Sword and Scimitar
Page 48
By the time Mustafa Pasha and Piyale Pasha launched their assault on the island detailed in this book, the Sultan had become older, wiser and more ruthless. This time there would be no mercy shown to the Order. Whereas Rhodes had been less than a day’s sail from the shores of Turkey, Malta would present a far more demanding set of logistical challenges. Besides requiring far longer lines of communication, there was also the nature of the island itself to contend with. Malta was a dry rock whose people had to scratch a living on its thin, treeless soil. Consequently the Turks had to bring timber with them to construct their siege works. That, and adequate supplies of food and munitions to see them through. In the event, they underestimated the task and were decimated by hunger and sickness in the latter stages of the campaign. Equally debilitating was the Sultan’s decision to split the command. By contrast, the unquestioned authority of La Valette, bolstered by his courage, meant that the defenders had a strong sense of mission. Neither side was lacking in courage, and when one considers the exhausting heat and privations suffered by the combatants it is hard not to be awed by their bravery and endurance.
The achievement of the Order in humbling the Sultan made them the toast of Europe. The victory was even celebrated in Protestant England. As a result, money and men flowed in, to such a degree that the Order was able to level the Sciberras ridge and build a brand-new fortified city, which was named in honour of La Valette. The example of the Order inspired the European powers to unite against the Sultan and his navy was crushed at the Battle of Lepanto six years after the humiliation on Malta. The shift in power led to the long decline of the Order. They remained in control of the island until the arrival of Napoleon and his army, en route to Egypt, in 1798. In rather stark contrast to their heroic forbears the knights of the Order who faced Napoleon surrendered after resisting for some ninety minutes. Thereafter the Order was forced to leave Malta and shifted its headquarters to Rome, where it has remained ever since.
Although the scene is very different today, one can still get a sense of the challenge that faced the Turks by exploring the harbour. When I first sailed into Valetta I was struck by the predominance of Fort St Elmo, and it is easy to understand why the Turks would have chosen it as the target of the first assault. Although the city is heavily built up, the main features of the harbour are intact and it is easy to picture the scene as it would have been in 1565. There is an excellent museum in the Grand Master’s palace with a fine collection of armour and weapons dating back to the siege. For those who wish to read more about the siege and the wider historical context, a good starting place is Tim Pickles’s Malta 1565: Last Battle of the Crusades from the ever excellent Osprey series. There is also an utterly gripping first-hand account by Francisco Balbi Di Correggio. Part diary and part commentary, it is a detailed summary from the point of view of a common soldier caught up in events. Ernie Bradford’s The Great Siege: Malta 1565 provides a very readable overview of the siege, and more recently Roger Crowley’s Empires of the Sea admirably sets the siege in a wider context.
On the question of the document at the heart of the tale, it is clear that King Henry VIII became increasingly concerned about his prospects for the afterlife as he grew older. His break with the Church of Rome had left England isolated from the heart of Europe and late in his reign he was keen to rebuild relations with the Catholic powers. The sticking point was the Pope’s demand that the possessions the Catholic Church had lost during the Reformation should be returned. Any attempt to strip the assets from those who had profited from the confiscation of Church property would have split the English ruling class right down the middle and the threat of civil war would have been unavoidable. Hence the desperate attempt by Sir Robert Cecil and Sir Francis Walsingham to secure the will that I have depicted in this novel.
FB2 document info
Document ID: 73adb2bb-37e1-4e52-a75e-b989fbb15449
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 14.12.2012
Created using: calibre 0.9.9, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software
Document authors :
Simon Scarrow
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