This week in history - The Last Battle of the Crusades (8-14 September)

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The army of Suliman the Magnificent under the command of Mustapha Pasha had landed on the island on 19 May and begun siege operations four days later. The epic and finally successful defence was led by the Grand Master of the Hospitallers, Jean Parisot de la Valette. It showed the Christian world that the might of the Ottoman empire could be resisted and bought its defenders some much-needed breathing space. Six years later, the great naval victory at Lepanto off the west coast of Greece halted the expansion of Turkish power over the western and central Mediterranean, and marked the beginning of its decline.

Further reading

Campaign 50: Malta 1565 Last Battle of the Crusades (extract below) is a compelling account of this ferocious siege. Warrior 41: Knight Hospitaller (2) 1306-1565 (extract below) is the second of two volumes on daily life in the Order, at war and in peacetime. Elite 58: The Janissaries and Men-at-Arms 140: Armies of the Ottoman Turks 1300-1774 are portraits of the Christian defenders' formidable historic adversaries. Campaign 114: Lepanto 1571 The greatest naval battle of the Renaissance completes this bloody final chapter in the long conflict between east and west, Muslim and Christian, that began in the 11th century. New Vanguard 62: Renaissance War Galley 1470-1590 examines the development of this remarkable war machine from its classically inspired resurrection in the 15th century until its demise in the early 17th century.


An extract from Campaign 50: Malta 1565 Last Battle of the Crusades
La Valette stems the tide
 

One thing La Valette had been unable to determine was precisely where the mine had been dug. He would be cautious in the next attack, and he did not have long to wait. The next morning, 18 August, opened with a heavy cannonade on Senglia, and sure enough, as soon as it slackened, the Turks attacked. Mustapha had organised the attack as before - he was commanding at Senglia and Piali at Birgu. While his Iayalers and Janissaries made a fierce assault on St. Michel, Piali sat and waited with his troops.

La Valette was too wily to be caught. Although the garrison at Senglia was hard pressed, he did not send over reinforcements. Finally, in frustration, Mustapha ordered the mine exploded and a vast portion of the defences heaved, crumbled and fell. As the dazed defenders peered into the dust, they saw the onrushing troops of Piali. Their impetus was not to be resisted and the defenders fell back as panic began to spread. The church bell began to ring, signalling that Turks were within the defences, and a chaplain rushed to the Grand Master, shouting: "All is lost! We must retreat to St. Angelo."

La Valette was in his forward command post in Birgu's town square. He was not fully armed, having not yet donned his cuirass or helmet, but his reply to the chaplain was swift and decisive. Picking up a light morrion and grabbing a pike from one of his guards, he ordered his staff to follow him and rushed for the breach. This move stemmed the near rout. Suddenly the Grand Master and senior Knights were joined by other Knights, then soldiers and townspeople. Still at the head of the force, La Valette rushed towards the very breach itself which, although the Turks were retreating, was still occupied by enemy troops. As he approached, a grenade blew up next to him and splinters from it wounded him in the leg. He was urged to withdraw to safety, but the position was not yet secure and he knew that such a move could reverse the situation. As he looked at the now empty breach which still had some enemy flags on it, he replied: "I will not withdraw so long as those banners still wave in the wind. I am seventy one. How is it possible for a man of my age to die more gloriously than in the midst of my friends and brothers, in the service of God? " When the position was reoccupied he had his wounds dressed and then returned to the breach where the captured Turkish flags were presented to him. He ordered them to be hung up in the conventual Church of the Order.

La Valette was right in his supposition that the Turks would renew the attack. As soon as dusk took the sting out of the day's heat the cannonade reopened from all sides, and the attack on the breach was renewed. With both sides using incendiary devices, there was no trouble seeing the enemy, or indeed, in seeing the Grand Master who had remained in the breach to direct operations. Dawn brought a withdrawal, and for the first time in 24 hours the situation could be assessed. Powder had run low and fresh supplies had to be rushed to the breach. Every bed in the hospital was now full, and the lull was only momentary, as it was obvious that troops were being organised for a renewed attack. The term 'walking wounded' was not used during the siege. It was considered a contradiction in terms: if one could walk one was not wounded!

Fighting on 19 August was as vicious as at any time during the siege. Relentless attackers swarmed to the walls and dribbled back, only to swarm again, and that day La Valette suffered a personal loss. Henri de la Valette the Grand Master's nephew and also a Knight of the Order was one of the officers at the Post of Castille. Along with many of the defenders, he was very worried by the siege tower which, although it had yet to be used, posed a severe threat to the walls. During a lull in the attacks, he let out a sally to try to destroy it. Unfortunately, he was wearing particularly fine gilded armour, which made him an instant target for the Turks. He was killed and then a fight ensued for the body, as the Turks wanted the armour as a trophy. Eventually his body was dragged back inside the walls. When told the news, La Valette made the only statement that could be considered in any way despondent during the whole siege: "If the relief from Sicily does not come and we cannot save Malta, we must all die. To the very last man we must bury ourselves beneath these ruins." However, he did not let the death go unavenged, but began directing operations against the tower to bring it down.

The tower was impervious to incendiaries since, though it was made of wood, it was covered in thick sheets of leather which were kept constantly wet. Also it was now so close that arquebusiers on the top could, and did, pick off defenders behind the walls, and Janissaries inside the tower could quickly rush out to defend it from attack. In consulting with his master carpenter, La Valette found that the tower's weak spot was its base. With what in a later age would be called lateral thinking, the Grand Master ordered workmen to begin making a hole in the base of the wall at the very point that the tower was heading for. He then had a large cannon brought to the base of the wall and loaded with chain shot. When all was prepared he ordered the wall breached and the cannon run out. In a very short time the tower began to sway and show signs of collapse. Turks began to abandon it, but not all were clear when the last shot smashed its supports and the whole thing came crashing down around them. Immediately the hole in the walls was repaired preventing Turkish reprisals.

At almost the same time that this was happening, Mustapha was attacking Senglia again with another device. From its description it seems to have been a kind of sealed petard which was to be used to further reduce a section of the defensive wall that, although not fully breached, was so ruined as to form slopes on either side. It was carried forward and up the wall during an attack then rolled down the inner wall where it came to rest at the defenders' feet. In a moment that might have been scripted by Hollywood, the defenders saw that the fuse had been cut too long and so rolled it back up the ramp and over the wall where it bounced into the ditch behind which the Turks were waiting to attack after it exploded. Explode it did, but right in the faces of the attackers. The bomb certainly had an anti-personnel quality, as shrapnel tore into the Turks and killed many. The defenders immediately attacked, and the Turks fled. From their darkest hours the Knights had emerged undefeated with victory almost a possibility.

An extract from Warrior 41: Knight Hospitaller (2) 1306-1565
The Hospitallers at Malta
 

After the fall of Rhodes, King Charles V of Spain had become the Order's most important patron and offered the Hospitallers both Malta and the vulnerable Spanish-ruled port of Tripoli in Libya. The French, who were then bitter rivals of Spain, resisted this handover, fearing that the Hospitallers would become an addition to Spanish military power. Nor were the Hospitallers particularly enthusiastic. The Order sent commissioners to look at alternatives, including Minorca, Ibiza and Ischia, but none were available, so the Hospitallers accepted what was on offer and moved to Malta in 1530.

Their commissioners' reports back, however, were not favourable. Wood was so scarce that it was sold by weight, cowdung and thistles were used as fuel and Malta did not lie on any important shipping lane. It was, however, an important centre of cotton production for making ships' sails, as well as a producer of the spice cumin. Some wheat and grapes were grown, but even without the presence of the Hospitallers, Malta had to import food. Neighbouring Gozo was more fertile but had no harbours, only 5,000 inhabitants and one weak castle. Many houses in Malta's main town of Mdina (Italian: Città Notabile) were derelict, while the small castle of Sant'Angelo, which defended a magnificent harbour on the east coast, had only three cannon and a few mortars. On the other hand this great harbour of Birgu (Italian: Il Borgo) was the best in the central Mediterranean after those of Syracuse and Taranto. The population of Malta consisted of about 12,000 Arabic-speaking peasants under a local aristocracy descended from Norman, Italian and Catalan conquerors. This Maltese nobility was not, in fact, keen on their island being handed over to the overbearing Hospitaller brethren, but they could do nothing about it.

In return for their new home, the Hospitallers agreed to pay an annual 'rent' of one hawk or gerfalcon to the King of Spain. They were also permitted to import Sicilian wheat free of duty. The Hospitallers selected the fishing town of Birgu rather than Mdina as their headquarters, and promptly set about strengthening the fort of Sant'Angelo. Birgu grew slowly and, after the Order overcame the Ottoman siege in 1565, its name was changed to Valetta in honour of the Hospitallers' brave master, de Valette.

Hospitaller military operations between the move to Malta and the great siege of 1565 were limited and not entirely successful. Their actions were hampered by France, whose brief alliance with the Ottoman empire not only meant the end of French domination of the Order but sometimes resulted in French brother knights taking part in joint Franco-Ottoman military and naval operations. Wherever possible the Maltese Hospitallers carried on their unrelenting privateering warfare in the Aegean and Mediterranean. In fact the Order still hoped to retake Rhodes, or at least to obtain a better base in Sicily, but Tripoli proved a liability and its loss in 1551 was something of a relief, enabling the Hospitallers to concentrate on strengthening Malta. These improvements in and around Birgu (Valetta) were completed just in time for the great Ottoman assault of 1565. The Englishman Richard Knolles, in his General Historie of the Turkes… published several decades later, claimed to quote Sultan Sulayman's justification for attacking Malta. Knolles apparently drew on Ottoman sources via French and other travellers to Istanbul, and the sultan's speech is remarkably similar to Venetian complaints about the Order. Sulayman supposedly described the brother knights as, 'Crossed pirates which vaunt themselves to be the bulwark of Christendom,' and addressing his followers the sultan continued, 'You yourselves daily hear the pitiful complains of our subjects and merchants, whome these Maltese, I say not soldiers but pirates, if they but look into those seas, spoil and make prizes of, whose injuries to revenge, all laws both of God and men do require.'