This was in 1535. Only a few short years before, in 1517, he conceded to a Flemish courtier the exclusive privilege of importing into the West Indies four thousand blacks from Africa. It is said that Charles lived long enough to repent what he had thus inconsiderately done.[35] Certain it is, no single concession of king or emperor recorded in history has produced such disastrous far-reaching consequences. The Fleming sold his monopoly to a company of Genoese merchants, who organized a systematic traffic in slaves between Africa and America. Thus, while levying a mighty force to check the piracies of Barbarossa, and to procure the abolition of Christian slavery in Tunis, the Emperor, with criminal inconsistency, laid the corner-stone of a new slavery, in comparison with which the enormity he warred against was trivial and fugitive. [35] Clarkson, History of the Abolition of the Slave-Trade, Vol. I. p. 33. Elated by the conquest of Tunis, filled also with the ambition of subduing all the Barbary States, and of extirpating Christian slavery, the Emperor in 1541 directed an expedition of singular grandeur against Algiers. The Pope tardily joined his influence to the martial array. But Nature proved stronger than Pope and Emperor. Within sight of Algiers a sudden storm shattered his proud fleet, and he was driven back to Spain, discomfited, with none of those trophies of emancipation with which his former expedition was crowned.[36] [36] Robertson's Charles the Fifth, Book VI. A lamentable and piteous Treatise, verye necessarye for euerie Christen Manne to reade, wherin is contayned, not onely the high Entreprise and Valeauntnes of Themperour Charles the v. and his Army (in his Voyage made to the Towne of Argier in Affrique, etc.) Truly and dylygently translated out of Latyn into Frenche, and out of Frenche into English, 1542: Harleian Miscellany, Vol. IV. p. 504.