He lived comfortably there for three years entirely on King Henry's good graces, but the English offered him no political support. In the spring of 1257, Giovanni Colonna, archbishop of Messina and an ambassador from Pope Alexander IV, arrived in England to negotiate with the king the investiture of his second son, Edmund, with the Kingdom of Sicily. Henry offered to lead troops to Italy to conquer the kingdom for Edmund, but a rebellion in Wales diverted attention from these projects. After several sojourns in France proved fruitless, Henry decided to seek his fortune in Africa, where the Hafsid emir of Tunis, Muhammad al-Mustansir, had carved out a large empire. After securing a vow that he would not attack Castile, the king of England let Henry leave for Tunisia in July 1259, even granting him a safeconduct through the Gascon ports under his control. Tunisian expedition Henry sailed to Catalonia, but King James refused to allow any of his vassals to accompany Henry to Tunisia. In 1260, Henry arrived in Tunis, where his brother Frederick soon joined him. Henry took command of a contingent of Spanish knights in the service of al-Mustansir. In 1261, with the emir's brother, Abou Hafs, he led an attack on the desert city of Miliana. These campaigns strengthened Hafsid independence in the face of the Almohads, the Moroccan dynasty which had also ruled much of Spain the previous century. In Tunis, Henry adopted the customs and dress of the Hafsid court, much to the shock of the local Christian community. He used the money he earned in the emir's service to finance commercial ventures originating out of the Genoese merchant colony in Tunis. From funds accrued through this trade, the king of France, Louis IX, was later able to make a loan to Henry of England. Italian campaigns Henry later made his way to Italy, where he joined his cousin Charles of Anjou's campaign in 1266 to become King of Sicily (Battle of Benevento) and lent him large sums of money. It was here that Henry earned his title of El Senador when Charles had him made senator of Rome (at the time, the ancient Senate of Rome evolved into an institution where a single senator was entrusted with civil power in the city of Rome). However, he was never repaid by Charles; and Henry had aspired to the kingship of Sardinia or some other