The Ottoman Siege of Malta

Clashing civilizations, rival great powers, cutting-edge technology: we have been here before, as Marcus Bull, a professor at the University of North Carolina, shows in The Great Siege of Malta, his consistently well-written, highly interesting, and appropriately illustrated account of what was seen at the time as an epic event. With a discussion of Jericho and Troy, Bull underlines the totemic nature of sieges in the public understanding of war as a moral struggle. Malta was to join the list.

In 1565, Suleiman the Magnificent, the ruler of the Ottoman Empire, whose forces had conquered widely since his accession in 1520, sent a powerful expedition of 130 galleys, maybe fifty large transports, and about twenty to twenty-five thousand troops to capture Malta, the small archipelago between Sicily and North Africa. The heavily fortified harbor base of the Knights of St. John served as the center for an unremitting campaign against Ottoman shipping as well as against the Venetian shipping that did a good deal of trade with the Ottomans. Malta was considered a pirate base by both, and one of the contributing reasons for the attack was the seizure by the knights of a large Ottoman carrack returning from Venice to Constantinople and belonging to Kuslir Aga, the chief eunuch of the seraglio of the sultan. The knights had made extensive preparations to receive an attack, and had been boosted by the gift by Cosimo I, Duke of Tuscany, of two hundred barrels of the finest corned gunpowder, which proved a major advantage during the siege.

Naval power provided the force-projection capability, but the Ottoman combatants were initially hampered by divided leadership, specifically the failure of the land and sea commanders to agree and implement a coordinated and effective command structure and plan. This is reflected in Bull’s adroit probing of the divisions of what to the outside could too readily be seen as monoliths. Indeed, Bull throughout emphasizes adaptability and fluidity in both strategies and operational implementation. This helps make his important study of more general significance for historians. For example, Bull is searching and sage on the role of religion in the conflict, arguing “we should not write holy war out of the story.”

After an initial rebuff at Birgu and Senglea, the main defense positions, the Ottoman attack was focused on the small fort of St. Elmo, which commanded the entrance to the main harbor and to the important subsidiary harbor of Marsamuscetto, which Piyale Pasha wanted to use as his fleet anchorage. The initial Ottoman attack on St. Elmo was poorly coordinated, and it was not until the arrival of the experienced corsair Turgut Reis that the attack made headway. Turgut Reis had the reputation and ability to act as a successful intermediary between the land and sea commanders. For a long time, the Ottomans could not prevail over the determined defense. Positions and fighting were at close quarters. Indeed, Francisco Balbi di Correggio, who was in the garrison, claimed, “We were now so close to the enemy at every point, that we could have shaken hands with them.”

The resistance, especially the extraordinary heroism of the defenders of the fort of St. Elmo, which delayed the Ottomans for thirty-one days, was crucial, as it exacerbated the logistical stumbling blocks the attackers encountered and also gave the Spaniards sufficient time to mount relief attempts. The Ottomans also lost a quarter of their force during the attacks on St. Elmo, and Turgut Reis was killed by a splinter of rock thrown up by a cannonball. The ferocity of the fighting indicates the intensity of religious conflict. At the height of the battle, the bodies of three dead knights were decapitated and disemboweled, then nailed to crosses that were floated across the harbor in order to discourage further reinforcements from entering the fort. Most of the defenders of St. Elmo died fighting. Only five badly wounded knights were captured; none was ransomed, and they probably died of their wounds. Five Maltese defenders leapt into the harbor and swam across to safety.

After the fall of St. Elmo, the defenders of Birgu and Senglea could only try to repel attacks: they were not strong enough to mount a sortie, although they were aided by sorties from the small garrison at Mdina in the center of the island. Moreover, Bull argues that the best Ottoman troops were disproportionately killed in the fighting for St. Elmo.

The garrison received and guided into the main defensive position a small force of seven hundred reinforcements from the Spanish territory of Sicily, who arrived six days after the fall of St. Elmo. A larger relief force, about 9,600 strong, attempted to sail from Sicily but was twice forced back by bad weather. It eventually managed to land unopposed on September 7, 112 days after the initial landings by the Ottoman fleet.

Although the Ottomans attacked the relief force, they were demoralized and had been drastically reduced in number by the severe fighting and disease. Problems with the supply of drinking water in the summer heat were considerable, and there was also a lack of siege artillery and ammunition. The Ottomans were routed by the fresh troops of the relief force, but, despite this, the discipline of the janissaries held, and they successfully covered the re-embarkation of the remnants of the Ottoman army in St. Paul’s Bay. As an instance of public interest, the first printed and illustrated accounts of the siege appeared in Italy and Germany within a month of the Ottoman withdrawal.

The attack marked the high-water mark of westward Ottoman maritime expansion and created a de facto maritime boundary that ran from Corfu, through Messina, to Malta and Tunis. This boundary was consolidated when Cyprus was captured by the Ottomans between 1570 and 1571 and when the Christian powers were unable to exploit their victory at Lepanto in October 1571. There was a struggle with Spain over Tunis in 1573–74, won by the Ottomans, but Crete continued in Venetian hands for another century, with the siege of Candia (Heraklion) lasting from 1648 to 1669. The Ottomans never again attacked Malta, although, in part, as Bull argues, this was due to the significance of other commitments.

Bull is greatly to be congratulated on a first-rate work, well-grounded in the sources, properly judicious in its evaluation, and interesting in its ability to contextualize developments in the period, indeed reaching from Florida to Sumatra to do so, as the global engagements of the rival empires are probed. He suggests that the siege was very close-run and the defenders extremely lucky.

Bull, unlike contemporary commentators, is chary of counterfactuals, but I would like to suggest that, had the Ottomans been successful, then Philip II would have found himself in a more vulnerable position in 1568–70 during the Morisco Revolt in the Granada region, as it might have been possible then for the Ottomans to send support or mount diversionary action. There is room indeed to debate the significance of a story that Bull tells very well.

He also brings Maltese history into the present day, via the Italo-German air-and-sea siege in World War II and discussion of modern challenges to Maltese democracy. The former was also deadly but different to that of 1565, with the Ottomans and their opponents fighting a close-quarter combat that was easily assimilable to accounts of heroic conflict such as at Troy.

Note: The Great Siege of Malta is also available in paperback, audio, and e-editions.

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