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