The Great Siege of Malta Read online

  His reputation apparently did not reach his opposite numbers in the West. Intelligence reports from Constantinople had little concrete to say of him, dismissing him as “a man of some authority but little experience in war.”43 (The same report refers to Turgut by name only—that man’s history and reputation were unquestioned.)

  Command of the navy went to Piali Pasha, now married to Selim’s daughter, Suleiman’s granddaughter—a reward for his service at Djerba. Selaniki records his letter from Suleiman: “I have decided to order an expedition to be undertaken. You will therefore prudently and energetically gird yourself to gather all military means, and with care and diligence prepare sufficient powder and munitions, and losing no time be ready and prepared [to set out]. We hope that, with the infinite aid of God, we shall defeat the enemy of the faith and that the soldiers of Islam will be victorious.”44

  It had not been certain that Piali would get the position. He had some taint of corruption, having accepted bribes from the Genoese in exchange for not attacking Bastia in 1558.45 There was also the story that after Djerba and before his marriage, Piali Pasha had secreted the son of the Duke of Medinaceli at Genoese-held Chios in the hope of getting a suitably large ransom from the family. This was presumptuous—all booty technically belonged to the sultan—and Suleiman got wind of it. He ordered a search for the child, but the boy died before this could happen, either of plague or by an alarmed Piali. Until Selim and the chief eunuch could talk Suleiman into granting him a pardon, Piali stayed on his ships, nervously cruising the Aegean while awaiting word from the palace. Suleiman needed him alive more than dead and was content to let him live out his natural life, after which, he said, “May God, the just avenger of crime, inflict upon him the punishment he deserves.”46

  The sultan also called upon the corsairs who lived in Galata (a section of Constantinople), experts in maritime arts, astute and famous men of the sea who were specific in their requirements: “What is needed is nothing less than three hundred ships, twenty cannon capable of bombarding the fortress with ninety-pound projectiles, one hundred and twenty columbrines and siege guns, five mortars, twenty thousand quintals of powder . . . forty thousand projectiles, ten thousand spades, picks and oars, fifty ships armed with cannon, barges to carry horse, provisions, victuals, and hardtack ready for the Muslim soldiers. Give us what we demand, hold back nothing. Let us take the contest upon ourselves; victory will be in God. However much more is provided through war and battle, that much greater will be the strength of the soldiers’ hearts.”47

  Once more, woodsmen of the Black Sea cut down old growth trees for new vessels. Hawsers, cook pots, grain, olives, swords, arquebuses, canvas, pitch, powder, ladders, pennons, water butts, sail, chickens, all these and more besides began to flow from the farther reaches of the empire into the chandleries and armories of Constantinople. All that autumn and winter, the noise of the arms makers sounded from the armory just north of the city. Suleiman came by daily to watch as his shipwrights sawed and shaped and joined the myriad pieces into a new fleet of galleys, galleots, foists, mahones, and barques.

  Most spectacular of all, there was the casting of the behemoth siege cannon needed to bring down the heavy walls. Gun casting was a recent and still developing technology, an art as much as a science and one that captured the attention of the age. It was also inordinately dangerous, all the way from melting the bronze to firing the end product. Evliya Chelibi in his Book of Travels has left a detailed account of casting the great guns, a process so important that infidels, however skilled (and it was from Europeans, chiefly Germans, that the Turks learned the craft), were forbidden access to the final stages “because the metal when in fusion will not suffer to be looked at by evil eyes.” Instead, viziers, muftis, and sheiks were called to the sweltering foundry to pray repeatedly, “There is no power and strength save in Allah!” Workers added tin to the molten brass, and the head founder ordered the guests to “throw some gold and silver coins into the brazen sea as alms, in the name of the True Faith!”48 When the pour was ready, viziers and sheiks put on white shirts and sacrificed sheep on either side of the furnace. These were not men to leave anything to chance.

  The rhythms of sixteenth-century war between Christian and Muslim, or more specifically between Ottoman and Habsburg, went on against a backdrop of continuous East-West trade. And as this was a regular event, the only question was whether the sultan’s armies would head east to Persia or west to Hungary. Suleiman could make this decision at any time. Only when the army was ordered to muster, either on the northern or southern side of the Bosphorus, would people know for certain whether it was going to Europe or Persia. There might, however, be clues in the run up.

  In the winter of 1564–65, foreign agents of the Germany’s Fugger banking family noted the activity and carefully reported back to their Augsburg headquarters, from where the communiqué would continue to other branches and incidentally to the pope. The Fuggers were not alone. Antoine Petremol, the French ambassador to the court of Suleiman, kept his own masters informed regarding events in Constantinople, and his was not an encouraging picture: “The great preparations for the Sultan’s navy continue and increase day by day, such that it is likely that this army will be ready to depart this coming March 12, and will be far larger than any force that the Turkish ruler has ever launched in terms of galleys and other large vessels, guns and artillery.”49 Venetian spies reported much the same, though Venice voted on March 24, 1565, not to share this information with the outside world.50 Spies reported that the king of Tunis had collected a good deal of raisins, dates, honey, oil, and other food for the Ottoman fleet, in return for which Turgut had exchanged bolts of silk and small bronze cannon. Rumor stoked anxiety all over. English ambassador William Fayre writes from Madrid that “the Turk is much feared in Sardinia, Sicily, and Corsica.”51

  Some held that the target might even be Cyprus or Crete or someplace in the eastern Mediterranean, but Valette was not one to take chances. Valette had spies even in Constantinople, Italian merchants who, whether for money, for piety, or for both, wrote in lemon juice—invisible dry, but dark when exposed to heat—between lines of business correspondence.52 An unnamed Greek knight is also noted as Valette’s informant, a man who had gone to Constantinople at the time of the buildup and “penetrated with his industry, fluency, and banter (plática) as far as the chamber of the most principal pashas, and not without great risk to his own life.”53

  What Valette really wanted were hard facts and firm numbers. What was the target, what was the force? Viperano wrote that it was well known “from the letter received from Alexandria, Dalmatia and Constantinople of their preparations and their intentions retailed by fugitives and deserters all this apparatus of war was ordered used against the Knights of Malta.”54 For once, common knowledge was correct. The Ottoman archives have confirmed that Suleiman was trying to enlist his North African allies as early as October of 1564.55 Turgut in Tripoli and Hassan, Suleiman’s proxy in Algiers, were ordered to prepare their own men and however many other corsairs as could be persuaded to take part in the expedition against Malta.56 (Suleiman also assured Hassan that it was his reportage of Christian activity in the west that convinced him to take arms against Malta—a bit of flattery possibly designed to sweeten the beylerbey.)57 The sultan also requested—it was hard to order these men—that the Algerian corsairs leave French ships alone, hoping that France might at least remain neutral. On April 8, 1565, he informed Mustapha Pasha that he had appointed Mustapha Reis commander of the Muslim pirates, to reinforce the imperial fleet, though he seems to be more hopeful than certain they would actually get into the spirit of the thing (“I believe they will besiege the island of Malta”).58 Nevertheless, as late as December the French ambassador was throwing around huge numbers—thirty to forty thousand spahis (Ottoman cavalry), fifteen thousand Janissaries exclusive of any other men—and professing ignorance of the final target.59

  The corsairs should have been quick to sign
up for this enterprise. The knights had made considerable trouble in their lives, and the treasuries on Malta were presumably packed. Moreover, any knight taken alive ought to be worth a considerable ransom. There were profits enough for all, even if this was primarily an Ottoman operation. (The financial rewards of success were presumably on Suleiman’s mind as well. According to Selaniki, “The fleet had taken a great toll from the treasury and it had not been enough.”60 The shortfall was borrowed from senior officials.)

  Alone, the knights would be hard-pressed to resist a force of this size. They would need help from Spain, now ruled by a decidedly ambivalent Philip II. To persuade him, Valette would need a very strong advocate indeed. Fortunately, he had one in the person of Don Garcia de Toledo.

  7

  DARK CLOUDS IN THE EAST, 1565

  The same day the fleet raised anchors and departed from Beshiktash; passing in front of the Seray, the troops made their salute, the guns fired with such force that it rang to the skies and was heard across the world.

  Selaniki

  Don Garcia de Toledo was one of the great figures of the era, honored and praised in his own time, but maligned or all but forgotten by posterity.

  He was born in Villafranca di Bierzo in 1514, the son of Pedro de Toledo Zuniga, viceroy of Naples; the nephew of the duke of Alba; husband to a Colonna of the Roman aristocracy; and brother-in-law to Cosimo I de’ Medici. His portrait shows a man with a long prominent nose, hooded eyes, receding hairline, and a full beard half covering full lips. Watchful and intelligent, he might have passed for a Dutch burgher. In life, he managed to combine in one person the talents of a skillful general, a patient diplomat, a perceptive strategist, an imaginative engineer, and a bold sailor. Emotionally, he could be proud, petulant, and if his numerous letters on the state of his health are to be believed, he was of fragile physical condition. Bosio describes him as “grave, judicious, and experienced.”1 He was also thoughtful, farseeing, conscientious, and loyal to his king, his soldiers, and his faith.

  Family connections got him his first job, serving on and soon commanding galleys under the tutelage of Andrea Doria himself. Talent saw him rise. At the age of twenty-one, he became captain general of the galleys of Naples, in which role he commanded six galleys at the 1535 battle of Tunis. In 1540–41 he took command of Doria’s land forces at Monastir, Susa, Mahomet, and Calibra. He was also present at the 1541 catastrophe at Algiers. Two years later he and his fleet were cheered in Messina as he towed a treasure ship belonging to Barbarossa himself. But it was his ingenious work at Mahdia, his mounting of heavy cannon on a makeshift catamaran and thereby destroying the wall from seaborne cannon, that solidified his reputation.

  The two decades at sea, however, had their effect. By 1552 he wanted out, and asked an intermediary to plead ill health for him—“the sun by day and the damp at night, along with other miseries, have destroyed his health and could possibly carry him off.”2 (Coincidentally, this was the same year he married.) He was instead made a colonel of Spanish foot in Naples, and in the following year, he led twelve thousand imperial troops against Franco-Sienese forces at Siena.3 Among his fellow officers were the one-eyed condottiere from Pavia, Ascanio Della Corgna; the Tuscan nobleman Giovan Luigi “Chiappino” (the Bear) Vitelli (a favorite of Garcia’s brother-in-law Cosimo de’ Medici); and Don Álvaro de Sande, all of them respected veteran commanders. He also served in Flanders and Italy. In 1560 he was slated to replace Medinaceli as viceroy of Sicily if the latter did not return from Djerba. By February of 1564 Philip had named him Captain General of the Sea (Andrea Doria’s old title), and when others (including the Djerba veteran Sancho de Leyva) had failed, ordered him to take the Moroccan pirate stronghold, the Peñon de Velez de la Gomera.4

  Peñon de Velez, like Mahdia, was an example of the care with which Don Garcia mounted a campaign. It also demonstrated, again, his ability to manage an international force. His resources included Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and German soldiers, as well as the galleys of the Knights of St. John. Among the commanders were Chiappino Vitelli, Leyva again, and the young Gianandrea Doria. After an involved two-pronged attack, victory: “About 3 A.M. on Wednesday, two Turks came from the fort, and told the general that a great number of runagates [renegades] had abandoned the place, and that such as remained had agreed to render it.”5

  The ill health that had plagued Don Garcia in recent years had not abated. At age fifty, he was suffering from rheumatism and gout—his old friend Chiappino Vitelli had sent him a medicinal elixir in 1563—and he might have been expected to settle down to a quieter life among the fountains, statues, gardens, and orchards at his villa at Chiaia, with honor and thanks and without the chains of office.6 He did not. He saw the threat of Islam to Spain and Christendom, and not without cause, saw himself as almost uniquely capable of doing something about it. And if he was to defend the empire against the full force of the Ottoman fleet as well as their Barbary allies, he would need as much authority as he could get. In addition to his title of captain general, he asked for, and got, the position of viceroy of Sicily, which combined authority made him the most powerful man in the central Mediterranean.7 He had his work cut out for him. “It is impossible to describe or imagine the condition in which I found the fleet,” he wrote to Francisco de Eraso, the king’s secretary in August 1564.8 Corruption was rampant, and he was not shy about saying so.

  It was, however, external threats in the upcoming year that were his greatest concern. Rumors were coming from the east; and in 1564, Garcia cataloged various possible targets, noting each city’s strengths and weaknesses, the reasons Suleiman might (or might not) wish to attack them, and the kinds of preparation that should be taken in each case.9 This report was long and meticulous, but it was essentially superfluous. Without doubt, Malta was the target of choice, with Goleta a possible second.

  He laid out the threat in the starkest possible terms: “If Malta is lost, not only would there be the loss of those who are therein, which would be great, but it would be simply like having the kingdoms of Sicily and Naples with a chain around their necks; and joining hands with Tripoli, [our enemies] could at any time gather together all the forces of Barbary.”10 When that failed to move Philip to action, Toledo wrote to the king’s secretary Eraso pleading with him to “for the love of God, expedite these matters.”11

  Spain was in an awkward position. The treasure ships from America this year were not enough to finance the horrifically expensive wars Spain waged and the fleets she tried to maintain. Philip had petitioned the papacy for money to help defray his military expenses, just as it had given France large sums to quash the Huguenots. Don Garcia, on his way to his new position in Sicily, went in person to Rome to press his case. Pope Pius IV was by nature a genial man, certainly a good friend to the knights and deeply concerned with the Muslim threat, but he was irritated with Philip. As of February 1565, revenues from Spanish parishes were being diverted to build sixty new galleys, and the pope thought that Philip should lead the armada in person, as his father would have done. Don Garcia endured a lengthy harangue in the gilt and marble halls of the papal palace, and afterward, in a nice bit of understatement, wrote to Philip that the pope “had his eye on [them].”12

  Nevertheless, the pontiff did come through, as did the Duke of Savoy, as did Toledo’s brother-in-law, Cosimo de’ Medici of Florence, as did the narrow-eyed bankers of Genoa, as did most of the others whom Don Garcia visited on his way to Messina. Malta was, after all, a good deal closer to home than Rhodes had been, and the ramifications of an Ottoman victory were a good deal easier to imagine.13 His rounds finished in April of 1565, Don Garcia sailed into Messina to settle into his new offices.

  While Don Garcia was still working to gather the Spanish fleet, the Ottoman armada was ready to sail. One hundred and ninety ships—war galleys, carracks, galliots, galleons—filled the harbor of the Bosphorus.14 Crowds of civilians—idle beggars and busy merchants, young children and old men—drifted down to the wa
terside to see this spectacle of imperial might, gawked at the ships, and cheered the soldiers and sailors. The galleys’ sterns were decorated with moons of hammered gold, with various paintings in the Turkish ornate style. The imperial galley had three lights, and instead of the normal standard it flew a banner of green silk.

  Preparing to board were spahis, light horsemen and archers who lived off of small land holdings called timars, granted by the sultan for good service (much as Roman soldiers were granted land in exchange for service, a practice that required an ever-expanding empire); Janissaries from Anatolia and Rumelia, crack soldiers and the sultan’s personal guard, who dressed in red coats and tall white turbans topped with the white feather that marked them as a military elite; Iayalars, religious fanatics intent on death, both of the enemy and of themselves, dressed in animal skins; and corsairs from the Black Sea, adventurers who cared very little for rank and a great deal for a fight, the more one-sided the better. Finally, there was the subsidiary army of support personnel—engineers, armorers, tent makers, cobblers, ditch diggers, physicians, sailors, caulkers—unheroic men, but vital to the success of such enterprises. And of course, there were the merchants who follow any army, ready in this case to pay cash for any slaves the army might pick up along the way.