The islands were kept in a constant state of alarm. In 1558 a Turkish fleet of 140 vessels hove in sight. Ciudadela and Port Mahon had been put in the best possible posture of defence, when fifteen thousand Turks were landed, under a leader named Mustapha. Having occupied the open country, they laid siege to Ciudadela, which was held by a garrison of seven hundred men. A battery of artillery was planted against the walls, and, after making a breach, three assaults were delivered and gallantly repulsed. The besieged Minorcans were resolved to defend the place to the death, and they would have done so if it had not been for a disastrous accident. The magazine caught fire and all their powder was destroyed. The men proposed to their leaders, Arquimbau, the Lieutenant-Governor, and Captain Noyet, to attempt to fight their way to Port Mahon. They came out, the men of Alayor and Mercadal leading, women and children in the centre, and the rest of the garrison bringing up the rear, under Arquimbau. The Turks attacked them furiously, and only 150 got back into the town. On July 10 another assault was delivered, and at last the place was taken. Many of the besieged were killed in cold blood, and the rest were carried off to be sold as slaves. On the same day the Turks embarked and made sail. The Viceroy, Don Guillermo Rocafull, was not in the island. He returned at once and proceeded to repair the fortifications of Ciudadela, bringing several families to re-people the place from Majorca and Valencia. The castle of San Felipe at Port Mahon was also repaired and strengthened. The piracies continued until well into the eighteenth century, and kept the people in a constant state of terror and alarm; but confidence slowly returned, and Minorca had long been free from actual invasion when the War of the Succession broke out, after the death of Charles II., the last of the Austrian Kings of Spain. CHAPTER III British occupation of Minorca. The people of Spain had long been misgoverned, impoverished, and oppressed when the last king of the House of Austria died and left the War of Succession as a legacy to his subjects. The descendant of Maria Teresa, sister of Charles II. and wife of Louis XIV. of France, would have had the best right if her marriage had not been allowed on condition of the most solemn renunciation of the crown of Spain for the offspring of it. The next heir was the Emperor Leopold I., descended from a sister of Philip IV. of Spain, the father of Charles II. He resigned his claim to his second son, the Archduke Charles. Strongly in favour of the Austrian claim, the unhappy King was forced by priestly threats on his deathbed to sign a will declaring Philip, Duke of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV. and Maria Teresa, to be heir to the Spanish monarchy. Philip was then seventeen. The Archduke Charles was fifteen.