Doria left Bona in the charge of Alvar Gomez and a company of Spanish troops and then sailed away, if possible to find and capture Barbarossa, thus to set the seal of completeness on the victory which had been won by his master the Emperor.  Another stronghold of the corsairs was now in most competent hands, as Alvar Gomez Zagal was one of the most renowned caballeros of Spain, son of that Pero Lopez de Horusco on whom the Moors themselves had bestowed the title of “Al Zagal,” or “The Valiant,” on account of his extraordinary bravery.

On August 17th Charles re-embarked his army and evacuated the country, leaving, however, one thousand Spanish veterans, under the command of Bernard de Mendoza, in charge of the Goletta, as a permanent memorial of the expedition, and as a guarantee that the wretched Muley Hassan should fully comply with the treaty obligations which had been imposed upon him.  It is true that Barbarossa had not been captured, but his city had been taken, his fleet had been destroyed, and he himself was now a fugitive, unable any further to trouble the peace of Christendom or the dignity of the Emperor by whom he had been so soundly chastised.  In consequence the Caesar departed well pleased with himself and with those who had been acting under his orders, to whom he distributed orders and titles, as a memento of the occasion upon which they had finally broken up the power of those by whom his peace had so long been troubled.

One of the difficulties in dealing with the career of Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa is that, in times when he was unsuccessful, or when, as on the present occasion, he had received a severe setback, it is next to impossible to find out what he was doing or where exactly he was preparing for his next coup.  In this case, in particular, the old-time historians were thanking God that the Emperor had rid the world of a particularly pestilent knave, and ceased to trouble themselves much about him until he forced himself once more upon their notice.  Had Charles at this time recognised the greatness of the man whom he had just so signally defeated he might have changed the course of history.  Had he, instead of sailing back to Europe, content with that which he had accomplished in Tunis, pushed his attack home on Algiers, he might have made himself master of the whole of Northern Africa, as, in the disorganised state in which the corsairs now found themselves, they could certainly have offered no effective resistance.  But to the Emperor these rovers of the sea presented themselves merely in the light of robbers.  Robbers, it is true, on a somewhat large scale, but still not persons of sufficient importance to detain him from the infinitely more pressing affairs which awaited him on the opposite shores of the Mediterranean Sea.