Empires of the Sea - the Final Battle for the Mediterranean 1521-1580 (20 page)

On Friday, July 6, the intelligence of Philip Lascaris was proved correct. As if from nowhere, six boats appeared in the upper reaches of the harbor: they had been dragged the one thousand yards across the peninsula of Mount Sciberras on greased rollers by ox teams and floated into the upper basin. The next day there were six more. By July 10 there were sixty; by July 14 there were eighty. Mysteriously the boats in the bay also seemed to be getting bigger: somehow the sides were being built up to provide a protective superstructure against arquebus fire.

Both sides were engaged in ceaseless preparations: the Ottoman bombardment and skirmishing were unceasing—with just an eerie lull on July 8 for the Sacrifice Festival. On July 10 Mustapha’s undue haste resulted in a spectacular accident. The barrels of the guns were not allowed to cool sufficiently between rounds. One of the guns cracked; a tongue of fire set the gunpowder store alight. “With an enormous flash and smoke, it blasted forty Turks into the air, and killed them.”

In the workshops and smithies of Senglea and Birgu furious countermeasures were in process. Smiths and carpenters were busy making small shot and fuses for arquebuses, repairing guns, forging nails, constructing wooden defensive structures. Forewarned by Lascaris of the coming attack, La Valette had instigated two major engineering projects. A pontoon bridge of airtight barrels was assembled, ready to be floated into position in the inner harbor between Birgu and Senglea; it would connect the two settlements and allow troops to be quickly transferred from one to the other. Meanwhile Maltese shipwrights had come up with an ingenious defense for the vulnerable shoreline against shipborne attack. Wading out into the warm sea in the dark—the only safe time to work—they drove a long line of stakes constructed from ships’ masts into the seabed about a dozen paces from the shore. Iron rings were attached to each stake and a chain passed through them to form a sturdy defensive barrier stretching the entire western shore of Senglea as far as the Spur, with the aim of stopping boats from riding up onto the beach.

This device instantly irritated the Ottoman high command, and the next day it became the focus of an extraordinary contest. At dawn four men armed with hatchets walked into the sea from the Ottoman shore, and swam underwater to the boom. Climbing up the poles, they managed to balance on top and started to hack away at the chain. At the same time, arquebuses put up a blanket of fire to prevent the defenders from shooting down the swimmers. The situation called for a swift response. A band of Maltese soldiers and sailors, stimulated by the promise of rewards, stripped off their clothes and struck out into the water. They were naked apart from their helmets and carried short swords clenched between their teeth. A furious swimming battle ensued; the naked men inefficiently thrashing and jabbing at each other, paddling with one hand and trying to land blows with the other. The blue water began to run pink with blood. One of the intruders was killed; the others retired wounded to the opposite shore. Another batch of swimmers returned that night to try a different strategy. They attached ships’ cables to the stakes, which were run back to capstans on the shore. Teams of men strained to tighten the capstans and drag the stakes out of the water; again Maltese sailors swam out and chopped the cables.

Impatient and frustrated, Mustapha decided to press ahead with a final assault. The impetus had been accelerated by the arrival of Hasan, Turgut’s son-in-law, the governor of Algiers, with twenty-eight ships and two thousand men thirsting for the fight and contemptuous of the army’s efforts. The gunfire continued all day and all night, opening breaches in the land walls. La Valette had the pontoon swung into position between Senglea and Birgu; despite furious attempts, Ottoman gunfire failed to destroy it. Ammunition and incendiaries were distributed to the men waiting at their posts. There was no surprise about the impending assault. Mustapha’s explicit plan was simply to mount a simultaneous attack by land and sea to overwhelm the defense—though the plan contained hidden details. Deserters from the Ottoman camp had also conveyed to the Christians Mustapha’s intention to kill them all; only La Valette was to live. He would be delivered to Suleiman in chains. The grand master’s response was a public vow never to be taken alive.

It was an uneasy night for the defenders, tensed at their posts. The moon shone brightly; Balbi waited with other men at the Spur with his arquebus. Across the harbor, he could hear the voices of the imams, rising and falling in the darkness, endlessly chanting the names of God.

SUNDAY, JULY
15, an hour and a half before dawn. A fire was lit on the hill behind Senglea; another answered from Saint Elmo across the water. The Algerians massed in the ditch beyond the land walls; Ottoman arquebusiers filed into trenches on the shore facing Senglea and sighted their guns; the artillery crews primed their cannon. Marshal de Robles and the fresh consignment from Sicily mustered on the walls. At the Spur, Francisco Balbi and his colleagues, commanded by the Spanish captain Francisco de Sanoguera, crouched behind their low earthworks ready to repel a seaborne attack. Over the bay in the dark, men were clambering noisily into invisible boats. The name of Allah rang out three times. Oars dipped and splashed as the small armada pushed off from the shore.

As dawn broke, the defenders on the shore could see the mass of ships moving slowly forward across the calm water. The low morning sun lit an extraordinary sight: hundreds of men packed into the boats bulwarked with bales of cotton and wool—janissaries with tall headdresses and flickering plumes, splendidly dressed Algerians in scarlet robes, “in cloth of gold and silver and scarlet damask,” wearing exotic turbans and armed with “fine muskets of Fez, scimitars of Alexandria and Damascus, and magnificent bows.” In the vanguard came three boatloads of turbaned holy men, “strangely dressed” according to the Christian accounts, “wearing green caps on their heads and many holding open books and chanting imprecations.” They were reciting verses from the Koran to inspire the men to battle. The boats were adorned with a huge number of multicolored pennants and flags fluttering in the morning breeze; the sounds of castanets, horns, and tambourines floated ahead across the water. The whole incredible effect was being directed by the Greek corsair Candelissa, seated high up in a small caïque, waving a small flag like the leader of an orchestra. To the defenders it was an extraordinary sight, a scene of unearthly beauty, “if it had not been so dangerous.”

As the Turks neared, the chanting stopped and the religious boats dropped back. The shore guns opened up and ripped through the fleet, killing many; “yet in spite of this they came on to the attack with immense courage and determination,” with shouts and the crackle of arquebus fire. The rowers labored harder at the oars, picking up speed. At the Spur Balbi and his comrades awaited the shattering impact of the boats against the palisade.

Meanwhile, at the land walls, Hasan led the Algerians forward in a furious charge. Breaking from the ditch, they hurled themselves at the ramparts with their scaling ladders, eager to prove their courage. The defenders riddled them with shot; they were caught in a further hail of bullets from Spanish arquebusiers in flanking positions; hundreds were mown down, but by sheer weight of numbers they pressed on and managed to gain a foothold on the parapets. The whole front was in uproar. “I don’t know if the image of hell can describe the appalling battle,” wrote the chronicler Giacomo Bosio, “the fire, the heat, the continuous flames from the flamethrowers and fire hoops; the thick smoke, the stench, the disemboweled and mutilated corpses, the clash of arms, the groans, shouts, and cries, the roar of the guns…men wounding, killing, scrabbling, throwing one another back, falling and firing.” All the people of the sea struggling in confused combinations; shouts in Maltese, Spanish, Turkish, Italian, Arabic, Serbian, and Greek; flashes of fire and thick smoke; momentary drifting glimpses of individuals—the Franciscan friar, Brother Eboli, crucifix in one hand, sword in the other, going from post to post; an enraged janissary jumping up on the parapet and shooting a French knight in the head at point-blank range; Algerians encircled in hoops of fire running screaming into the sea. But the attackers were hindered by the narrowness of the terrain, and, despite their ardor, Hasan eventually withdrew his men. Without a pause, the aga of the janissaries ordered forward the regular troops. A second wave hurled itself at the walls.

Back on the seashore, the boats were gathering speed and crashed into the fence; it withstood the shock and the men were forced into the water, wading in their robes toward the beach, shouting and firing. The defenders were ready for this moment; they had prepared and loaded two mortars to sweep the beach, but so rapid was the Ottoman advance that the mortars were never fired. Unopposed, the attackers made for the Spur at the end of the promontory, whose only protection was a low embankment.

The captain of the Spur, Sanoguera, had just rallied his men to push the intruders back “with pikes, swords, shields, and stones,” when their defense was thrown into sudden confusion. A sailor mishandled a lit incendiary; it exploded in his hand, and set fire to the whole stock, burning men to death around him. In the smoke and confusion, the Turks scrambled up and planted their flags on the parapet. Sanoguera ran in person to stem the tide; balancing on the parapet in a suit of rich armor, he made a tempting target against the sky. A bullet pinged harmlessly off his breastplate; then a janissary, “wearing a large black headdress with gold ornaments on it, knelt at the foot of the battery, aimed upwards at him and shot him in the groin.” The captain fell dead on the spot. Both sides ran forward to try to seize the corpse—from below they had him by the legs, above by the arms. After a grimly ludicrous tussle, the defenders secured the prize and dragged the body back. The Turks reluctantly abandoned their prize, “but before giving up they removed the shoes from his feet.” The enemy was so close and so numerous that Balbi and his colleagues dropped their guns and started to bombard the intruders with rocks.

It was at this moment, while the defenders were heavily engaged by land and sea, that Mustapha played his trump card. He had kept back ten large boats and about a thousand crack troops—janissaries and marines. Almost unnoticed, these boats, crammed with men, pushed off from the other side, heading around the tip of the Spur to the small part of the promontory outside the chain that was not protected by the palisade. Here there were no defenses; the ramparts were extremely low; a landing would be easy. These men had come to do or die; to increase their appetite for battle, they had been selected from those unable to swim. The boats passed quietly beyond the furious carnage on the beach, ready to turn in to the shore. Two hundred yards beyond their objective lay the end of the tip of the second peninsula of Birgu.

However, in planning this diversionary attack, the high command had missed a crucial detail. At the tip of the peninsula of Birgu, opposite the intended Ottoman landing spot, the defenders had positioned a concealed gun battery, almost at water level. As the boats came on, the commander of the post realized to his surprise that the intruders had no idea he was there. Stealthily he loaded his five cannon with a lethal mixture of grapeshot: bags of stones, pieces of chain, and spiked iron balls—unblocked his gun ports, and waited with bated breath. Incredulously, the boats had still not seen him. He held his fire until they were sitting ducks, impossible to miss, then put the taper to the cannon. A murderous hail of bullets ripped across the surface of the water and shredded the boats. Totally surprised, the men were either massacred by the blizzard of fire or tipped into the sea. Nine of the ten boats shattered and sank immediately; those who were not killed outright drowned off the point. The tenth boat somehow limped home. At a stroke, hundreds of crack troops were floating dead in the water.

The fighting went on fiercely at the wall and the beach. Candelissa the Greek, offshore, spurred his men on with news that Hasan’s men had breached the land wall; it was not true, but the position there was still critical. Anxiously, La Valette called up reinforcements over the bridge from Birgu. Half went to turn the tide at the land wall; seeing these fresh men on the ramparts, the aga of the janissaries started to withdraw his troops. The Turks retreated, carrying their dead with them and launching a last furious cannonade that felled a number of knights. The rest of La Valette’s reinforcements went to prop up the situation on the seashore. Among them was the son of Don Garcia de Toledo, the viceroy of Sicily, against La Valette’s orders. He was killed almost immediately by a musket shot.

The first the men on the beach knew about the Ottoman retreat from the land walls was the arrival of a crowd of young Maltese hurling stones at the boats from slingshots, and crying out “Relief! Victory!” The seaborne attack force suddenly realized that the tide had turned against them. Worse, they had been deceived by Candelissa. Howling curses at “the Greek traitor,” they turned to run to the water’s edge. Panic broke out, confusion, horror, fear, disorder. There was a furious scramble to re-embark; the few boats close to the shore were overturned by the scrabbling horde; those who could not swim, sank, entrapped in their robes. Worse still, the majority of boats had withdrawn from the beach. The landing party was now cut off. They signaled frantically for the rescue fleet to return.

Sensing the moment, the defenders burst onto the beach, stabbing and jabbing at the Muslims flailing in the shallows. Balbi and his comrades calmly stood back and shot the wretched men one after another. Some, preferring to drown, threw themselves despairingly into the water; others dropped their weapons, fell to the ground, and begged for mercy. It was not given; with the memory of Saint Elmo still vivid, the Christians streamed forward, howling “Kill! Kill! Pay for Saint Elmo, you bastards!” Among them, the enraged Federico Sangorgio, too young to be bearded, hacked and slashed without remorse, remembering the mutilated corpse of his brother. “And so, without any pity, they dispatched them.”