The Great Siege of Malta

by Allen, Bruce Ware

  Los Gelves, madre, malos son de ganar.

  (Djerba! Ah, mother, a misfortune to conquer.)

  The Order made one brief attempt to restore the honor lost at Tripoli. Valette, now general of the land force, and Leone Strozzi, prior of Capua and general of the galleys, set out on August 6, 1552, with three hundred knights and twelve hundred foot for the fortress of Zoara, west of Tripoli. The locals drove them back into the sea. D’Homedes saw the expedition as a chance to brush Gozo and Tripoli aside, or at least lay new blame on his French and Italian brethren. “This,” he claimed piously, “is the greatest defeat that the Order has suffered after that of Rhodes.”1

  To his credit, he did belatedly recognize the need to establish better defense works on Malta, and a year after the disaster at Tripoli did lay the foundation stones for what would become Fort St. Michael on the area then known simply as l’Isola. He also looked into improvements for Fort St. Elmo, the small fort that first greeted all ships entering Grand Harbor. D’Homedes finally died on September 6, 1553, aged eighty-three. D’Homedes’s will, written three days earlier, left the bulk of his fortune not, as was customary, to the Order, but to his nephews. The knights were outraged, but powerless. It was left to the poor of Malta to weep at his death and honor him for his habits of charity.

  Back on the continent, Charles was still struggling to consolidate Italy into, if not part of the empire, then at the very least a passive client. The Italian wars, a series of fifteenth-century conflicts for power and land, largely between France and the Habsburg Empire and including most of the city-states of Italy, make for depressing reading, but were a valuable training ground for such military luminaries as the one-eyed Ascanio Della Corgna, who commanded the five thousand papal troops recruited from the papal dominions against French and native forces at the 1555 siege of Siena. It is likely that this is where he first met Don Garcia de Toledo, then commanding some of Charles’s twelve thousand Spanish, Italian, and German soldiers. Here too was Chiappino Vitelli, first of Tuscany’s Knights of St. Stephen and frequent soldier of Don Garcia’s brother-in-law, Cosimo I de’ Medici, then Duke of Florence and later Grand Duke of Tuscany.

  Suleiman was, however, sidetracked by war with Persia, which forced him to take three hundred thousand men east. He needed someone to keep Charles occupied, just as Khairedihn had done in the old days. Turgut, described as “some time a pirate and now the Turk's chief doer in all the affairs of Africa and the mare Mediterraneo” was the obvious choice.2

  There was a snag. Two years before, Turgut had attacked a Venetian vessel whose commander he thought insufficiently respectful (no presents, no dipping of sails—the captain had wanted to get home quickly and perhaps was not aware that the other ship belonged to Turgut). To soothe his wounded honor, Turgut killed the crew and burned the barge. Word of this reached Venice, and her ambassadors lodged a protest with Grand Vizier Rüstem Pasha.3 As Suleiman was courting Venice at the time, the odds were good that some kind of justice would be done. Turgut did not wait to find out. He packed up and headed to Morocco, beyond the influence of the Grand Porte, and remained there for the next two years, happily raiding the coast of Spain.

  He was, however, too valuable a resource for Suleiman to dispense with altogether. Sinan Pasha had not really been up to the job; even as he had taken Tripoli in 1551, his own men revolted and tried to sail off with Turgut. What to do? Sinan Pasha had not really been up to the job of senior naval commander, but he had connections. Sadly, Ottoman meritocracy did not always extend to the highly self-willed Barbary corsairs, no matter how talented. Turgut would, when Sinan Pasha died in 1553, also lose out on the title of Kapudan Pasha, which went to a rising young mariner named Piali Pasha. But he was named beylerbey of Tripoli, an honor he had expected back when he helped Sinan Pasha take the place, but which Sinan then gave to another subordinate. Reconciled with Suleiman, Turgut accepted the sultan’s request that he take sixty ships and join France in attacking Genoese-held Elba and Corsica. By 1558 the corsair was willing to join the Ottoman fleet, commanded by the young Piali Pasha, as second-in-command, and happily savaged the coasts of Naples, going as far west as Minorca. (For his part, Turgut is known to have fought Vitelli near Maremma during the Siena war.)

  Back on Malta, the knights had elected Claude de la Sengle to succeed D’Homedes. The new grand master committed the Order to the task of fortifying the island, bringing in military architects from Italy to make estimates for what could be done. On August 18, 1557, Grand Master Sengle died and left sixty thousand crowns to the Order and his name to l’Isola, the peninsula that holds Fort St. Michael, to be called ever after Senglea. The council took only one day to choose Valette as his successor.

  Money was his first concern. Priories belonging to the Order throughout Europe, some of which had not paid their obligations in years, were now enjoined to disgorge accordingly. Malta itself was squeezed. Ancient rights and privileges of her inhabitants over such matters as the appointment of Malta’s bishop, respected under the previous four grand masters, were suddenly ignored, taxes increased, sumptuary laws instituted (a civilian in overly garish pants might expect a turn at the galley oars). When Mattew (aka Giuseppe) Callus, a leading Maltese citizen, attempted to protest these new excesses, he was summarily arrested and executed.4

  The number and extent of the Order’s raids in the eastern Mediterranean were increased. The defenses of Birgu and St. Michael were improved, as was Fort St. Elmo. Valette solicited Venetian merchants in Constantinople to report any and all information useful to the Order and paid them to do so. By whatever means necessary, the new grand master was preparing himself, the island, and the Order for whatever chance might bring.

  Time, meanwhile, had been delivering its inexorable changes. In 1556 Charles abdicated his Spanish throne to his son Philip II and his archdukedom to his brother Ferdinand I. Charles retired to a quiet life in a monastery, surrounded by walls mounted with clocks. Five years later Philip signed the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, which brought peace between Spain and France, and put thousands of European mercenaries out of work. Human nature and politics being what they are, they would not be unemployed for long. Valette saw a good use for such men, as did Juan de La Cerda, courtier to Philip, fourth duke of Medinaceli, and newly appointed viceroy of Sicily.

  This was a significant post, dripping with real power that La Cerda seemed eager to use. The timing was good; Sunni Ottomans were once again fighting Shiite Persians for political and religious dominance in the Muslim world. Philip, an armchair general unlike his father, had sent off imperial troops to a serious defeat in 1558 at Mostaganem in Algeria, and could use an easy conquest to boost his own standing. Valette sent an envoy to Philip pointing out that Tripoli under Turgut was turning into another Algiers, only closer to Sicily and Italy, and in need of a good trouncing. La Cerda was preparing a second letter to the same effect when word came back that, as of June 15, 1559, Philip was entirely in agreement. Turgut Reis must be destroyed.

  Valette immediately ordered up four hundred knights under Fra Carlo Urre de Tessières, captain general of the Order’s galleys, along with fifteen hundred soldiers and support personnel; he himself would remain in Malta. Genoa’s Andrea Doria, now aged ninety-three, provided eleven galleys, and to command them, his great-nephew Giovanni Andrea (aka Gianandrea), aged twenty-one and son of Giannettino, captor of Turgut.

  Gianandrea Doria lost his father at age six, and was taken under the wings of his elder relative. An early teacher reported his charge as “agreeable, of a lively intelligence. He has already read Caesar’s commentaries.”5 In his memoirs, the younger Doria reports that he had accompanied the elder Doria to sea at age eight, had commanded “many galleys” at age fourteen, and at fifteen, commanded all his granduncle’s generals.6 At sixteen he outfitted eight ships, which he would lend to the Spanish. In 1558 he effectively chased the Ottoman fleet under Piali Pasha away from the Italian peninsula. People grew up fast in those days.

 
For the Djerba expedition, in addition to Doria’s fleet came another five galleys from Genoa, five from Naples, four from Sicily, three from the pope, four each from Malta and Florence, and eleven others from various unaffiliated adventurers. La Cerda was not so efficient. He was limited to the Spanish squadron in Sicily, and slow to gather mercenaries from Florence, Genoa, Savoy, Naples, and the Papal States.

  La Cerda might be in command, but Philip wanted an experienced captain in charge of the actual troops. He appointed Don Álvaro de Sande, a sort of Spanish Falstaff, a tough, energetic, veteran of nearly thirty years’ service, stout from an energetic fondness for food, who gyrated between self-pity and high-flying exuberance and jokes.7 Sande had been intended by hopeful parents for the priesthood but found his natural medium in war. He served Charles in most of his battles—Mühlberg, Algiers, and notably at the siege of St. Dizier, where he and a colleague had been badly injured, “faces, hands and legs burnt to the bones.”8 The following day, his troops saw him being carried to the front on a chair, on which he swore he would remain until the siege was over. Now forty-eight, he was the watchful eye over the more junior and ebullient commanders, among them Don Sancho de Leyva in command of the Italians, and Tessières in command of the knights.

  After a wasted summer and fall, and a grueling voyage from Messina to Malta in early winter, La Cerda arrived at Malta in December, sufficiently undone that he called for a temporary rest. December flowed into January, during which time Valette, anxious for spring and good sailing weather, struggled to provide hospitality for La Cerda and his men. Cramped quarters precipitated disease; the Order’s infirmary soon filled with sick men, of whom nearly two thousand died in bed. Not until February 14 were upward of fifty-four warships and thirty-six support vessels from various Christian powers finally able to weigh anchor for Tripoli. It took some fortitude to be out in such weather, and Leyva’s crew was surprised to see two Muslim merchantmen off the coast of Kantara. In easier weather, the Italians might have given chase, and as things turned out, it was unfortunate that they did not.

  The delays had cost them any hope of surprise. Had the expedition arrived six months earlier, it might well have taken the city. By the time they landed, however, Turgut had been able to bolster Tripoli’s defenses to the point that La Cerda’s bravado had turned to caution. Better, he said, to take Djerba than Tripoli. It would be an admirable base of operations against Turgut’s fortified city as well as against the Barbary corsairs. (Kâtip Çelebi makes the curious observation that Tripoli had Arabs “known for their disloyalty/cowardice,” which suggests another missed opportunity for La Cerda.9)

  The knights, wanting only to get back Tripoli, accused La Cerda of bad faith. Others, sick and tired and motivated chiefly by greed, just wanted to abandon the operation as so much bad luck. They might have had a point. Djerba was flat and its waters shallow, poor for navigation; fresh water was scarce, and the natives uncertain. Catalans had landed in 1284 under Roger de Lauria, but abandoned it as more trouble than it was worth. Pedro de Navarro tried to regain it in 1510 and failed, a rare failure in that general’s long run of North African conquests. Ten years later, Hugo de Moncada, viceroy of Sicily, had purely nominal control of the place—local sheiks still entertained Muslim pirates operating from their shores. Then there was the humiliation of Turgut’s escape from Doria in 1551, still fresh in the minds of all those present. Djerba truly was an island of bad fortune for Spain.

  Nevertheless, La Cerda’s will prevailed. On March 1, the entire force embarked once more and returned to Djerba, anchoring in heavy seas, waiting for enough calm to beach the ships. It would be another five days and nights, five days exposed to the cold and wet on rolling galleys, before they could disembark and get on with the task of conquering the island.

  Someone—exactly who is a mystery—arranged for the first official account of the expedition, an unsigned letter to the king, to be published in Bologna.10 It’s a brief narrative, highlighting the uncooperative weather, the slogging on the island, the hostile reception, Don Álvaro’s slight leg wound, Turgut’s humiliating retreat, Spain’s ultimate victory. Tripoli is not mentioned at all, nor is the threat of the Ottoman fleet, nor the fierce arguments between La Cerda’s partisans (Sande), who wanted to stay, and Doria’s (the Knights of St. John), who wanted to leave. Again, La Cerda prevailed.

  For the optimists, there remained only the task of rebuilding the fort on the far north side of the island. If the Ottomans were to come, it would not be before June, plenty of time to consolidate the Spanish hold on the island and return in triumph to Sicily and Spain.

  Tessières sent Romegas back to Malta to inform Valette of the situation. The grand master was not pleased, but there was little he could do other than withdrawing the greater part of his own men. That Tripoli had been sidelined was only part of the problem. The proposed fort was problematic at best, described by a near-contemporary historian as “absent of all man-made and natural advantages, in a remote site without fresh water and without a harbor, which made it impossible to send for any outside aid.”11

  The footsoldiers expected to defend the place apparently had their own doubts about the place. One carved a sonnet over the entrance. It takes the form of a dialogue between author and fort and ends:

  Quien te defendera? Non se por cierto.

  Que socorro ternas? Solo del cielo.

  Who will defend you? I cannot say for certain.

  What help will you have? Only that of heaven.12

  Soldiers who dared were beginning to slink away. They had signed up for combat, of which they had seen little, and for the possible sacking of Tripoli, of which they had seen nothing. Their enlistment terms were nearly up; they had business to attend to. There were locals to rob.

  As if this were not enough, the invaders began to fall ill again. Even the Knights of St. John, sticklers for cleanliness, were not spared, and in a few weeks, Fra Urre de Tessières was forced to return to Malta, which put Valette in an awkward position. Would he be within his rights to withdraw his knights entirely? Would it be more politic to support the viceroy, and in consequence the new king, by pushing on? In the end, he ordered replacements for the knights.

  Despite disease and wayward soldiers, La Cerda did manage to get an outer wall erected around the central keep. By May 6, the viceroy could announce that he had secured what needed securing and Djerba was now a Spanish protectorate, its days as a clearinghouse for Christian slaves over. What he did not know was that the two merchantmen seen earlier had in fact belonged to Uludj Ali, a Calabrian renegade and lieutenant of Turgut, who had brought news of the armada to Constantinople. Suleiman had dispatched an armada of his own. Four days after La Cerda’s announcement of victory, word came from Malta that eighty-six Ottoman galleys had landed at Gozo, robbed it, torched it, and interrogated prisoners. The historian Zekeriyyaāzaādé (one of Piali’s lieutenants on this expedition) claims that the message stated: “The Turks’ ships have come, leave the fortress, otherwise they will cut your worthless heads, or they will take you into abject captivity.”13 The message further stated that the armada was heading south, though it could not confirm the target, or indeed whether Piali knew La Cerda’s location. (He did.)14

  Squabbling among the Christians began all over again. The fort was secure, the fort was at risk; the men were firm, the men were unreliable. Gianandrea Doria, ill and confined to bed, argued that it was time to cut and run, but La Cerda would not budge. The Turks might be sailing west, he agreed, but their destination was Tripoli, not Djerba. In any event, storms at sea these past two days must have caused considerable damage to the armada. Besides, as long as Spain held the fort, how dangerous could the Ottomans be?

  The answer came the next morning when the Ottoman fleet under the newly promoted grand admiral, Piali Pasha, appeared on the horizon.

  Piali Pasha, a “lion tall as a mountain, a crocodile of the sea,” so the story went, had been found abandoned as an infant after the siege of Belgr
ade in 1521, scooped up and brought back to Constantinople, where he was put through the imperial system, eventually graduating from the Enderûn school.15 Described by a Venetian envoy as slightly below average in height, with black hair and pallid skin, he was appointed fleet commander in 1555, in which capacity he supported the French siege of Calvi in that year, captured Oran the following year, Bizerta the year after that, and raided Minorca the year after that.16 Much of his maritime service was alongside Turgut, nominally as his superior, more realistically as his student. (Oddly, the Venetian envoy to Constantinople in 1562 considered him amiable and humane, but not very bright.)17

  By now the Ottomans had heard about the Spanish tercios and did not, according to Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq (ambassador to Constantinople for Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I), imagine that facing such men would be easy. “So great was their apprehension that many of them, thinking that they were bound on a desperate adventure from which they might never return to Constantinople, made their last will and testament before setting out. The whole city was full of alarm and everyone, whether he embarked or stayed at home, was harassed by grave doubt as to how the expedition might end.”18 Busbecq was, of course, writing for a European audience and well after the fact.

  Kâtip Çelebi, writing for the Ottomans, says nothing about any alleged Ottoman fears. He notes only that Piali Pasha approached, anchored twelve miles off Djerba the night before, and lay in wait for whatever the next day would bring.19 (Zekeriyyaāzaādé says that the Christians went out seven or eight miles and dropped anchor in the darkness of night. When the sun rose, they were astonished to see the “masts of the imperial fleet, thick as a forest.”)20

  If Piali was worried, he needn’t have been. Gianandrea Doria was physically unwell and clearly unable to have the ships line up in battle formation and defy the enemy. And so the Christian captains panicked. Left to their own devices and desperate to flee, the various ships jostled and crashed into one another, creating a gridlock that only a lucky few at the edges could break free of. Worse, the wind changed direction and favored the Ottomans.