Empires of the Sea - the Final Battle for the Mediterranean 1521-1580 (21 page)

Offshore, the boats still hung back, hesitant and uncertain what to do, receiving contradictory orders. Piyale was fearful for his ships. He climbed onto his horse and galloped down, ordering them not to move—but he was sprawled in the dust by a passing cannonball, which blew off his turban and left him deafened. Mustapha, the land general, watching the ghastly slaughter unfold, countermanded. He ordered the boats back to rescue his soldiers, but they were hit by the battery at the point of Birgu and quickly withdrew again.

To the Christian chroniclers, the scene in the water resembled carnage on a biblical scale, “like the Red Sea with Pharaoh’s army overwhelmed by the waves”: a brilliantly colored viscid mass of military paraphernalia—flags, banners, tents, shields, spears, and quivers floated on the surface so densely that it seemed more “like a field where a battle had been fought”—and here and there, wriggling like fish on a market slab, the living and half-living, the writhing and bloody, the maimed and dying.

The Maltese waded into this ghastly soup finishing off the survivors and stripping the corpses. They plundered extraordinary garments from the dead, and beautiful weapons. They grabbed inlaid scimitars and finely worked arquebuses chased with gold and silver that gleamed brightly in the sun—and other things that signaled the intentions to capture and occupy the place: large quantities of food, ropes for binding prisoners, even prepared letters to send to Istanbul announcing the victory. Mustapha had been supremely confident. The looters also recovered a sizeable quantity of money—for each man carried his wealth about his person—and “a great deal of hashish.”

Only four men were taken alive. They were brought before the grand master for interrogation, then turned over to the people. Cries of “Saint Elmo’s pay!” rang through the narrow streets as they were dragged away. Four thousand dead lay sprawled at the walls and drifted gently in the sea. Bodies washed up on the shore for days.

CHAPTER
13

Trench Wars

July 16 to August 25, 1565

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY
Suleiman dispatched an order to Mustapha:

I sent you over to Malta a long time ago in order to conquer it. But I have not received any message from you. I have decreed that as soon as my order reaches you, you should inform me about the siege of Malta. Has Turgut, the governor of Tripoli, arrived there and has he been any help to you? What about the enemy navy? Have you managed to conquer any part of Malta? You should write to me telling me everything.

Suleiman sent a copy of this letter to the doge of Venice with the peremptory demand to “make sure that it reaches Mustapha Pasha without delay. And you should send me news as to what has happened there.”

The sultan was not the only one anxious about Malta. Christian eyes were focusing on the island’s plight with ever-increasing apprehension. The Western Mediterranean was busy with messenger ships tracking to and fro with rumors, news, advice, warnings, and plans. From his headquarters on Birgu, La Valette kept up a steady flow of correspondence with Don Garcia de Toledo on Sicily, but after the fall of Saint Elmo, it became increasingly difficult to get messengers through. Maltese swimmers, dressed as Turks, crossed the harbor and slipped through the enemy lines to Mdina, then traveled by small boat via Gozo to Sicily. It became dangerous work; sometimes La Valette dispatched four copies of the same letter in the hope that one would get through. Piyale’s ships patrolled the straits, running these vessels down. The messengers threw their letters into the sea and gave themselves up to death; even when the messages were taken, Mustapha remained unable to break the codes, and the lines of communication, though parlous, were kept open.

There was live terror down the coasts of Italy as the news worsened and Saint Elmo fell. No one was more clear-eyed about the consequences of defeat than Pope Pius IV. “We realise,” he wrote, “in how great peril the well-being of Sicily and Italy will be put, and what great calamities threaten the Christian people, if (which God forbid!) the island…should come under the domination of the impious enemy.” Rome was acknowledged to be the ultimate target of Ottoman warfare. In Pius’s fevered imagination the Turk was almost at the gates. He gave orders that he should be woken at any hour of the night to hear dispatches from Sicily; he had already resolved to die in the city rather than flee.

As comprehension of the stakes at Malta spread across Europe, a trickle of adventurers and Knights of Saint John from the Order’s farther outposts headed for Sicily to join the rescue attempt. Europe held its collective breath and watched with apprehension. Even Protestant England said prayers for Catholic Malta.

But the bid to relieve the island was progressing at a snail’s pace. La Valette wrote with frosty politeness and increasing urgency to Don Garcia—and cursed him under his breath. Why was there no follow-up to the small detachment sent at the end of June? The morale of the civilians was at breaking point and a relief would be simple; only ten thousand men would be sufficient to shatter the Turks who were “mostly a rabble and a wholly inexperienced soldiery.” Don Garcia, as King Philip’s man on the spot, was being accused of hesitation and overcaution; he would become, in time, the target of round condemnation for the island’s prolonged suffering.

It was unjustified. The problem lay not in Sicily but in Madrid. Don Garcia was an immensely experienced and shrewd campaigner with a keen grasp of the issues. He had framed the problem of Malta early on and laid the issues before Philip with exceptional clarity. Malta was a challenge to Spain’s mastery of the whole sea; it was essential to act—and to act decisively. He begged for men and resources to do so. “If Malta is not helped,” he wrote on May 31, “I consider it lost.” He urged Philip to confront the issue now. Don Garcia was no casual bystander to the fate of Malta. He had given a son to the siege, who was dead before Don Garcia received a reply. Philip’s responses were cautious. The king was haunted by the memory of Djerba and frightened by the size of the Ottoman fleet. His own fleet had been rebuilt at great cost after Djerba—Philip had no intention of losing it a second time. He gave explicit orders to Don Garcia that no risk was to be taken with his ships and that nothing should be done without his say-so. Don Garcia was charged with conserving the king’s fleet as carefully as Piyale guarded the sultan’s: “Its loss would be greater than the loss of Malta…. If Malta was lost, which God forbid, there would be other means to return and recover it.” It was not a view widely shared at the center of the sea. The Prudent King gave permission for the collection of troops but no permission to use them.

All the divisions of Christendom were once again being cruelly exposed. Pope Pius was beside himself with indignation at Philip’s response. The king’s fleet had been, in large part, paid for by papal subsidies; it was intended for the defense of all Christendom. The pope got the Spanish cardinals to remind Philip that “if he had not aided your Majesty with the subsidy for the galleys, today you would not have an oar at sea which might defend us against the Turks.” The king remained evasive and cautious; Don Garcia could help the island, as long as he risked no danger to the fleet. Forward progress was not helped by the lengthy response times: it took, at best, six weeks for a letter from Sicily to reach Madrid and for a reply to be received. Meanwhile the viceroy pressed forward with the collection of men and ships and kept up the lobbying of officials in Philip’s court. By early August Don Garcia was ready to mount an expedition, but he still did not have permission to use his ships, and every day the situation was becoming more parlous.

Despite the catastrophe at the Spur on July 15, Mustapha pursued the siege vigorously, as if he could sense the sultan’s distant displeasure. He abandoned any other attempt on the fortress of Malta by sea. Henceforward he would pursue an attritional siege in the style of Saint Elmo—heavy bombardment, relentless trenching, and surprise attacks to catch the defenders off guard—and he would concentrate his resources on the short land fronts of both Birgu and Senglea simultaneously.

It was the first time that Birgu had come under heavy attack. This second peninsula was the urban heart of the island and the knights’ ultimate stronghold. The landward side was protected by substantial fortifications in the shape of the two weighty protruding bastions of Saint John and Saint James—the protecting saints of the Order and of Spain. The promontory that lay behind this bulwark was a densely packed town, a warren of narrow streets that tapered to a point in the separate fortress of Saint Angelo. This stout little castle, separated from the mainland by a sea moat and drawbridge, was designed as a fallback position in the event of a last stand.

By July 22 Mustapha had all his cannon concentrated in batteries on the heights above the harbor. At dawn of that day, sixty-four guns in fourteen batteries started to hit the defenses of Birgu and Senglea. These delivered “a bombardment so continuous and extraordinary that it was both astounding and frightening.” To Balbi it seemed like the end of the world. The people of Sicily needed no reminding that war had reached their doorstep. They could hear the rumble of gunfire in Syracuse and Catania, a hundred and twenty miles to the north. The weight and penetration of this bombardment was extraordinary; the guns could search the whole of Birgu, destroying houses, killing the people within, reducing the fortifications to rubble. Men were blown away behind the apparent security of a twenty-one-foot-thick earth rampart. The bombardment continued for five days and nights without ceasing. Ottoman engineers had quickly identified the weakest point in Birgu’s land defenses—the post of Castile, the section of wall at the eastern end down to the sea, that could not easily be defended by cross fire. They singled it out for special treatment in preparation for a major attack.

During the hot days of July a furious contest developed along the land defenses of Birgu and Senglea between two well-matched opponents. Mustapha could draw on a lifetime’s experience of capturing fortresses and all the practical engineering skills and human resources of Ottoman warfare. La Valette, the stern disciplinarian who gave no quarter, brought a matching understanding of defense against impossible odds. The old man knew that he was making a last stand—not just for himself but for the Order to which he had given his life. Mustapha Pasha could feel Suleiman’s gaze bearing down; the tiled kiosks of Istanbul seemed close indeed. The sultan’s banner fluttered in the camp; Suleiman’s own men, the
chaushes
, sent back their reports to the sultan. Neither leader could afford to lose; both were personally prepared to risk their lives in the front line. The contest between the two was as much a test of mental strength as military skill.

The bombardment of Birgu (B); a troop of janissaries in their plumed headdresses (O); Mustapha (L) and Piyale (N) watching from horseback

Despite the capability to reduce the fortifications to mountains of rubble, Mustapha was beset by difficulties, not least by the miniature scale of the battlefield. The front at Birgu was one thousand yards wide; that at Senglea less. No matter how many thousand men he had, only a fraction could be deployed at any one time. A small number of defenders, well armored and protected by makeshift walls and ramparts, could fight at no particular disadvantage. He was worried too by muffled reports from spies and captives of the buildup of men and ships thirty miles away in Sicily. And by the height of summer, he had sickness in the camp. No army of the time took such care with the hygiene and organization of its encampments as the Ottomans, but Malta was unfavorable terrain. The army had had to camp in low-lying marshy land around the available water sources, which the knights had taken care to contaminate. In the sweltering summer heat, in a landscape strewn with unburied corpses, the men started to succumb to typhoid and dysentery. Time was pressing down on the Ottoman commanders.

Mustapha proceeded with all speed to try to break the defense. In the first few days after defeat at the Spur, attempts were made to cross Senglea’s ditch with a bridge of masts. The defenders made several attempts to burn it—the grand master’s nephew, hideously visible in rich armor, was shot dead in one incautious assault—but ultimately they were successful. Undeterred, Mustapha put his miners to work tunneling through the solid rock to lay explosives charges, covering the noise of the work with gunfire. Only luck saved Senglea; on July 28 “by the will of God,” the miners were probing with a spear to see how close they were to the surface, when the men on the wall spotted the spear tip protruding from the ground. They dug countermines and burst into the tunnel, hurling incendiaries and chasing the miners out. The shaft was blocked up. Mustapha was visibly discouraged by this failure—it had represented a huge effort, but the battle of wits went on. When the Ottomans bombarded the streets, La Valette had stone walls built across them. When the arquebusiers started to pick off laborers repairing the ramparts, Marshal de Robles screened his men with ships’ sails that forced the marksmen to shoot blind. Attempts to fill in the ditches were countered by night sorties to clear them out. As the outer defenses collapsed under cannon fire, the defenders responded by constructing retrenchments—makeshift fallback barriers of earth and stone—to staunch the crumbling front line, demolishing houses for building materials. In the rubble-strewn wasteland each side attempted to maintain positions of cross fire and to build barriers to protect their own men. Siege warfare required huge quantities of human labor, but the Ottomans had the resources to work on an immense scale: digging tunnels, erecting walls, snaking forward covered trenches, moving earth, and repositioning cannon. And Mustapha drew on a wide vocabulary of stratagems: he moved his guns from place to place, mounted sudden attacks at mealtimes or in the dead of night, inflicted nerve-shredding bombardments in irregular patterns, sometimes targeting precise sectors of wall, sometimes randomly shelling the town behind to frighten the civilian population, repeatedly attempting to distract or undermine morale with requests to parley.