The Ottoman Great Siege Of Malta

• published: 21 Jun 2014
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The Great Siege of Malta took place in 1565 when the Ottoman Empire invaded the island of Malta, then held by the Knights Hospitaller. The Knights, together with between 400 Maltese men, women and children and approximately 2,000 footsoldiers won the siege, one of the bloodiest and most fiercely contested in history, and one which became one of the most celebrated events in sixteenth-century Europe. Voltaire said, "Nothing is better known than the siege of Malta," and it undoubtedly contributed to the eventual erosion of the European perception of Ottoman invincibility and marked a new phase in Spanish domination of the Mediterranean. The siege was the climax of an escalating contest between a Christian alliance and the Ottoman Empire for control of the Mediterranean, a contest that included Turkish admiral and privateer Dragut's attack on Malta in 1551, and the Ottoman utter destruction of an allied Christian fleet at the Battle of Djerba in 1560. The Knights Hospitaller are also known as the Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta, Knights of Malta, Knights of Rhodes, and Chevaliers of Malta. By the end of 1522, the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent had forcibly ejected the Knights from their base on Rhodes after the six-month Siege of Rhodes. Between 1523 and 1530, the Order lacked a permanent home. They became known as the Knights of Malta when, on 26 October 1530, Philippe Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Grand Master of the Knights, sailed into Malta's Grand Harbour with a number of his followers to lay claim to Malta and Gozo, which had been granted to them by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in return for one falcon sent annually to the Viceroy of Sicily and a solemn mass to be celebrated on All Saints Day. Charles also required the Knights to garrison Tripoli on the North African coast, which was in territory that the Barbary Corsairs, allies of the Ottomans, controlled. The Knights accepted the offer reluctantly. Malta was a small, desolate island, and for some time, many of the Knights clung to the dream of recapturing Rhodes. Nevertheless, the Order soon turned Malta into a naval base. The island's position in the center of the Mediterranean made it a strategically crucial gateway between East and West, especially as the Barbary Corsairs increased their forays into the western Mediterranean throughout the 1540s and 1550s. In particular, the corsair Turgut Reis was proving to be a major threat to the Christian nations of the central Mediterranean. Turgut and the Knights were continually at loggerheads. In 1551, Turgut and the Ottoman admiral Sinan decided to take Malta and invaded the island with a force of about 10,000 men. After only a few days, however, Turgut broke off the siege and moved to the neighboring island of Gozo, where he bombarded the citadel for several days. The Knights' governor on Gozo, Galatian de Sesse, having decided that resistance was futile, threw open the doors to the citadel. The corsairs sacked the town and took virtually the entire population of Gozo (approximately 5,000 people) into captivity. Turgut and Sinan then sailed south to Tripoli, where they soon seized the Knights' garrison there. They initially installed a local leader, Aga Morat, as governor, but subsequently Turgut himself took control of the area. Expecting another Ottoman invasion within a year, Grand Master of the Knights Juan de Homedes ordered the strengthening of Fort Saint Angelo at the tip of Birgu (now Vittoriosa), as well as the construction of two new forts, Fort Saint Michael on the Senglea promontory and Fort Saint Elmo at the seaward end of Mount Sciberras (now Valletta). The two new forts were built in the remarkably short period of six months in 1552. All three forts proved crucial during the Great Siege. The next several years were relatively calm, although the guerre de course, or running battle, between Muslims and Christians continued unabated. In 1557 the Knights elected Jean Parisot de Valette Grand Master of the Order. He continued his raids on non-Christian shipping, and his private vessels are known to have taken some 3,000 Muslim and Jewish slaves during his tenure as Grand Master. By 1559, however, Turgut was causing the Christian powers such distress, even raiding the coasts of Spain, that Philip II organized the largest naval expedition in fifty years to evict the corsair from Tripoli. The Knights joined the expedition, which consisted of about 54 galleys and 14,000 men. This ill-fated campaign climaxed in the Battle of Djerba in May 1560, when Ottoman admiral Piyale Pasha surprised the Christian fleet off the Tunisian island of Djerba, capturing or sinking about half the Christian ships. The battle was a complete disaster for the Christians and it marked the high point of Ottoman domination of the Mediterranean. Toward the siege