The Great Siege of Malta Read online

  St. Aubin was bold, but he was no fool. When the six Ottoman galleys debouched from the mouth of Grand Harbor, he knew any battle would be hopeless. He quickly reversed course away from the island and north toward Sicily and safety. Despite having the advantage of fresh crews, five of the six vessels failed to close the gap with St. Aubin; soon only Mohammed Bey had any chance of overtaking the Christian. A galley of this sort with low draft can reach speeds of up to seven knots by oars, but only in short bursts. (Under sail, it can reach up to eleven knots.) Mohammed Bey was closing in on St. Aubin, when St. Aubin made a surprising move. Without warning, he ordered the galley stopped, came about at 180 degrees and suddenly was directing his own guns at the oncoming Ottoman vessel. St. Aubin had now become the challenger in an even fight.

  There was a well-understood protocol of galley warfare. Two vessels charged each other and fired the bow guns, larger first, smaller second, at the last possible moment, after which the stronger boarded the weaker and the fight played out on a blood-soaked deck. The crucial question always was who fired first. The time it took to reload the guns made one shot the only shot, thus making the galley joust into a primitive game of chicken. Fire first and you were then at the mercy of your surviving opponent’s remaining strength. Fire second, preferably at the very moment of engagement, and you had the momentum of your shot to carry your men onto the enemy ship. This was the goal of any captain, and it took strong nerves to pull it off.

  The alternative was simply to break off the fight, and it was that option that Mohammed Bey chose. While there was still a large gap between the ships, the Ottoman commander ordered his vessel to pull up short, turn around, and head back to the safety of Grand Harbor. St. Aubin, triumphant, set course for Sicily.

  It was no surprise that cheers went up from behind the walls of Fort St. Elmo. It was a bitter humiliation for Piali Pasha, but more so for Mohammed Bey. The admiral had the disgraced captain brought to him, berated the fellow, and finally, spat in his face. This is the last we hear of Mohammed Bey.

  10

  PREPARATIONS FOR A SIEGE

  What matters is that if Malta is not helped now, I believe it will fall.

  Don Garcia de Toledo to Philip II, May 31, 1565

  The governing council of Mdina, the Università, was concerned about the state of the city’s defenses, and with the blessing of Governor de Mesquita they sent one of their own, Luca de Armenia, to confer with Valette. Armenia arrived at Fort St. Angelo at dusk on May 24 and had to wait some hours while the grand master inspected the troops.1 He is likely the same Armenia who had written, just prior to the siege, a short paean to his country and city, expressing doubts as to its fate:

  Alas, we flee our native land, we leave the city by herself

  Dispersing each one according to each one’s fate

  Sorrowful city, farewell, for a second and a third time farewell

  We are left to our tears and grief. No other city will be like you, farewell2

  The Università had a simple request—permission to send their excess citizens to Birgu, or failing that, to get more soldiers, mercenaries, artillerymen, and powder sent to Mdina.3 If the grand master could arrange the latter course, Armenia assured him that the remaining citizens of Mdina would do all they could in defense of their homeland. Valette was in no position to welcome more people in the already overcrowded Birgu, and Armenia could hardly point to any imminent danger to the old city. Nevertheless, Valette agreed to send more men, and Armenia appears to have roused himself from his melancholy. By the end of the siege, the soldiers he commanded could take credit for having killed over a thousand Ottomans.4

  At about this time, Valette received mail from Don Garcia that gave Valette some cause for anxiety.5 While it was true that the viceroy was gathering men as quickly as possible, he also made it clear that he was anxious for boats. Malta had boats, arguably the best in the Mediterranean.6 Don Garcia requested that the grand master send him however many he could, to help in the transport of the forces gathering at Messina, while also removing noncombatants from the island. All of this, he noted, would be much more difficult once the Ottomans controlled the entrance to Grand Harbor.

  Valette wrote back to say that he could not spare the galleys, but again urged the viceroy to come as quickly as possible. He gave the letter to the Perugian knight Vincenzo Anastagi and, as he promised the Università, dispatched him with sixty soldiers to reinforce Mdina.7 With them went horses, the last in Senglea and Birgu. Cavalry, useless in the city, was ideally suited for the fast raids and reconnaissance missions that would come out of Mdina. (Two days earlier, Valette had also sent a letter directly to Philip II, voicing confidence that they could win not just at Malta, but also at Goletta.8 Clearly he knew his audience.)

  Now certain that the first target was to be Fort St. Elmo, Valette had all the civilians who had taken refuge there brought over to Birgu. The boats that carried this last group out of harm’s way returned with powder, lead, rope, incendiaries, hardtack, wine, cheese, lard, oil, and vinegar for the five hundred men inside. He also ordered Colonel Mas and 150 of his men to swell the ranks.9

  If Valette expected caution from the men at St. Elmo, he had sadly misjudged them. Inspired by the knowledge that Ottoman siege guns were being towed down the peninsula, Colonel Mas and Captain La Cerda led a number of their men out of the fort and headed for the enemy. The ensuing fight, the last direct fighting they were to enjoy for some time, was a short and spirited affair, but the handful of men killed on both sides did not materially slow Mustapha’s progress.

  It appears, however, to have prompted him to position sharpshooters within range of Fort St. Elmo. Janissaries were notorious for the efficiency of their snipers, “most excellent marksmen.”10 These men could lie in wait for hours at a time in the hope of blowing the head off anyone who, from curiosity, might peek over the top of the parapet, however briefly. From that time on, the Christian defenders were trapped inside the fort, with only the sound of Muslim sappers digging trenches outside the fort and enemy gun carriages moving closer and closer.

  The defenders, however, were able to fire cannon from seaward facing cavalier cannon fire that was supplemented by Valette’s men across the water at Fort St. Angelo. The footsoldiers might feel superfluous in such circumstances. These were experienced warriors who knew what went into a proper fort, and Fort St. Elmo was not the best example of the military architect’s art. Personal bravery notwithstanding, the men of Fort St. Elmo could calculate odds as well as any Ottoman engineer, and they knew the power of the wall-smashing guns that in a day or so would be brought to bear.

  On May 24, Mustapha was ready. His guns were set in three ranks facing the landward side of St. Elmo. Defensive gabions, boxes filled with cotton, now created a wall through which ten guns capable of firing eight-pound balls poked out toward the fort. A second tranche that boasted two culverins, guns capable of lobbing sixty-pound shot, backed them up. Finally, on the rise overlooking the fort was one of the so-called basilisks, its vast cyclopean eye staring down on St. Elmo, a huge weapon capable of throwing a stone ball of a hundred and sixty pounds. More guns would follow, and from different emplacements, but these would do for now. Sacks of powder were shoved down the bronze gullets, with stone balls lifted in as a chaser. Engineers sighted targets and adjusted angles of fire. Each gunner prepared his slow match and blew the tip into a bright orange glow, loose sparks flying off and crackling as they expired. Mustapha himself stood behind them, waited until all was ready, and then gave the order to fire. The artillerymen lowered the linstocks to the touchholes, and in a storm of sound, fire, and smoke, the first volleys slammed into the walls of Fort St. Elmo.

  The effect was devastating, so powerful that even in Birgu the houses shook.11 The infantry huddled inside the fort, unable even to watch the enemy. Throughout the day, Turkish artillery smashed against the walls, pulverizing and knocking off chunks of stonework and beginning to fill the ditch. Of necessity, trained sold
iers became journeyman masons of the crudest sort, reduced to reinforcing the walls as the ground shook and stonework crumbled, their swords and guns and all thoughts of fighting now shelved. Men such as La Cerda could only seethe at this misuse of their talents.

  The Christians of St. Elmo were not, however, fighting completely alone. Valette had ordered the guns on Fort St. Angelo to fire on the Ottoman sappers and cannon, and they did so with good effect. One of these shots dislodged a stone that struck Piali Pasha’s head and knocked him senseless. He was unconscious for about an hour, prompting rumors about his death—premature, as it happened. He had, they said afterward, his turban to thank for his life. Mustapha’s reaction to this news is unrecorded.

  The entire day passed in ponderous rolling thunder of cannon fire, smoke, and dust quivering in midair. The very ground trembled in response to this pummeling. Finally, night fell, the cannon ceased, and the men at St. Elmo considered the situation. It was clear to them that the fort could not hold up under this kind of abuse, and since the defenders could not even fight back, the best option, the only option, was to abandon the fort entirely, return to Fort St. Angelo, and bolster the fighting force there.

  If someone was to suggest this course of action to as stern a man as Valette, best that it be a reputable commander who was not a member of the Order of St. John. The job went to Captain La Cerda.

  On the night of May 24–25, La Cerda slipped into a small boat and under a moonless sky was rowed across to Fort St. Angelo. Valette was there to greet him and in a public square asked him how matters stood at St. Elmo. The grand master presumably expected a bluff-and-hearty answer to the effect that they were holding their own and eager to fight. He got the opposite. La Cerda answered that matters were exceedingly bad.

  It was a straightforward, honest, and heartfelt answer, but as the chronicler put it, one that “he should have kept secret and in chambers, so as not to frighten the populace.”12 He was quickly hustled into the council room before he could blurt out anything more. The grand council sat in tall back benches on either side of the room, unsteady candlelight wavered over the stones and wood, and the commanders asked him to explain himself. La Cerda didn’t hesitate. Fort St. Elmo was, he said, “a sick man in need of medicine.”13 Its walls could not hold, and the soldiers, his soldiers, were being condemned to die without hope of fighting back. Let the place be mined and abandoned so that Turks could enter and be blown up in the process. Let the Christians rejoin their fellows at Senglea and Birgu, and let the real fight begin.

  The council might not have expected good news, but this kind of talk, this early on in the campaign, was a shock, the more so given the source. La Cerda was no raw recruit who flinched at the first sound of gunfire. He was a veteran of the 1543 siege of Tlemcen, on the Barbary coast, in which battle he had been wounded in his shoulder.14 His actions on Malta so far had been aggressive, even rash, but undeniably brave. Given his position and experience, his word must carry some weight, both with the council and with his own men.

  How did Valette react? Accounts differ. However displeased the grand master might have been, the chroniclers Balbi and Cirni record a relatively temperate response. The encyclopedic Bosio, however, writes that Valette was scathing.15 He thanked La Cerda for his report. Did the men in the fort truly have no confidence in their abilities? Very well, they were free to go. Valette did not wish to have anyone in whom he could have no confidence, and clearly he could have no confidence in them. He would replace the men now in the fort with better men, braver men, men headed by Valette himself.

  It may have been stage anger or the real thing, but regardless, the threat had its intended effect. The council protested that as grand master he must not leave. If more soldiers were required at St. Elmo, they could be found. Valette agreed in the end and called up Lieutenant Medrano, a subordinate to Captain Miranda (who was recovering from an illness at Messina) and ordered him to take his company of two hundred men across to Fort St. Elmo.16 Proving that good things come to those in whom Valette did have confidence, the grand master also promoted him to captain.

  Not to be outdone by the Spanish volunteers, a French knight, Captain Gaspard de La Motte, stepped forward and offered to take a number of his own men to bolster the defenders of Fort St. Elmo.17 Would Valette agree?

  He would. Ardent men, he said, were exactly what was needed. To top off the rebuke to La Cerda and any others at Fort St. Elmo who thought the place not worth defending, Valette also offered some sixty pressed convicts (forzati) their freedom if they would agree to act as ferrymen for the soldiers.18

  The sky was still dark. Captain Medrano, La Motte, and two hundred fresh troops (along with the humiliated La Cerda) embarked stealthily into the small crafts and under the last sliver of the old moon crossed the waters back to the crumbling fort. Valette wrote to Don Garcia that the fort’s complement was eight hundred men, though perhaps he was exaggerating a bit when he said “all were resolved to do their duty.”19

  If nothing else the incident demonstrates the degree to which auxiliaries, especially the Spanish soldiers like La Cerda, considered themselves to be the equals of the Order in terms of authority. Vertot, a seventeenth-century French historian for whom Valette could do no wrong, derides the Spaniard as someone “whom fear made eloquent.”20 The charge is ludicrous and ignores La Cerda’s logic, which in this instance was both simple and direct. He was on Malta to kill Muslims. In St. Elmo he was not killing Muslims. Better, therefore, to abandon a slaughter pen and take the fight to the enemy elsewhere. This was perhaps an admirable view, but impractical for Valette. The grand master’s was not a split command, much less command by consensus. Dissent was already a problem in the enemy camp, and Valette would not have it in his own.

  And he did not let the matter drop. He quickly informed Don Garcia, who raised the matter with the king: “Juan de la Cerda and his lieutenant . . . have shown great baseness (vildad), and attempted to persuade the Grand Master to abandon the fort and mine it, because it was no longer possible to defend the place.”21 Don Garcia suggested that beheading would be suitable punishment, and the king, who took a minute interest in all details of his empire, did not object: “If what you say is true, that Juan de la Cerda and his lieutenant wanted to abandon Sant Telmo, you are to give orders that they be punished according to what is just.”22 Philip’s letter is dated July 7—it is a little touching that the king could imagine that he was addressing a situation static enough that his advice would be meaningful. Nothing further seems to have come of the matter, and as we shall see, La Cerda’s fate would be more complex than a simple execution.

  It took Captain Medrano just two days inside Fort St. Elmo to understand La Cerda’s frustration. Sitting around while the walls around them were toppled and pulverized was no way to fight a war. He and Colonel Mas discussed the situation. What was needed, they decided, was to give the Ottomans a sharp kick to remind them that the Christians were not a bunch of passive cowering bricklayers. Night would be a good time to take the fight to the enemy.

  Turkish sappers worked all hours in shifts. By day, Muslim sharpshooters held down the Christians and allowed the ditchdiggers to work in safety. But at night the Janissaries retired, and it was at night that two companies under Mas and Medrano girded themselves in steel breastplates, strapped on greaves, snugged morions on their heads, and gathered weapons. The moon was two days into its first quarter and in no danger of giving them away. The two companies slipped out from a sally port and approached the dull sound of pick and shovels in the near distance.

  The Turkish sappers, grateful for the cool of the night, off guard on the presumption of safety, and unarmed except for their tools, continued their spade work. This was the soft shift, free from the unspeakable Maltese sun and any possible danger of a stray Christian missile. Certainly they were luckier than the soldiers who, once the ditches were finished, would actually have to attack the fort. Comparatively speaking, their lot was a happy one.

 
Weird shadows appeared above these happy men, and Mas and Medrano’s columns fell on them with speed and violence. The Spaniards, too long unable to take the fight to the enemy, were releasing a long overdue fury against the almost defenseless foe. If there was little glory in this kind of one-sided slaughter, there was satisfaction in the knowledge that it would delay Ottoman progress. Swords and pikes sliced open the enemy; sharp edges cut deeply into their torsos or limbs, or took off their hands or feet. The sappers fell quickly but not quietly, and the Janissaries soon awoke to what was happening. Rising from their beds, they seized their own weapons and guided chiefly by sound, rushed to close with Mas and Medrano’s men. Now the real fight began and the Christians no longer held the advantage.

  The sounds of shouting, clashing metal, and gunshots carried across the water to the sentinels at Fort St. Angelo; thus alerted that some kind of fight was under way, they could only stand at the edge of the bay and wait, and listen, and watch the darkness sporadically illuminated by the yellow spit of gunfire. There was no telling how the battle might be going, though every Christian knew how the numbers stacked up. Any fight between soldiers of equal skill—and the Janissaries were as good as any soldiers on earth—is weighted to the side with the most men. All surprise spent, the Christians’ only hope was in a timely retreat to the relative safety of the fort. The men across the waters at St. Angelo waited anxiously and prayed that their comrades were giving worse than they got.

  It took some hours for the sounds of battle to die down. Dawn gradually broke and a light wind carried off the last of the smoke as the men at Fort St. Angelo strained to see across the bay.

  Christians still held the fort. The Muslim crescent, however, now waved over the counterscarp, with just the ditch below separating the attackers from the walls of the fort itself.