In 1539, a tercio of Spanish soldiers fought an impressive last stand against an Ottoman force more than ten times its size led by famed admiral Hayreddin Barbarossa at the town of Castelnuovo (now Herceg Novi) in what is now Montenegro. While the Spanish were eventually overwhelmed and slain almost to the last man, they inflicted heavy casualties on the Ottomans. One of the most dramatic episodes of the siege was when 600 Spanish soldiers launched a surprise raid on the Ottoman camp. During this sortie, Barbarossa's personal guard feared for his safety and took him aboard a galley despite his protests.

This raises an obvious counterfactual: what if Barbarossa had been killed during this raid? Would it have been enough to change things in favor of the Spanish? And what other consequences Barbarossa's death have had?
 
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