Heads flew in Malta’s desperate last stand against Turks
It was a matter of life or death on Malta from March 1565, when word arrived that ageing sultan Suleyman the Magnificent intended a final assault on the Knights of St John.
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It was a matter of life or death on Malta from March, 1565, when word arrived that ageing Ottoman sultan Suleyman the Magnificent intended a final assault on the Knights of St John.
Enmity between Suleyman and the remnant brigade of medieval Christian crusaders had festered since Ottoman raids forced the knights off the island of Rhodes in 1522. Cardinal L’Isle Adam resettled his knights on Malta, in the central Mediterranean. His successor, grand master John de la Valette, fortified the island’s northern harbour as knights mounted random attacks on Ottoman ships plying between Turkey and Africa.
Angered the knights held many Ottoman hostages and supported Spanish raids on Moroccan harbours, Suleyman organised the assault that could also deliver a strategic base for Turkish attacks to capture Calabria.
La Valette, like Suleyman, was born in 1494. As the Ottoman fleet reached Malta on May 18, 1565, at age 71 La Valette was described as tall, robust and well built, with a dignified manner of “authority as befits a grand master”.
La Valette had overseen fortifications at St Angelo castle fort, on the right bank of Birgu town harbour, and started St Elmo fort, about 1km away on the extremity of Mt Sceberras peninsular, since the knights arrived in 1530. The knights had fended off an Ottoman attack in 1551.
At dawn on May 18, 1565, watchmen on St Angelo and St Elmo spotted the Ottoman fleet almost 50km offshore. Two guns were fired to warn the islanders, who rushed into Birgu with their children and cattle, while La Valette immediately dispatched appeals for reinforcements to Spanish officials on nearby Sicily.
As Turkish ships headed for a harbour 8km from Birgu, La Valette sent more than 100 knights with 900 cavalry to ward them off. When the Turks turned south, knights and Maltese fighters chased them along the shore on foot and horseback.
The Ottomans came ashore at Marsaxlokk, about 8km southeast of Birgu by land, on Sunday, May 20. With troops under veteran general Mustafa Pasha and galleys under admiral-in-chief Piali Pasha, the next day “more than 40,000 Turks” landed artillery and ammunition and set up camp, unfurling flags and noisily playing bugles, trumpets and drums.
La Valette ordered his forces to beat drums and unfurl flags before sending 1000 knights and soldiers into battle, holding another 1000 in reserve. After a five-hour battle, La Valette’s knights counted more than 100 Turkish bodies.
“The heads of many Turks were brought back into Birgu, as well as one standard,” recalled soldier Francesco Balbi in The Siege Of Malta, 1565. The knights counted 10 casualties. Three days later the Turks assaulted St Elmo fort, where knights and Maltese soldiers pelted them with rocks, boiling oil, fire hoops and musket balls. Turkish reinforcements arrived when veteran warrior Turgut Reis, then 80 years old, sailed another 45 ships up the Maltese coast.
St Elmo fell on June 23, at a cost of 10,000 Turkish soldiers. Almost every man in the garrison perished as the invaders slaughtered and beheaded any surviving knights, tied their bodies on to wooden crosses, then pushed the crosses into the harbour. A Christian sentry patrolling the Grand Harbour spotted a cross drifting in the water and raised the alarm.
Infuriated by the grotesque fate of his knights, many of them personal friends, La Valette ordered the beheading of captured Turks held in Fort St Angelo dungeons. He had the heads of his Turkish captives fired from cannons into Ottoman lines.
La Valette’s army of less than 9000 men held their positions against Ottoman attacks until reinforcements finally arrived from Naples. The Turks, exhausted with the obstinate defence of the knights and defiant Maltese natives, departed as they saw advancing Neapolitan ships. The siege of Malta ended on September 8, 1565, observed since as Malta’s National Day, a victory celebrated across Christian kingdoms as the turning point to stop Muslim advances into southern Europe.
Originally published as Heads flew in Malta’s desperate last stand against Turks
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