the frontier still continued, and the seas were not free from acts of piracy. As Spain had not been included in the treaty of 1562, a Spanish flotilla of twenty-two ships was destroyed near the island of Djerba, which had previously been seized by Spain. Not long afterwards a Turkish armada of 191 vessels sailed against the island of Malta, with the purpose of bringing to the home of the Knights Hospitalers the ruin that had already been inflicted at Rhodes on their brethren. For four months the siege lasted, costing the assailants nearly 20,000 men. Dragut, the Turkish commander, was slain, and finally, on September 11, 1565, the undertaking was abandoned as hopeless, and the Turkish armament withdrew. Souliman’s days were brought to an end in the midst of the siege of a Hungarian town, Sziget, one of the many events of the frontier warfare carried on without intermission, irrespective of the treaty between the heads of the two states. His death was carefully concealed from his men for fear of discouraging them in their assaults on the citadel of the town, which was being heroically defended by Zriny. Three days after the Sultan’s death, on the 8th of September, 1566, only the central tower of the fort was left in the hands of the Hungarian champion. He loaded up his cannon to the muzzle, and in the smoke of the cannonade rushed into the thick of the Turkish lines and perished. He had taken care to arrange for the blowing up of the powder magazine at the time he made his sortie. The great tower fell in ruins, burying in the débris 3000 Turks. Souliman, in his life of seventy-one years, had personally led sixteen campaigns against the Christians; despite gout and physical weakness he would not hand over to a lieutenant the work of wiping out on the battlefield the stigma inflicted on Turkish arms by the failure at Malta. VII THE DECLINE OF THE OTTOMANS In the expansion of their empire the main characteristic of the Ottomans had been fidelity to their tribal origin in Asia and to their religion; they showed little elasticity in modifying their system of government to new conditions, but they did recognize the necessity of progress. After their conversion to Mohammedanism their supreme guide was the “cheriat,” under which term is signified the religious law of orthodox Moslems in the threefold division of Koran, Sunna, and the Sentences. In addition to this, there were the various official interpretations from the Sultan’s hand in the application of the law called the Kanoun. So much importance had this aspect of the Sultan’s functions that Souliman is remembered under his title of El Kanouni, that is, as a Turkish Justinian, rather than as a great military leader.