With these comings and goings summer was getting old, and on the 13th of August, at the Cape of Carthage, appeared the dreaded Turkish fleet of 300 ships and 60,000 soldiers, the fleet being commanded by Aluch Ali, and the troops by Selim's son-in-law Sinan Pasha, the renegade. A great outcry arose at the extreme peril of the Barbary Christians, and by every means in their power they sent to ask help from Granvelle, Terranova, and, above all, from D. John of Austria, in virtue of his office and Christian piety. He wished to fly to their aid, abandoning everything. He wrote first, however, to the Duque de Sesa, "To urge the Cardinal to send people to help Goletta, as that province was in his charge." But the imperturbable Granvelle replied coldly, "That he had much to guard in the Kingdom, and that it did not suit him to divide his forces." "This was," says Vander Hammen, commenting on the fact, "to give colour to the excuse. The real reason was Granvelle's dislike to support D. John, jealous of his favours with Mars and Venus, and because he was a foreigner, and because his brothers conspired in the Flemish rebellion;" and Luis Cabrera de Córdoba expresses himself in similar words, equally severe, not forgetting Mars and Venus. And D. John himself wrote to his sister Donna Margarita: "In short, Lady, everything goes badly; and in truth it is not entirely the fault of His Majesty, except for permitting those who govern his States to forget that those in their vicinity, or those that are not, are as much His Majesty's as those which each minister has charge of."