The tract of country which occupies the angle thus formed is the Regency of Tunis. As its very name denotes, the _Regency_ of Tunis never had any pretensions to be more than a quasi-independent state. The dominion of Tunis is, or rather was, a Regency or fief of the Turkish Empire, and the Beys of Tunis were both politically and religiously vassals of the Sublime Porte. French historians, more candid than French diplomatists, have admitted this both before and after the eventful 12th May 1881, when a French general, _manu militari_, by a stroke of the pen substituted the suzerainty of the French Republic for that of Abdul Hamid. Only a few months ago, the well-known writer on Algerian subjects, Commandant Villot, wrote as follows:—“The religious tie is so powerful amongst Muhamedans, that the successors of Heussein (the common ancestors of the Beys of Tunis) have never omitted to obtain a firman of investiture from the head of Islamism, nor has any money ever been current except that which bears his name.”[2] More than this, the Beys of Tunis have resisted repeated efforts put forth by Western Powers to induce them to shake off the yoke of their natural lord. M. Thiers, who endeavoured to persuade Ahmed Bey to take this step, was fortunately obliged to abandon his intention, for France has no interest in weakening the authority of the Porte. The dangerous policy of M. Thiers has been almost unanimously condemned by historians, and especially by M. Guizot in his “Mémoires pour servir à l’Histoire de mon Temps.” In 1877 M. Desfossés says in his pamphlet entitled “La Tunisie”:—“_Le Pachalik_ de Tunis est toujours sous la souzerainté de la Turquie.” Thirty years ago Pellissier, in his elaborate and almost complete “Description de la Régence de Tunis,” remarks that “the suzerainty of the Grand Signor is recognised by law, but more in a theological than in a political point of view. The money is struck in his name, and each day at noon his glory and virtues are proclaimed by a herald before an empty armchair which represents his throne.”[3] A few days before Kairwán fell I happened to go to the Bardo palace. The French Protectorate was then six months old, but the herald and his attendant drummers went through the ceremony as heretofore, and invoked the protection of Allah for the Sultan and Caliph. The most northerly part of Tunis is only divided by some eighty miles of sea from Sicily. Indeed, a line of rocks beneath the waves, known as the Ferki reefs, forms a junction between that island and the Atlas mountains of the African mainland. It is this strait or channel which separates the eastern and western basins of the Mediterranean.