The Shield and The Sword

by Ernle Bradford

  the discreditable state of affairs created by the duplicity and insatiable ambition of the princes, popes, and republics who showed no hesitation in paying tribute to the Sultan for his favour and protection, or invoking his aid against each other. The mutual recrimination and public washing of dirty linen must have been largely responsible for the contempt in which, according to Haedo and later writers, the Turks held the Christians.

  It might indeed be said that the only Christians for whom the Turks continued to hold any respect throughout this period were the Knights of St John of Rhodes and of Malta. Firmly entrenched in their rocky little island they were as dangerous to provoke as a desert scorpion.

  Quite apart from their constant incursions into the water off the North African coast, the galleys of the Order challenged the Turks as far afield as Greece, the Dardanelles, Oran, and Algiers. But more and more it was the corsairs to the south of them that became the main target of the galleys of Malta. As Roderick Cavaleiro records in The Last of the Crusaders:

  As long as the unprincipled states of Barbary…continued to menace Christian shipping, the galleys of St John maintained a regular Corso, thrice-yearly cruises in search of the squadrons and pirates of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli; they seldom failed to make prizes. The record of the Order throughout the seventeenth century showed a vast credit list of captures, firings, sinkings and forcings aground. The number of Moslem slaves in Malta far outnumbered those in other lands.

  It might well have been thought that a combination of Christian powers—as at Lepanto—could quite easily have cleared the seas and exterminated the Barbary pirates for ever. But the fact was that, in the divided state of Europe, it suited not only the pirates but the Europeans themselves to continue to allow the sea to remain in a state of anarchy. In the uneasy balance of power (and one that was always changing) between the European kingdoms, the Moslem seafarers provided a useful makeweight. They could tip the balance one way or another. It was with this knowledge in mind that most of the states—whether papal, republican, kingdoms, or principalities—continued to bribe and barter with the corsairs; now securing protection for their own ships, and now inciting the Moslems to cause the utmost damage to some European rival.

  Because they were neither rich enough nor powerful enough to mount a large-scale sea-offensive against their enemies, the Knights throughout the seventeenth century—as they had done long ago at Rhodes—tended to ally themselves with other Christian naval powers in order to inflict the maximum damage upon the Moslems. Their assistance was constantly sought. Not only did they know the whole sea-basin like a book familiar since childhood, but their help could always be solicited on the ground that it was a war against the enemies of the Faith. The Knights’ dedication to a religious war (in which of course they were entitled to their pickings) meant that they were not seeking territorial aggrandisement for themselves. It was for this reason that the Knights of St John were constantly to be found throughout the seventeenth century working in concert with the Venetians in attempts to restrain the Ottoman power in the eastern basin of the sea. For the Venetians this was a simple financial matter—their trade with the East was the source of the wealth of their proud republic. For the Knights, comparatively few of whom had any Venetian connections, it was a question of increasing the striking power of their fleet against their eternal enemy. Such a compact suited both allies very well. ‘The Venetians,’ writes Kelf-Cohen in an essay on The Knights of Malta, ‘were the one power who continued to resist the Turks at sea. They were still lords of the great island of Crete, which lay athwart the trade routes of the Levant, and only by its complete conquest would the Ottoman control of the Eastern Mediterranean be complete.’

  It was not until 1645 that the Turks finally declared open war on Crete, the principal reason for their doing so being that the Venetians had allowed the galleys of the Knights to take shelter in their waters after they had been attacking Ottoman shipping. Landing an army of 50,000 men, the Turks were soon successful in reducing the town of Khania in the north-west of the island. It was Candia, the capital, however, which they needed to secure before all else. Candia (from which the English language derives the word ‘candy’ from the sugar cane that was one of Crete’s main exports) was a strong and well-walled city, and it was to resist the Turkish attack off and on for over twenty years. This, although not an entirely continuous siege, nevertheless probably rates as the longest siege in history. Throughout these years the Knights of St John were constantly active in company with their Venetian allies. Hardly a year passed in which there was not either some major, or a series of minor engagements at sea, with the banner of St John invariably present. One of the more important of these, but typical in essence of so many others, occurred in 1656 at the mouth of the Dardanelles. A contemporary report, based on Venetian despatches and published in London the same year, records how:

  After the Venetian fleet had made a month’s stay at the mouth of the Dardanelles to wait for and fight the enemy, in the meanwhile arrived the squadron of Malta, which consisted of seven galleys. On the 23rd. of June the Captain Bassa [Pasha] appeared in. sight of the castles; his fleet consisted of twenty-eight great ships, sixty galleys, nine galeasses, and other small vessels.

  The navy of the republic was composed of twenty-eight great ships, twenty-four galleys, and seven galeasses, to which joyned (as was said before) the galleys of Malta, commanded by the lord prior of Roccella. The navy of the republic kept in the narrowest part of the channel, so that the Turks could not come forth without accepting the battel which was offered… About ten of the clock it pleased God to send a small north-west wind which occasioned the Venetian navy to move, and the honourable Eleazer Mocenigo found means to advance with the Sultana of St Marke, wherein he was, and passing beyond the Turkish fleet, endeavoured to hinder its retreat, keeping the mouth of the channel, and fighting valiantly.

  The battel being thus begun, the captain general, Laurence Mar cello, accompanied with the general of Malta, came up, intermingling with the rest of the Venetian commanders and vessels, fell to it pel mel. After the Turks had used their utmost endeavour to avoid the fight, being hemmed in by the Venetian fleet, and having no place left to escape, they were forced to fight, with the more eagerness because they had lost all hope of making a retreat, and so commended their safety to the conflict, whereby they gave the means to the Venetians the more to exalt their triumph and glory over their enemies, all the enemy being totally routed by the sword, by fire, and by water, the captain Bassa only saving himself with fourteen galleys, which hath crowned the republick with one of the greatest victories that ever was heard of in former times.

  The number of the enemies’ dead cannot be known nor discovered among so many ships and galleys taken and consumed by fire and water. About the shore there were seen huge heaps of bodies, and in the bay of a certain little valley there appeared so great a quantity of carcases that it caused horror in the beholders. The number of Christian slaves freed on this occasion is near upon five thousand. That of the Venetians’ men killed and wounded doth not amount to three hundred, which makes the victory memorable to all ages… The Venetians having reserved some of the enemies’ ships of all sorts in memory of the success, besides eleven which those of Malta had taken, it was resolved upon by the Venetian commanders to burn the rest, to free themselves from the trouble of sailing with so numerous fleet… The valour, courage, and magnanimity wherewith all the Venetians and Maltese did behave themselves in this occasion may better be understood by the action than by the discourse.

  A tablet in the Auberge of Italy in Valetta also commemorated this notable action, recording how the prior, Gregory Caraffa, was ‘The first to attack the enemy’, and how the Maltese squadron ‘seized three large ships, and eight other smaller galleys together with a large amount of brass guns, and captured 300 Turks as well as liberating 2,600 Christians’.

  It was not until 1669 that the city of Candia finally fell to the Turks, after a last con
tinuous siege of twenty-seven months. As was to be expected the Knights of St John were there until the end, embarking in their ships for Malta only at the very last moment when the fate of Candia was clearly sealed. Morosini, the Venetian commander of the city, in a despatch to the Republic referred to them as follows: ‘I lose more by the departure of these few, but most brave, warriors than by that of all the other forces.’ During the course of this long drawn-out war (which finally sealed the fate of Venice in the East), the Republic, to show its regard for all the assistance that the Order had given them, passed a decree which authorised any Knight of St John to appear fully armed at any time within Venetian territories—a unique privilege since it was not even conceded to native Venetians. The Knights, with their hauteur and arrogance which so upset the nobilita of Malta, were nevertheless aware of the meaning of the words Noblesse oblige. Even in the days of their decline they never forgot their obligations to fight for their Faith wherever the opportunity offered.

  Chapter 25

  MORE MEDICAL THAN MILITARY

  Throughout these centuries when the Order of St John is mainly heard of in history through its incessant warfare against the Moslem Mediterranean, the Knights nevertheless continued to practise their ancient and foremost function—that of Hospitallers. At the time of the siege of 1565 there existed three hospitals in Malta. One was a very small foundation up in the old city, which had inadequate bed space even for normal victims of illness. The second was a slightly larger hospital kept by the Knights of the Italian Langue as an adjunct to their Auberge in Birgu. The third was the Sacred Infirmary itself, the descendant of that original hospital in Jerusalem where Brother Gerard had first formulated the rules of the Order.

  The Infirmary was sited on the east side of Birgu peninsula, only a little way back from the long curtain-wall that connected St Angelo at the far end with the Post of Castile at the landward end of Birgu. Unfortunately, quite apart from the immense weight of gunfire that was directed at Castile, the whole of this curtain-wall came under heavy fire from Mount Salvatore on the eastern side of the creek, where the Turks had massed some of their largest batteries. Soon after the capture of St Elmo, when the main Turkish attack fell upon Birgu and Senglea, the Sacred Infirmary found itself in the front line. Indeed, at one moment, when the wall had actually been breached and when La Valette in person had led the counter-charge that saved the city, the hospital itself all but fell into the hands of the enemy, whose troops had forced their way into the town. Shortly after this, when the ranks of the defenders were so depleted that great sections of the fortifications were practically unmanned, La Valette visited the hospital and enjoined all those who could even walk to leave their beds and lend a hand at the defences. He showed them the grenade wound in his own leg, pointing out that he too could do with a rest but that such a thing was unthinkable when the situation was so desperate. The effect of his action and his words was such that all except those who were totally incapable of walking left their beds and made their way to the defences. In any record of the great siege of Malta it must always be borne in mind how important a part the Infirmary played in restoring men to action who would, under most conditions of war at that time, have certainly died from their wounds. Despite the cramped conditions under which the defenders lived it is remarkable that no pestilence or plague broke out in the two beleaguered cities. The Turks, on the other hand, with their field hospitals erected in the Marsa seem to have suffered far more heavily from sickness and disease. A regular line of transports passed between Malta and Tripoli evacuating the sick and wounded who could not be dealt with on the spot.

  When the Order moved, the old hospital continued to function for about ten years, by which time a great new hospital had been built in Valetta. This, as W. Bedford writes in his history of Malta and the Knights Hospitaller,

  was unfortunately placed on the south-eastern seafront close to the Grand Harbour, the inducement to choose this site being that patients might be landed from ships at the mouth of the harbour, and brought in by a covered way below the sea wall into the lower ward of the hospital, without making a tedious and dangerous circuit of the streets. Unfortunately it is thus completely sheltered by the high ground behind it from the healthy north and north-east winds, while it is exposed to the enervating sirocco.

  Little enough was known in those days about the effects of climate, wind and weather upon the human constitution. It was natural enough that the designer of the hospital should place it on the southern side of Mount Sciberras, with a view to sheltering it and its patients from the strong—and at times tempestuous—northerlies. But even if the site was ill-chosen, the hospital in all other respects was the envy of Europe. In its day it was without any doubt the greatest hospital in the world. The Order, despite its militant role, had never at any time forgotten its principal function in the world—the care of the sick. This was at a time when, throughout most of Europe, the sick were no more than sad casualties abandoned on the battlefield of life.

  The main or ‘great’ ward of the Valetta hospital was (and still is) one of the longest rooms in Europe, 185 feet overall by nearly thirty-five feet wide, and thirty-one feet high. The height of the ward was all-important in Malta where summer heats of ninety degrees are quite common and, in the days before fans, the only method of keeping a room cool was to have as high, a ceiling as possible. Curiously enough, although the hospital was in essence the raison d’être of the Order, the name of its architect is unknown. Erected when La Cassière was Grand Master it might be expected that Gerolamo Cassar would have been chosen to design it, but among the numerous other works with which he is credited there is no mention whatever of his having been concerned with the Valetta hospital. The hospital largely follows the design of that of Santo Spirito in Rome and it is almost certain that, whoever in fact was the architect, he had seen this fifteenth-century Roman hospital. One of the best descriptions we have of it during its seventeenth-century days comes from the diary of a British naval chaplain, Henry Teonge, who visited Malta aboard HMS Assistance in 1674. ‘The hospital is a vast structure, wherein the sick and wounded lye. This so broade that twelve men may with ease walke abreast up the midst of it; and the bedds are on each syde, standing on four yron pillars, with white curtens and vallands, and covering, extremely neate, all kept cleane and sweete…’ Everyone who visited the hospital over the years commented on its cleanness—rare enough in Europe at that time—and upon the fact that the Knights themselves attended the patients, who were all served off silver plate. The use of silver was not so much a matter of ostentation as of hygiene. At a later date in the eighteenth century, when the finances of the Order were at a low ebb, pewter was substituted for silver.

  Surgery was still primitive, as indeed in the rest of Europe, but the Order’s physicians were at least better educated in matters of hygiene than most of their contemporaries. The Greek doctor-philosophers, Galen and Hippocrates, still provided the basis of medical knowledge, transmuted by the works of the Arab Avicenna, whose Canon of Medicine, one of the principal treatises of the time, was itself based on the doctrines of the two famous Greeks modified slightly by those of Aristotle. Anaesthesia prior to surgery was also rudimentary—alcohol and the narcotic sponge being the main methods of inducing loss of consciousness. The latter was soaked in opium-poppy solution and other drugs, the patient taking it in his mouth and sucking it until the combination of the fumes and ingested opiates made him unconscious. Dr Paul Cassar in his Medical History of Malta also mentions a simple but efficacious method of ‘putting a patient out’—probably the world’s original anaesthetic. ‘The hammer-stroke was also practised. The patient’s head was encased in a sort of helmet on which the surgeon delivered a good blow with a wooden hammer in such a way as to stun the patient into insensibility and thus enable him to go through the operation without suffering any pain.’

  On other aspects of medical treatment Dr Cassar adds that ‘wounds were cleaned and washed with salted water as a firs
t aid measure, [During the siege La Valette had butts of salt water placed at various points along the fortifications.] Splinting and traction were employed in the treatment of fractures; broken skull bones were treated by the elevation of the depressed fragments and trephining was resorted to when necessary. Wounds involving soft tissues were sutured and severed blood vessels were ligatured as the tying up of bleeding arteries had begun to replace the cautery as a haemostatic. The wound was then dressed with tow or wool. In injuries of the mouth which rendered the intake of food difficult or impossible, the necessary nourishment was administered by means of nutrient enemas.’

  One of the sovereign remedies used as a cure for wounds, haemorrhages and dysentery was a curious black fungus (Fucus coccineus melitensis) which grew on the top of a small island, ‘Fungus Rock’, just off the western coast of Gozo. So important was this considered that the fungus was a perquisite of the Grand Masters and a permanent guard was maintained in a tower opposite the rock to prevent anyone from stealing it. The only means of access was by a basket which was suspended on ropes stretched between the rock and the mainland of Gozo. Even after the Knights had left Malta, as late as 1815, this strange form of transport was still used to collect the fungus, and an Englishman, Claudius Shaw, described

  More Medical than Military. how he went out to the rock in 1815:

  The passage to this rock is rather curious, if not dangerous; two ropes are made fast on each shore, on which a box with grooves on its edges passes over. A Maltese first works his way across, then the person desirous to go over draws the box back and seats himself in it, when he is hauled over by the guide; in this manner as many as please can go, one at a time. It is not a very pleasant sensation to be suspended some hundred feet above the water, and if there is any wind, the movement of the box is anything but agreeable, and all that can be obtained are a few pieces of fungus. I was well pleased to be back again, and made a determination never to risk my precious carcase in that conveyance again. It seems very strange to be swinging up in the air between two rocks, with sea-gulls and other aquatics flying about below you.