In his hidden road, minutes had grown into hours and Anastagi bided his time. His men became restless. He did nothing. The sun crept higher, pouring down the impossible heat of a Maltese summer. Anastagi waited. The men fighting on the wall were growing more tired and still Anastagi did nothing. Almost nine hours after the attack began, the Ottoman army had reached its high tide against the walls of Fort St. Michael. Mustapha was urging his men to the final assault that would overflow the tops of the walls. The Christian defenders were flagging, and victory was imminent. Anastagi finally gave his men the order to advance.
Throwing themselves against the Ottoman army would have been pointless—they were raiders, and very few—and so they didn’t. Their target lay nearby, and was softer than the blood-spattered men attacking Fort St. Michael.
While Mustapha was leading his tidal wave against the remains of Fort St. Michael, the survivors of his previous fights, along with support personnel and camp followers, remained back at the Marsa camp. In large tents there lay scores of injured men in greater or lesser degrees of pain, men whose long days and nights were punctuated by the occasional groan or whimper, by gasped prayers for an end of agony, by regret or relief that they were no longer in the fight; men contemplating their immediate suffering, the fortune that kept them from the audible fight in the distance, a future without the familiar comfort of a hand, an eye, an ear, a jaw, a leg, their wits. Men with charred skin lay motionless, aware that the slightest movement would be torture; other wounded veterans marginally more fortunate shifted positions in the hope that this would alleviate, or at least redistribute, the pain. The present was bad, the future grim. The lucky might have families to look after them, a religious shelter to attend to their basic needs; the unlucky were staring at destitution.
They made easy targets. Anastagi’s horsemen approached from the south, unsheathed their swords, cried out “Victory and relief!” and began to charge.11
There was no defense worth mentioning—a remarkable oversight given the horsemen’s record—and the attackers careened around the tents, slashing the guylines. Horse hooves trampled the fallen, billowing canvas, crushing anyone left inside, turning the brightly colored cloth into a lumpy, sticky, glistening, bright scarlet mess. No mercy here. Those who had assumed they were safe from combat were now running “as quickly as healthy men.”12 In short order, fire, presumably from the regimental kettles, spread to some of the tents and sent up columns of smoke.
It took some time for the men engaged at Fort St. Michael to notice the attack, and there was confusion over what it all meant. An Ottoman unit detailed with guarding the fleet was the first to investigate. They didn’t see much, but what they did see caused them to rush back toward the boats. Mustapha got a report that all the men in the camp had been massacred. Without orders or permission, men started to withdraw from the trenches before the Post of Castile, which made it easy for the Christians to shoot at their backs. Those still attacking St. Michael froze in indecision and confusion. Wounded refugees from the camp stumbled toward them and swore that a force of over a thousand men was coming. The trenches now emptied as quickly as had those before the Post of Castile. Men defending the Post of Sicily had a vantage point and a slightly clearer idea of what was going on, and began to echo the raiders’ cry, “Victory and relief!” Some among the Turks would have understood this and translated it for their comrades.
What did it all mean? Men shouted out speculation, speculation became rumors, and rumors, accepted fact. Piali Pasha’s cordon of galleys had failed one more time. The greater Spanish relief, long anticipated, had finally arrived. Unknown thousands of Christian troops had landed on the western shore, unnoticed, just like the six hundred men of the Piccolo Soccorso. These new armies, fresh and ready for battle, were now tearing through the camp, destroying food and supplies, trampling the wounded, killing anyone in their path. These new arrivals would soon be attacking the Muslims from the rear, catching Mustapha’s armies between two pincers.
Panic breeds panic, but Mustapha appears to have kept his head. Somehow he managed to restore enough order to rally his troops to the high grounds at Santa Margherita, leaving behind him a backwash of dead and wounded before the wall. It was only when he could survey the landscape from these heights that he realized just how feeble the attack on his camp actually had been, and ordered his men to rush back—too late and on foot. When they saw that the Muslim forces had turned toward the camp, Anastagi, considering the mission fulfilled and his men in danger of being routed, ordered retreat. Each horseman hauled up a foot soldier behind him and galloped headlong back to Mdina.
The assault on Senglea was over. Turkish casualties, both before the wall and in the camp, were some two thousand killed “judging by how quickly the enemy retrieved their dead.”13 Of Christians defending Fort St. Michael, sixty were dead.
Not a single horseman was lost.14
The Mdina cavalry had done their worst, and even if it was unlikely that they would ever manage to pull off a coup like that again, nevertheless, martial pride demanded that Mustapha reply in kind. While the greater part of the army set about putting out the fires, repairing the damage, and attending to the wounded who still survived, he sent Piali in the general direction of Mdina to somehow punish Mdina’s cavalry. Three ambush areas were set up in the abandoned village of Zebbug, at San Domingo near Rabat, and in the grand master’s wood, all south of Mdina. As a lure to the enemy, Piali dispatched a small number of men to rustle the cattle that still grazed under the watchful eyes of the city. It was a no-lose provocation as far as Piali was concerned, and as he hoped, men under Lugny and Anastagi galloped out of Mdina, chased off the enemy, and began to herd the cattle back within artillery range of the city. They then found themselves being cut off by unseen Ottoman infantry.
The Maltese promptly let the cattle loose and charged the oncoming enemy. In the ensuing scuffle, they managed to kill over fifty Muslims at a cost of twelve of their own.15 Lugny survived unhurt and returned, alive if not triumphant, to Mdina. Piali followed. He approached the city and was stopped short by the sight of hundreds of soldiers lining the tops of the walls, shouting, jeering, and letting off cannon and small-arms fire. Clearly this was not going to be a walkover. Without proper siege equipment, Piali had no choice but to abandon the operation and return to the familiar problems of Senglea and Birgu.
What he did not know was that these soldiers were in fact civilians in costume. In another trick as old as warfare, Mesquita had dressed the citizens, however old or lame, male and female, and spotted them across the expanse of the wall, firing a few seemingly reckless shots to keep the Ottomans from getting close enough to recognize the swindle.
It could be presented as a victory for the Christians in that more Ottomans than Christians had died. The Christians, however, had initially been outfoxed; and besides losing twelve men, they also had lost nearly a third of their remaining horses, invaluable for raiding and utterly irreplaceable. This was a severe loss for this arm of the overall Christian defense, and Piali, even if fooled by the Potemkin village that Mesquita had arranged on the walls of Mdina, could take some pride in a good day’s work.
22
TWO GENTLEMEN OF PERUGIA
When I compare our systems to that of the Turk, I tremble to think what horrors the future must bring. . . . Once he has made peace with the Persians, he will come at us with the entire combined armies of the orient—what our preparedness may be, I dare not say.
Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, 1560
Christian warfare has repeatedly been marked by visions, from Constantine’s dream of the cross the night before he seized Rome in 312 to the (demonstrably fictional) Angel of Mons in 1914. In 1339, St. Ambrose appeared on the battlefield of Parabiogo, riding a white horse and swinging a cudgel at the enemies of his beloved Milan. In AD 884, St. James arrived to help Christian Spain in its fight against Muslims at Clavijo. He alone killed sixty thousand Moors, and in the doing became the patron saint of
Christian Spain. This was powerful help and was paralleled at Malta. Robert of Eboli, recovering from wounds received at Fort St. Michael, fell into an ecstasy and saw Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and John the Baptist. The trio, he reported, had been inclined to chastise the knights for previous bad behavior (and certainly there was no shortage of that), but were impressed by their current valor and return to the path of virtue.1
Robert was not the only witness to such visions: “Turks while fighting were terrified by an apparition of a woman robed in white, and several times by a wild man robed in skins, but of divine appearance, and of a white dove.”2 On the vigil of Our Lady’s Ascension, “a white dove was seen resting above the miraculous image of Our Lady of Filermo, which for many hours did not fly off; and this made the people pious, and was taken as an augury that they would soon be freed from the siege.”3 Some even claimed that there were manifestations in Constantinople itself.
All this was encouraging, as was the news from another deserter that the aga of the Janissaries had been killed and that the “pasha of the ground troops” was feeling ill.4 This was encouraging, but it did not kill Muslims. Mustapha had returned to the dull repetitive routine of bombardment. It seemed scarcely worthwhile, as a good part of the walls were as far demolished as they were likely to become. In parts of the town, a single inner wall “about the height of a man” and at places no more than ten to twelve feet thick was the only barrier between Turk and Christian.5 The men lining the defenses were lying prone on top of the rubble and waiting for the Ottomans either to come within arquebus range or to present themselves for hand-to-hand combat. The Ottoman troops were at least getting a deserved rest.
Robles, leader of the Piccolo Soccorso, whose position was less broken down, wanted to know how things stood. It was late in the day and presumably he thought there was enough light to see, but not enough to put anyone in danger. In a moment of absentmindedness, or anxiety, or ill-advised bravado, or of trust in the half-light of evening, or perhaps because it was simply too uncomfortable, he neglected to put his helmet on. An Ottoman sniper instantly put a bullet through his head. He lived through the night, reportedly in great pain, and died the next morning.
At a time where death was commonplace, Robles’s fall had a powerful effect on the survivors. All contemporary accounts note that the mourning for this man was extensive and heartfelt. Always “as a devout man, in every assault he carried a crucifix in his hand, encouraging his men to fight in ever greater fury.”6 Soldiers under his command, hard men made harder by the unspeakable horrors of the past two months, could not bring themselves to look at his corpse. Valette ordered the body to be laid out in the Church of St. Lawrence, his casket to be covered in black velvet. The grand master further decreed that Robles should be buried with the honors of a grand cross of the Order, an extraordinary gesture to any man, all the more so since Robles was not a knight of St. John.
Letters between Philip and Don Garcia made their three weeks’ journey on a regular basis, the viceroy giving updates and explanations, the king offering advice and cautions. He wanted Malta to be helped, but he wanted his fleet to remain intact. He left matters up to Don Garcia’s best judgment, but forbade any attack on the Turks. There are times Philip was resigned to the fall of Malta and comforted himself with the thought that it could be retaken at some later date. Indeed, Philip was open-minded enough to allow Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, duke of Alva, to meet with Hajji Murad, an Ottoman emissary then traveling in France. The subject was peace between the empires. Nothing came of it, but the very fact that such a meeting took place was telling.7
Whether Don Garcia was aware of this meeting is not known; regardless, he did not let up in his efforts to save Malta. Throughout the summer he had canvassed Europe for volunteers and had quartered and fed those men who had gotten as far as Sicily. He “effected the equipping of triremes, constructing barges more spacious than usual to disembark soldiers, and was gathering from all parts the provender, arms, oarsmen, and however much was necessary to such a mutable war.”8 Already by July 27 Don Garcia could write to Valette that he had one thousand to twelve hundred foot under the charge of Vincenzo Gonzaga, prior of Barletta, and that Gianandrea Doria was en route to Syracuse with twenty-seven galleys and four thousand foot, mostly from Florence and under Chiappino Vitelli.9 Freebooters and mercenaries were plentiful enough and would fight well if the money was good. Don Garcia was not just trying to gather ships and cannon fodder; the viceroy needed commanders who could lead these men. One man he especially wanted was Ascanio Della Corgna.
Ascanio Della Corgna—nephew of a pope, brother of a cardinal—was a condottiere, a contract soldier, and a good one. The sixteenth century was a busy time for men in that trade, and profitable as well, provided one could stay alive. Small wars were plentiful, and Della Corgna’s talent was exceptional. He could command a full army, and even after the loss of one eye had destroyed his depth perception, he could take on the strongest swordsmen in single combat. More than three thousand spectators gathered at Pitigliano (Tuscany) to witness Della Corgna’s 1546 duel with an insolent subordinate named Giannetto Taddei. Shopkeepers and home owners whose windows overlooked the square rented out the view. Taddei was killed, honor satisfied, and Della Corgna’s reputation confirmed. For those who missed it, the bloody event, a matter of short swords and long daggers, is immortalized in fresco on the walls of Della Corgna’s palace at Castiglione del Lago.
We get a good portrait of the man from these pictures—a long, thin face, receding hairline and long nose, the full pointed beard characteristic of the era, proud, confident, and utterly effective. (A contemporary bronze bust suggests a rounder head—something for the art historians to ponder.) In an age where distinguished soldiers were reasonably thick on the ground, his name was well known across the continent. An anonymous poet calls him a vero figliuol di Marte, a true son of Mars.10 Don Garcia would have known him (along with Chiappino Vitelli and Don Álvaro de Sande) from their common service in the 1552–1559 war against Siena, one of the interminable power struggles of the Italian city-states. As viceroy, Don Garcia was adamant that this man be put in charge of the major force that he, Don Garcia, was collecting to save Malta.
There was, however, a problem. Ascanio was sitting in a papal jail cell in Rome’s Castel Sant’Angelo “on several charges” (per alcune imputationi) in Bosio’s delicate phrasing, but that others elaborate as theft, rape, and murder.11 Serious allegations, possibly even true, but they meant nothing to Don Garcia. He wrote to Philip, who wrote to the pope and asked for indulgence. So did Maximilian the Holy Roman emperor. Ascanio’s brother, Cardinal Fulvio, also a member of the Order of St. John, argued passionately for his release. Valette also chimed in, noting that such a valiant soldier would do Christendom far more good by fighting the Turks than by rotting in jail.
The argument was hard to deny. So was Fulvio’s transfer to the pope of twenty-five thousand gold ducats and two towns in Romagna. On August 3, Pius relented, and twelve days later, with a number of Roman and Perugian gentlemen, Della Corgna was headed to Messina.12 Don Garcia was “delighted beyond measure and provided him accommodation in his own house, extending him endless kindnesses and always consulting with him.”13 Once having arrived, Della Corgna did not waste time. He wanted a firsthand report on how things stood. And by good fortune, Anastagi, hero of the Marsa battle and effectively the ranking intelligence officer, was a fellow Perugian.
It was not only Don Garcia and Della Corgna who were hungry for information. The ongoing events in Malta were being followed with interest throughout Europe, and not just among the political and military captains. Up-to-the-minute reports were published throughout the siege, notably in Paris, of which a handful survive to this day.14 Even Protestant Europe was paying close attention. On August 27, a pamphlet appeared entitled, Certayn and tru good nuews from the fyege of the ifle Malta, with the goodly vyctorie wyche the Chriftenmen, by the favorer of God have ther latlye obtained agaynft the Turks,
before the forteres of faint Elmo. The contents are further described as having been “transflat owt of French yn to Englysh,” likely by a Flemish printer with an eye for the British market and a shaky grasp of the language. It purports to contain a copy of a letter from Valette to Don Garcia dated June 18, followed by an account of events made by Orlando Magro, who rode the galley into Messina on June 27. It gives a fairly accurate, if truncated, account of the St. Elmo siege and some moving afterthoughts: “Item, that the great mafter was veari forrowful for the death of Capitayn Mirande.”
This is not the only such notice in English. There are some pitifully small fragments of a second document, greatly damaged, that relate the final victory, as the pages refer to “the delivuery of Malta.” One can imagine the man on the London street grabbing at the pamphlet, reading it aloud at some tavern to his tablemates, heartened to hear the victories of the knights (wicked Catholics though they be), while the more thoughtful wonder what exactly the consequences of a Turkish victory might mean for England. Sympathy for Christendom was also the official line from the English court. Spain’s ambassador to England wrote to his king that Elizabeth “expressed sorrow that all the Princes should leave your Majesty alone with the Turk.”15 Not that she was going to pitch in, of course, she having the body of a weak and feeble woman, and there being no princes invading the borders of her realm. Still, the ambassador could report that “great importance is attached here to what is passing in Malta, and the Queen has ordered a general prayer for victory.”16 The interest is not hard to understand. Islam had proven to be a formidable enemy, and the final outcome of this struggle was not at all certain. God’s will was obscure, and Muslims could easily summon a sense of entitlement—a great motivator for any army.
The Great Siege of Malta Page 26