All this time he was
far from idle; sortie after sortie did the dauntless old warrior lead in
person against those engaged in the task of bombardment. Time and again he
heartened the Arab and Berber levies to attack, but the sallies were
repulsed, and the lightly armed Africans were driven like chaff before the
wind when they swooped down on the lines of investment.
But the time came at last when Sinan and his gallant Turks could hold the
place no longer; the walls were breached in six or seven places, and
Spaniards, Germans, and Italians made a simultaneous attack. Sinan fighting
to the last, evacuated the fortress, and retired actually through the water
across a shallow part of the bay to the city, with the remnant of his once
magnificent force; and now Barbarossa knew that the end was come, and that
Tunis must pass from his hands to those of the Christian Emperor. It was
not only the fall of the Goletta that troubled him, but the equally
important fact that by this the fleet of the enemy was enabled to lay hands
upon his own fleet, consisting of eighty-seven galleys and galliots,
together with his arsenal, and no less than three hundred cannon, mostly
brass guns of excellent construction, mounted on the walls and planted on
the ramparts. The surprising amount of this artillery gives a measure of
the strength of the fortress and the efforts it must have cost the
besiegers with such a man as Sinan in command.
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