CONDITION OF THE SOUDAN 293 ever impoverished. Spain has never recovered from the blow dealt against its public life by the wisest of its sovereigns.

Africa, which for a time seemed to receive all that Spain had lost, suffered on her part by the severance which took place between her own life and the progressive life just then opening upon new possibilities of the West. Isabella died in 1504. She was succeeded by her daughter, Joanna, the mad queen, and after her by Charles V., who ascended the throne in 15 16, just one year before the Turks took Egypt from the Mamelukes. Charles V., Emperor of Germany as well as King of Spain, and champion of Catholicism against the tendencies of the Reformation in Europe, reigned for forty years, and during the whole of that time showed himself the determined enemy of Islam. He pursued the Moors to the shores of Africa. He took their coast towns. He engaged the European Powers to help him in closing the ports of the Mediterranean to their ships. He fought indiscriminately against Moors and Turks, and in beating the Moors, prepared the way for the triumph of the Turks, who proved themselves a harder enemy for him to overthrow. Tripoli had been already taken by Spain in 1 5 10. When the Turks took the island of Rhodes in 1522, Charles V. gave Malta to the Knights Templars, and five years later established them in the very camp of Islam by giving them Tripoli, which they held till the Turks took it again in 1551.

Oran, which had also become Spanish in the early part of the century, was gallantly defended against successive attempts, alike on the part of Moors and Turks, to repossess themselves of it. In the siege of 1563, in the succeeding reign, the Turks used muskets, heavy artillery, and mines, but without avail, for the place, on the eve of surrender, was relieved by the fleet of Andrea Doria. In 1535 Charles led in person the attack on Tunis, which the Turks had taken in 1534, and he sue-