In the autumn of 1530 the Knights of St John of Jerusalem (and now of Rhodes) sailed south from Sicily across ‘The Canal’, or Malta Channel, headed for their new island home. They were not at all happy with what they found. The commissioners had indeed warned them that Malta was rocky and barren, but they had hardly envisaged the harsh North African face that the islands present at the end of summer, before the first rains have fallen and the land has become alive again. Everywhere they looked as they coasted along, first past the rugged little island of Gozo, then past the islet of Comino, and then down Malta itself, they saw only a barren moon-landscape of harsh limestone crags and rocks. Only here and there a patch of green glowed dully where some dusty carob tree provided a patch of shade. Hostile and inimical, the islands glowered back at their new owners.
The local inhabitants, as the commissioners had reported, spoke a dialect of Arabic, and only a few merchants, coupled with the local aristocracy, spoke any French, Spanish or Italian. The aristocracy, related to the principal families in Aragon and Sicily, certainly had no cause to feel any affection for these newcomers who had been granted the overlordship of the islands, out of which they themselves had been accustomed to drawing their rents and accepting the tributes of the peasantry. The Knights for their part were dismayed and indeed horrified by all that they saw: a peasant population of some 12,000, illiterate and unskilled compared with the quickwitted and intelligent Rhodian Greeks. Città Notabile, or Mdina as the natives called it, was indeed well-situated but almost desolate. Only the harbours could console them, and in particular the great harbour on the east coast known to this day as Grand Harbour. Here, indeed, there was room for a fleet immeasurably greater than even the resources of any European monarch could afford to maintain. But again the doubts came back—the harbour was so ill-defended. It was clear at once that there would have to be an immense amount of building before they could consider it even moderately defensible against a corsair raid, let alone a seaborne attack by the fleet of Suleiman.
To the considerable relief of the ancient nobility the Knights decided to settle on a narrow peninsula of land which jutted out on the south side of Grand Harbour. Here they found a miserable fishing village known as Birgu (the Borg or Township), and at the head of it a small dilapidated fort. Unattractive it all might be, but somehow or other the sight of that harbour with its numerous creeks and inlets lying off it to the south and west contrived to make the gift of Malta seem acceptable. Nevertheless, for months and even years to come, there was always to be a predominant party in the Order which maintained that they must in due course recapture Rhodes. Malta would do for the moment—a last resort as it were—but looking at the island under the late sun of that autumn day ‘they wept remembering Rhodes’.
The ordinary Maltese people for their part regarded the Knights rather as if they were visitors from another planet. Their lives of back-breaking toil on a hard soil under the sun’s hot eye had little accustomed them to these armoured men with their airs and graces, their colourful trappings and standards, their pages and squires, men-at-arms, Greek artisans, pilots and seamen; let alone their elaborate sailing ships and galleys with their decorated bows and sterns. And then there was the unfamiliar sight of the lines of manacled Moslem slaves being ushered under guard into temporary quarters ashore. The last sight must at any rate have brought the Maltese some comfort, for it was the fate of the Maltese and their Gozitan fellows in the northern island to be constantly subjected to the raids of pirates and slavers from the Barbary coast to the south of them. At any rate these new masters, these Knights of St John, were as good Catholic Christians as themselves. It was clear that they were enemies of the Moors for they used them as galley slaves—a fate hitherto, they had thought, reserved for those Maltese who were captured and sold in the great market of Tunis.
On other counts the Maltese were not so happy at the arrival of the Knights. Here is a Maltese historian, Sir Themistocles Zammit, on the subject:
By the time the Knights came to Malta, the religious element in their foundation had fallen into decay. Their monastic vows were usually regarded as mere form, and they were remarkable for their haughty bearing and worldly aspirations. The Maltese, on the other hand, accustomed to be treated as freemen greatly resented the loss of the political liberties which had been conceded to them… It is not, therefore, surprising that there was little love lost between the Maltese and their new rulers.
There is some exaggeration here, for this portrait of the Knights, while it may well have been true in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was hardly the case when they first settled in Malta in 1530. The outlook of the nobility, however, settled in their old palaces in Mdina has been accurately portrayed by Elizabeth Schermerhorn. Reporting on the comments of some of their modern descendants, she goes on:
To the educated and aristocratic Maltese, well-informed on local history, the memory of the imperious Order that took away their parliament and free institutions, interfered with the sacred privileges of their bishopric, snobbishly refused membership to the sons of families whose titles of nobility ante-dated the occupation of Rhodes…is simply not to be discussed or defended in any well-bred circles.
The ‘imperious Order’, however, had its own problems. The first of these was to transform Birgu into something that, however remotely, might resemble their former home in Rhodes. Over two centuries of living a rigidly patterned life within the walls of Rhodes had conditioned the Knights to such a degree that they could not imagine that there was any other way of living except on, or hard by, the water; with a view of their ships and galleys immediately below them, and a prospect of the open sea beyond. Birgu met these requirements. Its transformation was not to be achieved by L’Isle Adam however. He had led the Order through the siege of Rhodes, he had held it together during the years of exile, and now he had found it a new home. As Quentin Hughes comments:
To the meagre defences [of Birgu] L’Isle Adam had added detached works wherever the nature of the ground permitted, repaired the existing walls of Fort St Angelo [at the seaward tip of the peninsula]…but otherwise held his hand; for in his mind he planned to reconquer Rhodes, and considered the sojourn in Malta as no more than a temporary expedient. To this end the fleet of the Order was set in battle array and, as a preparatory move, dispatched to capture Modon in southern Greece. In this attempt the ships suffered a serious defeat, and all further idea of reoccupying Rhodes had to be abandoned.
L’Isle Adam’s later years were troubled by dissensions and even insubordination among a number of the young Knights. They found Malta boring and unattractive and were too young to realise how lucky the Order was to have a home at all. L’Isle Adam died in the ancient capital of Mdina in 1534, four years after he had first set foot on Malta: a brilliant and enterprising Grand Master, and one of the greatest in all the Order’s long centuries of history.
Among his immediate successors the most important was the Spanish Grand Master Juan de Homedes, who reigned from 1536 to 1553. It was under Homedes that the defences of Birgu began to assume a realistic form. An Italian military engineer, Antonio Ferramolino, was sent to Malta by Charles V to advise on the reconstruction of the old fishing village and in particular to improve its fortifications. Ferramolino immediately pointed out—as others were to do after him—that the whole area was low-lying and was dominated by the gaunt limestone ridge of Mount Sciberras which formed the northern arm of the entrance to Grand Harbour. Ferramolino counselled Homedes to shift the Convent to those rugged heights and build there a completely new city.
The Grand Master undoubtedly recognised the wisdom of his words but there was little or nothing that he could do to act upon them, for the cost of building a new fortified city was, at that moment, completely beyond the finances of the Order. He had to content himself with getting Ferramolino to strengthen the existing works around Birgu. Principal of these was the fort at the head of the peninsula. St Angelo was now transformed into a formidable strong p
oint, Ferramolino erecting over and above it a large cavalier from which guns could be brought to bear upon the entrance to Grand Harbour as well as upon the extreme point where Mount Sciberras plunged into the sea. Another radical improvement was to cut a great ditch through the peninsula, so that the fortress was cut off from the township of Birgu behind it. Access to St Angelo was now only by means of a drawbridge. The moat thus created between the fortress and Birgu was also useful in providing a galley port, somewhat reminiscent of Mandraccio in miniature. Later developments to the fortifications protecting Grand Harbour were initiated by a Spanish engineer Pietro Pardo and by Count Strozzi, the Prior of Capua. These included a star-shaped fort at the seaward end of the neighbouring peninsula, called L’Isla (the Island) and later Senglea, after Grand Master de la Sengle. This fort named after St Michael provided additional covering fire over the waters of Grand Harbour and reinforced the fire of St Angelo.
The most important development during these years was the construction of another star-shaped fort at the very end of Mount Sciberras. This dominated the entrance to Grand Harbour as well as the entrance to the other large harbour, Marsamuscetto, that lay to the north of the peninsula. The fort, called St Elmo after the patron saint of sailors, was sited where a small watchtower had formerly stood, and where there had probably been some form of a beacon ever since Greek and Roman times. (The Maltese name for the peninsula, Sciberras, means literally ‘The Light on the Point’.) In the course of all the new works that were initiated during their first twenty years on the island the Knights discovered one major asset hitherto unlooked for among the islanders—their remarkable skill as stone masons. Although the fortifications that arose were designed by specialist military engineers, and a lot of the back-breaking stone-shifting was done by the slaves from the galleys, the bulk of the work was done by the Maltese themselves. Living for centuries in their barren islands where wood-construction was unthinkable they had developed into some of the finest masons and stone carvers in the world. They were helped in this by the softness of most of the island’s limestone, which could be quite easily cut into blocks but which, after a few years’ exposure to the briny air, developed a thick, hard crust. Yet another variety of Maltese limestone was immensely hard. This produced an excellent material for facing battlements so as to provide a glancing surface against cannon balls.
Naturally enough, in view of their depleted finances, the Knights very quickly reinstated their sea-going ‘caravans’. They found to their delight that even if the Moslem shipping routes were somewhat further afield than they had been at Rhodes, they were immensely rich. Furthermore, they had for so long been immune to attack that their merchantmen were little prepared for the sudden hawk-like arrival of the Order’s galleys. Working out of Malta and Tripoli together—but principally out of Malta—they were soon bringing back fine rich prizes with which to help the exchequer, thus speeding the work of building not only the fortifications but the new Hospital and the Auberges of the different Langues.
Although small, the Order’s navy was still, as it had been at Rhodes, the most efficient in the Mediterranean. The Knights were also lucky in the fact that, although they had been accompanied by some Rhodian pilots and a number of seamen, they soon found trainable replacements in the Maltese themselves. The latter were familiar with the lateen sail from the Arabs who had dominated their islands for two centuries, and they were excellent small-boat sailors, having long been dependent on coastal fishing to supplement the inadequate amount of meat to be found in Malta and Gozo. Short-legged, barrel-chested, hardy and enduring, the Maltese were in due course to prove as great an asset to the Order’s navy and military arm as the Rhodians had been in previous centuries.
The fleet was also reinforced by the Great Carrack, one of the most powerful vessels of its time and probably the largest warship in the Mediterranean. This had been built at Nice and, since it foreshadowed the end of the galley and the coming of the man-of-war dependent solely upon canvas (and the weight of metal which the guns could throw from so large and stable a platform), it is worth describing in some detail. The following account of the Carrack is given by J. Taafe in his History of the Order (1852):
It rivalled with our lifeboats in this, that, however pierced with multitudinous holes, no water could sink it. When the plague was at Nice, and the mortality so frightfully huge that the stench of the corrupted air made the birds of the sky drop dead, not a man was ever sick aboard it, which is chiefly attributed to the great quantity of fires kept by the workmen to supply the requisite screws, nails, and other irons… (It) had eight docks or floors, and such space for warehouses and stores, that it could keep at sea for six months without once having occasion to touch land for any sort of provisions, not even water; for it had a monstrous supply for all that time of water, the freshest and most limpid; nor did the crew eat biscuit, but excellent white bread, baked every day, the corn being ground by a multitude of handmills, and an oven so capacious, that it baked two thousand large loaves at a time. The ship was sheathed with six several sheathings of metal, two of which were underwater, were lead with bronze screws (which do not consume the lead like iron screws), and with such consummate art was it built that it could never sink, no human power could submerge it. Magnificent rooms, an armoury for five hundred men; but of the quantity of cannon of every kind, no need to say anything, save that fifty of them were of extraordinary dimensions; but what crowned all is that the enormous vessel was of incomparable swiftness and agility, and that its sails were astonishingly manageable; that it required Little toil to reef or veer, and perform all nautical evolutions; not to speak of fighting people, but the mere mariners amounted to three hundred; as likewise two galleys of fifteen benches each, one galley lying in tow off the stern, and the other galley drawn aboard; not to mention various boats of divers sizes, also drawn aboard; and truly of such strength her sides, that though she had often been in action, and perforated by many cannon balls, not one of them ever went directly through her, or even passed her deadworks.
The Moslems were soon to find out that, with such a ‘battleship’ as the core of the Order’s fleet and with the lean galleys streaking down on their shipping lines, the sea along the Barbary coast—for so long exclusively their preserve—was to become a dangerous one into which to venture. Malta, situated at the crossroads of the Mediterranean, deserved the Homeric epithet ‘the navel of the sea’. The Knights of St John were soon to find that their new island home, although it could never replace Rhodes in their hearts, was to be the ideal base for their eternal warfare against the enemies of the Cross.
Chapter 18
KNIGHTS AND CORSAIRS
For the first thirty years that the Knights were in Malta they inevitably found themselves in constant conflict with the corsairs of the Barbary coast, that whole area ranging from modern Libya, to Algiers and the strait of Gibraltar. The main founders of these groups of states, or semi-states, were two remarkable brothers, Kheir-ed-Din and Aruj, ‘Barbarossa’ (or ‘Red Beard’ as they were known to the Christians). Although ardent Moslems, both brothers were the sons of a Christian Greek woman married to a Janissary who had been settled on the island of Lesbos by the Sultan as a reward for his service in its capture. It is unlikely that either of the brothers had any Turkish blood in their veins.
Operating principally out of Tunis they had made themselves the terror of the central Mediterranean shipping routes, and had often come into conflict with the ships and men of the Spanish monarch. The elder brother Aruj died quite early in 1518 in an action against the Spaniards in the neighbourhood of Oran. He was immediately succeeded as leader of the North African Moslems by his brother Kheir-ed-Din (Protector of the Faith), who was to prove himself as able politically as he was as a commander at sea or ashore. Kheir-ed-Din, to whom the sobriquet of ‘Barbarossa’ was to be exclusively applied by Europeans, was an enemy of all Christians—and a worthy enemy at that.
So famous had Barbarossa become as a naval leader
that he was summoned to Constantinople by the Sultan shortly after his brother’s death, and was appointed High Admiral of the Turkish fleet by Suleiman himself. It was he who set in train the prodigious ship-building expansion of the Ottomans and he who, by introducing into the ranks of the Sultan’s sea-captains a number of men of his own calibre, raised it to the point when it was, to all intents and purposes, the most efficient navy in the whole Mediterranean. Barbarossa soon secured
Tunis and Its surrounding area for the Sultan, and it was against this former pirate that the forces of the Spanish emperor were constantly engaged in warfare over the next decades.
Some idea of the conditions in the Mediterranean during the years when Barbarossa was supreme in North Africa, and the Knights were busy establishing themselves in Malta, can be gained from the account of Abbot Diego de Haedo in his History of Algiers (1612). Although written at a much later date, it was based on the Abbot’s own experience of Algiers, and of his acquaintance with a number of Moslems who had known Kheir-ed-Din Barbarossa when they were young. The Mediterranean, it becomes immediately clear, had become a completely lawless sea, where no Christian ship or coastal town was safe-the Sea of the Corsairs. Over the centuries to come, the Order of St John was to be constantly engaged in sweeping the sea-lanes and in doing their best to eradicate the menace of these pirates.
The Shield and The Sword Page 14