ever ready to acclaim deeds of blood and cruelty.  After this there were no more plots against the corsair in Algiers.  News of all these desperate doings in Algiers had by this time filtered across into Spain, and El Maestro Don Fray Prudencio de Sandoval recounts how, when the tidings came to Fray Francisco Ximenes, the Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo, that that prelate, much scandalised that the might of Imperial Spain should be flouted by a mere pirate, sent Don Diego de Vera with some fifteen thousand men to recapture the town, and relieve the beleaguered garrison in the tower.  This was in the month of September 1516.

Don Diego landed “en el dia de San Hieronymo,” and threw up entrenchments within gunshot of the town.  Great things were expected of this expedition, as Sandoval notes that in 1513 Don Diego de Vera, in the war against the French, had gained the approval of Count Pedro Navarro ("avia bien aprovado con el Conde Pedro Navarro"), and it was not expected that a mere pirate rabble would ever make head against the Spanish troops.  De Vera opened fire on the walls of the town from his entrenchments, but hardly had he done so when Uruj, leading his corsairs, which formed the spearhead to an innumerable army of Berbers and Arabs, made a sortie.

“Upon them one day did Barbarossa make an onslaught, and when he saw that the Spanish soldiers were ill commanded, he flung his forces upon them with loud cries.  And so great was the fear inspired by Barbarossa that they were routed almost without loss to the Moors; and with much ease did these latter slay three thousand men and capture four hundred on the day of San Hieronymo in this year.”

("Salio un dia a el Barbarossa y como vio los soldados Espanoles desmandados dio en ellos con gran gritos.  Y fue tan grande el miedo que vieron que Barbarossa los desbarato casi sin dano y con mucho facilidad mato tres mil hombres y cautivo quatro cientos dia de San Hieronymo deste ano.”)

This quotation is given in full to set out the amazing fact that in this battle over three thousand were killed while only four hundred were captured, which shows that it must have been in the nature of an indiscriminate massacre; the only captive of any note was the captain, Juan del Rio.  Diego de Vera had had enough of the corsairs, and sailed away with the remainder of his force.  Of what became of him or of them there is no record, but he must have been a singularly incompetent commander when he could not make head against a rabble of pirates and Moors with the army at his disposition.  Sandoval does not attempt to minimise the defeat, which, of course, would have been impossible; he contents himself with the following delightfully quaint reflection:  “But many, many times Homer nods; this disaster must have come upon us for our sins, upon which it is most important that we should always think and meditate.”