Heussein soon began to show an increased disposition to break with France, and his corsairs frequently pursued their prizes to the coast of Provence. A squadron arrived at Goletta in 1728 under M. De Grandpré, and the Bey was compelled to make signal reparation for the behaviour of his captains. Heussein was deposed in 1735 by his nephew Ali Pacha, who in 1740 came to an open rupture with the French Consul-General, M. Gauthier. The French accused the Bey of piracy on their ships, and the Bey retorted by charging the French with sending stores to his nephews. M. Desfontaines and some other historians give a very different version of the _casus belli_. “The rupture between France and Tunis,” writes M. Desfontaines, “was caused by the want of tact of our Consul. This agent was ruled entirely by his mistress, who was jealous of a Maltese woman married to a Frenchman. She induced the Consul to expel the Maltese from Tunis on a charge of bad behaviour. The latter sought the protection of the Khaznadar, but the Consul insisted on arresting her. The Khaznadar rescued her by force, and his doing so being construed into an insult to the French flag, the war broke out.”[26] Whatever was the original cause of the dispute, the Bey seemed to determine to proceed to extremities. He ordered M. Gauthier to kiss his hand. The latter demurred, and was threatened with death if he persisted in his refusal. On the 14th May 1740 he was compelled to submit to the humiliating ceremony. Two French vessels richly laden were captured by the Tunisian corsairs off Cape Bon, and the island of Tabarca[27] was occupied and its Genoese colonists reduced to slavery, on a rumour becoming current that the Lomellini family meditated its cession to France. M. Gauthier managed to escape to Tripoli, whereupon Ali Pacha directed his son to destroy the French commercial establishment at Cape Négre. A M. Saurins, a lieutenant in the French navy, made a romantic but unsuccessful effort to obtain possession of Tabarca by stratagem. He was brought in an apparently dying state to Tunis, but he ultimately recovered and was released. The heads of the French who perished in M. Saurins’ adventure were exposed opposite the house of the French merchants. A war broke out at this juncture between England and France, which M. Rousseau frankly admits rendered a peace with Tunis “une nécessité indispensable.” Under these circumstances the extraordinary insolence of Ali Pacha went almost unpunished, for by the treaty of 1742 the kissing of his hand by the Consul and French merchants was agreed to, although the immunities of French trade were restored and all the French slaves released.