Antonio Sciortino’s monument to the Great Siege in Valletta, Malta.

“Rien n’est plus connu que le siège de Malte.’ (Nothing is better known than the Siege of Malta).” — Voltaire
“The Turk never built anything; his mission in life has been to destroy.” — Robert E. Howard, 1930

This past Friday marked the four hundred and fifty-fifth anniversary of the definitive end to the Great Siege of Malta. On September 11, 1565, the tattered and battered fleet of Suleiman the Magnificent sailed away from the tiny island of Malta, utterly humiliated.

The Ottoman Turks had disembarked amid imperial splendor nearly four months earlier. Their soldiers were reckoned in the tens of thousands, outnumbering by a factor of four to one, at minimum, the men whom they had come to kill or enslave: the Knights Hospitaller and the native Maltese who fought alongside them.

The threads of fate that brought the Ottoman fleet to Malta had been a-weaving for a half century. The longest and brightest thread in the tapestry would have to be that of Suleiman the Magnificent, whose other sobriquets included--but were not limited to--the Padishah of the White Sea and the Black, Allah's Shadow Upon This Earth, the Sultan of Sultans and the King of Kings. The strongest thread in the tapestry would be that of Suleiman's nemesis, Jean de la Valette, Grand Master of the Knights of St. John, who were also known as the Hospitallers.

The young Valette had faced Suleiman as a Knight of the Order--alongside Gottfried von Kalmbach, if "The Shadow of the Vulture" is to be believed--at the epically brutal Siege of Rhodes in 1522. The Hospitallers were jaw-droppingly tenacious in defense of their island. This forced a negotiated surrender and Vallette embarked for Malta—the new headquarters of the Order—with his weapons in hand and vengeance in his heart.

With Rhodes firmly an Ottoman colony under the Turkish yoke, Suleiman turned his gentle attentions back to eastern Europe, which he had begun terrorizing in 1521. He spent years reducing Hungary to a wasteland and then struck at Vienna in 1529, the events of which are immortalized in both Robert E. Howard's "The Shadow of the Vulture" and Tim Powers' The Drawing of the Dark.

Meanwhile, Valette had been working his way up through the ranks of the Order, learning iron-hard lessons in the briny abattoir that was the Mediterranean during the sixteenth century. Jean became one of the great sea-captains of the age, ranked alongside Don John of Austria and Mathurin Romegas, and he was accounted the equal of the Sultan's admirals, Barbarossa and Turgut Reis.

Jean de la Valette, who was Grand Master of the Knights of Saint John during the Great Siege.

Turgut Reis—also known as “Dragut” by Europeans— almost ended Valette's career in 1541, capturing him and making him a galley-slave--much like what happened to Solomon Kane four decades later. In a move that every Turk later lamented with bitter tears, Valette was ransomed by way of a prisoner exchange. With a heart tempered and hardened by a year under the Turkish lash--an ordeal that regularly killed men half his age--the old sea-wolf went right back to doing what he did best: taking the war to the Turk.

In 1551, Turgut Reis--one of the preeminent maritime slavers of his era--attacked Malta's neighboring island, Gozo. All but a handful of the island's entire population were either killed or captured and then enslaved. The native Maltese and the Knights of Saint John never forgot it, the incident serving as a kind of "Alamo" fourteen years later. The Hospitallers and Maltese knew they could expect only slave-chains or death from the Turk.

Valette and his fellow Hospitaller, Mathurin Romegas, took to the waves with renewed fury. The Hospitallers--along with the Spanish and Italian fleets--suffered a major setback at the Battle of Djerba in 1560. Western leaders were sure that Suleiman would soon strike at Malta, which was situated in a supremely strategic maritime location, on top of being the stronghold of the Hospitallers, whom the Turks referred to as the "Hounds of Hell". Valette proceeded to build two more Hospitaller fortresses on the east coast of Malta and went right on attacking Ottoman shipping.

The breaking point was reached when Romegas captured an Ottoman galleon whose passengers included the Turkish governors of Cairo and Alexandria, as well as Suleiman's favorite daughter. Such impudent aggression could not stand. Suleiman commanded the construction of a fleet, the likes of which hadn't been seen since the Roman era.

The ensuing conflagration--and it was a literal conflagration, with tons of gunpowder burned during the months of the siege--was shocking in its intensity. Over ten thousand cannonballs were fired , on average, every day of the Siege. Mercy was a virtue in short supply on either side.

Nowhere was mercy harder to find than in the environs of Fort St. Elmo. The Hospitaller fort was on a peninsula opposite the other two forts of Fort St. Michael and Fort St.Angelo. It commanded the entrance to the harbor. The Turkish commanders—Suleiman had foolishly established a split command for the expedition—decided to annihilate the threat of Fort St. Elmo before concentrating on the two bigger forts across the harbor. They threw everything they had at the defenders: cannon volleys, incendiaries, primitive grenades, sniper fire and thousands upon thousands of the Sultan’s minions.

Valette knew the Ottomans were throwing away time and soldiers by implementing such an attack. Jean was waiting on a relief force from the king of Spain. He needed all the time he could lay hands on. Fort St. Elmo was to be bait, a distraction, a forlorn hope. As one military history scholar put it:

“Valette understood what the wretches on St. Elmo were going through. As a veteran of Rhodes, who better? But however much he sympathized, he wanted these men to realize that they, and everyone else under his command, were dedicated to Malta’s preservation. The soldiers at St. Elmo might die in its blasted ruins—and in fact probably would die there. But all men must die, and few are given the chance to do so for the sake of such a greater good. Valette was firm. Fort St. Elmo must be defended to the last man.”

The Turks spent the lives of three thousand elite janissaries--the slave-soldiers of the Sultan--to defeat and slaughter the fifteen hundred defenders of Fort St. Elmo. Valette's old rival, Turgut Reis, lost his life in that assault, probably cursing the day he traded Jean back to the Order. The Grand Master had goaded the Turkish commanders into spending precious time and manpower on what was, strategically, a fairly minor salient.

Turgut should’ve stayed in the rear with the gear.

By this time, word of the Siege had reached England. Queen Elizabeth I, no friend to Catholics or the Knights of Saint John, but most assuredly an astute observer of international politics, wrote this:

"If the Turks should prevail against the Isle of Malta, it is uncertain what further peril might follow to the rest of Christendom..."

Grand Master Valette surveying the Ottoman hordes that he wiould soon decimate and humiliate.

The Maltese lost Fort St. Elmo and the Turks lost Turgut, but the Siege raged on. Again and again, the outcome balanced on a knife-edge. Valette--seventy years old and grey as a wolf--was often found swinging a bloody broadsword on the shattered battlements, with the native Maltese killing and killing again right beside the Hospitaller knights.

Every single one of the defenders knew his only options were victory or death. The fates of those who fell at Fort St. Elmo mutely testified to that. The Knights and the Maltese were facing an empire that had only known defeat once in the past century, an empire that ruled over twenty million subjects.

Battle-lines were often mere yards apart, with opposing forces using mounds of blood-soaked rubble as bastions. It was a sulphur-reeking, gore-encrusted, ruined hellscape. The Knights and the Maltese made the Turk pay for every inch of ground with torrents of Ottoman blood. Rarely, in the history of the West, have men stood their ground with such conviction and tenacity, day after day, month after month.

Finally, the undimmed ferocity and indomitable will of the defenders forced Suleiman's warlords to consider a strategic withdrawal to Malta's other city, Mdina, in order to recoup and plan the next assault. The hard-bitten Maltese living in Mdina welcomed the Sultan's minions with volleys of cannon-shot. That was enough for the demoralized troops of Allah's Shadow Upon This Earth. A general retreat was called and the Ottomans began loading their artillery onto the transports while the rest of the Sultan's forces started marching back, razing villages as they went.

Meanwhile, eight thousand Spanish troops had finally arrived and landed on the northern shore of the island. The Spanish knights, observing the bedraggled Turks and the trail of burning Maltese villages stretching off to the south, charged the Ottomans, striking them like the Hammer of God and riding down Suleiman's Finest like cattle.

The retreat turned into a rout, but the Turks still far outnumbered the Spanish, who were eventually held off. The Ottomans hastily loaded their ships and sailed off into the blue East, well-bloodied and utterly beaten, on September 11, 1565. Suleiman the Magnificent would die less than a year later. No other Ottoman emperor would ever attempt to take Malta again.

The aftermath of the Siege saw money from all over a grateful Europe pour into the Hospitallers' coffers. La Valette began work on a new fortified city at the site of the former Ottoman encampment. He died in 1566. The city was completed, named "Valletta" in his honor and was then made the new capital of Malta. On the Grand Master's tomb are engraved these words, written by the English Hospitaller, Sir Oliver Starkey, who fought alongside the Grand Master at the Siege:

"Here lies La Valette, worthy of eternal honor. He who was once the scourge of Africa and Asia and the shield of Europe, whence he expelled the barbarians by his holy arms, is the first to be buried in this beloved city, whose founder he was."

My description of the events above is a mere summary. The glorious pageant of tragedy and triumph, the awe-inspiring moments of ferocious courage and iron resolve, the shocking episodes of bloody horror and terror, cannot be truly conveyed in one thousand--or ten thousand--words. Hence, the "scrolls" referred to in the title. Several fiction and non-fiction books have been written about the Great Siege. I'd like to point all of those who admire displays of great courage and a tenacious will to win toward the best of those books.

When it comes to non-fiction books on the Great Siege, Ernle Bradford is considered the "standard" authority. Bradford was an interesting and erudite man. He served in the Royal Navy and lived on Malta for several years. His history of the Siege, The Great Siege: Malta 1565, is still a great read. He also translated one of the best primary sources on the Siege, Francesco Balbi di Correggio's The Siege Of Malta 1565. The other volume I would recommend is Bruce Ware Allen's The Great Siege of Malta: The Epic Battle between the Ottoman Empire and the Knights of St. John. Here's a perceptive quote from Allen on the importance of the Great Siege:

"We are accustomed to think of the Mediterranean as a divide between a Christian Europe and a Muslim North Africa. It was not always so. Egypt, indeed all of North Africa, was once a stronghold of Christianity; Spain, Sicily (and Malta itself) once figured as part of Dar as Salaam. The line drawn in water had more or less stabilized by 1565 to what we recognize today. That we do so is largely dependent on what happened that long hot summer on the island of Malta. Had the outcome been other than it was, the political and religious divide of the Mediterranean might be significantly different."

In the "supplemental non-fiction" category, I am compelled to mention two books. One is Bradford's The Sultan's Admiral: The Life of Barbarossa, which details the life of Suleiman's greatest admiral who was the terror of the Mediterranean during the quarter century after the Siege of Rhodes. The other volume is Roger Crowley's Empires of the Sea: The Final Battle for the Mediterranean, 1521-1580. Crowley's book is a very readable account of the entire saga, from the Siege of Rhodes to the Battle of Lepanto, which battle wouldn't have been possible without the example set by la Valette at the Great Siege.

In terms of literature, the Great Siege made an early entry into English letters with Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta. Lisa Hopkins, in her paper, 'Malta of Gold': Marlowe, The Jew of Malta, and the Siege of 1565, makes a strong argument for Marlowe having numerous connections with, and interests in, the Great Siege of Malta. Marlowe has been eclipsed--and rightly so--by Shakespeare, but his play is still worth reading, in my opinion.

If nothing else, The Jew of Malta warrants a mention because it was the catalyst for Tim Willocks writing The Religion. Willocks' fictionalizing of the Siege easily ranks as one of the great novels of the twenty-first century. Willocks, a fan of Robert E. Howard, has written a novel of poetic, baroque savagery that I return to again and again.

While no competition to Willocks, there are two other novels I recommend. Nicholas Prata's Angels in Iron is a good read which takes a fairly traditional (Western) view of the Siege. Dorothy Dunnett's The Disorderly Knights is a more irreverent, Flashman-like take on the conflict.

Finally, in the “mighta been” category… As I mentioned in my post on Tim Powers awhile back, Powers originally wanted to set a heroic fantasy novel during the Great Siege, but publisher constraints induced him to shift the setting to the Siege of Vienna, which tale ended up being his S&S novel, The Drawing of the Dark. Just imagine if Powers had written that Great Siege novel. I’m willing to bet Powers would’ve found a way to work in Malta’s awe-inspiring megalithic ruins

So, sword-brothers, raise your mead-horns high in honor of those who fought and died so we can read posts like this on the internet and drive around in self-propelled vehicles. May the memory of their deeds during the Great Siege never die