The Great Siege of Malta Read online

  What would an Ottoman victory have meant for Europe as a whole? We step into a contentious area here, but a useful one. Visions of what might have been were exactly what informed the actions of the participants, what made them fight to the last man against such high odds. The fear in Madrid was that had the siege succeeded, over thirty thousand of Spain’s Moriscos, closet Muslims, would be encouraged to rise up in revolt, notably in Granada.1 Even Queen Elizabeth did not like to think about it: “If they should prevail against the Isle of Malta, it is uncertain what further peril might follow to the rest of Christendom.”2

  It was uncertain, but we can imagine some possible scenarios. A victorious Suleiman might have delegated the 1566 Hungary campaign to a proven general, Mustapha Pasha perhaps, and in consequence survived a few more years, placid, without risk of, as the French ambassador feared, “[dying] of anger from his army being repulsed on Malta.”3 With Malta seized, he might have seen no reason to take Chios from the Genoese or Cyprus from the Venetians. Malta under the Ottoman rule could be cleared of the local Christian population (as Muslims were expelled from Spain) and perhaps repopulated with Anatolians (as had happened when Mehmed took Constantinople). As such, it would not be just another traditionally Muslim port city that owed allegiance to a distant Constantinople, but a formidable outpost of the empire. The distinction is not trivial. An Ottoman Malta would show a powerful commitment to the western Mediterranean theater. Corsairs and sheiks of the Maghreb, fair-weather allies who had abandoned the siege when the going got tough, would see a firm exponent of empire on their doorsteps, perhaps with Piali Pasha as its commander. Anyone who doubted the seriousness or the power of Constantinople would have to think twice.

  To the degree that the Order lost prestige, Suleiman’s reputation would have soared even higher, with significant effects on the psychology of both ally and enemy. France, always pragmatic, would have been encouraged to greater cooperation with their on-again off-again ally in Constantinople. Venice, always eager to avoid trouble, would have continued their commercial relationship. In consequence, any Holy League would have been without their help (or that of the knights, for that matter). Lepanto probably never would have been fought, and if it had been, the inexperienced Müezzinzade Ali Pasha, who oversaw the Ottoman defeat, never would have been in charge of the Ottoman fleet.

  Suleiman eventually would pass on the empire to Selim, and the question becomes what would he do with it? Andrew Hess points out that a Muslim reconquista of all the Maghreb had been a long-standing strategy of the Ottomans, one that even the disaster at Lepanto did not wipe out.4 Absent Lepanto and given a successful taking of Malta, the possibilities change dramatically. Sicily, a Muslim holding until 1091, would have been targeted, possibly taken. The Balearics, previously just a harvest ground for slaves and plunder, might have been taken for good, and from there it was a simple matter to help the Moriscos in Spain (a task Uludj Ali neglected in 1567), with what bloody results we can only imagine. There was also the long-term Ottoman strategy to take Rome—the Ottomans were, after all and by their own lights, the torch holders of the Roman Empire. Muslim converts in Bosnia and Herzegovina, along with any number of Christian-born corsairs, proved that not all Europeans were as resistant to Islam as the Maltese were. Battista Mantovano, in De Calamitatibus Temporum (1498), reports that Christians living on the Adriatic coast took it as a given that they would soon be Ottoman subjects.5

  Hess writes: “The battle of Lepanto did not directly set the conditions for the neutralization of the Mediterranean but instead encouraged further warfare until the question of who controlled North Africa was settled in favour of the Ottomans.”6

  North Africa, but not Christian Europe. That question was settled by the men, women, and children who fought to hold on to Malta. The failure to take that island redirected the Ottoman flow away from the Mediterranean’s northern shores and back toward Africa. The siege effectively determined that the ocean would divide the two religions. Christendom would hold north and west, Islam east and south. The line drawn that summer continues roughly to this day.

  28

  THE SURVIVORS

  It seemed a new miracle that those brave knights and soldiers so few in number and with so many hardships had resisted such frightful assaults and such a long siege and succeeded in maintaining so many defense works against so great a force and such excellent warriors.

  Adriani

  How many brave soldiers drank the cup of martyrdom and obtained eternal happiness!

  Selaniki

  Valette lived five more years, not easily. Honors showered down on him, including the offer of a cardinal’s hat. His duty, however, lay on Malta. The closeness of the siege, and the thought that next time the Order would not be so lucky, all but obsessed him. So did money. By luck or by shrewdness, he sold the Order’s holdings in Cyprus, soon to be conquered by the Ottomans.1 “He resorted to wholesale looting of the holy relics of the Order, snatching gold chains from the necks of anyone he met, melting his table silver and selling the precious gifts he had received after the siege.”2

  As the Ottoman threat appeared to recede, however, Valette became subject to anonymous and not-so-anonymous sniping. One of the most vicious examples came from the Italian Pallavicino Rangone, a member of the Gran Soccorso, who for reasons best known to himself took violent exception to both Valette and Don Garcia de Toledo.3 It is perhaps Rangone’s (secret) report to Pius V, a man even more fastidious than Valette, which encouraged the pope to go over Valette’s head to appoint the Order’s priory of Rome and various commanderies without consulting the grand master.4 When Valette remonstrated, Pius refused to allow his envoy to enter the city of Rome—an astonishing slap in the face.

  On July 31, 1568, Valette’s (illegitimate) daughter was murdered by her jealous husband.5 It was a blow from which he never quite recovered. Some days later, while attempting to distract himself by hunting partridge with his falcons, he suffered a stroke. As he lay dying, nature rolled out portents suitable in number, drama, and kind to a man of his accomplishments. Thunder clapped in a cloudless sky, “horrid . . . like a great concert of arquebus guns.”6 A school of dolphins beached themselves in Marsaxlokk. One by one, his pets began to die: his ruby-colored parrot; his griffin, a gift from the king of France; and his lioness, who slept at the foot of his bed. He died on August 21, the anniversary of his election as grand master, and was buried in the crypt of the newly built Cathedral of St. John in the town that was to bear his name. His epitaph was written by Sir Oliver Starkey:

  Ille Asiae, Lubiaeq(ue) Pavor Tutelaq(ue) quondam

  Europae edomitis sacra per arma getis

  Primus in hac alma quam condidit urbe sepulto

  Valletta eterno dignus honore iacet

  He, onetime scourge of Africa and Asia, and shield

  Of Europe, whence he expelled the barbarians by his holy arms,

  First to be interred in this foster city, whose founder he was:

  Here lies La Valette, worthy of eternal honor.

  Mustapha and Piali Pasha sailed to Constantinople with the uneasy knowledge that men were executed for their kind of failure. It speaks something about their characters, or their sense of fatalism, that they chose to return home and accept whatever end the sultan decreed. They were ordered to enter the harbor at night so that their arrival should not excite the masses. Already news of the defeat had sparked violence, as Turkish mobs attacked Christian merchants. What might they have done with the sight of the armada limping back into port to inspire them?

  The chill between the two Ottoman commanders as reported by European chroniclers is recorded in Ottoman history as blowing up once they were shipboard and headed home. According to Peçevi, “The two inculpated each other and the Kapudan Pasha turned to the artillerymen and said: ‘Take the serdar, put him on the mouth of a cannon and fire.’ And the men of the fleet put the blame on the serdar. Thus, after having uselessly lost much treasure and many soldiers, they returned ignomin
iously to Constantinople, where the serdar was stripped of the post of Vizier.”7 Mustapha might have been grateful that he was allowed to live at all. He died while visiting Mecca in 1568–1569.8

  In contrast, Piali Pasha was allowed to continue in military office, no doubt because of his blood connections to Suleiman, and later, after Selim took the throne, because of his alliance to the Grand Vizier Sokollu. He was promoted to vizier in 1568, and in 1570 he was among the commanders when the Ottomans invested Cyprus. His insufficient savagery in prosecuting the war and failure to achieve a quick victory saw him recalled to Constantinople. He was not at Lepanto. He died in 1576 and is buried in the Piali Pasha mosque in Constantinople, a building he had commissioned.

  Uludj Ali continued as beylerbey of Algiers, where he played off the interests of Spain and those of the Moriscos, who hoped, in vain, to get fellow Muslims from abroad to help them in their final revolt. Uludj Ali accepted what amounted to bribe money from Spain to remain neutral—a stance he was likely to take regardless—while placing no impediment before those who wished to help the rebels in Granada. Indeed, it was a chance for him to get rid of some of the local hotheads—another plus for him.

  He commanded the Ottoman left flank at Lepanto and through superior skills managed to feint and to evade the boats under Gianandrea Doria, thus marking the only small upside for the Ottoman fleet that day. Uludj Ali became Kapudan Pasha following Lepanto with the name Kiliç Ali Pasha. He continued harrying the Christian Mediterranean for some years afterward, most notably in recapturing Tunis for Selim in 1576. In time he retired from the sea for good, honored as the last of the Khairedihn Barbarossa’s great lieutenants. His death in 1587 is variously reported as the result of overexertion in the arms of a slave girl (against the express advice of his doctor) or, less pleasantly, of poison administered by a Christian slave. Or possibly of a cutthroat razor in the hands of a barber he trusted too much. His estate contained over a half million gold pieces and thirteen hundred slaves, all of which went to the state treasury. He is buried in the Kiliç Ali Paşa mosque in Constantinople, built for him by the architect Sinan. Back in Italy, his hometown of La Castella erected a statue in his honor.

  Lepanto was Gianandrea Doria’s last significant action. He was later appointed Spain’s naval Commander in Chief for the Mediterranean; and to the extent his contentious actions of that day would permit, he enjoyed the glory that all veterans of Lepanto enjoyed. He was in Madrid for a few years, was made a Knight of St. James, and gave generously to the Augustinians. In 1601 he failed to retake Algiers, after which his services were no longer required by Spain. That he had been tolerated as long as he had been was likely because of Philip’s worry that he might throw his lot (and that of all Genoa) back with France, a worry that had gone back to Philip’s father.9 He died in 1606.

  Don Álvaro de Sande continued to serve his king, who granted him the position of señorío of the village of Valdefuentes and later the title of Marqués de Piobera. In the year following Malta, he was sent to defend Oran against any Muslim threats. None appeared. He was in Naples in 1570, gathering volunteers for the Holy League; among their number was Cervantes, soon to fight at Lepanto and eventually to write Don Quixote. Sande, like Piali Pasha, was not present at Lepanto. His final office was as governor of Milan, where he died in 1573.

  Ascanio Della Corgna did not return to prison—it helped that Pius IV died soon after the Malta siege. Instead, Don Garcia sent him to Madrid, both to claim the respect he deserved and to report on the state of post-siege Malta and what it would need to recover.10 He was deputed to command a contingent of Germans if the Ottomans had returned to Malta in 1566.11 He helped create the initial designs for the city of Valletta, but would not live to see them executed. He was the subject of one of many overwrought encomia that came after the siege:

  Had the cruel Scythian, who espied the Pillars of

  Hercules, and, almost as conqueror

  Overlaid our sea with so many ships

  That he filled the world with rumor and fear,

  Not had, against his bold intentions,

  Your ready hand and valor, my Lord,

  He would by now—may all men praise you!

  Have planted the great prize of Malta in Thrace.12

  In 1571 he was named the Holy League’s field master general prior to the battle of Lepanto, a post he held at the time of his death from fever two months after that battle. His body was returned first to Rome, where, at the pope’s orders (mudanza de fortuna!), it lay in state for six days, then was carried overland to his native Perugia. Bells tolled in each town as the cortege passed by, and when he was finally laid to rest, one of his pallbearers was Vincenzo Anastagi.

  Anastagi himself continued to serve the Order in various capacities on Malta and elsewhere.13 He might have risen very high indeed, but in 1586 he was murdered by a fellow knight, in circumstances that have never been adequately explained.14

  Romegas seemed poised for greatness as well. He was present at Lepanto, commanding the Maltese contingent, and by all accounts served the order and his religion well. In 1571, Gregory XIII made him prior of Ireland, a post that appears not to have required actually going to that pleasant island. War and such concerns did force him to make the rounds of the Mediterranean by land and sea, notably in attacking the Huguenots in southern France. Politics were his downfall. In 1581, Italian and Spanish knights, alarmed at the strict laws of the new grand master La Cassière, attempted a coup that made Romegas, as second in the Order’s hierarchy, the de facto grand master. The pope soon ordered both men and their backers to Rome to explain themselves. The factions were the talk of the city for a season, and the pope eventually ruled in favor of La Cassière. Shortly thereafter Romegas died of a fever (rumors of poisoning naturally arose, but were officially denied). He was buried with full honors in Rome’s Trinità dei Monti. Brantôme, who knew him, later wrote: “It was a great shame that this great captain, first among those after Valette, that he was not to become Grand Master, for he would have accomplished great things.”15

  Sir Oliver Starkey fell on hard times. Deprived of English benefices and rent, his lot was one of poverty. A few letters dating from after the siege show pitiful requests for money owed and requests to return home to England (these starting from before the siege began).16 He appears to have died in 1588, and for centuries it was believed that he was buried in the Cathedral of St. John in the same chamber as Valette, a chamber reserved for grand masters, with Starkey the only exception. As if to toss one more indignity on the man, twentieth-century scholarship has blasted this story as well. His burial site is unknown, but it is said that his spirit still makes itself known in his final home in Malta, now the site of the Russian Centre for Science and Culture.17

  Lascaris did well. Valette sent him to Rome, where “he arrived the fourteenth day of November, then on the ensuing day he kissed the feet of the Pope.”18 He was also baptized at this time. All this and a papal annuity would see out his unremarkable days. Balbi writes of having visited him outside Naples, presumably to help in the details on the writing of his book. (Balbi also seems to suggest that he was not a genuine Lascaris, but took the name.)19 A century later, another Lascaris, Giovanni Paolo, would be named grand master of the Order.

  Without question the most controversial figure to come out of the Great Siege is Don Garcia de Toledo. In the immediate aftermath of the siege, his reputation was high, but dropped soon after. He had not sought glory, and he didn’t get it. In a public address with the Spanish cardinal present, Valette praised God and the knights for victory over the infidel. He did not mention the Spanish at all. In private meetings with this same cardinal, he criticized the viceroy for not having taken the matter in hand sooner. People in the Spanish court were beginning to talk about Don Garcia, and not with affection:

  November 8, 1565, Phayre to Cecil: “Don Garcia has come back to Messina without taking so much as an oar of the Turks.”20

  November 17, 1565
, Phayre to Cecil: “Don Garcia is at the mouth of the Archipelago with all his galleys waiting for sixty of the Turkish galleys. The strangers say that he will do little good in all his life upon the sea.”21

  December 6, 1565, Phayre to Cecil: “The Grand Master has protested to forsake Malta if by January he be not well succoured. Don Garcia De Toledo has lost almost all his reputation.”22

  Pallavicino Rangone, mentioned earlier, went so far as to tell the pope that he, Rangone, had been so disgusted by the viceroy’s pusillanimity in the period leading up to the Gran Soccorso, that he had threatened the man to his face with assassination.23 (If true, this shows either remarkable forbearance on Toledo’s part, or serious cowardice. In either case, it shows how freely the man could be abused.)

  Among military men, however, Garcia de Toledo ranks high and always has. When the twenty-two-year-old Don John of Austria was tapped to command the Holy League prior to the battle of Lepanto, he actively sought out advice from the aging veteran. Brantôme wrote a glowing encomium.24 In the later nineteenth century, Jurien de la Gravière, himself an admiral in the French navy and a veteran of Sebastopol, expressed some sympathy for the man’s impossible position.25 Twentieth-century historians have tended to follow suit—Braudel comes down firmly in his camp, and Guilmartin lays out the defense of his action in some detail in his Gunpowder and Galleys.26