The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean (44 page)

It was by now clear that Venice must negotiate a peace with the Sultan on whatever terms she could. Of all her recent losses, those which crippled her most were Nauplia and Malvasia, her last trading posts in the Peloponnese, for the return of which she was prepared to pay a ransom of 300,000 ducats. This was by any standards a huge sum, and it was thought that Süleyman would be only too happy to accept it. He proved, however, to be nothing of the kind, and in October 1540 Venice was obliged to agree to a treaty on terms far harsher than she had ever contemplated. The sum she had offered as a ransom was exacted as general reparations, but there was to be no question of the return of Nauplia or Malvasia, or indeed any other of the territories lost in the past three years. In future, too, Venetian ships would not be allowed to enter or leave Turkish ports without permission. It was a blow from which the Republic was never entirely to recover, but it was symptomatic of a situation that was giving increasing concern to the entire Christian Mediterranean. Everywhere it was becoming brutally clear that the days of expansion were gone, that those of retrenchment had set in. The patterns of trade were changing fast; even though the adverse economic effects had not yet proved as bad as the pessimists feared, there were no long-term grounds for optimism. The Turk was at the gates, his advance relentless, his appetite apparently insatiable; and the Christian West had failed to offer him any concerted resistance.

Barbarossa was now about fifty-five. He still had before him some seven years of service to his Sultan, years in which he was to distinguish himself as brilliantly as ever he had, but henceforth he was to fight at the side of a somewhat surprising new ally: Francis I of France. Already two years before, in 1536, we find a Turkish squadron wintering in the harbour of Marseille; in the years following, relations between the two powers–to the disgust of the rest of Christian Europe and indeed of a large number of Frenchmen–seem to have grown steadily more cordial. For Francis, here was an invaluable ally prepared to fight his battles with the Emperor; for Süleyman the Magnificent, an unrivalled chance of splitting the forces of Christendom more drastically then ever.

It was not until 1543 that these improbable allies moved against their common enemy, but when they did so they moved in strength. In the early summer of that year, no less than 100 Turkish galleys attacked Charles where he was at his most vulnerable, in south Italy. Sweeping up from the south, they sacked Reggio–where, according to one account, Barbarossa captured and subsequently married the governor’s daughter–and then, passing through the Straits of Messina, pressed remorselessly up the Calabrian coast, raiding and plundering as they went. On arrival at Gaeta they stormed and seized the fortress and wrought havoc within the city. A few days later they appeared off the mouth of the Tiber and fell upon Civitavecchia, before heading northwest to a prearranged rendezvous with the French at Marseille.

But now the trouble began. There was no sign of the stores and provisions which Barbarossa had ordered and upon which he had relied, and which Francis had promised would be awaiting him. The King’s representative and commander of his galleys, the young Duke of Enghien, grovelled in apology–eyebrows were raised, then and later, at the seemingly exaggerated deference shown to the former pirate by all the leading Frenchmen with whom he came in contact–but Barbarossa made no secret of his dissatisfaction, nor of his contempt for such unpardonable inefficiency; so angry, indeed, was he that he almost refused Enghien’s proposal that the joint fleet should sail east along the coast to Nice. This city, which since the late fourteenth century had enjoyed peace and prosperity under the Dukes of Savoy, had become a bone of contention between Francis and Charles almost as soon as their long rivalry began; now it faced the most merciless bombardment of its history.

If the siege of Nice in August 1543 is remembered at all in the city today, it is because of the courage of its local heroine. Early in the morning of the 15th, Barbarossa and Enghien had opened a breach in the walls near one of the principal towers, and the garrison was on the point of taking flight when a local woman named Caterina Segurana, with a few brave men whom she had summoned to support her, blocked its passage and forced it to stand firm. The town was temporarily saved, but Caterina had only delayed the inevitable. Just a week later, on the 22nd, the governor formally surrendered. In doing so, he was entitled–and doubtless expected–to be offered honourable terms, but within two days Nice was sacked and put to the torch. Inevitably, the Turks were blamed; in fact it was almost certainly the French soldiers who were responsible. Such, certainly, was the opinion of the Maréchal de Vieilleville, dictating his memoirs shortly before his death in 1571:

The city of Nice was plundered and burnt, for which neither Barbarossa nor the Saracens can be blamed, for when it occurred they were already far away…Responsibility for the outrage was thrown at poor Barbarossa to protect the honour and reputation of France, and indeed of Christianity itself.

Although the Ottoman fleet returned to Toulon for the winter, the siege and capture of Nice was the first and last joint operation of the Franco–Turkish alliance. In 1544 Francis made a pact with his old enemy Charles V and Kheir-ed-Din Barbarossa returned to a hero’s welcome in Constantinople–ravaging en route Elba, Procida, Ischia and Lipari with its fellow Aeolian islands, all of which were imperial territory. Two years later he was dead, at the age of sixty-three. The only son that we know of, Hassan, in due course became ruler of Algeria, the kingdom that his father and uncle had created, but the old man’s true successor was his long-time lieutenant Dragut–known as ‘the living chart of the Mediterranean’–who continued his work. It was Dragut who in 1551 wrenched Tripoli after sixteen years from the hands of the Knights of St John,
¹⁴⁵
and who nine years later utterly routed a Spanish fleet sent to dislodge him. He was subsequently rewarded with the Sultanate of Tripoli, but he never hung up his sword; in 1565, aged eighty, he was killed in action during the siege of Malta.

But the siege of Malta is another story.

CHAPTER XVI

Malta and Cyprus

Malta’s history really begins with the Phoenicians, who set up a trading post there around 800
BC
. Perhaps surprisingly, in view of the number of Greek inscriptions, there seems to have been no Greek colony on the island. Its strategic importance became clear during the Punic Wars, and it was fought over by Rome and Carthage–changing hands several times–before it finally fell to Rome in 218
BC
. For the next millennium and a half, its history was predictable enough: Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Norman. The first of the Norman rulers of Sicily, Count Roger I, conquered it in 1090. Tradition has it that he cut off part of his own scarlet standard and gave it to the Maltese as their flag. Finding this rather too small, they added a piece of white cloth to it; red and white–with the subsequent addition of the Cross of the Knights of St John–remain the colours of the Maltese flag to this day.

With the collapse of Norman Sicily at the end of the twelfth century, Malta was granted as a fief to the country’s Grand Admiral, but it soon fell, with Sicily, to Charles of Anjou and then, after the War of the Sicilian Vespers, to the house of Aragon. Somewhere around 1250 King James I of Aragon expelled all the Muslims–who until then seem to have formed the considerable majority of the population–and the island remained at least technically under Spanish rule until Charles V presented it to the Knights in 1530. Just thirty-five years later it was to find itself at the centre of the Mediterranean stage.

On the international political scene during the nineteen years separating the death of Kheir-ed-Din Barbarossa in 1546 and the siege of Malta in 1565, there was a major change of cast. Henry VIII of England and Francis I of France died within two months of each other in 1547, and in 1556 the Emperor Charles V abdicated and retired to the monastery of Yuste in Extremadura, from which two years later he followed them to the grave. Spain he left to his son Philip II, the Empire to his brother Ferdinand; but Ferdinand himself died in 1564, to be succeeded by his son as Maximilian II. Only one of the old principals remained in the centre of the stage. Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent was now in his seventieth year, but his physical and mental powers were undiminished. So too was his ambition.

Süleyman had had plenty of time to regret his merciful treatment of the Knights of St John after the fall of Rhodes. His safe-conduct had been granted them in return for a promise never again to take up arms against him; never had a promise been so flagrantly or repeatedly broken. Clearly, the time had now come to expel them from Malta, just as he had expelled them from Rhodes. Now they were settled in their new home, they were threatening to become as persistant a nuisance as ever they had been. And the Sultan had another reason too. Malta occupied a key position in the central Mediterranean, forming a natural stepping-stone between Turkish-held Tripoli and Sicily, which belonged to Philip of Spain. Once it had fallen into Süleyman’s hands, it would provide the perfect springboard for a conquest of Sicily, after which landings in south Italy would have followed as the night the day.

Charles V had been fully aware of this when in 1530 he made the island available to the Order. What better means could he hope for, at no cost to himself, of protecting the southern approaches to his empire? The Knights, it is true, had not been initially enthusiastic: they had considered the possibility of a move to Malta six years earlier, and had sent out eight commissioners to investigate its possibilities. ‘The island,’ the commissioners had reported,

is merely a rock of soft sandstone called tufa, about six or seven leagues long and three or four broad;
¹⁴⁶
the surface of the rock is barely covered by more than three or four feet of earth. This also is stony, and most unsuited for growing corn or other cereals. It does however produce quantities of figs, melons and other fruits. The principal trade of the island consists of honey, cotton and cumin seed. These the inhabitants exchange for grain. Except for a few springs in the centre of the island there is no running water, nor even wells, so the inhabitants catch the rainwater in cisterns. Wood is so scarce as to be sold by the pound and the inhabitants have to use either sun-dried cow-dung or thistles for cooking their food.

Malta was not, admittedly, a place designed to withstand a siege. It boasted, on the other hand, three immense advantages: a limitless supply of mellow, honey-coloured building stone; a fine tradition of quarrymen, builders, stonemasons and carvers; and perhaps the most astonishing natural anchorage in the world. To this day the first sight of Grand Harbour from the heights of Valletta cannot fail to catch the breath. It was unquestionably this that finally decided the Knights–after eight years’ homelessness–to accept the Emperor’s offer of a lease. The rent was reasonable enough: a single falcon, payable annually on All Souls’ Day.

The Knights never forgot that they were first and foremost Hospitallers; for well over five centuries the care of the sick had been their
raison d’être
. No sooner had they settled in Birgu (now known as Vittoriosa), the northern of the two long headlands on the far side of Grand Harbour, than they set about building a hospital.
¹⁴⁷
Its predecessor in Rhodes had been famous throughout Christendom and visited by the sick of every nation in the western world, and they were determined that a similar institution in Malta should be equally celebrated–as indeed it soon became. Their second priority was defence: the fortification of their superb harbour and their navy. Shipbuilding was no easy task on a treeless island; thanks, however, to massive imports of timber from Sicily, over the next thirty years they gradually built up a considerable fleet, until by 1560 their sea power was probably as great as it had been in the old Rhodian days. It was just as well; when they received the first reports of Süleyman’s coming expedition, their navy at least was ready.

Certainly, they had no illusions about the danger they faced. Without vast reinforcements they knew that they would be hopelessly outnumbered, both in men and in ships, and they could expect little sustenance from their scanty, stony soil. They also knew, however, that that soil would show itself still more inhospitable to a besieging army. Whereas Rhodes had been only ten miles from the Turkish coast, Malta was nearly a thousand. Minor reinforcements might be brought in from North Africa; nonetheless, it was clear that the force which the Sultan was to hurl against them had from the first to be largely self-supporting. Small wonder that his invasion fleet, carrying as it did not only the entire army of some 40,000 men with their horses, cannon, ammunition and military supplies but food and water too and even fuel for cooking, was said to be one of the largest ever to embark on the high seas. It consisted of well over 200 ships, including 130 oared galleys, thirty galleasses
¹⁴⁸
and eleven tub-shaped merchantmen which relied, like the galleons, entirely on sail. The remainder was made up of assorted smaller ships, mostly barques and frigates. Swelling the numbers still further–though emphatically not part of the official expedition–were the privateers, circling like vultures around them.

In 1557, at the age of sixty-three–he was almost exactly the same age as Süleyman–Jean Parisot de la Valette had been elected forty-eighth Grand Master of the Order of St John. A Gascon, he is said by the Abbé de Brantôme to have been outstandingly handsome and to have spoken several languages fluently, including Italian, Spanish, Greek, Turkish and Arabic. He was also a hard, implacable defender of the Christian faith. As a young Knight of twenty-eight he had fought at the siege of Rhodes; later he had been captured and had suffered for a year as a Turkish galley slave. He was utterly single-minded in the service of the Order–a man, it was said, ‘equally capable of converting a Protestant or governing a kingdom’. Faith, strength, leadership and steel discipline, all were his. He was to need them all in the ordeal that lay ahead.

The Knights, it need hardly be said, had their spies in Constantinople. They knew as soon as anyone when the Sultan had begun his preparations, and from the moment of his election La Valette had every able-bodied man in Malta working flat out to be ready for the battle to come. He had appealed for reinforcements of men and materials from the commanderies of the Order that were scattered throughout Christian Europe; even so, at the start of the siege he could count on only some 540 Knights with their servants-at-arms, together with about 1,000 Spanish infantrymen and arquebusiers and perhaps 4,000 local Maltese militia. He had also ordered emergency supplies of grain from Sicily and additional armaments and munitions from France and Spain. All his water cisterns were full, and he had no compunction in arranging for the waters of the Marsa–a low-lying region beyond Grand Harbour which he knew must be the principal source of water for any besieging army–to be contaminated with dead animals when the time came.

The great fleet appeared off the horizon on 18 May 1565. The Sultan had regretfully decided that he was too old to lead it in person, as he had led the last attack on Rhodes. Instead he divided the command in two, the naval force to be the responsibility of his young son-in-law Piale Pasha (who had recaptured Djerba from the Spaniards some years before), the land army that of his brother-in-law, the veteran general Mustafa Pasha. It was to prove a disastrous decision; the two men hated each other, Mustafa being deeply jealous of the younger man’s success and his popularity with the Sultan.

Grand Harbour was obviously far too stoutly defended to be a possible site for disembarkation, and Piale eventually selected the harbour of Marsascirocco (now Marsaxlokk) at the southeastern tip, some five miles away across country from Birgu. The Knights made no attempt to stop him. They could have had little impact on so huge a force in the open sea or even at a beachhead; their one hope lay in their fortifications, from which they had no intention of emerging more than was absolutely necessary. The Turks, once ashore, then advanced towards the city and pitched their camp on the land sloping down to the Marsa, from which they had a commanding view of the whole anchorage. There, stretching out before them, was the long central sweep of water, with the three narrower creeks leading off to the right and, to the left, the long crest of Mount Sciberras–where Valletta stands today–with, at its furthest point guarding the entrance, the towering walls of Fort St Elmo.

Had Piale Pasha elected–as he certainly should have done–to keep his fleet in the south (where it would have been perfectly safe during the summer months), Fort St Elmo would not have loomed large in Turkish calculations. Instead, he decided to bring his ships up the northeast coast and into the harbour of Marsamuscetto (Marsamxett), which runs along the northern side of Mount Sciberras. This certainly provided more shelter; unfortunately it brought him once again into violent disagreement with Mustafa Pasha. It also involved sailing directly beneath the guns of the great fortress, the destruction of which thenceforth became a top priority.

A cursory examination of Fort St Elmo suggested that, as a star-shaped fort of a fairly traditional kind, it might not be a particularly tough nut to crack. The principal difficulty was the dragging of heavy guns for nearly two miles along the ridge of Mount Sciberras, where they would be within range of the guns from the headlands of Birgu and Senglea on the opposite shore. Trench-digging here was impossible; within a few inches the sappers’ spades hit solid rock. If the troops manhandling the huge cannon up the slopes and along the crest were to be protected, it could only be by bringing up vast quantities of soil from the Marsa with which to construct earthworks. All this consumed the energies of most of the Sultan’s army, providing a welcome breathing space for la Valette and his men as they worked around the clock to strengthen still further the defences of Fort St Angelo, their principal redoubt at the extremity of Birgu.

On 23 May the attack on St Elmo began in earnest. Night and day the bombardment continued. A few days later there arrived the most celebrated Ottoman commander on land or sea, Dragut himself, seemingly unaffected by his eighty years. He took personal command of the siege, setting up new batteries to the north and south of the fort, which was now suffering a remorseless bombardment from three sides at once. By the end of the month its walls were showing signs of imminent collapse. Every night under cover of darkness small boats from Fort St Angelo slipped across the harbour mouth to bring the garrison fresh troops and provisions, returning with the wounded for the hospital in Birgu; it was only thanks to them that the fort held out as long as it did. One night, however, a returning boat brought something more: a deputation from the besieged to tell the Grand Master that they could no longer continue. La Valette looked at them coldly and replied that in that case he would replace them with others who could, and that these would be led by himself. Ashamed, they returned to their posts. St Elmo might be doomed, but there would be no surrender.

Somehow, the fort survived for a total of thirty-one days. When at last on 23 June the Turks smashed their way in, only about sixty of the original 150-odd defenders remained alive. Of these, all but nine were instantly decapitated, their bodies nailed–in mockery of the crucifixion–to wooden crosses and floated across the harbour mouth to the waters below Fort St Angelo. When La Valette saw them he ordered the immediate execution of all Turkish prisoners. Their heads were then rammed into the breeches of the two cannon on the upper bastion and fired back into the ruins of St Elmo. There was no mistaking that message. From that time forward no quarter would be asked or given.