The Monks of War

by Desmond Seward

  The assaults and the bombardment continued mercilessly. Yet if the garrison were desperate so were the Turks: food and ammunition were running out, for supply ships were waylaid by Christian corsairs. This was an excessively hot summer – fever raged among the besiegers and plague was feared. Guns were wearing thin, and so was morale; it was rumoured that djinn and affrit had been seen at La Valette's side – he was a magician in Satan's pay. The attackers had to be driven on by other officers. Mustafa called off an assault on Mdina, whose governor had manned the walls with townsmen in red sopravests and loosed off every gun available. On 8 September a Christian fleet passed St Angelo, each ship firing a three-gun salute, and Piyale's navy was too demoralized to attack. 'I don't think any music has ever soothed the mind of man quite so much as the pealing of our bells on 8 September 1565, the Nativity of Our Lady,' wrote Francesco Balbi, who was present throughout the siege and left a vivid account. 'The Grand Master ordered them to be rung at the time when the call to arms was normally sounded and for three months we had heard nothing but the call to arms. On that morning, however, they summoned us to Mass, a pontifical High Mass sung very early, to thank God and his Blesed Mother for the mercies they had bestowed upon us.' (The Knights of Malta still attend a 'Vittoria' Mass every September.) The relieving force which landed further north was at most 10,000 strong but included knights from all over Europe, even another English brother. When Mustafa, who had set sail, realized how few they were, he landed again, at St Paul's Bay. But his men were already beaten: Christian troops smashed into them and total rout was averted only by Mustafa's leadership. Grimly he and Piyale sailed for Constantinople; Osmanli sultans seldom forgave failure – death was the usual penalty. And of the 40,000 besiegers – Turks, Algerians, Berbers – only 10,000 survived. Suleiman was enraged, shouting, 'Only with me do my armies triumph – next spring I will conquer Malta myself.'39 But he spared his trembling generals.

  La Valette received the dilatory viceroy with every honour. Only 600 fighting men were on their feet to greet him; over 2,500 mercenaries had died with 250 of the brethren, besides 7,000 Maltese men, women and children.40 But they were the heroes of Europe. Pius V offered Fra' Jean a Red Hat, which he declined gracefully as it meant visiting Rome and he would not leave the convent. Even the Archbishop of Canterbury ordered services of thanksgiving. King Philip sent a sword of honour with 15,000 troops to guard the island until it was re-fortified; Catholic sovereigns gave many handsome contributions for this purpose.

  Now a real convent could be built. Monte Sceberras was the site for Humilissima Civitas Valettae, work beginning in March 1566. Fra' Jean was refounding Jerusalem, the Rhodes of his youth; church, hospital, palace and auberges were to be simple, with a collachium as in that lost but still beloved Aegean island. A portrait of the Very Reverend Grand Master shows a curiously reflective face, an abbot's face, and indeed Valetta was intended first and foremost as a monastery, the mother house of a great Order. He lived another two years, watching his dream – which he 'loved like a daughter' – take shape, before dying of a stroke in August 1568. He was buried in his brothers' new home. Oliver Starkey wrote an epitaph: 'Here lies Valette, worthy of eternal honour, he that was formerly the terror of Asia and Africa and the shield of Europe, whence by his holy arms he expelled the barbarians, the first buried in this beloved city of which he was the founder.'

  Yet the siege had decided nothing, and the Turks completed their conquest of the Levant. Venetian Cyprus fell in 1571, and even the Serene Republic joined Pius V's Holy League of Spain, Genoa, Tuscany and Malta. In August of that year its fleet gathered at Messina under Philip II's bastard brother, the young Don John of Austria, assisted by Frey Luis Zúñiga y Requesens, Santiago's grand commander of León. Their armada had 202 galleys, seventy small sailing ships and eight large Venetian galleasses (a kind of galleon with oars). Of the Order's contingents San Stefano's was the biggest – twelve galleys – but Malta's was the most formidable – three galleys under the Religion's Admiral, Pietro Giustiniani, with Romegas.

  By now the galley had reached its final form, as much as 180 feet in length if one includes raked poop and prow; such a vessel might have a beam of less than twenty feet, shallow draughted and rolling horribly. But in calm water, propelled by thirty oars a side and two lateen rigged masts, its average speed was two knots – over four for short distances. Normally a 48-pounder culverin and four 8-pounder sakers were mounted on the prow, with smaller guns elsewhere.

  Crusaders and faithful met in the Gulf of Corinth off Lepanto on 7 October 1571. Ali, the Kapudan Pasha, had 216 war-galleys, thirty-seven galliots (small galleys) and various lesser vessels.41 The crusader line of battle was Venetians on the left flying yellow banners, Genoese on the right flying green, and Don John and his ships with the papal galleys in the centre flying azure, and behind them a reserve – probably including San Stefano's squadron – flying white; Malta's vessels flanked Don John's right. Along his front line he spaced the galleasses, where their big guns' cross-fire could do most damage. Confidently the young admiral sailed forward to music from his minstrels' gallery, unfurling the blue banner of the Holy League, embroidered with the figure of Christ crucified. The Turks were spread out over six miles in poor formation which deteriorated under fire; a galley sank at the third salvo.

  Ali Pasha and his red banner emblazoned with the prophet's sword went straight for the Reale, the League's flagship, guns blazing; his iron ram penetrated to the fourth rowing bench – for a moment her crew feared she would settle. But now Don John's bowchasers raked Ali's own flagship. Then the troops, 300 Janissary marksmen with 100 archers against 400 Spanish arquebusiers, set to; the prince would not shoot until he 'could be splashed with his enemies' blood'. Many Christian oarsmen left their benches and grabbed boarding-pikes. The struggle surged from one ship to the other until the papal commander, Colonna, who had just captured the Bey of Negropont, came up, blasting the Turks from stem to stern. Don John's men boarded for the third time; not one enemy soldier survived. Elsewhere the entire Christian centre had been victorious. On the left the issue was more in doubt. Chuluk Ali – 'Sirocco' – had attacked savagely and, though he was killed, his ships outflanked the League's line, passing between it and the coast. However, fighting like fiends, the Venetians drove them aground, Christian galley-slaves breaking loose to slaughter their masters. It was very different on the right. That superb seaman Ali el-Uluji, Dey of Algiers, made a wide sweep as though to take the Christians in the rear, and the Genoese drew back to forestall him. A galley, by stopping one bank of oars and double stroking the other, could turn in its own length. Suddenly the corsairs swung in, racing for the now isolated squadron of Malta. The brethren fought with habitual ferocity but were hopelessly outnumbered; their flagship was overwhelmed and the great banner of St John torn down, only three knights surviving – an Italian, an Aragonese who lost his arm and half of one shoulder from a single sword-cut, and the admiral himself, found beneath a pile of Turkish dead. The Order's other galleys would have been taken too, had not the reserve come to their rescue, followed by Don John and then the Genoese. Surrounded, el-Uluji battled on magnificently for another hour before cutting his way out with twelve ships. His Moslem comrades had lost 210 vessels – 40 sent to the bottom – and 30,000 men, including nearly all senior officers.42

  Constantinople and Islam had lost the Mediterranean at Lepanto. The Ottoman navy's fire power had been destroyed by the wholesale elimination of its bowmen. These specialist archers were irreplacable since a lifetime was needed to learn their skills, passed down from generation to generation.

  VII

  BAROQUE PALADINS

  1571–1789

  'Chi la pace non vuol la guerra s'abbia'

  ('Who wills not peace, let war his portion be.')

  Tasso, Gerusalemme Liberata

  16

  BAROQUE PALADINS

  The Counter-Reformation replaced the military religious orders with new shock-troops: Jesui
ts. As a Spaniard, the founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius Loyola, was very much aware of Santiago, Calatrava, Alcántara and Montesa, whose brethren undoubtedly contributed to his inspiration. Even so, monks of war continued to do battle with the Infidel until Napoleonic times. Nor did the Knights of Malta forget their other, hospitaller, vocation. Significantly, several new brotherhoods emerged to join the ranks of the monks of war.

  This chapter is a general survey of the military religious orders during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a period in which many of their members showed that the calling retained a good deal of its original vitality.

  Throughout the age of the Baroque, the monks of war displayed all their old Crusader zeal. When the twenty-year siege of Candia in Crete came to an end in 1668, Knights of Malta had held the half-demolished gate of Sant'Andrea for three months against relentless attacks by the Turks. After the twenty-nine brethren who remained on their feet finally withdrew, the Venetian general reported in a dispatch to his Council at Venice, 'I lose more from the departure of these few superbly brave soldiers than from all the rest put together.' During the previous year they had been heartened by the arrival of a detachment of white-cloaked Teutonic Knights under Johann-Wilhelm von Metzenhausen, Komtur of Coblenz.1 In 1687 the Order of Malta helped Francesco Morosini's Venetians conquer the Morea, while two years later a Malteserorden force marched with the Imperial army on the campaign to retake Belgrade.

  In 1631 there were 2,000 professed members of the Order of Malta, of whom 1,746 were Knights. The Order even acquired colonies. In 1653 Grand Master Lascaris bought the Caribbean islands of Tortuga, St Croix and St Barthélemy, to be administered as a bailiwick; but the venture proved a failure, and after twelve years they were sold to the French West India Company.2 However, Malta grew steadily richer, its European revenues supplemented by the spoglio – prize money from Moslem shipping captured by the corso, the sea caravans of the Knights.

  13. Capturing a Barbary Corsair in the seventeenth century

  The General of the Galleys – 'The Venerable Bailiff, General of the Armies of the Religion on the Sea', to give him his full title – commanded a formidable navy. (Although technically his superior, the Order's admiral was a desk-bound officer who never put to sea, rather like the old First Sea Lord and the British Navy.) Until 1700 its principal warships continued to be a battle fleet of seven black-and-red galleys. There was also a 'gran galeone' of never less than seventy guns, together with the invaluable saettas (feluccas used for scouting) and the tartans which sometimes mounted as many as twenty-two guns. The Knights were famous for their gunnery and their ability to dismast an enemy ship with a single salvo.

  The General's 'Capitana' (flag-ship) flew the Order's Great Banner, red with a white cross and bearing the motto 'Vias tuas, Domine, demonstra mihi' – 'Show unto me thy ways, O Lord'. There was a banner of the Blessed Virgin flying from every mainmast, banners of St John the Baptist fore and aft. There was also a life-sized gilded statue of the Baptist on each poop-rail, the highest point of the stern, dominating the ship. (Brethren often had his likeness or a prayer to him engraved on their armour and weapons.)

  Yet the galleys of Malta were as uncomfortable as ever. There was no means of cooking food while the Knights still slept on the poop deck, catching lice from the ciurme or oarsmen, the reek of whose sweat and excrement must have been overpowering beneath a hot Mediterranean sun. If magnificent fighting machines, in foul weather such narrow, cramped vessels were a nightmare, unwieldy and easily capsized. However close together they might sail, they often lost sight of one another in the big seas which frequently swamped them – the oarsmen shrieking and cursing above the storm, straining on the chains which bound them to their benches, voiding themselves from fear. Any captain who lost his galley in a shipwreck, even though blameless, could expect a lengthy spell in the dungeons of St Elmo after appearing before the Sacred Council – which, among its many functions, acted as an Admiralty court. When his vessel the Santo Stefano ran aground off Leghorn, Fra' Denis de Polastron de la Hilière saved her by his fervent prayers – eyewitnesses reporting that a miracle took place, the wind changing immediately and lifting her off the rocks.

  'The Most Eminent and Reverend Lord the Grand Master of the Sacred Religion and Most Illustrious Order of the Hospital of St John and of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, Guardian of the Poor of Jesus Christ, Prince of Malta, Gozo and Rhodes, Lord of the Royal Domain of Tripoli' was very much a monarch. In 1607 he was made a Prince of the Empire, while after 1603 his rank at Rome was equated with that of a Cardinal Deacon. (He is still called 'Altezza Eminenza' today.) He addressed kings as 'Mon Cousin', receiving ambassadors from Rome, Vienna, Paris and Madrid. In the eighteenth century Grand Master Pinto would place a royal crown over his arms.

  A grand master had several roles and, judging from their portraits, some holders of the office preferred one role more than another. Fra' Alof de Wignacourt (1601–22) was painted by Caravaggio as a warrior; a magnificent study shows him in a parade armour and another in what appears to be his seaman's rig. His successor, Fra' Luis Mendez de Vasconcellos, liked to be portrayed as a monk-hospitaller, in a habit and holding a towel, with a breviary in front of him. By contrast, Fra' Manoel Pinto de Fonseca (1741–73) made Favray paint him as a sovereign in ermine-trimmed robes of state, with a crown next to him.

  Yet all grand masters were formed by the Order's novitiate. As soon as he reached Malta, each young novice had to familiarize himself with the heroic deeds of his predecessors, soldiers for Christ. He did so through the chronicles of Giacomo Bosio and of Fra' Bartolomeo dal Pozzo. The former's Istoria della Sacra Religione et Illustrissima Militia di San Giovanni Gierosoloimitano was commissioned by the Sacred Council and published in 1594; by order of the Council it was read in the refectory of every auberge. Bosio had access to material now lost and, if often inaccurate and too full of pious legend, his book is still of value. Dal Pozzo's Historia della Sacra Religione Militare di S. Giovanni Gerosoloimitano of 1703–15 is the sequel, dealing with the seventeenth century.

  Another inspiring work which novices were encouraged to read was Goussancourt's Martyrologie des Chevaliers de Sainct Jean de Hierusalem, dits de Malte. Published at Paris in 1643, this tells of the sufferings borne by captured Knights, who refused to embrace Islam – of how they had steadfastly endured the terrible life of a galley-slave, with its daily floggings, or of their tortures in the dungeons of Constantinople or Tripoli. The martyrology listed by name an impressive selection of brethren who had fallen in battle against the Infidel, giving a brief account of how each had met his death, together with a picture of his coat of arms. Thus, Fra' Jean Jacques de Harlay 'had expired of a wound from a poisoned assegai while fighting the Turks of Zagiora near Tripoli, in the year 1550'. (An assegai was a Berber javelin long before it became a Zulu spear.) This sort of death, which continued to await a surprising number of Knights during the seventeenth and even eighteenth centuries, merited the martyr's palm. For they were still Crusaders.

  14. A Knight of Malta, still wearing the Crusader surcoat in 1721

  In itself Valetta was sufficient testimony to the Knights' achievement. The conventual church of St John was deliberately built low so that defending cannon should not have their field of fire restricted seaward. The auberges were barracks, with guardrooms, stores and slave-quarters, and the Grand Master's palace had been designed as a command-post. The city had been designed as a soldiers' cantonment, its streets on a grid pattern with boxlike blocks of houses which could easily be held against Turkish or Moorish invaders.

  This grim military exterior concealed a wealth of Baroque splendours, of noble halls and elegant apartments. They were lined by Gobelin tapestries and Oriental rugs, furnished with rich cabinets, antique bronzes, Chinese vases and an abundance of silver plate. As was fitting, the greatest splendours were in the conventual church. Its gilded ceiling framed scenes from the Baptist's life, while its chapels were adorned with superb statuar
y; that of the Langue of Italy contained paintings by Caravaggio, who was briefly and ingloriously a Knight. (Another important Baroque artist, Mattia Preti, was also a member of the Order – known as 'Il Cavaliere Calabrese', he became Commander of Syracuse.) Even the church's floor was magnificent, marquetried by plaques commemorating dead Knights, whose arms were picked out in jasper, porphyry, agate, onyx and lapis lazuli.3

  The Sacred Infirmary, whose great ward measured 185 feet by 34, sheltered 350 patients on average. Its vast staff included doctors, surgeons, nurses and pharmacists, while the food was specially chosen (vermicelli and chicken for the weak, wine and game for the strong), served on silver dishes. There were clinics for outpatients, with one for leprosy and another for venereal disease, slaves and beggars receiving free prescriptions. An external nursing service tended the old in their own homes. (During his novitiate, each Knight had to serve in the Hospital for one day a week, as did the Grand Master and the bailiffs on great feast-days.)