The allied fleet assembled in June 1535 off the coast of Sardinia. “The Pope,” says Boyssat, “sent twelve galleys. The King of France sent twenty more to guard the rivers of Christendom,[19] and the Religion[20] four ships and the great _carraca_,[21] commanded by Touchebœuf Clermont, with two hundred Knights. Anthony de Grolée commanded a reserve of seventy Knights, and a regiment of infantry. The Chevalier Botigella directed the sea-forces. On arriving in Sardinia the Emperor received the Knights with the highest honours, and the Prior of Pisa presented to him one Sherif, the envoy sent to the Grand Master by Mouley Hasan. Sherif was able to address the Emperor in good Spanish, being descended from the Moors expelled by Ferdinand from the kingdom of Granada. On the 28th June the fleet anchored off the harbour of Utica, now called Porto-Farina. The Emperor’s galley stuck fast in the sand, but Prince Doria managed to release it, and the circumstance was hailed as a good omen denoting the desire of the African soil to voluntarily submit to the will of His Majesty.” On the appearance of this formidable flotilla of 600 ships before Goletta, Barbarossa repented having withdrawn his vessels into the Tunis lake, and put to death one Louis Pressida, a Genoese gentleman, who had assured him that the Emperor would never come to Tunis in person. The soldiers disembarked _between Goletta and the salt-pits_. There an entrenched camp was formed. The Goletta garrison made frequent sorties against the invaders, in one of which their leader, Jiaffer, was killed. The Maltese _carraca_, “St. Anne,” was then brought as near as possible to the Goletta fort, and her artillery in a short time demolished the greater part of it. The Turkish cannon, not being mounted on wheels, were consequently almost useless. An attack by sea was next organised, in which the Maltese ships occupied the position and precedence invariably conceded to the Order. The barque of the “St. Anne” carried three small cannons, and, approaching the shore, greatly harassed the besieged. At last the Emperor ordered a general assault, which was led by the Knights. The Chevalier Copier, carrying the banner of St. John, was the first to enter the Goletta, and it was his flag which first floated from the half-ruined battlements. The Turks fled towards Tunis by way of the lake, and Goletta was sacked by the Spaniards. Charles then moved along the right side of the lake (_estang_) towards Tunis. Kheir-ed-Din met him, a league from the town, at the head of eight thousand Moors or Turks and a strong force of Arabs. After a desperate engagement, Kheir-ed-Din was forced to fall back on Tunis. At that time there were several thousand Christian slaves in the dungeons beneath the citadel, which is now called the Kasbah. Kheir-ed-Din felt the danger of having to resist a double attack, and proposed to massacre them. This plan was successfully opposed by his subordinates.