leader. They felt, like him, that the doom of slavery was more terrible than death.
That night, or rather two hours before dawn on the twenty-ninth of June, Don Alvaro sallied out of the fortress, at the head of all those who were capable of bearing arms. But they amounted to scarcely more than a thousand men, so greatly had the garrison been diminished by death, or disabled by famine and disease. Under cover of the darkness, they succeeded in passing through the triple row of intrenchments, without alarming the slumbering enemy. At length, roused by the cries of their sentinels, the Turks sprang to their arms, and, gathering in dark masses round the Christians, presented an impenetrable barrier to their advance. The contest now became furious; but it was short. The heroic little band were too much enfeebled by their long fatigues, and by the total want of food for the last two days, to make head against the overwhelming number of their assailants. Many fell under the Turkish scymitars, and the rest, after a fierce struggle, were forced back on the path by which they had come, and took refuge in the fort. Their dauntless leader, refusing to yield, succeeded in cutting his way through the enemy, and threw himself into one of the vessels in the port. Here he was speedily followed by such a throng as threatened to sink the bark, and made resistance hopeless. Yielding up his sword, therefore, he was taken prisoner, and led off in triumph to the tent of the Turkish commander.
On the same day the remainder of the garrison, unable to endure another assault, surrendered at discretion. Piali had now accomplished the object of the expedition; and, having reëstablished the Moorish authorities in possession of the place, he embarked, with his whole army, for Constantinople. The tidings of his victory had preceded him; and, as he proudly sailed up the Bosphorus, he was greeted with thunders of artillery from the seraglio and the heights surrounding the capital. First came the Turkish galleys, in beautiful order, with the banners taken from the Christians ignominiously trailing behind them through the water. Then followed their prizes,—the seventeen vessels taken in the action,—the battered condition of which formed a striking contrast to that of their conquerors. But the prize greater than all was the prisoners, amounting to nearly four thousand, who, manacled like so many malefactors, were speedily landed, and driven through the streets, amidst the shouts and hootings of the populace, to the slave-market of Constantinople. A few only, of the higher order, were reserved for ransom. Among them were Don Alvaro de Sandé and a son of Medina Celi. The young nobleman did not long survive his captivity. Don Alvaro recovered his freedom, and lived to take ample vengeance for all he had suffered on his conquerors.[1275]
Such was the end of the disastrous expedition against Tripoli, which left a[{402}] stain on the Spanish arms that even the brave conduct of the garrison at Gelves could not wholly wipe away. The Moors were greatly elated by the discomfiture of their enemies; and the Spaniards were filled with a proportionate degree of despondency, as they reflected to what extent their coasts and their commerce would be exposed to the predatory incursions of the corsairs. Philip was especially anxious in regard to the safety of his possessions on the African coast. The two principal of these were Oran and Mazarquivir, situated not far to the west of Algiers. They were the conquests of Cardinal Ximenes. The former place was won by an expedition fitted out at his own expense. The enterprises of this remarkable man were conducted on a gigantic scale, which might seem better suited to the revenues of princes. Of the two places Oran was the more considerable; yet hardly more important than Mazarquivir, which possessed an excellent harbor,—a thing of rare occurrence on the Barbary shore. Both had been cherished with care by the Castilian government, and by no monarch more than by Philip the Second, who perfectly understood the importance of these possessions, both for the advantages of a commodious harbor, and for the means they gave him of bridling the audacity of the African cruisers.[1276]
In 1562, the king ordered a squadron of four and twenty galleys, under the command of Don Juan de Mendoza, to be got ready in the port of Malaga, to carry supplies to the African colonies. But in crossing the Mediterranean, the ships were assailed by a furious tempest, which compelled them to take refuge in the little port of Herradura. The fury of the storm, however, continued to increase; and the vessels, while riding at anchor, dashed against one another with such violence, that many of them foundered, and others, parting their cables, drifted on shore, which was covered far and wide with the dismal wrecks. Two or three only, standing out to sea, and braving the hurricane on the deep, were so fortunate as to escape. By this frightful shipwreck, four thousand men, including their commander, were swallowed up by the waves. The southern provinces were filled with consternation at this new calamity, coming so soon after the defeat at Gelves. It seemed as if the hand of Providence was lifted against them in their wars with the Mussulmans.[1277]
WAR ON THE BARBARY COAST.
The Barbary Moors, encouraged by the losses of the Spanish navy, thought this a favorable time for recovering their ancient possessions on the coast. Hassem, the dey of Algiers, in particular, a warlike prince, who had been engaged in more than one successful encounter with the Christians, set on foot an expedition against the territories of Oran and Mazarquivir. The government of these places was intrusted, at that time, to Don Alonzo de Cordova, count of Alcaudete. In this post he had succeeded his father, a gallant soldier, who, five years before, had been slain in battle by this very Hassem, the lord of Algiers. Eight thousand Spaniards had fallen with him on the field, or had been made prisoners of war.[1278] Such were the sad[{403}] auspices under which the reign of Philip the Second began, in his wars with the Moslems.[1279]