Fox of France

However, these follow-up matters do not need to worry about Admiral Treville and Tayip Pasha. For them, the most important thing now is "it is better to chase the poor with the remaining courage" and immediately go to Tunisia and Morocco. Strive for greater victories and more interests.

But after all, it took a lot of time in Tripoli, so the effect of the raid was naturally impossible to achieve. But when they came to Tunisia, they found that there seemed to be something wrong with the port of Tunisia, as if—as if it had just been burned by a fire.

Ahdi Pasha of Tunisia had seen Yusuf Pasha who had fled, and knew from his mouth the terrible weapon of heavenly fire used by those evil pagans, and the terrible conflagration it caused. This news also made Ahdi Pasha very worried.

"My friend, you mean that the fortress can't stop them at all, and deploying troops in the port will be attacked by fire... Well, how can this battle be fought! It's impossible to fight at all." There was no one around, Ahdi Pasha was not afraid of damaging morale, so he just said that.

"How many mines did you buy?" Yusuf Pasha asked.

Ahdi Pasha was stunned for a moment, and after a while he said: "My friend, you know, those Brits charge a very high price, and they are just slaughtering us like fat sheep, so I... don't know what's urgent Is it too late to place an order with them?"

"What a god!" Yusuf also said in shock, "You buy very little?"

"I wanted to buy a few fewer, but those British pagans really... As soon as they heard that I was going to reduce the order quantity, they immediately increased the unit price. As a result, when I got angry, I..."

"What?"

"I didn't buy a single one!" Ahdi Pasha said with a mournful face.

"Are those English merchants still around?"

"Yes, yes. I will go to them now and buy all the goods in their hands." Ahdi Pasha stood up quickly.

"My friend, don't worry, find out now, where is their goods? Is it near our port? If their goods are in Gibraltar, or even in the UK mainland. Then even if he doesn't give you a penny, It's also pointless. The Turks and the French won't give us so much time. Also, I guess their price will be higher, but in any case, the mines are also considered to have caused damage to our enemies in previous operations. The most threatening weapon."

"Okay, I'll have it done at once. My friend, if... I mean if those British mines are still in Gibraltar—what am I going to do?"

"My friend, sea mines are useful to some extent, but they are not completely effective. They can use the high tide to avoid the danger of sea mines. Of course, this also limits the time they can spend on attack every day. Now our most important thing is how to avoid the danger of sea mines. That rain of fire against them. I have an idea..."

Yusuf Pasha believes that the reason why such a large fire broke out in Tripoli is entirely because there are too many wooden houses and wooden roofs. Therefore, in order to avoid a fire, Yusuf Pasha suggested that all the roofs and other flammable materials in the houses in the port area should be removed immediately. To avoid being attacked by opponents.

But cleaning these things is too much work. So things have been slow going. But news soon came of what the Turks and the French were doing in Tripoli. This news suddenly strengthened the determination of those Barbary pirates to resist to the end.

"It is impossible for us to negotiate with them, let alone surrender to them. Selim III, a tyrant, needs a lot of land to buy followers. Who else can he get land from except us? You see, all Did any of the farmers who stayed in Tripoli keep their property and heads? We can’t give them what they want, because what they want is everything from us, including our heads. So we have to resist to the end. There is no other way to go!" After getting the exact news, Ahdi Pasha gathered his officers and said to them.

So the speed of the demolition was accelerated a bit, but at this speed, it was still impossible to complete the entire fire prevention and demolition work before the arrival of the Turks and French. Finally, an officer suddenly had an idea and came up with a better way.

"Honorable Pasha," said the officer, "I think why don't we set a fire ourselves? It will take half a day at most to remove all combustibles."

The residences near the port area are all poor people’s houses, and they don’t feel bad if they are burned, so Ahdi Pasha thought about it and thought it was a good idea, so he gave an order, and the soldiers immediately took action to burn those poor people. Kicked out of their house, and then lit a fire by themselves.

However, perhaps because the cleaning work was not done properly, the fire had already started before many residents were evicted. As a result, many civilians were burned to death, and even some soldiers responsible for arson were trapped in the sea of ​​fire and burned to death because of poor coordination.

So now, when the joint fleet of France and Turkey appears off the coast of Tunisia, Tunisia before their eyes has become like this.

The first round of action of the coalition forces, of course, is to conduct a tentative attack by the Turkish fleet. The first thing is to see if the fort can be lured to fire, and then the French will use high-explosive bombs to sweep away the cannons and artillery on the fort. And the light. The second is to see if those rebels have deployed a lot of mines outside the port.

As a result, only one gun was firing on the most obvious battery of the Barbary pirates, and the French, thinking that it would be too wasteful to use high-explosive shells for one gun, insisted on refusing to fire for it. In the process of approaching the port, no mines were encountered.

The British told Ahdi Pasha that their mines were on board the ships outside the port. As long as they paid a deposit, they could be sent to the port immediately, and then they would pay for the mines and deliver them.

Ahdi Pasha's men followed the British to their ship outside the port, and they really saw the mines on board. Then, a deposit was paid, and the British sold the mines to them with all the money and delivery. It's just that the British secretly replaced the concentrated sulfuric acid in the fuze with distilled water. The nitrated starch in the mine body was replaced with real starch—the British government had informed them not to sell mines to Barbary pirates half a month ago.

Barbary pirates who lack scientific knowledge can't see the tricks in it at all. Then the British took the money and went home.