At this epoch the Sublime Porte informed the Bey that he had agreed to guarantee all Austrian vessels from the attacks of the Barbary corsairs; and in conformity with the wishes of his suzerain, Hamouda promised that the Tunisian cruisers should never more molest the ships of the Empire. During the stay of the naturalist Desfontaines at Tunis, an event occurred there which serves to illustrate the boundless power of the Beys at that period. A Ragusan captain was detected at the house of a Jew in the company of a Moorish woman. They were all three brought before Hamouda, who sentenced them to death _séance tenante_. The luckless Ragusan was at once beheaded, the woman was smothered in the mud of the Tunis lake, and the Jew was _burned alive_ in the middle of the city. This despotism at home seems to have been reflected in the increase of piracy abroad. Holland and Denmark vied with each other in coming to terms with Tunis, and in 1791 Spain too purchased a treaty from its former dependency at a cost of 100,000 piastres. During our war with France in 1796, an English squadron surprised four French men-of- war at anchor off Goletta. An engagement ensued, in which three of the French ships were taken. This proceeding is very severely commented on by French writers. At this time the French Republic was represented by a Special Commissioner, the citizen Hercules, and a Chargé d’Affaires, M. Devoize. The former accused the latter of a suspicious intimacy with the English Consul, of favouring émigrés, going to mass and singing, _“O Richard, o mon roi,”_ upon which he was ordered to Paris to give an account of his conduct, which was, however, deemed to be satisfactory. M. Devoize returned to his post in 1797. Three years before Hamouda Bey had declared war against the United States, and in 1799 the American Government deemed it expedient to put a stop to the depredations committed on their merchant shipping by a treaty. The following are the curious items of the price paid for it, viz.:—50,000 dollars in cash; 8000 dollars for secret service; 28 cannons of calibre 12, 14, and 8; 10,000 cannon balls; 300 quintals of gunpowder; 400 quintals of cordage, and a quantity of jewels. While the chief Power in the New World was thus paying tribute with all the forms of diplomacy to the piratical states of the Old, the weaker nations of Europe were reaping the fruits of the system which conventions thus ignobly obtained only served to nourish and support. The American Treaty had hardly been signed, when the Tunisian corsair, Muhamed Raïs Roumali, appeared with twelve ships before the defenceless island of San Pietro, to the west of Sardinia, and carried into slavery nearly the whole of its inhabitants. This occurred in June 1799. Three months afterwards Hamouda Pacha, by order of the Sultan, declared war against France, and in accordance with his directions sent his squadron to join the English fleet off the coast of Egypt.