S. Lucida next day, and took eight
hundred prisoners; seized eighteen galleys at Cetraro; put Sperlonga
to the sword and brand, and loaded his ships with wives and maidens. A
stealthy inland march brought the Corsairs to Fondi, where lay Giulia
Gonzaga, the young and beautiful widow of Vespasio Colonna, Duchess of
Trajetto and Countess of Fondi. She was sister to the "heavenly Joanna
of Aragon," on whose loveliness two hundred and eighty Italian poets
and rimesters in vain exhausted the resources of several languages;--a
loveliness shared by the sister whose device was the "Flower of Love"
amaranth blazoned on her shield. This beauty Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n destined
for the Sultan's harem, and so secret were the Corsairs' movements
that he almost surprised the fair Giulia in her bed. She had barely
time to mount a horse in her shift and fly with a single
attendant,--whom she afterwards condemned to death, perhaps because
the beauty revealed that night had made him overbold.[29] Enraged at
her escape the pirates made short work of Fondi; the church was
wrecked, and the plundering went on for four terrible hours, never to
be forgotten by the inhabitants.

Refreshed and excited by their successful raid, the Turks needed
little encouragement to enter with heartiness upon the real object of
the expedition, which was nothing less than the annexation of the
kingdom of Tunis. Three centuries had passed since the Sultans of the
race of Hafs had established their authority on the old Carthaginian
site, upon the breaking up of the African empire of the Almohades.
Their rule had been mild and just; they had maintained on the whole
friendly relations with the European powers, and many treaties record
the fair terms upon which the merchants of Pisa, Venice, and Genoa
were admitted to the port of Tunis. Saint Louis had been so struck
with the piety and justice of the king that he had even come to
convert him, and had died in the attempt. Twenty-one rulers of their
line had succeeded one another, till the vigour of the Ben[=i] Hafs
was sapped, and fraternal jealousies added bloodshed to weakness.
Hasan, the twenty-second, stepped to the throne over the bodies of
forty-four slaughtered brothers, and when he had thus secured his
place he set a pattern of vicious feebleness for all sovereigns to
avoid. A rival claimant served as the Corsair's pretext for invasion,
and Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n had hardly landed when this miserable wretch fled
the city, a