Virginia Argus

REVOLUTION AND MASSACRE IN TUNIS.
From a French Paper.
FLORENCE, February 15.

The most tragical events have lately taken place in Tunis. The reigning family has been totally exterminated. The following are extracts from two letters written at Goulette, which we have received by the way of Leghorn. We may depend on the correctness of the facts they contain.

GouLETTE, January 30.

Sidi Mahmoud Flassen, Cousin of the reigning bey of Tunis, enjoyed the Confidence of his sovereign, whom he attempted to render odious to the people by all possible means, and for a long time meditated his ruin. In the night of the 19th of December, after 11 o'clock, Flassen, at the head of a great number of conspirators and slaves of different religions, and having apparently seduced the greatest part of the Seraglio, entered the apartments of the bey and plunged with his own hand a poinard into the heart of the old man. At the same moment the conspirators threw themselves on the partizans of Sidi Ottoman. During three hours the friends of the assassinated prince defended themselves with desperation.-- Many were killed and nearly all wounded; but in the end they found it necessary to submit to the usurper, who, in the midst of this carnage, had the good fortune to escape unhurt himself.

While the interior of the Seraglio was inundated with blood, the people and the troops, accustomed to similar scenes, quietly waited for the development of the horrid tragedy.

The two sons of the unhappy Sidi Ottoman were in their different beds with their wives at the moment of the massacre of their father. They scarcely had time to fly in their shirts, and to scale the walls of the Seraglio, followed by a few others, leaving to the mercy of the conspirators their wives, who were massacred without pity.- The two princes went immediately to the suburbs, Collecting as many of the inhabitants as they could, and presented themselves at the gates of the city, in hopes of being supported by the people, but no one took up arms for them. They then endeavored to make their escape, and threw themselves into a barque to go to Goulette. They reached there in the morning; but Mahmoud had been beforehand with them, and the authority was already in his hands. They were instantly arrested: certain of their fate, they would have thrown themselves into the sea, but were prevented and closely pinioned, and put on two mules to conduct them to Tunis. At a short distance from the city they were met by their barbarous cousin, who ordered their throats cut on the highway.

Mahmoud then returned to Tunis, where he was recognized the absolute master of the regency. He has given his daughter in marriage to Sadi Soliman Kiaja, chief of a powerful party under the former dynasty, and who had great influence over the people. By this means he gained him entirely to his cause.

The prime minister of the new sovereign is Jussuf Kggia Sappatappa, to whom the bey has promised his sister. Jussuf is a ferocious man, who has begun his ministerial career by ordering the hanging of Mariano Stinka, who enjoyed the favor of Sidi Ottoman, but who had merited the general hatred by his cruelty to the slaves, and his insolence towards the European consuls.- He was a renegado, born at Sorrento, in the kingdom of Naples, of a poor and obscure family, and who was a slave at the age of twelve years; he had become the arbiter of the person and estates of his master. They have seized all his riches, which were immense. The renegado physician Mahmet has lately been strangled by the order of the same minister.

January 28.

Jussuf Koggia has enjoyed but a few moments the post to which he was raised by the last revolution. After the massacre of the family of Ottoman, he formed a project to destroy the usurper and his sons, and to mount the throne himself. The 22d he came out of the Seraglio, and went throughout Tunis with the pomp of a sovereign. He ordered money to be distributed to the soldiers, to prepare them for a new revolution. The Regent was informed of this: and when Jussuf Koggia returned to the Seraglio, the chief of the Mamelukes arrested him in the name of the bey, and seized him fast by the beard. Koggia drew his poniard, and mortally wounded the Mameluke chief, and severely the soldiers who surrounded him; but in spite of his vigorous resistance he was thrown to the ground, carried all bloody and half dead to the presence of the bey. The latter, after having reproached him with his treachery and ingratitude, ordered his head cut off on the spot, which was instantaneously done. The enraged populace dragged his corpse all over the city, and the military had much difficulty to tear from them the horrid remains of the mutilated carcase. His partizans are arrested, and great changes are rumored. The soldiers have taken the oath of fidelity to Sadi Mahmoud Flassen, and the massacres have ceased. Every one has quietly returned to his ordinary occupations, as if nothing had happened.

[Sidi Ottoman succeeded Hamuda Pacha, his brother, who died the 24th of September last, after a peaceful reign of thirty two years.]