Empires of the Sea

by Crowley, Roger

As the Turks neared, the chanting stopped and the religious boats dropped back. The shore guns opened up and ripped through the fleet, killing many; “yet in spite of this they came on to the attack with immense courage and determination,” with shouts and the crackle of arquebus fire. The rowers labored harder at the oars, picking up speed. At the Spur Balbi and his comrades awaited the shattering impact of the boats against the palisade.

  Meanwhile, at the land walls, Hasan led the Algerians forward in a furious charge. Breaking from the ditch, they hurled themselves at the ramparts with their scaling ladders, eager to prove their courage. The defenders riddled them with shot; they were caught in a further hail of bullets from Spanish arquebusiers in flanking positions; hundreds were mown down, but by sheer weight of numbers they pressed on and managed to gain a foothold on the parapets. The whole front was in uproar. “I don’t know if the image of hell can describe the appalling battle,” wrote the chronicler Giacomo Bosio, “the fire, the heat, the continuous flames from the flamethrowers and fire hoops; the thick smoke, the stench, the disemboweled and mutilated corpses, the clash of arms, the groans, shouts, and cries, the roar of the guns…men wounding, killing, scrabbling, throwing one another back, falling and firing.” All the people of the sea struggling in confused combinations; shouts in Maltese, Spanish, Turkish, Italian, Arabic, Serbian, and Greek; flashes of fire and thick smoke; momentary drifting glimpses of individuals—the Franciscan friar, Brother Eboli, crucifix in one hand, sword in the other, going from post to post; an enraged janissary jumping up on the parapet and shooting a French knight in the head at point-blank range; Algerians encircled in hoops of fire running screaming into the sea. But the attackers were hindered by the narrowness of the terrain, and, despite their ardor, Hasan eventually withdrew his men. Without a pause, the aga of the janissaries ordered forward the regular troops. A second wave hurled itself at the walls.

  Back on the seashore, the boats were gathering speed and crashed into the fence; it withstood the shock and the men were forced into the water, wading in their robes toward the beach, shouting and firing. The defenders were ready for this moment; they had prepared and loaded two mortars to sweep the beach, but so rapid was the Ottoman advance that the mortars were never fired. Unopposed, the attackers made for the Spur at the end of the promontory, whose only protection was a low embankment.

  The captain of the Spur, Sanoguera, had just rallied his men to push the intruders back “with pikes, swords, shields, and stones,” when their defense was thrown into sudden confusion. A sailor mishandled a lit incendiary; it exploded in his hand, and set fire to the whole stock, burning men to death around him. In the smoke and confusion, the Turks scrambled up and planted their flags on the parapet. Sanoguera ran in person to stem the tide; balancing on the parapet in a suit of rich armor, he made a tempting target against the sky. A bullet pinged harmlessly off his breastplate; then a janissary, “wearing a large black headdress with gold ornaments on it, knelt at the foot of the battery, aimed upwards at him and shot him in the groin.” The captain fell dead on the spot. Both sides ran forward to try to seize the corpse—from below they had him by the legs, above by the arms. After a grimly ludicrous tussle, the defenders secured the prize and dragged the body back. The Turks reluctantly abandoned their prize, “but before giving up they removed the shoes from his feet.” The enemy was so close and so numerous that Balbi and his colleagues dropped their guns and started to bombard the intruders with rocks.

  It was at this moment, while the defenders were heavily engaged by land and sea, that Mustapha played his trump card. He had kept back ten large boats and about a thousand crack troops—janissaries and marines. Almost unnoticed, these boats, crammed with men, pushed off from the other side, heading around the tip of the Spur to the small part of the promontory outside the chain that was not protected by the palisade. Here there were no defenses; the ramparts were extremely low; a landing would be easy. These men had come to do or die; to increase their appetite for battle, they had been selected from those unable to swim. The boats passed quietly beyond the furious carnage on the beach, ready to turn in to the shore. Two hundred yards beyond their objective lay the end of the tip of the second peninsula of Birgu.

  However, in planning this diversionary attack, the high command had missed a crucial detail. At the tip of the peninsula of Birgu, opposite the intended Ottoman landing spot, the defenders had positioned a concealed gun battery, almost at water level. As the boats came on, the commander of the post realized to his surprise that the intruders had no idea he was there. Stealthily he loaded his five cannon with a lethal mixture of grapeshot: bags of stones, pieces of chain, and spiked iron balls—unblocked his gun ports, and waited with bated breath. Incredulously, the boats had still not seen him. He held his fire until they were sitting ducks, impossible to miss, then put the taper to the cannon. A murderous hail of bullets ripped across the surface of the water and shredded the boats. Totally surprised, the men were either massacred by the blizzard of fire or tipped into the sea. Nine of the ten boats shattered and sank immediately; those who were not killed outright drowned off the point. The tenth boat somehow limped home. At a stroke, hundreds of crack troops were floating dead in the water.

  The fighting went on fiercely at the wall and the beach. Candelissa the Greek, offshore, spurred his men on with news that Hasan’s men had breached the land wall; it was not true, but the position there was still critical. Anxiously, La Valette called up reinforcements over the bridge from Birgu. Half went to turn the tide at the land wall; seeing these fresh men on the ramparts, the aga of the janissaries started to withdraw his troops. The Turks retreated, carrying their dead with them and launching a last furious cannonade that felled a number of knights. The rest of La Valette’s reinforcements went to prop up the situation on the seashore. Among them was the son of Don Garcia de Toledo, the viceroy of Sicily, against La Valette’s orders. He was killed almost immediately by a musket shot.

  The first the men on the beach knew about the Ottoman retreat from the land walls was the arrival of a crowd of young Maltese hurling stones at the boats from slingshots, and crying out “Relief! Victory!” The seaborne attack force suddenly realized that the tide had turned against them. Worse, they had been deceived by Candelissa. Howling curses at “the Greek traitor,” they turned to run to the water’s edge. Panic broke out, confusion, horror, fear, disorder. There was a furious scramble to re-embark; the few boats close to the shore were overturned by the scrabbling horde; those who could not swim, sank, entrapped in their robes. Worse still, the majority of boats had withdrawn from the beach. The landing party was now cut off. They signaled frantically for the rescue fleet to return.

  Sensing the moment, the defenders burst onto the beach, stabbing and jabbing at the Muslims flailing in the shallows. Balbi and his comrades calmly stood back and shot the wretched men one after another. Some, preferring to drown, threw themselves despairingly into the water; others dropped their weapons, fell to the ground, and begged for mercy. It was not given; with the memory of Saint Elmo still vivid, the Christians streamed forward, howling “Kill! Kill! Pay for Saint Elmo, you bastards!” Among them, the enraged Federico Sangorgio, too young to be bearded, hacked and slashed without remorse, remembering the mutilated corpse of his brother. “And so, without any pity, they dispatched them.”

  Offshore, the boats still hung back, hesitant and uncertain what to do, receiving contradictory orders. Piyale was fearful for his ships. He climbed onto his horse and galloped down, ordering them not to move—but he was sprawled in the dust by a passing cannonball, which blew off his turban and left him deafened. Mustapha, the land general, watching the ghastly slaughter unfold, countermanded. He ordered the boats back to rescue his soldiers, but they were hit by the battery at the point of Birgu and quickly withdrew again.

  To the Christian chroniclers, the scene in the water resembled carnage on a biblical scale, “like the Red Sea with Pharaoh’s army overwhelmed by the waves”: a brilli
antly colored viscid mass of military paraphernalia—flags, banners, tents, shields, spears, and quivers floated on the surface so densely that it seemed more “like a field where a battle had been fought”—and here and there, wriggling like fish on a market slab, the living and half-living, the writhing and bloody, the maimed and dying.

  The Maltese waded into this ghastly soup finishing off the survivors and stripping the corpses. They plundered extraordinary garments from the dead, and beautiful weapons. They grabbed inlaid scimitars and finely worked arquebuses chased with gold and silver that gleamed brightly in the sun—and other things that signaled the intentions to capture and occupy the place: large quantities of food, ropes for binding prisoners, even prepared letters to send to Istanbul announcing the victory. Mustapha had been supremely confident. The looters also recovered a sizeable quantity of money—for each man carried his wealth about his person—and “a great deal of hashish.”

  Only four men were taken alive. They were brought before the grand master for interrogation, then turned over to the people. Cries of “Saint Elmo’s pay!” rang through the narrow streets as they were dragged away. Four thousand dead lay sprawled at the walls and drifted gently in the sea. Bodies washed up on the shore for days.

  CHAPTER 13

  Trench Wars

  July 16 to August 25, 1565

  THE FOLLOWING DAY Suleiman dispatched an order to Mustapha:

  I sent you over to Malta a long time ago in order to conquer it. But I have not received any message from you. I have decreed that as soon as my order reaches you, you should inform me about the siege of Malta. Has Turgut, the governor of Tripoli, arrived there and has he been any help to you? What about the enemy navy? Have you managed to conquer any part of Malta? You should write to me telling me everything.

  Suleiman sent a copy of this letter to the doge of Venice with the peremptory demand to “make sure that it reaches Mustapha Pasha without delay. And you should send me news as to what has happened there.”

  The sultan was not the only one anxious about Malta. Christian eyes were focusing on the island’s plight with ever-increasing apprehension. The Western Mediterranean was busy with messenger ships tracking to and fro with rumors, news, advice, warnings, and plans. From his headquarters on Birgu, La Valette kept up a steady flow of correspondence with Don Garcia de Toledo on Sicily, but after the fall of Saint Elmo, it became increasingly difficult to get messengers through. Maltese swimmers, dressed as Turks, crossed the harbor and slipped through the enemy lines to Mdina, then traveled by small boat via Gozo to Sicily. It became dangerous work; sometimes La Valette dispatched four copies of the same letter in the hope that one would get through. Piyale’s ships patrolled the straits, running these vessels down. The messengers threw their letters into the sea and gave themselves up to death; even when the messages were taken, Mustapha remained unable to break the codes, and the lines of communication, though parlous, were kept open.

  There was live terror down the coasts of Italy as the news worsened and Saint Elmo fell. No one was more clear-eyed about the consequences of defeat than Pope Pius IV. “We realise,” he wrote, “in how great peril the well-being of Sicily and Italy will be put, and what great calamities threaten the Christian people, if (which God forbid!) the island…should come under the domination of the impious enemy.” Rome was acknowledged to be the ultimate target of Ottoman warfare. In Pius’s fevered imagination the Turk was almost at the gates. He gave orders that he should be woken at any hour of the night to hear dispatches from Sicily; he had already resolved to die in the city rather than flee.

  As comprehension of the stakes at Malta spread across Europe, a trickle of adventurers and Knights of Saint John from the Order’s farther outposts headed for Sicily to join the rescue attempt. Europe held its collective breath and watched with apprehension. Even Protestant England said prayers for Catholic Malta.

  But the bid to relieve the island was progressing at a snail’s pace. La Valette wrote with frosty politeness and increasing urgency to Don Garcia—and cursed him under his breath. Why was there no follow-up to the small detachment sent at the end of June? The morale of the civilians was at breaking point and a relief would be simple; only ten thousand men would be sufficient to shatter the Turks who were “mostly a rabble and a wholly inexperienced soldiery.” Don Garcia, as King Philip’s man on the spot, was being accused of hesitation and overcaution; he would become, in time, the target of round condemnation for the island’s prolonged suffering.

  It was unjustified. The problem lay not in Sicily but in Madrid. Don Garcia was an immensely experienced and shrewd campaigner with a keen grasp of the issues. He had framed the problem of Malta early on and laid the issues before Philip with exceptional clarity. Malta was a challenge to Spain’s mastery of the whole sea; it was essential to act—and to act decisively. He begged for men and resources to do so. “If Malta is not helped,” he wrote on May 31, “I consider it lost.” He urged Philip to confront the issue now. Don Garcia was no casual bystander to the fate of Malta. He had given a son to the siege, who was dead before Don Garcia received a reply. Philip’s responses were cautious. The king was haunted by the memory of Djerba and frightened by the size of the Ottoman fleet. His own fleet had been rebuilt at great cost after Djerba—Philip had no intention of losing it a second time. He gave explicit orders to Don Garcia that no risk was to be taken with his ships and that nothing should be done without his say-so. Don Garcia was charged with conserving the king’s fleet as carefully as Piyale guarded the sultan’s: “Its loss would be greater than the loss of Malta…. If Malta was lost, which God forbid, there would be other means to return and recover it.” It was not a view widely shared at the center of the sea. The Prudent King gave permission for the collection of troops but no permission to use them.

  All the divisions of Christendom were once again being cruelly exposed. Pope Pius was beside himself with indignation at Philip’s response. The king’s fleet had been, in large part, paid for by papal subsidies; it was intended for the defense of all Christendom. The pope got the Spanish cardinals to remind Philip that “if he had not aided your Majesty with the subsidy for the galleys, today you would not have an oar at sea which might defend us against the Turks.” The king remained evasive and cautious; Don Garcia could help the island, as long as he risked no danger to the fleet. Forward progress was not helped by the lengthy response times: it took, at best, six weeks for a letter from Sicily to reach Madrid and for a reply to be received. Meanwhile the viceroy pressed forward with the collection of men and ships and kept up the lobbying of officials in Philip’s court. By early August Don Garcia was ready to mount an expedition, but he still did not have permission to use his ships, and every day the situation was becoming more parlous.

  Despite the catastrophe at the Spur on July 15, Mustapha pursued the siege vigorously, as if he could sense the sultan’s distant displeasure. He abandoned any other attempt on the fortress of Malta by sea. Henceforward he would pursue an attritional siege in the style of Saint Elmo—heavy bombardment, relentless trenching, and surprise attacks to catch the defenders off guard—and he would concentrate his resources on the short land fronts of both Birgu and Senglea simultaneously.

  It was the first time that Birgu had come under heavy attack. This second peninsula was the urban heart of the island and the knights’ ultimate stronghold. The landward side was protected by substantial fortifications in the shape of the two weighty protruding bastions of Saint John and Saint James—the protecting saints of the Order and of Spain. The promontory that lay behind this bulwark was a densely packed town, a warren of narrow streets that tapered to a point in the separate fortress of Saint Angelo. This stout little castle, separated from the mainland by a sea moat and drawbridge, was designed as a fallback position in the event of a last stand.

  By July 22 Mustapha had all his cannon concentrated in batteries on the heights above the harbor. At dawn of that day, sixty-four guns in fourteen batteries started to
hit the defenses of Birgu and Senglea. These delivered “a bombardment so continuous and extraordinary that it was both astounding and frightening.” To Balbi it seemed like the end of the world. The people of Sicily needed no reminding that war had reached their doorstep. They could hear the rumble of gunfire in Syracuse and Catania, a hundred and twenty miles to the north. The weight and penetration of this bombardment was extraordinary; the guns could search the whole of Birgu, destroying houses, killing the people within, reducing the fortifications to rubble. Men were blown away behind the apparent security of a twenty-one-foot-thick earth rampart. The bombardment continued for five days and nights without ceasing. Ottoman engineers had quickly identified the weakest point in Birgu’s land defenses—the post of Castile, the section of wall at the eastern end down to the sea, that could not easily be defended by cross fire. They singled it out for special treatment in preparation for a major attack.

  During the hot days of July a furious contest developed along the land defenses of Birgu and Senglea between two well-matched opponents. Mustapha could draw on a lifetime’s experience of capturing fortresses and all the practical engineering skills and human resources of Ottoman warfare. La Valette, the stern disciplinarian who gave no quarter, brought a matching understanding of defense against impossible odds. The old man knew that he was making a last stand—not just for himself but for the Order to which he had given his life. Mustapha Pasha could feel Suleiman’s gaze bearing down; the tiled kiosks of Istanbul seemed close indeed. The sultan’s banner fluttered in the camp; Suleiman’s own men, the chaushes, sent back their reports to the sultan. Neither leader could afford to lose; both were personally prepared to risk their lives in the front line. The contest between the two was as much a test of mental strength as military skill.