The Shield and The Sword

by Ernle Bradford

  The great mistake of the Turkish High Command which became increasingly apparent during the course of the siege, was that they failed to concentrate first of all on the old and ill-fortified city of Mdina. This was weakly garrisoned and, indeed, was mostly used by the Knights as a post for their cavalry, from which they sallied out to cut off Turkish foraging parties. Had the Turks concentrated upon Mdina they would have cut off the main positions in Grand Harbour from any contact with the north—and the north meant communications with Sicily. As it was, throughout the course of the siege, La Valette managed to get messengers past Mdina and up to Gozo, whence they proceeded in small open boats to the harbour of Syracuse, only seventy miles away. This constant contact with their friends, although for a long time it elicited little more than one small relief force, served nevertheless as an immense source of morale. Unlike Rhodes, where Europe and their friends had seemed a world away, the Knights were always conscious that potential help was only a few sailing hours distant. Furthermore, there were natural springs in the area of Mdina and the land around the citadel was among the most fertile in Malta—two things which the attackers could well have made use of.

  The weight of the first Turkish attack fell upon the Post of Castile, on the landward end of Birgu. Because of its exposed position it had been designed as one of the strongest points in all the defences. The reason that Mustapha Pasha decided to make his first probe at this point was due entirely to the bravery of a Knight who had been captured during one of the early clashes. He was Adrien de la Rivière, of the French Langue, who, when put to torture, cried out that if Mustapha was seeking for a quick victory he should attack Castile first, since it was the weakest point in the defences. After the abysmal failure of this first attack, in which many hundreds of his best Turkish troops were lost, it was patently clear to Mustapha that Rivière had been lying. He was taken from confinement and beaten to death. The attack on Castile was called off and the Turks withdrew to their tents while their commanders debated how best to prosecute the siege.

  Since the two low-lying headlands of Birgu and Senglea could both be commanded from the higher land that lay just to the south of them, while Birgu itself could also have been brought under fire from the adjacent peninsula to the east (where the hill of Santa Margherita dominated the whole of the area), it would have been logical to concentrate all the army’s firepower and all its weight of men upon these two areas. After all, it was here that the Knights had their main positions, and here only that they could finally be defeated. The reason why the Turks did not adopt this plan of action—quite the most sensible once they had failed to adopt the best of all, the capture of Mdina and the occupation of all the island to the north—was a marked divergence of views, and indeed an open hostility, between the two principal commanders, Mustapha Pasha of the army and Piali Pasha of the fleet.

  Mustapha was determined that Malta should be seen as his own personal triumph, a vindication of his abilities as army commander, and a personal revenge for all those years ago when he failed at Rhodes and incurred the Sultan’s displeasure. Piali on the other hand, a younger man, and entrusted by the Sultan with the pride of his whole empire, the greatest fleet that had ever sailed out of the Golden Horn, was determined that it should be berthed in a harbour where he felt confident that it could never come to harm. Since Grand Harbour itself, dominated by the guns of Fort St Elmo and of St Angelo, was clearly impossible he had decided that Marsamuscetto to the north of Sciberras peninsula was the place where the fleet must lie during the course of the campaign. His motives were sensible, but his reasoning was unsound. Having no knowledge of the weather conditions obtaining in the central Mediterranean during the summer months he looked always for weather conditions similar to those that might be expected in the Aegean. Had he but known, it was extremely unlikely that anything stronger than moderate winds from north or north-west would blow until September, he would have been content to let his fleet rest where it was. But—to the great good fortune of the Knights and of the Maltese—he insisted that the Sultan’s fleet must be berthed in Marsamuscetto. This meant that first of all Fort St Elmo must be captured.

  The Turkish base camp was now established in the Marsa area at the very end of Grand Harbour, where there was a supply of fresh water (which had already been contaminated on La Valette’s orders). The Marsa, being about equidistant between the townships of Senglea and Birgu to the south, and Fort St Elmo at the head of Sciberras, seemed the most sensible place from which to operate against divided objectives. From the slopes hard by the Marsa the whole of Grand Harbour could be kept under surveillance. Mustapha Pasha now sent forward his engineers to bring him back an ‘on the spot’ report as to the situation and defences of St Elmo. He was heartened by what he heard. ‘It is a star fort,’ he was told, ‘and there are four main salients. The front which we shall have to storm is broken into a bastioned form. The cavalier which rises to seaward is separated from the fort by a ditch. There is also a small ravelin. Both of these outworks are connected to the main fort, the one by a drawbridge, and the other by a fixed bridge.’ It was a simple and old-fashioned type of fort similar to many which the Sultan’s troops had captured in other parts of Europe.

  Preparations were immediately made for the transport of the major part of the artillery up the long stony peninsula, so that they could be sited on the crest of Sciberras (where the city of Valetta now stands). The greatest difficulty that beset the Turks during this phase of the operation was digging trenches for the protection of their troops and sites for their guns. There was hardly any earth on the peninsula’s spine and a steady train of men moved like ants from the Marsa bringing with them earth and fascines to construct protective barriers for the attackers. This diversion of the main part of the Turkish forces for the attack on Fort St Elmo gave La Valette time to make additional improvements to the defences, to carry on with the preparation of the Greek fire bombs, and the tightening up of every security aspect of the two fortified townships. He must have known that St Elmo could not possibly hold out for very long against the massive firepower of the Turkish gunners and the weight of their army. But the Turkish High Command, by turning to the attack of isolated St Elmo, had given all the other defenders of the island a more than useful breathing space. An additional high rampart was now built on top of the cavalier of Fort St Angelo so that two extra heavy cannon could be mounted there to command the Turkish positions on the top of Mount Sciberras. Night and day the slaves, soldiers, and Maltese citizens toiled at reinforcing the weaker places in the ramparts, while out of sight in the underground cellars the powder mills worked ceaselessly, and the cannon balls were hauled up and sited around their gun positions. St Elmo was the key to Malta. The longer it could hold out the more chance there was of the island and the garrison surviving.

  It was now the end of May and the summer heats were beginning. The thunder of the guns as they relentlessly bombarded that small star fort, beyond which glittered the Mediterranean sea, never stopped. All night long the flicker of flares ascending and descending the slopes from the Marsa showed where the ammunition parties kept up their continuous supply, and where the diggers of trenches and the sappers and miners prepared for the gradual encirclement of the fort and for the demolition of its walls. The Turkish gunners operated with a mathematical accuracy, interspersing balls of iron, marble and stone, and concentrating on one point or salient at a time. The indiscriminate gunfire of earlier days had been replaced by precision and accuracy.

  It was hardly surprising that by the end of May parts of St Elmo’s landward walls were beginning to crumble. It was at this moment that La Valette received one night in his Council Chamber in St Angelo a most surprising and unwelcome delegation. A number of the Knights from St Elmo had slipped across to tell him that the position was untenable. La Valette remembered Rhodes. He must have felt (as have so many both before him and since) that the younger generation was not worthy of its fathers. Under his icy scorn the mood of dissent began t
o turn to one of shame. When he said that they need not go back to St Elmo but that he and a picked band would personally relieve them, they begged to be allowed to return to their post. After they had gone the Grand Master told the Council that he knew perfectly well that the fort was doomed, but that the longer it held out so much the longer was there hope for the Order in Malta. In order to keep the battered and depleted garrison up to a working strength he had fresh troops ferried across every night in small boats, which also took out the wounded and brought them back to the Hospital in Birgu. Had it not been for this regular nightly blood-transfusion St Elmo would have fallen long before it did.

  Smoking under the hot midday sun or ringed with fire at night, St Elmo looked like a volcano rising out of the parched limestone rock. It seemed incredible that so small a fort manned by so few defenders could hold out for so long. Its end was signalled by the arrival of the great Dragut, master of Tripoli, who brought with him a further squadron of ships and a number of picked fighting men. Like all professionals he believed in quality rather than quantity. Dragut’s appearance upon the scene changed the entire Turkish course of action. For one thing both Mustapha Pasha and Piali had been instructed by the Sultan to heed Dragut’s advice in all things. He was, in fact, though never so nominated, overall commander. He had another advantage over Mustapha and Piali, he already knew Malta well. He knew the central Mediterranean like the back of his hand, and he had an unweaning contempt for ‘staff college’ soldiers who directed operations from the sherbet and shade of silk-lined tents. He made no secret of his feelings about the conduct of the whole campaign to date. They should have secured the north of the island first, and then concentrated on the two main fortified places—Birgu and Senglea. They should have ignored St Elmo altogether. However, since they had now committed themselves to this totally unnecessary siege it would be bad for morale to withdraw. He himself immediately took charge of the whole operation, making his quarters among the soldiers and gunners on Mount Sciberras, and directing the mounting of further batteries on the points north and south of St Elmo. The fort was soon under attack on three sides at the same time.

  The effect of Dragut’s arrival was electric. Within a matter of days it was plain that the fort must soon fall. Early in June the ravelin and the counterscarp were in Turkish hands, and already the Janissaries had probed the main defences and, despite heavy losses, had established that the walls would soon be sufficiently breached for a general assault. Nevertheless the heroism of the defenders and the strength of the fort were still sufficient to preserve intact for a further three weeks a position which even Dragut, with all his expertise, had presumed doomed within a matter of days. Its end was hastened not only by Dragut’s resiting of the batteries that were enfilading it but also because it was he who discerned that it was the nightly transfusion of troops from St Angelo that was enabling St Elmo to hold out. On Dragut’s orders Turkish patrol boats now thronged the waters of Grand Harbour by night, and the supply of fresh men and materials was cut off at source.

  On June 21st, the Knights of St John celebrated the Feast of Corpus Christi as they had always done, a solemn procession through the streets of Birgu to the Conventual Church. Dressed in their formal robes, ‘The Grand Master and all available Knights…participated with lay and ecclesiastical dignitaries in escorting the Holy Host through streets lined by a devout population… On their return procession they all knelt and implored the Lord of Mercies not to allow their brothers in St Elmo to perish utterly by the merciless sword of the Infidel’

  The following day the Turks launched a mass assault against the fort, the Iayalars preceding the Janissaries, and the whole preceded by so heavy a bombardment that the whole island seemed to shake. St Elmo itself disappeared under a swirling cloud of dust and smoke. Yet still, to the astonishment of the watchers in St Angelo and St Michael’s as much as to that of’ the Turks, the fort emerged once more after hours of bombardment and assault with the Cross of St John still flying above the crumbling ruins. So moved was La Valette at the astonishing endurance of the besieged that he endeavoured even at this last hour, and even though he knew it was hopeless, to send a last relief across under cover of darkness. But the Turks now held the waters of Grand Harbour firmly in their grasp and the boats despatched from St Angelo were reluctantly compelled to turn back. St Elmo was now abandoned to its fate.

  On June 23rd, in the small hours of dawn, the Turkish fleet closed in around the base of the peninsula, while the first of their ships began to make their way into the harbour of Marsamuscetto—that harbour for the sake of which the whole of the Turkish army had been diverted to St Elmo for the length of a month. At a prearranged signal the ships opened up with their bowchasers on the fort, at the same moment as the main batteries, which had been daily drawing nearer and nearer to the walls, commenced the last and fatal cannonade. Then, in the awesome silence that followed this man-made thunderstorm, the voices of the Imams could be heard, calling upon the Faithful to conquer or die for Islam. By now there were no more than 100 defenders left in the fort, nearly all of them wounded, and some too weak to stand. Two of these crippled Knights, De Guaras and Miranda, had themselves carried in chairs into the breach so that they could confront the enemy to the last. Wave after wave of the finest troops in the Sultan’s army now hurled themselves against the ‘small star fort which it should not take the army more than a few days to capture’. It fell of course at last. But to the astonishment of Mustapha Pasha even now St Elmo took an hour to die.

  When all was over, when one of the last of the Knights had lit the signal beacon that told La Valette that the Turk was within the walls, Mustapha and his staff, their turbans bright with gems and the hilts of their jewel-encrusted scimitars shining in the early sunlight, crossed the blood-soaked walls to view their conquest. A few of the Knights and men-at-arms were still alive—despite Mustapha’s orders to the contrary—and were being bound prisoners by corsairs from the Barbary coast who were more eager for ransom than for valueless bodies. St Elmo had cost the lives of thousands, including many of the army’s leaders, the master gunner, the Aga of the Janissaries, and even Dragut himself. The latter had been struck on the head by a splinter of rock thrown up by a cannon shot from St Angelo. He is said to have survived until this dramatic moment when, the news of the fall of St Elmo being brought to him, ‘he raised his eyes to heaven as if in thankfulness and immediately expired’.

  For all these losses, what had the army of the Grande Turke gained? A ruined fort, and the access to the long sheltering arm of Marsamuscetto, into which Piali’s ships were already gliding. Even at that moment of victory it seems to have occurred to Mustapha Pasha that their whole strategy had been wrong, and that St Elmo had been bought too dear. He looked across the waters of Grand Harbour at the daunting bulk of Fort St Angelo, whose guns were still thundering into the ranks of his advancing troops. ‘Allah!’ he is reported to have cried as he gazed round the limited perimeter of St Elmo. ‘If so small a son has cost so dear, what price shall we have to pay for so large a father?

  Chapter 21

  THE TERRITORY OF THE KNIGHTS

  Although it was not obvious at the time, either to besiegers or besieged, St Elmo had proved the key point in the defence, During the thirty-one days that the small fortress had held out, the Turks had incurred immense losses, their morale had suffered, and it was now high summer—the last days of June when the island of Malta becomes brazen with heat. Now the whole army had to transfer from the headland of Sciberras right round Grand Harbour to lay siege to the two principal defence points, each of them immeasurably larger than St Elmo since they were not only fortresses but townships. Before he left, as a gesture to the Knights in St Angelo of his unspeakable contempt for the Christian Faith, and as an indication of what kind of treatment they too might expect to incur at his hands, Mustapha had the bodies of the Knights decapitated. They were then nailed to improvised wooden crosses in mockery of the crucifixion, and were launched into Gra
nd Harbour just opposite St Angelo.

  Next day, impelled by the gentle current that washes the southern shores of the harbour when the midsummer northerlies are blowing, the bodies of four of the Knights were washed up on the limestone shelf at the foot of St Angelo. Two of them were recognised by their own brothers who were serving in the fort, but the other two remained unidentified. La Valette read Mustapha Pasha’s meaning clearly enough. This was a guerre à l’outrance, a war with no quarter given. In that case he would make it quite clear that he had understood the message—and let them receive his in return. He ordered the execution of all the Turkish prisoners in the dungeons of St Angelo and had their heads placed in the two large cannon on the top of the cavalier and fired into the Turkish lines across the harbour. ‘From this day on,’ we also read in the account of an eyewitness, ‘they hanged one Turkish prisoner every morning from the ramparts of Mdina.’ All this was a far call from Rhodes forty-three years before, and from the chivalrous exchanges that had taken place between L’Isle Adam and the young Suleiman. The atmosphere had hardened over the years and, while Mustapha was warning the defenders that they might expect no quarter, La Valette by his action was also saying to them, ‘You see, there can be no turning back. We either survive in Malta or we all perish to a man!’

  While the Turkish army, hampered by the unwieldy gun carriages and the weight of shot, ammunition, and supplies which they had to transport round the harbour over difficult terrain (with nothing but cart-track roads), was gradually moving into position opposite Senglea and Birgu, La Valette received some more than welcome news. Unknown to him, on the very day that St Elmo fell a small relief force had made its way down from Sicily and had arrived off Gozo. There were not more than 1,000 of them all told, but at this stage in the siege the arrival of any reinforcements was an immense boost to morale. Forty-two were Knights, there were also a number of gentlemen volunteers (two of them from England), fifty-six trained gunners, and about 600 Spanish troops. On the night of June 29th, the leader of the force, Chevalier de Robles, a member of the Order and a distinguished soldier, managed to bring his troops down through the enemy-occupied countryside and reached the head of the creek where the fishing village of Kalkara now stands, opposite the fortifications of Birgu. The safe passage of the relief force was aided by the fact that it was a damp and misty night—rare in late June—and, by dint of taking small bypaths and tracks known only to the Maltese peasants who guided them, not a man was lost and the relief force was soon within the walls. Next morning the Knights did nothing to conceal their presence, and the triumphal sound of church bells, the laughter and the shouting from the ramparts, told the Turks that the besieged had received reinforcements.