Hayraddin was, however, no contemptible foe. Ambitious and relentless, a skilful and a generous chief, his lavish bounties among his partizans made them his blind adherents: while his wondrous versatility had enabled him to ingratiate himself with the Sultan and his Vizier. It was therefore to be war to the knife between the Crescent and the Cross. As soon as Barbarossa heard of the Emperor's formidable preparations, he called in all his corsairs from their different stations, drew from Algiers what forces could be spared, summoned Moors and Arabs from all quarters to his standard, and inflamed their fanaticism by assuring them he was embarking in a holy war. Twenty thousand horse and a considerable body of foot answered his summons, and drew together before Tunis. Hayraddin knew, however, that his greatest dependence must be on his Turkish troops, who were armed and disciplined in the European manner. He therefore threw six thousand of them, under Sinan, the renegade Jew, into the fortress of Goletta commanding the bay of Tunis; which the Emperor immediately invested. Three separate storming parties attacked the fort; Sinan raged like a lion at bay: frequent sallies were made by his garrison, while the Moors and Arabs made diversions. But nothing could withstand the fury of the assailants; and a breach soon appeared in the walls of the fortress, which the Emperor pointed out to Muley Hassan. "Behold," said he, "the gate through which you may re-enter your kingdom!" With the Goletta, Barbarossa's fleet fell into the Emperor's hands; and he was driven to extremities. Having strongly entrenched himself within the city, he called his chiefs to a council of war, and proposed to them, that before sallying out to decide their fate in battle, they should massacre ten thousand Christians whom he had shut up in the citadel. Even his pirate chiefs were staggered at this proposal; and Barbarossa, seeing they would not support him in it, yielded the point with a gesture of disgust at their want of hardihood. Charles and his chivalry were meanwhile painfully toiling, under a blazing African sun, across the burning sands which encompass Tunis, without so much as a drop of water to cool their tongues: "Non e gente Pagana insieme accolta, Non muro cinto di profonda fossa, Non gran torrente o monte alpestre e folta Selva, che 'l loro vïaggio arrestar possa." La Ger. Lib., _Canto I._ Hayraddin, sallying out upon them with his best troops, made a desperate onset, but was so vigorously repulsed that his forces surged back to the city, and he himself was irresistibly borne along with them like a straw on the tide.