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Updated: May 5, 2025
At length they saw that the Turks were driven back into the fortress; the Christian army pursued them, and a shout was heard from the Spanish camp as of one loud Victory! and the cry, Goletta was taken!
Long ago, when Kheyr-ed-dīn was unknown to fame, Doria had driven him from the Goletta ; and in 1531 the Genoese admiral made a descent upon Shershēl, which Kheyr-ed-dīn had been strengthening, to the great detriment and anxiety of the opposite coast of Spain. The Imperialists landed in force, surprised the fort, and liberated seven hundred Christian slaves.
The first to fall was the Goletta, until then reckoned impregnable, and it fell, not by any fault of its defenders, who did all that they could and should have done, but because experiment proved how easily entrenchments could be made in the desert sand there; for water used to be found at two palms depth, while the Turks found none at two yards; and so by means of a quantity of sandbags they raised their works so high that they commanded the walls of the fort, sweeping them as if from a cavalier, so that no one was able to make a stand or maintain the defence.
At Bologna, for the Church of S. Martino, he painted an altar-piece of the three Magi, with most beautiful heads and figures; and at Ferrara, in company with Benvenuto Garofalo, as has been related, the façade of the house of Signor Battista Muzzarelli, and also the Palace of Coppara, a villa of the Duke's, distant twelve miles from Ferrara; and, again, in Ferrara, the façade of Piero Soncini in the Piazza near the Fishmarket, painting there the Taking of Goletta by the Emperor Charles V. The same Girolamo painted for S. Polo, a church of the Carmelite Friars in the same city, a little altar-piece in oils of S. Jerome with two other Saints, of the size of life; and for the Duke's Palace a great picture with a figure large as life, representing Opportunity, and executed with beautiful vivacity, movement and grace, and fine relief.
Three desperate sallies had the besieged made under the leadership of Sinān the Jew; three Italian generals of rank had fallen in the melley; before they were driven in confusion back upon the city of Tunis, leaving the Goletta with all its stores of weapons and ammunition, and its forty guns, some of them famous for their practice at the siege of Rhodes, and more than a hundred vessels, in the hands of the enemy.
On came the consort, utterly ignorant of what had happened, till a shower of arrows and small shot aroused her, just in time to be carried by assault, before her men had collected their senses. Urūj brought his prizes into the Goletta. Never was such a sight seen there before.
Giovanni then executed on a crystal the triumph of the taking of Goletta, and the War of Tunis on another.
Charles landed in Africa with thirty thousand men, took the fortress of Goletta, defeated the pirate's army, captured his capital, and restored the exiled Moorish king to his throne. In the midst of these victories Francis invaded Savoy. Charles was terribly indignant, and loaded his rival with such violent invectives that Francis challenged him to single combat.
Meanwhile the heavy firing of besiegers and besieged thundered unceasingly from the fortress of Goletta, and as the night darkened the scene with massy clouds, the flames of burning fragments became more visible, and the fiery course of the red bullets was perceptible as they crossed each other in their path, while their effects in fire and devastation were fearful to behold.
Into the hands of the Christians fell the Penon de Velez, situated on the northern coast of Africa opposite to Malaga a fortress much frequented by the corsairs; the Goletta at Tunis was also taken, and the pirates became so much alarmed that they demanded succour from Constantinople.
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