The Great Siege

The Maltese archipelago consists of two main islands, Malta and Gozo. Malta, the larger of the two, is only eighteen miles long by nine wide, while Gozo is no more than eight miles by four. The islands lie on an axis running north-west to south-east, and are divided from one another by a narrow channel in which lies the islet of Comino. Cominotto, a small rock adjacent to Comino, and Filfla, another rocky outcrop, a few miles south-west of Malta, complete the group. Fifty miles south of Sicily, commanding the main channel through which all shipping between east and west must pass, they are almost equidistant from Gibraltar, on the one hand, and Cyprus on the other.

The islands had been presented to the Order of St John by the Emperor Charles V of Spain in 1530, ‘in order that they may perform in peace the duties of their Religion for the benefit of the Christian community and employ their forces and arms against the perfidious enemies of Holy Faith’. On the face of it the gift was highly acceptable, for the Knights had been homeless since their expulsion from Rhodes eight years before. The annual presentation of a falcon to the Viceroy of Sicily, and a guarantee that they would never make war upon his Kingdom was all that was required of the Knights in return.

Charles V was not magnanimous by nature, and the aged Grand Master Villiers de l’Isle Adam may well have murmured ‘Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes’ when he saw that, along with the gift of the Maltese islands, went that of the seaport of Tripoli in North Africa. Tripoli, a Christian outpost in the middle of the hostile Moslem states on the notorious Barbary Coast, was a gift that Charles V could well afford to make. De l’Isle Adam was right to hesitate when he saw it in the Emperor’s rescript. He had yet further grounds for hesitation when the report of the commission, whom he had sent to investigate the Maltese islands, came before him.

‘The island of Malta,’ they said, ‘is merely a rock of soft sandstone, called Tufa, about six or seven leagues long and three or four broad; the surface of the rock is barely covered with more than three or four feet of earth, which is likewise stony, and very unfit to grow corn and other grain.’ On the other hand, they agreed that ‘it produces an abundance of figs, melons, and different fruits; the principal trade of the island consisting of honey, cotton, and cummin, which the inhabitants exchange for grain. But, except for a few springs in the middle of the island there is no running water, nor even wells: the want of which the inhabitants supply by cisterns…’

The Maltese archipelago, showing the principal places and positions at the time of the Great Siege of 1565

After fertile and fruitful Rhodes, one of the loveliest islands in the Mediterranean, Malta had been something of a shock to the eight Commissioners. Wood, they reported, was so scarce in Malta and Gozo that it was sold by the pound. Cow-dung or wild thistles were used as fuel for cooking. The capital, called Mdina in the Maltese language, or Città Notabile in Spanish, was situated upon rising ground in the centre of the island. Most of its houses were uninhabited. There were no ports, bays, or coves on the western side of the island, and the shore was studded with rocks and shoals. On the eastern side, though, there were a number of useful coves and inlets, as well as two spacious and very fine harbours. These were capable of housing the largest of fleets. Unfortunately, they were at the moment very ill-protected. A small castle called after Saint Angelo guarded part of the largest harbour, but it was furnished with only three small cannons, and a few mortars.

The Knights must certainly have known of Malta’s two great harbours in advance of the report, for they had been constantly used by European fleets for many centuries. It was they, in fact, which turned the scale and decided the Grand Master in favour of accepting Charles V’s gift. The Knights of St John at that time lived by what can only be called ‘organized piracy’, and a good harbour was their prime necessity. There was nothing to equal the harbours of Malta until one came to Syracuse in Sicily, or Taranto in southern Italy.

Apart from their favourable comments on the two main harbours, the Commissioners had found everything else disagreeable. There were about 12,000 inhabitants in Malta, most of them poor peasants speaking a kind of Arabic dialect. The climate in summer was torrid and, indeed, almost insupportable. Gozo, on the other hand, was greener and more fertile, but had no harbours at all. In this smaller of the two islands there were about 5,000 inhabitants, living mostly in primitive villages. There was also an ill-constructed castle on the highest point, to which the natives withdrew whenever the Moslem corsairs raided their shores. These raids were common, said the Commissioners, and the inhabitants of the Maltese islands were long resigned to the almost annual arrival of Moslem pirates, who carried off to slavery any Maltese who fell into their hands.

If the Order had not been desperate for a new home, there is little doubt that De l’Isle Adam would have tactfully declined the Emperor’s gift. For more than seven years, however, he had made the round of the European courts asking for assistance. Minorca, Ibiza, Ischia—innumerable islands and ports had been considered by the European sovereigns as potentially suitable for the Knights. For one reason or another, all the more fertile and prosperous islands had been deemed by their owners as unsuitable for the Order.

The fact was, that respected though it might be for its fighting prowess, the Order was not popular. Its Knights, drawn from every nation in Europe, owed direct allegiance to the Pope and were thus insusceptible to national allegiances. They were, indeed, constrained by their rules never to fight against other Christians, but only against the Moslem enemy.

In the sixteenth century, when nationalism was becoming the dominant force in European affairs, such an international Christian Order was somewhat suspect—particularly when it was known how rich it was, and how influential its members. But, quite apart from the difficulty of finding another home, De l’Isle knew how hard it had been to keep the Order together after its expulsion from Rhodes. If many more years were passed in exile the Order was likely to disintegrate. Whatever his Commissioners might say, he realized that it was Malta and Gozo—together with the unwelcome gift of Tripoli—or nothing.

In the autumn of 1530, the Knights of St John of Jerusalem sailed in their galleys from Sicily, across the Malta channel, and took possession of their new home. After Rhodes, ‘The Garden of the Mediterranean’, they found Malta as unwelcome as were they themselves to the old rulers of the island. It is doubtful whether the Maltese peasants, for their part, cared who was technically their master. Their lives of back-breaking toil, interrupted by the savage attacks of the Moslem corsairs, could scarcely have been harder. The island nobility, on the other hand, the Inguanez, the Manducas, the Sciberras and others, who were descended from, or related to, the principal families of Sicily and Aragon, viewed the newcomers with anything but good grace.

Gibbon’s remark that ‘The Knights neglected to live but were prepared to die, in the service of Christ’ was not entirely untrue. By the mid sixteenth century this militant Christian Order was beginning to be something of an anachronism. If it is true that, during the great siege of Malta, the Knights attained their finest hour, the fact remains that this fruit was (as is the case in nature) the last achievement before winter stripped the leaves from the tree. A Maltese historian, prejudiced no doubt by a natural bias, has given this account of the Knights of St John at the time when they occupied the islands:

By the time the Knights came to Malta, the religious element in their foundation had fallen into decay. Their monastic vows were usually regarded as mere form, and they were remarkable for their haughty bearing and worldly aspirations. The Maltese, on the other hand, grown accustomed to be treated as freemen, greatly resented the loss of the political liberties which had been conceded to them…It is not, therefore, surprising that there was little love lost between the Maltese and their new rulers.

The local nobility had no option but to accept the fact that the Emperor—contrary to an agreement made in 1428—had disposed of the sovereignty of their islands to these proud and haughty newcomers. They withdrew into their palaces in the old city of Mdina and maintained as little contact as possible with the Knights. To their surprise and, no doubt, also to their relief, they found that the Knights had no intention of settling in their capital. The Knights, whose service was on the sea, and who had accepted Malta only because of its fine natural harbours, preferred to settle in the small fishing village of Birgu—just inside the entrance of what is now Grand Harbour. Here they began to enlarge and restore the fortifications, and to build in the narrow streets the Auberges of their order. During two centuries in Rhodes they had evolved a plan and pattern for their island-living. Now, with the instinct of men whose minds have been formed in a conservative tradition, they began to repeat in Malta the pattern of their old home in Rhodes.

These armoured, dedicated men, who move across the history of Malta and Rhodes like visitors from another planet, represented the last active element of the three great military orders which had sprung out of the Crusades. The most powerful of the three, The Templars, had been suppressed in the early fourteenth century. The second, the Teutonic order, had never really recovered from the defeat inflicted upon it at Tannenberg in 1410. It was only the Order of St John of Jerusalem that preserved, into the renascent Europe of the sixteenth century, something of the fire and ardour which had existed in the great era of the Crusades. The Order stemmed from a Benedictine hospital for pilgrims dedicated to St John the Baptist, which had been established in Jerusalem in the eleventh century. In 1113, in gratitude for the services which this hospital had rendered to the crusaders, Pope Paschal II had taken the Order and its possessions under his protection. Unlike the Templars, who were a purely military order dedicated to fighting the Moslem infidel, the Knights of St John were primarily a nursing brotherhood.

The building, furnishing, and improvement of hospitals, research in medicine, and the training of doctors and surgeons, remained the prime motive of the Order. As well as the mother foundation in Jerusalem, daughter houses were maintained in a number of European cities lying on the pilgrims’ way to Palestine. Part of the Order’s function was also the defence of pilgrims. It was this which led to the emergence of its military side, when the renewed activities of the Saracens and, later, of the Turks made the pilgrim’s passage to Jerusalem and the holy places difficult and perilous. Yet even in the sixteenth century, when the aggressive policies of the Turkish sultans had forced the military side of the Order to become predominant, it still continued its original duty. One of the first activities of the Knights, upon their arrival in Malta, was to establish a hospital.

In 1291, after the fall of the last Christian strongholds in Palestine, the Knights of St John had emigrated first to Cyprus and then in 1310, to Rhodes. For over two centuries, until the great siege in 1522 when Soleyman had driven them from the island, the Knights had evolved the special characteristic of their order. From being hospitallers first and soldiers second, they had become sailors first and hospitallers second. In Rhodes, leaning like a spear against the side of Turkey, they had become the finest seamen the Mediterranean had ever known. Unable to pursue their war against the enemy by land, they had turned themselves into Christian corsairs.

It was in Rhodes, too, that the Knights had perfected the form of their Order, a form which they brought unchanged to Malta. They were an amalgam of all the European nations—a foreign legion of militant Christians, ‘the most remarkable body of religious warriors that the world has ever seen…’ The eight-pointed Cross they bore (which, because of its long association with the island has now become known as the Maltese Cross) was symbolic of the Eight Beatitudes. Its four arms were held to represent the four virtues—Prudence, Temperance, Fortitude, and Justice.

Grand Harbour, Marmuscetto, and the defences of Malta in 1565

The men who formed this unique body were divided into five distinct groups, yet all—whether fighting man or serving priest—were united by the same vows of Chastity and Obedience. First, came the Military Knights, or Knights of Justice. It was they who, in a sense, dominated the Order, and gave it that quality of patrician arrogance which the Maltese nobility found so distasteful. The Military Knights were the sons of the great houses of Europe. Before being admitted to the Order, it was necessary for them to prove noble birth, on both sides of their family, for at least four generations. That there was no disputing the necessity for these proofs of nobility, can be seen from the archives of the Order in Valetta. No matter how important or wealthy a family might be, no taint of illegitimacy (at any rate in these early days), or suspicion of common blood, could pass the scrutiny of the Grand Master and his Council. It was they who investigated the claims of all potential members of the Order. Novices for their first year after acceptance, the young Knights then joined the Convent, as it was called, for military service. By the time that the Order came to Malta this was usually held to mean service as an officer in the galleys. A complete year of this duty was termed ‘a Caravan’. After three years of Caravan duty, the Knight had to reside for at least two years in the Convent. After that he became eligible for higher posts—the Bailywicks, Commanderies, and Priories. Not all the Knights, after completing their duties with the Order, remained within the Convent. Many returned to their estates and duties in Europe. It was they whom—on any occasion of dire peril to the Order—the Grand Master was entitled to summon to his headquarters. A failure to report on such an occasion might mean dismissal from the Order, with all its consequences of social and religious disgrace.

The second division of the Order consisted of the Conventual Chaplains, or Chaplains of Obedience, for whom there were no restrictions on birth. Though not exempt from duties in the Caravans, they were, in fact, usually employed in the Hospital and Conventual Church. All of course were ecclesiastics, and were eligible for elevation to Priors or even to Bishop of the Order.

In the third category were the serving brothers who again were not required to be of noble birth, but only, as it was termed, ‘respectable’. Their service was only of a military nature. The fourth and fifth divisions, Magistral Knights, and Knights of Grace, were honorary Knights who had been nominated by the Grand Master.

At the head of the Order came the Sacro Consiglio, the Supreme Council, presided over by the Grand Master—himself a Knight, who after years of service, had progressed through the major positions of the Order, and had then been freely elected by his brethren. The Supreme Council consisted of the Bishop, the Prior of the Church, the Piliers or Deans of each national Langue, the Priors, the Conventual Bailiffs, and the Knights Grand Cross.

It was a Council that combined the wisdom and experience of the most distinguished members of both aspects of the Order—the temporal and the ecclesiastical. The Vice-Chancellor, assisted by two priests, acted as Secretary. The Bishop himself was chosen from three candidates whose names were submitted by the Grand Master to the Emperor’s Viceroy in Sicily. He, in his turn, submitted one of them for recommendation to the Pope. It can be seen that, although the Knights of St John were by their very nature independent and aristocratic, there were a number of checks placed upon their constitution, intended to ensure that only the best and most efficient rose to the responsible positions. In later centuries, as the Order declined in morale and power, many abuses crept in. But in the sixteenth century, under a strong and selfless Grand Master like La Valette, the constitution operated efficiently.

Apart from the divisions of duties within the Order, the Knights were also divided into eight Langues, or Tongues, consisting of the eight European nationalities from whom its members were primarily recruited. These Langues were Auvergne, Provence, France, Aragon, Castile, England, Germany, and Italy. The French influence in fact, predominated, with its three Langues—Auvergne, France, and Provence. In view of this numerical superiority it was not surprising that many of the most notable Knights over the centuries were of French blood. The three greatest Grand Masters the order ever possessed were all French: Guillaume de Villaret (1310) who led the Knights to Rhodes and established a home which lasted for over two centuries; Phillipe Villiers de l’Isle Adam who brought the Order to Malta in 1530; and Jean Parisot de la Valette.

‘Entirely French and a Gascon’, as the Abbé de Brantôme described him, La Valette was the greatest Grand Master the Order ever knew. Under him it reached its highest peak of glory. It was against this greatest of Grand Masters and his Knights, that Sultan Soleyman the Magnificent proposed to send the might of his army, and the largest fleet that the Ottoman empire could muster.