It came at long last on the evening of September 6th, 1565, when Don Garcia’s fleet, which had earlier been dispersed by storms, finally reached the safety of Mellieha Bay in the northeast of the island. Their numbers were small enough, little more than 8,000 men, and the Turks—however great their losses—must still have had at least 20,000 troops in the field. But the news of the landing of the relief force (whose numbers were inevitably exaggerated both by Turkish scouts and by peasants who had seen them pass on their way to Mdina) was sufficient to cause both Mustapha and Piali to agree to abandon the siege. The latter, indeed, could not be gone quick enough, for now as always he was worrying about the precious fleet that Suleiman had placed in his hands. It seemed like a miracle, an act of God, something quite unbelievable to the defenders, when they looked out from their gap-toothed bastions one morning and saw the great army melting away like smoke, pouring along the dusty roads around Grand Harbour and heading for their base camp. Tents were being struck, slaves and animals were being harnessed to gun carriages, and the whole complicated apparatus of siege warfare—trenches and earth ramps and leather-shielded towers—was either being dismantled or abandoned.
On September 8th, the Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin, the siege was raised. The bells of the Conventual church of Saint Lawrence rang out over the ruins of Birgu, their clangour to be caught up and repeated by the bells in the Church of Our Lady in Senglea. ‘I do not believe that ever did music sound so sweet to human ear. It was three months since we had ever heard a bell except one that summoned us against the enemy. And that morning when they rang for mass it was at the same time that we had grown used to expect the call to arms. All the more solemnly then did we give thanks to God, and to His Blessed Mother, for the gracious favour they had shown us.’
A solemn Te Deum was offered to the God of Victories, and then for the first time in all that long infernal summer the gates were opened. Knights, men-at-arms and townsfolk walked out of their fortresses over the rocks blistered by explosives and Greek fire, past bodies which there had been no time to bury, and into the lines and the trenches where abandoned guns pointed their empty mouths to the air. Soon the first rains would come and wash the island clean. But it was an island that, thin-soiled and part-barren as it had been before, now looked as if the God of War himself had singed and scorched every nook and cranny of it. Mustapha Pasha, when he learned the true figures of the relief force that had reached Malta from Sicily, attempted to recall his troops, many of whom were already embarking in Piali’s fleet which lay at anchor in St Paul’s Bay on the east coast. Despite a last valiant attempt to stem the retreat, and to give battle to the newcomers, Mustapha Pasha had to resign himself to the inevitable. For the second time in his life, he and the Sultan’s army had been defeated by those ‘Sons of Satan’, the Knights of the Order of St John.
This time the defeat was of an order that had never before been experienced in the reign of the all-conquering Sultan. Less than a third of his army finally reached the safety of the Golden Horn. Mustapha and Piali trembled for their heads. They were spared, possibly because they had been intelligent enough to send on their despatches in a fast galley a long way ahead of the fleet. Suleiman’s temper had had time to abate before his commanders arrived—on the Sultan’s orders bringing the army and the fleet into Constantinople after dark, so that the people could not see what ruin had been inflicted upon them.
‘I see now,’ said Suleiman, ‘that it is only in my own hand that my sword is invincible.’ He gave orders for the preparation of a new expedition against Malta in the following year—‘one which I will lead myself against this accursed island. And I swear by the bones of my fathers—may Allah brighten their tombs—that I will not spare one single inhabitant!’
Chapter 22
AFTERMATH AND CITY
‘It has pleased God this year, 1565,’ the Spanish Arquebusier Balbi had written at the beginning of his journal, ‘that under the good government of the brave and devout Grand Master Jean de la Valette, the Order should be attacked in great force by the Sultan Suleiman, who felt himself affronted by the great harm done to him on land and sea by the galleys of the Knights of the Order.’ The Sultan might indeed have failed in his objective, ‘the extirpation of this nest of serpents’, but he had certainly inflicted more than ‘great harm’ upon the Order and its island home. La Valette as he rode round the island with Don Garcia de Toledo could only ruefully reflect that if the Turks returned to the attack next year there was practically no chance of the island and the Order surviving. His small kingdom lay in ruins about him and, however hard they worked over the winter and spring months, it was very unlikely that the defences could be made good before the return of spring brought once again the return of campaigning weather. As a first measure he had all available men put to filling in the Turkish trenches and destroying all the earthworks that they had erected. At least, if they returned, they would not find anything left to assist them.
Innumerable problems confronted him, not least the lack of men to garrison the defences adequately. Out of a force that had originally consisted of little more than 9,000 the Grand Master had only 600 left who were capable of bearing arms. During the siege 250 Knights of the Order had died and of those who survived nearly all were maimed, wounded or crippled for life. Not even the last siege of Rhodes had taken such a toll. Of the Maltese militia and the Spanish and foreign mercenary soldiers some 7,000 had died. Had Mustapha Pasha prevailed over Piali and brought all the troops back, he might well have defeated the relief force. There can be no doubt that another week, or at the most two, would have seen the fall of Senglea and Birgu. Perhaps the greatest single piece of good fortune that befell the Knights during the course of the siege was the death of Dragut. It was Dragut who, by his siting of the batteries around St Elmo and by his cutting off the nightly boat ferries that brought relief to the garrison, had finally contrived the fort’s capture. There can be little doubt that, if his had been the guiding hand during the siege of the two main fortified positions, both Birgu and Senglea would have fallen long before the relief arrived.
There was another aspect of the affair, however, which, in his gloomy contemplation of his ruined island and decimated forces, may have escaped the Grand Master’s notice at that moment. The Turkish losses had been immense, quite out of proportion to the value of their objective—even if they had attained it. Out of the various authorities who left their records of the siege of Malta the most conservative estimate gives the Turkish losses as 25,000 men, while most put them at 30,000. None of these figures take into account the losses suffered by the Algerians, the Egyptians or the corsairs of the Barbary coast, for whom no records are available. But even taking the most conservative estimate of the Turkish dead, it would seem likely that the total was probably in excess of 30,000 men. As W. H. Prescott commented in his History of the Reign of Philip II: ‘The arms of Soleyman the First, during his long and glorious reign, met with, no reverse so humiliating as his failure in the siege of Malta. To say nothing of the cost of the maritime preparations, the waste of life was prodigious…’
Although, no one could have foreseen it at the time, this was the last real effort of the Ottomans to break into the western Mediterranean and complete the encirclement of Europe from the south. Had Malta fallen, the face of Europe might have been completely changed within the next decade. That perspicacious ruler, Queen Elizabeth of England, had observed during the course of the siege that ‘if the Turks should prevail against the Isle of Malta, it is uncertain what further peril might follow to the rest of Christendom’. In Protestant England, where in 1534 King Henry VIII had expropriated all the lands and possessions of the English Langue, the victory of the Knights was seen as the salvation of Europe. The Queen ordered the Archbishop of Canterbury to appoint a special form of Thanksgiving to be read out in all the churches throughout the land, thrice weekly for three weeks, after the lifting of the siege.
The Knights, those who had survived, and the Grand Mast
er—but above all the Order itself—suddenly found that their defence of their barren, rocky island had brought them a world-wide fame, a lustre so enduring that even after centuries it has not dimmed. Although there were still those who hankered after a return to Rhodes it was not too difficult for the pro-Malta party to have their way and, since the Grand Master himself was in favour of retaining the island as their home, the opposition was discredited. But the fact remained that the siege had clearly shown that the two peninsulas of Senglea and Birgu, however much their defences were improved, were unsuitable for a permanent base. They were overlooked from the high ground behind them, and in the case of Birgu also from Mount Salvatore to the east. Above all else they were dominated by the bony ridge of Mount Sciberras on the far side of Grand Harbour and, with the steady improvement in the range of guns, it was clear that in any future siege both peninsulas could be rendered completely untenable by massed batteries sited opposite them. The suggestion had been made earlier by two military engineers, Ferramolino and Strozzi, that, if the Knights wanted an ideal site for a fortified city—one that would not only rival but surpass that of Rhodes—then Mount Sciberras was the place to build it. Only a few years before the siege another distinguished engineer, Bartolomeo Genga, had confirmed the opinions of his predecessors and had gone so far as to make a model of a fortified city embracing the whole of Mount Sciberras and extending as far as the area now known as Floriana; a point from which the whole of the Marsa area could also be brought under gunfire. Even before the siege La Valette had been in favour of moving the home of the Order to Sciberras, but shortage of money and a knowledge that the attack would come too soon for the proposed city to be completed had caused the plans to be shelved.
The time was now ripe for raising the issue once again, and for securing the good will of the Pope—at a moment when the Order stood so high in his esteem—for a project which, though it would undoubtedly be costly, would ensure that the Order was securely housed and protected against any further incursions by the enemies of Christendom. La Valette, forestalling the dissentients in the Order, who were all in favour of leaving the island at once (a number of the Order’s relics and other valuable possessions had already been packed for shipment), despatched ambassadors to the Pope to plead for his help. Pius IV, a practical man who was well aware how important the Order in Malta was for the defence of Sicily and Italy, decided to despatch one of the best military architects of the time to make a study of the problems involved and to advise on the construction of a more permanent home for the defenders of this outer bastion of Christendom. His choice fell on Francesco Laparelli, a pupil and assistant of Michelangelo, and an expert in military architecture who had already carried out a number of commissions for the Vatican.
Laparelli arrived in the island late in December and immediately began to make a survey of Grand Harbour and its defences. He proposed first of all that both Birgu and Senglea should be further strengthened—this with a view to the fact that the Turk might return before the new city was built. The city which Laparelli proposed was to be built exactly where his predecessors had envisaged it, running right along the top of Mount Sciberras and guarded at the seaward end by a new and greatly strengthened Fort St Elmo. It would command the entrance to Grand Harbour and Marsamuscetto, thus relegating the roles of Birgu and Senglea to that of secondary defensive positions which would guard the southern flank of Grand Harbour. Laparelli grasped the whole problem with such speed that he had laid a draft of his proposals before La Valette and the Council within three days. He forcibly expressed his view—which was shared by La Valette—that the whole island of Malta was by its very nature a fortress and that, in view of its superb harbours and fine building stone, it would be criminal folly to think of retiring elsewhere. Opposition was thus overcome and on March 28th, 1566, the first stone was laid by the Grand Master. The city was to be named Valetta after him and, in the custom of the time, the descriptive adjective Humilissima was attached to it—Civitas Humilissima Valettae, ‘The most Humble City of Valetta’. In later days, when the grandeur of its buildings and the arrogance of its knightly defenders had somewhat changed the original image that La Valette had had in mind, it was commonly referred to throughout Europe as Superbissima, The Most Proud’.
The cost of the whole project was daunting. Indeed it was this which had prevented any action being taken in previous years. But the great difference now was that the Order stood in such high renown throughout Europe that, from the Pope down to the most obscure Catholic nobleman, there was a unanimous feeling that these saviours of Europe and Christendom should at all costs be provided with money and help. They must be given the means whereby, if the enemy should come again, they could once more repeat, or even better, the feats of 1565. Apart from a large subsidy from the Pope, considerable sums were voted to the Order by the Kings of France and Portugal as well as by Philip II of Spain. The latter had seen that his predecessor Charles V had chosen wisely when he had installed the Knights in Malta, and that this fortress-island was the best guarantor of the security of his other Mediterranean dominions. Individual members of the Order cheerfully gave immense sums to further the work of the new; city and commanderies throughout Europe gave literally everything they had to ensure that the expenses could be met. The city of Valetta may be said to have arisen on a sudden surge of enthusiasm throughout Europe for the almost forgotten ideals of the Crusades. It owed its birth also to the purely natural instinct of self-preservation—of regarding the Knights in their small limestone island as a good investment against further Turkish inroads into the Continent.
In all of this the astounding popular fame which the siege of Malta had acquired played no small a part. La Valette himself was offered a cardinal’s hat, an honour which he wisely declined, maintaining that as Grand Master of the Knights Hospitallers (and he undoubtedly had the militant side of the Order in mind) he must often of necessity be involved in actions which were hardly suitable to a cardinal. Within the very year of the siege ballads and broadsheets were being sold throughout Europe, depicting the until then little-known island, the features of La Valette and of his opponents Mustapha and Piali, as well as incidents of the siege. At that moment in its more than usually troubled history, with nation divided against nation and with the Turk firmly established in eastern Europe and his shadow growing daily longer over the West, the Continent badly needed a victory. Great though their losses may have been, the Order of St John profited enormously from the fact that the siege occurred at the moment that it did. Nothing could have been more opportune. East of Malta, in another island which lived under the shadow of Turkish power and which was one day destined to fall within the Ottoman Empire, some Cypriot ballad-maker coined a song that was destined to become famous throughout the sea, and to be sung wherever men needed to remind themselves that the Turk was not all-powerful:
‘Malta of gold, Malta of silver, Malta of precious metal,
We shall never take you!
No, not even if you were as soft as a gourd,
Not even if you were only protected by an onion skin!’
And from her ramparts a voice replied:
‘I am she who has decimated the galleys of the Turks—
And all the warriors of Constantinople and Galata!’
The Abbé de Vertot in his history of the Order, published in the eighteenth century, gives as the reason why there was no further attack on Malta in the following year the fact that the main arsenal in Constantinople was blown up by a spy or spies employed for that purpose by La Valette. Certainly nothing could have suited the Grand Master better, and it is just possible that the account is true, but unfortunately Vertot does not give any sources for his statement. It has been repeated by a number of historians, among them Whitworth Porter:
…La Valette, feeling that he was unable to oppose force by force, decided on having recourse to stratagem to avert the danger. He availed himself of the services of some of his spies at Constantinople to cause the gra
nd arsenal of that city to be destroyed by fire. Large stores of gunpowder had been accumulated for the purpose of the approaching expedition, the explosion of which utterly wrecked the dockyard and the fleet which was being equipped within it. The blow put a complete stop to the undertaking, and the death of Soleyman, which occurred on September 5th, 1566, whilst invading Hungary, prevented any renewal of the attempt.
Certainly the great Sultan did die next year while campaigning in Hungary, and certainly there was no further attack on Malta in 1566, but the real truth of the matter will never be known. In any case, whether by La Valette’s design or by sheer accident (common enough in powder magazines in those days when safety precautions were little understood), the destruction of the arsenal in Constantinople saved the Order from a further siege which it could never have withstood.
In July 1568, three years after the siege, La Valette suffered a stroke from which he never recovered. His last few years had not been particularly happy. Apart from the pleasure of seeing his new city rising in white limestone blocks under the brilliant southern sun, his time had been taken up with resolving innumerable disputes among the young Knights who, when not absent on their caravans, found time heavy on their hands in the soft and indolent atmosphere of Malta. This was a problem that had already beset a number of Grand Masters (including d’Aubusson). It was one that was to cause them more and more concern in the centuries to come, when the harsh demands of warfare were felt less and less, and when the inevitable decline in the standards of the Order was to lead to interminable ‘town and gown’ quarrels between Knights and Maltese, and to gaming, wenching, drinking and duelling—anything to enliven the soporific seasons of the south.
La Valette was buried in the city that bore his name. A Latin inscription on his tomb, composed by Sir Oliver Starkey, translates as follows: ‘Here lies La Valette, worthy of eternal honour. The scourge of Africa and Asia, and the shield of Europe, whence he expelled the barbarians by his holy arms, he is the first to be buried in this beloved city which he founded.’ Few other Grand Masters, even given the circumstances of the time, could have attained the pre-eminence of La Valette. If ever justification was needed for the ideals of old-fashioned chivalry the life of this most unusual man provides it.
The Shield and The Sword Page 19
