Empires of the Sea - the Final Battle for the Mediterranean 1521-1580 (17 page)

The days were heating up; nights were lit by brilliant moons, but the Ottoman sappers worked around the clock, snaking their trenches closer and closer to the walls, building protective embankments from earth carried up the stony slopes of Sciberras. “In truth it was a remarkable thing,” declared Giacomo Bosio, “to see, in a barren landscape, the speed with which the Turks could make mountains of earth appear almost in a flash, from which they created bastions and platforms to bombard Saint Elmo, and the urgency with which they advanced their trenches and covered ways.” Medrano mounted unexpected sorties to disrupt the work and kill the laborers; but during one of these sallies on May 29, the janissaries counterattacked and planted their flags on the counterscarp, hard up against the outer defenses and close to the ravelin. On Ascension Day, May 31, the Ottoman gunners opened up again on an even larger scale with twenty-four cannon, determined to blast Saint Elmo’s fortifications back to the living rock. The bombardment continued unabated all night; so unceasing was the firing that the defenders calculated that the guns were not being cleaned out or allowed to cool between rounds—a highly risky practice for guns and gunners alike. The following morning at dawn, a shot knocked down Saint Elmo’s flagstaff and flag. A great cry went up from the Turkish troops; it was taken as a sign of impending victory.

However, across the water in Birgu and Senglea, the time being bought by the small fort was put to good use. The soldiers and inhabitants worked feverishly, raising walls, building parapets and fighting positions for the day when Saint Elmo would fall and the guns would be turned on their fortifications. At night the sound of gunfire set the dogs in the towns barking; La Valette had them all killed—including his own hunting dogs—and dispatched a continuous stream of small boats to the fort. By now, however, the Turks were starting to think about this loophole. They set up two small artillery pieces and some arquebusiers on the shore to try to disrupt the lifeline to Birgu.

On the morning of June 2, it all took a further turn for the worse. At daybreak, lookouts on the cavalier of Saint Elmo spotted sails to the southeast. There were brief hopes that these were the outriders of Don Garcia’s rescue fleet, but the truth was grimmer. It was Turgut, coming up from Algiers with his corsairs—some thirteen galleys and thirty other vessels, fifteen hundred Islamic fighters under the most experienced and resourceful commander in the whole sea. The circumstances of his welcome perhaps highlighted the gulf in ability between Turgut and the commanders already in place. Piyale, determined to make an impression, sailed his own galleys out “in superb order” to greet the newcomer. Passing Saint Elmo, they fired off a volley of gunfire at the fort. Their shots whistled overhead and killed some of their own men in the trenches, while return fire from the fort holed one galley amidships, so that it had to be towed quickly off to prevent its total loss.

Suleiman had perhaps placed his ultimate confidence in Turgut, “a wise and experienced warrior”—and Mustapha and Piyale were aware of this. “The Drawn Sword of Islam” knew Malta better than anyone; he was not only an expert seaman, but also a highly experienced gunner and siege specialist. Once ashore, the old corsair was quickly apprised of the situation. He pursed his lips with displeasure. He probably disliked the whole venture and would have preferred an easy attempt on the Spanish enclave at La Goletta, an irritant to his own personal North African fiefdom. He may or may not have disagreed about the decision to go for Saint Elmo first—all Christian accounts of the matter have the ring of invention—but since the siege was under way, it would be best if it were concluded as quickly as possible. He wasted no time in going up to the front line to reanalyze the terrain and the disposition of the artillery. He saw that speed was essential: more guns must be brought up and they must be brought nearer. A second heavy bombard was hauled forward, and four cannon were placed on the northern shore to bombard Saint Elmo’s weakest flank. He was determined to pulverize the fort as heavily as possible. To this end he set up a battery of guns on a point across the Marsamxett harbor that could rain shot onto the ravelin and cavalier; in due course he established another battery on the opposite headland. Saint Elmo was now under fire from a hundred and eighty degrees; so heavy was the shot, Bosio declared, “that it was extraordinary that the tiny, straightened fort was not reduced to ashes.”

Turgut’s final suggestion was to take the ravelin as quickly as possible, “even at the cost of many good soldiers.”

CHAPTER
10

The Ravelin of Europe

June 3–16, 1565

I
N THE LETTERS THAT LA VALETTE DISPATCHED
day after day to Sicily and the Italian mainland, he never failed to stress the strategic importance of Malta. Its loss would leave Christian Europe as “a fortress without a ravelin.” The metaphor was not wasted on his audience. Since the fall of Constantinople, the technical language of Italian fortress engineering had been constantly on the lips of Christian potentates and churchmen. They conceived the whole of the Christian Mediterranean as a vast system of concentric defenses, at the center of which sat Rome, God’s keep, constantly under attack from the barbarian horde. One after another, the outer works had crumbled. In the years after 1453, Venice had been the outer wall of Europe; the Ottomans had neutralized it in just fifty years. Then Rhodes was the shield of Christendom. It had fallen. With each retrenchment, the Turk was a step closer. Now Malta had become the ravelin of Europe. Everyone realized the significance of this—the pope in Rome, the Catholic King high up in his palace in Madrid, Don Garcia across the water in Sicily—for when the ravelin fell, the end of a fortress was nigh. In late May and early June 1565, concern for the defenses of Christendom focused on a single point. For if the key to Europe was Malta, the key to Malta was Saint Elmo; and the fortress, in its turn, was dependent on the small makeshift triangular ravelin that protected its vulnerable side. Turgut understood this as clearly as La Valette. And he was determined to act.

By the morning of June 3, following a night of intense bombardment, Ottoman troops had established sheltering positions close to the ditch and only tens of yards from the ravelin’s protecting walls. It was, by irony, the saint’s day of Saint Elmo—the patron saint of seamen.

Ottoman engineers, intent on assessing the effect of the night’s barrage, slipped into the ditch in front of the fort and approached the ravelin. There was silence from the position—no challenge, no shots from a lookout. They got up to the foot of the fortification unnoticed. In all likelihood, the assigned sentry had been silently felled by a single arquebus shot, and lay on his stomach on the parapet looking “as if he were still alive.” His comrades, only forty in all, assumed he was still on guard. Other versions give a more cowardly version of the sentries’ behavior.

The engineers stole away and informed Mustapha. A force of janissaries with scaling ladders crept forward and stealthily climbed the parapet. They burst into the small fortress with ululating cries and shot to death the first men they saw. The remainder turned and fled, too panic-stricken to raise the drawbridge into the main fort behind them. Only a determined sally by a small group of knights stopped the rush of the janissaries into Saint Elmo. A spirited counterattack was mounted to force the intruders out of the ravelin; two or three times they seemed to have succeeded, but more men were flooding the ditch, and the defenders were forced to withdraw. With lightning speed the Turks seemed able to consolidate their position in the ravelin, bundling in sacks of wool and earth and brushwood to construct a rampart against counterattack from the fort. Flags—the critical markers of possession—started to flutter from the makeshift defenses. It was just the prelude to a berserk, impromptu assault by the men in the ditch, who propped ladders against the walls with the hope of finally storming Saint Elmo. They felt certain of success, but the attempt was suicidal. The defenders hurled down rocks and liquid fire on the Turks’ unprotected heads. The din of the battle was extraordinary; according to the Christian chroniclers, “with the roar of the artillery and the arquebuses, the hair-raising screams, the smoke and fire and flame, it seemed that the whole world was at the point of exploding.” After five hours of havoc, the Turks were forced to withdraw, leaving five hundred crack troops dead in the ditch. The defenders claimed to have lost sixty soldiers and twenty knights, including the French knight La Gardampe, who crawled away into the fortress chapel and died at the foot of the altar. Despite the huge Ottoman losses, the ravelin was now in enemy hands.

The serious consequences of the loss were felt almost at once. The Ottomans worked furiously to consolidate their command of the ravelin, using goatskins filled with earth to raise the platform until it was level with the wall. They now occupied an offensive position within yards of the fort; they were soon able to bombard its very heart with two captured guns. In the ditch below, men could work their way up to the base of the walls without being attacked.

Toward dawn on June 4, while the Turks were still fortifying the ravelin, a small boat was seen approaching the rocky promontory below the fort; the sentries on the rampart tensed themselves, ready to fire, when a cry rang out in the dark: “Salvago!” It was a Spanish knight, Raffael Salvago. He had been dropped by galley from Sicily with messages from Don Garcia, and had run the blockade around the harbor. With him was an experienced captain, Miranda. The two men clambered ashore and briefly inspected the fort in the dark, then climbed back on board. By now the crossing between Saint Elmo and Birgu was under threat from sharpshooters. Boats could no longer make the journey in broad daylight; even night crossings were fraught with danger. As they rowed quietly across the harbor, a volley of shot struck the boat and killed one of the crew.

La Valette listened to their report in gloomy silence. It was devastating to have lost the ravelin so negligently. Hardly more reassuring was the news from Sicily: Don Garcia was struggling to gather forces but he hoped for relief by June 20. The question was simply how long Saint Elmo could be kept alive. Miranda was dispatched back again to make a more detailed appraisal of the defenses and the men’s morale. His second report was emphatic: “The fort could not be held for long if the Turks were persistent, because the lack of traverses meant that the defenders’ fire had little effect. Furthermore, there was no strongpoint to which the defenders could retire.” Yet again La Valette wanted to test this information. Another commission was dispatched specifically to study the feasibility of retaking the ravelin, with the same conclusion: “It was impossible to get the ravelin back; they should shore up the defenses for as long as they could.” From now on Saint Elmo was living on borrowed time. A nightly transfusion of men and materials slipped across the harbor, dodging the enemy guns, keeping the doomed fort alive. It was on life support.

IN THE WAKE OF THE LOSS,
La Valette was desperate to sustain the fort’s morale; with this in mind he appointed Miranda as de facto commander of Saint Elmo. The Spaniard was not an aristocratic knight, but an experienced and practical field commander who understood his men. It was not the consolations of religion that would stiffen their resolve but tangible rewards. He asked for money, “for nothing pleases soldiers more than money,” and barrels of wine. He paid the men and set up gaming tables and a bar in the covered arcades around the parade ground. In the short run it was effective.

The Ottomans, however, felt that the end must be near. They kept raising the ravelin to overtop the fort and peppered the interior with shot. The men worked furiously to fill up the ditch with brushwood, earth, and bales of wood. At the same time, the Ottomans hauled up masts from some of the galleys and constructed a scaffolding bridge across the ditch and adjacent to the ravelin, from which the workers were protected by arquebusiers: any defender who showed his head above the parapet was immediately shot down. A second bridge was built farther down the wall. The bridge building, however, provoked a furious response: a sortie was mounted to burn the first bridge with only partial success—and “by Vespers they had repaired it again.” Bridge work continued: a causeway was laid, wide enough for five men to walk abreast, and covered with earth to proof it against incendiaries. The defenders were compelled to crouch beneath the parapet, so that it was impossible to hinder this operation; the whole fortress was being probed by gunfire so that “there was not a safe place in St Elmo.” Seeing the hopelessness of their situation and the likelihood of another assault, morale in the fortress snapped again.

The whole body of men, including the Knights of Saint John and Captain Miranda, agreed to dispatch another captain, Medrano, to Birgu to put the case to La Valette and his council. It was a unified response. Medrano declared that the fort could not be held much longer; “because their defences had been levelled, the enemy’s bridge was nearly completed, and that, owing to the height of the ravelin, which commanded the whole fort, whence the Turks were bombarding them, it was not possible to defend themselves.” La Valette somehow persuaded the concerned Spaniard to return to the fort with vaguely reassuring words, but they failed to assuage the growing panic inside. While the bridge building continued apace, the chink of pickaxes working at the foot of walls convinced the garrison that the Turks were about to plant mines. Meanwhile the bombardment went on night and day without stopping, “so that it seemed as though they wanted to reduce the fort to dust.” It was clear an all-out assault was near. On June 8 the council on Birgu received a second letter from Saint Elmo: the end was nigh, they were expecting to be blown sky high at any moment, they had withdrawn to the church in the center of the fort and would prefer to sally out and die straightaway. This letter was signed by fifty knights.

La Valette’s response was again to play for time: he sent across another commission. When the three knights arrived, they found the fort in uproar. The defenders’ nerves were in shreds. Panicky preparations were being made to abandon the fort; cannonballs and trenching equipment were being thrown down wells; work was in hand to blow up the fort from within. When the commissioners declared that Saint Elmo was still defensible—and that it was impossible to mine a fortress built on solid rock—rage boiled over. An open mutiny erupted in the parade ground; they taunted the commissioners to show them exactly how the fort could be held. The gates were closed to detain the visitors inside. Only when someone had the wit to sound the alarm bell did the men disperse back to their posts, and the commissioners slipped back across the water. On Birgu the council met to discuss the matter; the rebellious garrison dispatched a swimmer across the harbor in quick time to reiterate their fears. In camera, the council was deeply undecided about how to proceed; some wanted withdrawal to preserve the men, others were for holding out, but in practice there was no choice; it would be impossible safely to evacuate such a large body of men now that the harbor was monitored by Ottoman guns. The defenders had to be persuaded to go on buying time.

A combination of promises and blackmail eventually quelled the mutiny. Don Constantino, one of the knights’ commissioners, offered to raise volunteers to go to Saint Elmo. In Birgu’s main square drums summoned recruits to the standard. The council then calmly informed the mutineers at Saint Elmo that they could return if they wished: “For every one who came back, there were four begging and imploring to take their place.” Meanwhile La Valette wrote to the knights in the fort, reminding them of their vows to Christ and their Order. A new commander was appointed, Melchior de Monserrat; there was an upsurge of zeal; the Christians were impressed that two converted Jews volunteered for the cause, and the inspirational preacher Robert of Eboli went across. Captain Miranda made a stirring speech to the men “in the language that soldiers understand” to the effect that “they should fight bravely and sell their lives to the barbarians as dearly as possible.” A second swimmer came back from the fort, announcing that “all said with one voice they did not wish to leave the fort, but that reinforcements and munitions should be sent to them; that they all wished to die in St Elmo.” The nightly transfusions of men and materials continued; a hundred men were ferried over with a great number of banners to plant on the ramparts to give the impression of a large relief force. There was no more talk of dissent.