The capture of Algiers by Count Pedro Navarro was a crowning misfortune for
the exiles, and when this commander seized upon the place he extracted from
the inhabitants an oath of fidelity to the Spanish crown; he further
erected a strong tower to overawe the town, and to keep its turbulent
inhabitants in order. But such an oath as this, extracted at the point of
the sword, was writ in water; it meant, of course, the suppression of
piracy, and it also meant the starvation of most of those persons who dwelt
in the vicinity. How the Moslem population existed for the six years after
the incursion of Navarro is a mystery; but they probably moved their
galleys, of which they possessed some twenty, further along the coast out
of the range of the guns from Navarro's Tower, and secure from the
observation of those who held it for the Spanish king.
In the year in which Selim descended upon Egypt the King of Spain,
Ferdinand V., died, and grave troubles immediately broke out in Spain. This
was an opportunity too good to be missed, as no reinforcements could
possibly be expected for the garrison in Algiers as long as these
disturbances lasted, and the Algerines took counsel together as to the best
means of driving out their enemies. It is a commentary on the detestation
in which they held the Spaniards that they should have allied themselves
for this purpose with the savages of the hinterland. This, however, was
what they did.
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