With pirate ships they infested the seas, and spread their ravages along the coasts of Spain and Italy, until Charles the Fifth was aroused to undertake their overthrow. The various strength of his broad dominions was rallied in this new crusade. "If the enthusiasm," says Sismondi, "which armed the Christians at an earlier day, was nearly extinct, another sentiment, more rational and legitimate, now united the vows of Europe. The contest was no longer to reconquer the tomb of Christ, but to defend the civilization, the liberty, the lives, of Christians."[26] A stanch body of infantry from Germany, the veterans of Spain and Italy, the flower of the Castilian nobility, the knights of Malta, with a fleet of near five hundred vessels, contributed by Italy, Portugal, and even distant Holland, under the command of Andrew Doria, the great sea officer of the age,--the whole being under the immediate eye of the Emperor himself, with the countenance and benediction of the Pope, and composing one of the most complete armaments which the world had then seen,--were directed upon Tunis. Barbarossa opposed them bravely, but with unequal forces. While slowly yielding to attack from without, his defeat was hastened by unexpected insurrection within. Confined in the citadel were many Christian slaves, who, asserting the rights of freedom, obtained a bloody emancipation, and turned its artillery against their former masters. The place yielded to the Emperor, whose soldiers soon surrendered themselves to the inhuman excesses of war. The blood of thirty thousand innocent inhabitants reddened his victory. Amidst these scenes of horror there was but one spectacle that afforded him any satisfaction. Ten thousand Christian slaves met him, as he entered the town, and falling on their knees, thanked him as their deliverer.[27] [Footnote 26: Sismondi, _Histoire des Français_, tom. xvii. p. 102.] [Footnote 27: Robertson's Charles the Fifth, book v.] In the treaty of peace which ensued, it was expressly stipulated on the part of Tunis, that all Christian slaves, of whatever nation, should be set at liberty without ransom, and that no subject of the Emperor should for the future be detained in slavery.[28] [Footnote 28: Ibid.] [Illustration] The apparent generosity of this undertaking, the magnificence with which it was conducted, and the success with which it was crowned, drew to the Emperor the homage of his age beyond any other event of his reign. Twenty thousand slaves, freed by treaty, or by arms, diffused through Europe the praise of his name. It is probable that, in this expedition, the Emperor was governed by motives little higher than those of vulgar ambition and fame; but the results with which it was crowned, in the emancipation of so many of his fellow-Christians from cruel chains, place him, with Cardinal Ximenes, among the earliest Abolitionists of modern times.