The Siege of Malta: Knights Hospitaller vs The Ottomans

Summary

Summary of "The Siege of Malta: Knights Hospitaller vs The Ottomans"

Episode Release Date: February 12, 2025
Podcast: Dan Snow's History Hit
Host: History Hit
Guest: Marcus Bull, Distinguished Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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1. Introduction

In this compelling episode of Dan Snow's History Hit, host Dan Snow delves into one of history's most dramatic and pivotal confrontations: the Great Siege of Malta in 1565. Joined by esteemed historian Marcus Bull, the episode unpacks the complexities, strategies, and lasting impacts of this monumental clash between the Knights Hospitaller and the Ottoman Empire.

2. Historical Context: Malta and the Order of St. John

Marcus Bull sets the stage by elucidating the dual nature of the Order of St. John. Originating in Jerusalem nearly five centuries prior, the Order exemplified a unique blend of medical humanitarianism and martial prowess. As Bull explains:

"They were both a hospital order that cared for the sick and for pilgrims, and a military order modeled on the Order of the Temple, the Templars" (06:31).

By the mid-16th century, the Order had been granted Malta and its surrounding islands by Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor. This relocation was part of the Counter-Reformation efforts to revitalize the Order amidst declining influence in Northern Europe due to the Reformation. Malta became the new bastion for the Knights, serving both as a refuge and a strategic military outpost.

3. The Ottoman Empire under Suleiman

Under Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Empire had reached its zenith, controlling vast territories across Southeast Europe and the Mediterranean. Bull highlights that:

"The Great Siege's interpretation as a step toward the conquest of all Western Europe is now being questioned" (04:38).

Contrary to prevailing narratives, Bull argues that the Ottoman campaign against Malta was less about territorial expansion and more a culmination of long-standing hostilities toward the Order of St. John. The Ottomans, recognizing the logistical challenges of maintaining Malta, aimed to eliminate a persistent adversary rather than initiate a broader conquest of Europe.

4. Prelude to the Siege

The tension leading up to the siege was aggravated by the Knights' corsair activities—state-sanctioned piracy targeting Ottoman supply lines and disrupting pilgrimages to Islamic holy sites. This aggressive stance threatened both the Ottoman economy and its religious prestige, prompting Suleiman to mount a decisive campaign against Malta as retribution.

5. The Siege of Malta: Key Events

a. Defensive Preparations

Malta's defenses comprised four key positions surrounding the Grand Harbour: St. Elmo, Biagu, Senglia, and the inland fortress at Dina. These fortifications, though hastily constructed in the preceding decades, formed a formidable barrier against the besieging forces.

b. Ottoman Assault on St. Elmo

St. Elmo, positioned at the tip of the peninsula, became the first major target. Under relentless bombardment, it valiantly held out for five weeks, allowing the defenders crucial time to reinforce other positions. Marcus Bull emphasizes the significance of this stand:

"Every day that St Elmo survived was buying more time for the defenders" (27:03).

The eventual fall of St. Elmo marked a turning point, with Ottomans suffering heavy casualties among their elite Janissary troops.

c. Artillery and Siege Tactics

The Ottomans employed approximately 70 cannons, leveraging their superior artillery to break down the Maltese defenses. Bull notes:

"The Ottoman artillery arrayed against the defenses was an affirmation of their sophisticated military engineering" (30:46).

However, Malta's defensive structures effectively funneled Ottoman assaults into confined killing zones, neutralizing their numerical advantage.

d. Atrocities and Religious Warfare

The siege was marred by brutal acts on both sides. Upon St. Elmo's fall, Ottoman forces desecrated the bodies of fallen knights, prompting retaliatory beheadings by the defenders. Marcus Bull remarks on the heightened religious fervor:

"After St. Elmo, holy war rhetoric goes up a notch and becomes much more important" (29:26).

This vicious cycle underscored the siege's characterization as a clash of faiths.

e. Attrition and Defense Strategies

Despite being outnumbered, the defenders adeptly managed Ottoman assaults by isolating and decimating smaller waves of attackers. Bull explains:

"The Christians were able to manage the killing zones, dealing with attackers bit by bit" (35:28).

This attritional approach minimized casualties and sustained the defenders' resolve.

6. The Siege's Conclusion

The siege culminated with the arrival of the Gran Socorso, a relief force comprising approximately 8,000 Habsburg and allied troops. This reinvigorated the Maltese defense and compelled the Ottomans to retreat. Bull posits that:

"Even before the Gran Socorso arrived, the Ottomans were beginning to disengage" (41:10).

The combination of dwindling Ottoman resources, persistent assaults, and strategic reinforcements led to the siege's end in September 1565.

7. Aftermath and Significance

While the Great Siege of Malta may not have drastically altered the strategic balance, its symbolic resonance was profound. Marcus Bull articulates:

"Its importance is symbolic rather than strategic... It became twinned with the Battle of Lepanto, demonstrating that Western Europe could meet the Ottomans on equal terms" (43:33).

The victory solidified Malta's role as the "Bulwark of Christianity," fostering a narrative of resistance that resonated throughout Europe. Furthermore, the siege marked a transitional period in Mediterranean geopolitics, setting the stage for the eventual decline of Ottoman naval dominance and the rise of European maritime powers.

8. Conclusion

Marcus Bull's in-depth analysis offers a nuanced perspective on the Great Siege of Malta, challenging traditional interpretations and highlighting its multifaceted impact. The episode underscores the siege's role as a symbolic fortress defending European identity and the intricate interplay of military strategy, religious fervor, and geopolitical shifts that defined this historic confrontation.

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Recommended Reading:
The Great Siege of Malta by Marcus Bull – An insightful exploration of the siege's intricacies and its place in history.

Transcript

[Dan Snow]

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[Marcus Bull]

Picture a late medieval or early modern siege. Picture those towering walls damaged by early cannon. They're topped with soldiers, among them, guns loaded with cannonballs, but also chain shot, which when fired out, spins like a scythe at the besieging forces as they advance. Picture that attack coming columns of infantrymen, many holding large shields above their head to protect them from the small arms on the walls above. Not just the small arms, the boiling water, the feces that pelted down at them. I'm sure you can imagine the unwieldy but terrifying siege towers, many stories high, being pushed by gangs of men, roared on by burly sergeants, drawbridges ready to clatter down on the battlements on the top level, sharpshooters providing covering fire. Some had primitive firearms, others arrows, rocks from slings throwing spears to combat the threat of fire. Those siege towers were clad in soaking wet leather hides, with more water available on hand in casks in the tower to keep them nice and damp. It's a siege which pits two religions, ancient foes, against each other, where prisoners are murdered, their mutilated bodies floated across waterways on crosses, a taunt about their Christian faith. Muslim prisoners are beheaded in turn, their severed heads fired back at their comrades from the barrels of cannon. It's not just a siege, but an all in struggle for a mighty fortress that seemed at the time to hold the key to the strategic balance of this entire region. A milestone in a centuries long zero sum struggle between sworn religious foes. The siege, as I've described it, sounds like some kind of Platonic ideal form of siege made for the big screen, an archetype just waiting to be used by filmmakers and novelists. And yet this is a siege that did actually happen. The great siege of Malta in 1565.

[Dan Snow]

Now, for centuries, it was regarded as.

[Marcus Bull]

A definitive moment, a decisive moment in the Ottoman Turkish Muslim attempt to conquer Europe and a moment of Christian resistance to that conquest. But as you'll hear in this podcast, that interpretation is now being questioned by historians, although it was believed by many at the time and since, including, interestingly, by the English queen Elizabeth Tudor. Elizabeth I, who wrote about it as it was happening. She wrote, if the Turks should prevail against the Isle of Malta, it is uncertain what further peril might follow to the rest of Christendom. Many people believed it was a battle for the future of Europe. And even if that interpretation is now being questioned, what is not in doubt is the ferocity, the scale and intensity of the fighting that took place on that little island during that terrible summer. It is simply one of the most astonishing sieges in history, one that has come to define what we think of in our mind's eye when we hear the word siege. To tell me all about it, I've.

[Dan Snow]

Got Marcus Bull on the podcast.

[Marcus Bull]

He is Distinguished professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He's just written the Great Siege of Malta and he's going to tell us why it happened, what happened, and whether truly it mattered. Enjoy. T minus 10.

Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the King. No black white unity till there is first some black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off and the shuttle has cleared the tower.

[Dan Snow]

Marcus, great to have you on the podcast.

[Marcus Bull]

Thank you.

[Dan Snow]

Just try and paint a picture for the audience of how much of A threat or a perceived threat? The Ottoman advance through the Eastern Mediterranean.

[Marcus Bull]

Was, I think the operative word there is perceived, because there was a disconnect between the realistic threat posed by the Ottomans to Western Europe and what Western European observers chose to believe, or at least the rhetoric that they ramped up when trying to make a case. The reality was that the Ottoman Empire was, yes, a political organization in which military expansion was built into its DNA, but it also, at the time of the Great siege in the 1560s, was slowing down, or at least being more selective about the targets it was identifying. And I think Western European Christian observers tended to hark back to a more aggressively expansive stage in Ottoman military history, 20, 30, 40 years before the fact, and assume that there was something constant, permanent about the way that the Ottomans live for relentless expansion. Therefore, the rhetoric surrounding the Great Siege is sometimes out of kilter with the reality. Which isn't to say that if you're on the ground in Malta in the middle of 1565, you didn't feel yourself in the middle of enormous history under grave threat. But the way in which the Order of Malta itself and its Spanish overlords tried to build up support to aid in the defense of Malta was to suggest that Malta was the first step in a grand Ottoman strategy which would lead them to the conquest of Sicily. They would work their way up through Italy and ultimately all of Western Europe was at stake. I don't think that's even remotely feasible and people knew it, that the Ottomans would have been hard pressed even to hold on to Malta had they won it, let alone contemplate Sicily and Italy. I think they were attacking Malta as a bit of unfinished business. Their Sultan Suleiman was growing old. Malta and the Knights of St. John on it had been a thorn in his side for years. And I think this was a last bit of let's deal with this persistent problem once and for all. They failed. And the fact that they never really tried to come back to Malta, even though they could have perhaps taken it a year later because the defences were ruinous, suggests that ultimately this wasn't really a major strategic goal. It was more a kind of vendetta. It was a big feud against the Order of St. John. That was largely what drove them.

[Dan Snow]

Let's talk about the Order of St. John. Who were they?

[Marcus Bull]

Well, at the time of the siege, they'd already been around for nearly 500 years. They were a venerable order of the Catholic Church with origins in Jerusalem. They had developed an interesting and unusual two facing personality. They were both A hospital order that cared for the sick and for pilgrims. And they were a military order modeled on the Order of the Temple, the Templars. And they were able to hold those two seemingly contradictory roles in a kind of creative tension. They were a socially top heavy order. The great majority of their membership at the time of the siege there would have been about 1400 knights around Europe were the sons of high status aristocratic families, predominantly in southern Europe. Under them were auxiliary personnel, sergeants and priests. But demographically and in terms of social importance, this was a very aristocratic, blue blooded, elitist order. There were some nuns, but it was a predominantly a male order that prided itself on a tradition of resolute holy war on the frontiers between Christianity and Islam, which had inherited from its earlier history, first on the mainland of Palestine in Syria, then on the island of Rhodes, from which it had been ejected 45 years before the siege. And in a sense had that mandate rebooted just before the siege by the great reforming Council of Trent, the Catholic Church's attempt to react to the Reformation. And one small part of Trent's pronouncements had been to vindicate, to re, legitimize the vocation and existence of the Order of St. John. So it was trying to rediscover itself. It had taken a very big hit in the Reformation because much of northern Europe, its properties and membership in much of Germany, in all of England and Scotland, had disappeared. It had been thrown back onto a romance speaking southern European core. It had been given the islands of the Maltese archipelago when it had been evicted from Rhodes. It wasn't yet really convinced that Malta would be its permanent home. But nonetheless, the siege presented it with an opportunity to rediscover itself, to vindicate its historic sense of mission and indeed the way in which it celebrated their victory as they saw it after the siege and appealed for funds around Europe, was built on this idea that the Order was back. It had discovered a kind of legitimacy and purpose which was in danger of ebbing away over the previous two or three generations.

[Dan Snow]

We're back in the business of holding back or driving back the forces of Islam. Okay, so. And they've been given Malta and the surrounding islands to run. I mean, they're. How would you describe it? A religious oligarchic state.

[Marcus Bull]

Yeah, the oligarchic is exactly the word. Like all ultimately medieval religious orders, it had an incredibly elaborate constitution and hierarchy, but essentially it was an oligarchy of old men based in Malta, in which the grandmaster, a quasi autocratic figure, a monarch effectively surrounded by the Equivalent of a privy council, though there were sometimes rumbles of discontent from the ranks of the knights, sometimes serious. But by and large it was run as a autocracy or oligarchy. Perhaps in the interests of performing this mandate, it was ultimately answerable to the Pope. But on Malta, it was in a funny position because it had been given the Maltese Islands by Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, in his capacity as King of Spain. And therefore the order was to some extent beholden to the Spanish monarchy at the time of the siege. And the expectation was that it would be the Spanish king by then, Philip ii, if Malta were to be saved, who. Who would galvanize the resources to bring relief?

[Dan Snow]

So we've mentioned the Ottomans a little bit. Suleiman the Magnificent has been ruling over the Ottoman Empire. He's taken it to their maximum extent. He's marched to the gates of Vienna, he's conquered all sorts of territory in southeast Europe and islands and east to Mediterranean. Like Rose that you've mentioned, it's important for us to remember, I mean, they were extraordinary maritime power. One of the great strategists of all time, I always think, is Barbarossa, the famous Ottoman commander in the Mediterranean. And they've done things like link up with the French and they were dominant naval power in the Mediterranean, I suppose. But you mentioned that this is a sort of vendetta. Why particularly is this just a nest of very nasty anti Islamic folk who the Sultan wants to get rid of?

[Marcus Bull]

I think they could dress it up as holy war. That was always a gambit available to the Ottomans, to be gazes, to cast themselves as leading a holy war against infidels. But in reality, I think the siege was an exercise in clearinghouse. The Knights of St. John, or the Knights of Malta we can now call them, were, amongst other things, part of a culture of corsairing in the central and western Mediterranean, indeed the whole of the Mediterranean. Corsairs were, at least by their own lights, licensed, formally acceptable pirates. They were pirates who had been given facilities or gave themselves license to both catch a shipping or to raid coasts and take slaves. Slavery was one of the big stories of the 16th century Mediterranean and interdiction or capturing of ships was the other. And The Knights of St. John did it, as indeed many other coastal powers in the Mediterranean, along the North African coast, many Italian coastal cities and others. The Knights of St. John, though they were a quite small naval operation, punched above their weight. They knew the eastern Mediterranean very well from their time at Rhodes. Two things happened to the Ottoman Empire in the generation before Suleiman came to power. The most important was that Suleiman's father, Selim, had taken what is Syria, Palestine and crucially Egypt from the Mamluk regime, which was in decline. This was the game changer, perhaps the single most important fact in 16th century world history. And I would put the discovery of Americas underneath this because it gave the Ottoman Empire access to the wealth of Egypt in itself, but also the access to the wealth that came through Egypt, up the Red Sea, the spice trade from the Indian Ocean and beyond. This made the route between Alexandria and the port through which all this spice trade came and Istanbul a vital maritime link for the Ottoman world. Also, that same conquest which extended into parts of Arabia, gave the Ottomans control of the holy places of Islam, Mecca and Medina, and that gave them responsibility for supervision of the Hajj, that the pilgrimage to Mecca that devout Muslims are expected to take, and responsibility to protect pilgrims. In the early to mid-1560s, it looks like the Knights of St. John had pivoted from grandiose schemes of territorial expansion to a more realistic marshaling of their resources towards their corsairing naval activities. And they had recently captured both valuable Ottoman cargo vessels traveling between Alexandria and Istanbul. And they had severely disrupted the movement of pilgrims by sea on the way to the holy places. This therefore threatened the Ottoman regime both financially and also in terms of its ideology and prestige. So I think it was in their capacity as glorified pirates that the Order of St. John were attacked. This was ultimately the threat. It was a double whammy of threat of both money and image as far as the Ottoman regime was concerned.

[Dan Snow]

So this is an imperial policing action. It's not the first step on a great expedition to conquer the rest of the world.

[Marcus Bull]

No, it's actually a very realistic, hard headed impulse that Suleiman is aging. He had perhaps been too generous to the Order when he'd let them go from Rhodes. When he captured Rhodes from them on New Year's Day 1523, they had remained a thorn in his side. Why not have one last push to be rid of them? I'm not sure they would know what to do with Malta. They would have probably abandoned it. It would have been too costly in men and money to maintain. But they've had the satisfaction of ridding themselves of this pesky thorn in their flesh.

[Dan Snow]

He sends a big old fleet, doesn't he? It's a huge force to deal with these, the thorn in their flesh.

[Marcus Bull]

Well, it is a huge force as an amphibious force, but the fleet of 170 frontline galleys, perhaps another 50 or 60 smaller oared craft and cargo ships and others, delivers about 20 to 25,000 frontline troops, a large number, and certainly far more than the defenders had available to them, compared to the sorts of numbers that the Ottomans would have been able to throw against the Habsburgs of Austria in Central Europe or against their Iranian rivals in Anatolia. This is a quite small army, but as an amphibious force, it is enormous. And that is itself an indication that this wasn't just a gestural effort. Let's see if we can get lucky. Enormous amounts have been invested in it in terms of men and materiel. The trouble was that to get those 20, 25,000 frontline troops there, of which the majority were elite janissaries and sipahis, the two core that represented the frontline troops of the Ottoman military machine, that to get them there, you had to have a lot of people rowing the galleys. They could perform auxiliary roles, they could drag cannon around, they could build fortifications. But in a sense, the Ottomans were condemned to take a lot of non combatants to the island with them to use up precious food and water on what is a very small, barren, dry island. So, in a way, the clock was running from the moment they arrived off Malta in May 1565, because, yes, the numbers were impressive, but they were committing to a campaign on a small island with very few resources that they couldn't live off the land. They would have to bring basic supplies in from both North Africa and from the Eastern Mediterranean. So they were always vulnerable. This was a campaign on a tight clock. And the fact that they were able to prolong the campaign for four months is ultimately evidence of the Ottoman Empire's extraordinary command of logistics and organization, which was ultimately what gave them the advantage over their Western European rivals was that all early modern governments were dreadfully inefficient. Money would get lost in transit, supplies would sort of fritter away, people would desert. The question was how well one could do to at least mitigate the worst effects of that inbuilt inefficiency. And the Ottoman Empire definitely developed systems which reduced those inefficiencies to a much greater extent than their Western European rivals. So the net effect was that they could organize themselves to contemplate something like the siege of Malta, even though they were at the very limit of the operational range of their galleys in a summer campaign season, is evidence that they were perhaps the only people who could have done it. And the fact that they persisted for four months is again evidence of their powers of organization and persistence.

It is the Dance knows history. Talk about the Siege of Malta. More coming up. Well, there were more sieges, but more of this podcast coming up.

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[Dan Snow]

So they get a foothold on Malta Tell me about the defenses and how the campaign takes shape.

[Marcus Bull]

Well, there are four defensive positions on Malta and really the phrase the siege of Malta or the Great Siege of Malta evokes a classic siege type forces arrayed around one single walled position. It was a little bit more complicated than that. The Knights of St. John, various Spanish troops and Italian troops, they had either been given by the Habsburgs or had paid for. And importantly, a large number of Maltese militia and volunteers were tasked with defending four positions, and the score at the end of the campaign season would determine the ultimate result in the event. One of those four fell, a fortress called St Elmo. The other three held, though two came close to it. So ultimately that represented a victory for the defenders, insofar as a victory, if you are defending in a siege, is not to lose. Three of those four positions were clustered around the great harbor area of Malta, which visitors to Malta today would be very familiar with. If you're looking from the modern city of Valletta, which was then just a bare rock peninsula, you'd have St Elmo at the tip of that peninsula and then the twin peninsulas perpendicular to you, of Biagu and Senglia, pointing towards you. Those are the three grand harbor fortified positions. A fourth was in the interior of the the island, the ancient capital of Dina, which was threatened at times, but was basically not in the front line to the extent that grand harbor was. The point was that for the Ottomans, this was an amphibious campaign. They had to keep their navy and their grand forces as close together as possible. This is the first law of amphibious warfare. And therefore they had to concentrate on those defences which the older had, in most cases, rather hastily and inadequately erected in the 10 or 15 years before the great siege. In the event, they just about held, though it was a very, very close run thing. So it was a siege. It was a siege of four places at various times and with varying levels of intensity. One fell, three survived.

[Dan Snow]

So St Elmo falls.

[Marcus Bull]

Yes.

[Dan Snow]

What's the secret there? Is it Turkish bombardment? Is it the fact they were able just to smash the walls with cannon?

[Marcus Bull]

Yeah. So Delmar was the weakest point. Its value lay in guarding the Grand Harbour and its sister harbour on the other side of the peninsula, Marsamshet. If it fell, the Ottomans would be able to bring their fleet into Massam Shet and have the fleet available very close to where the action was on land. So it was important it clung on for about five weeks facing formidable bombardment. And the standard narrative of the siege is that every day that St Elmo survived. It was buying more time for the defenders in the other larger fortresses to improve their defenses, to organize themselves. And this is the way in which the Order and its grandmaster, Jean de Villette, approached it. It was a kind of sacrifice to buy time. Something like 19 or 20,000 cannon shots were fired at it. This is a tiny, weak fortress. The fact that it survived for several weeks was nothing short of miraculous in the long run. Perhaps the greatest significance of the fact that the Ottomans were held up for more than a month taking Centelmo was that a disproportionate number of their frontline troops, especially the Janissaries, were killed in that phase of the operation. Meaning that when they swung around to the other side of grand harbor and began the siege in phase two of the peninsulas of Biagu and Senglia, their frontline troops were depleted. And this may have made the difference in the long run. They just didn't have enough of the trained, hardened, experienced veterans to make the difference in the killing zone of the front line when they came face to face with the defenders.

[Dan Snow]

When St. Elmo falls, there are atrocities and prisoners are beheaded and all sorts of disgusting things are done. Is there a religious element? I mean, is this bloodier and more horrific than fighting going on between Christian powers in northern Central Europe at the time? For example, you know, Charles V and the King Francis are always at each other. But is there something different about this fighting?

[Marcus Bull]

I think there is. What happens particularly is when St. Elmo finally falls, the Ottomans very demonstratively, visibly desecrate the bodies of the leadership of the knights who had fallen there. And in doing so, they're deliberately raising the bar or trying to alter the mood music. They've been frustrated by St. Elmo. They now face the, on paper, more formidable task of reducing the remaining fortifications that stand in their way. And they need to galvanize their own men. And one of the ideological tricks of the Ottoman regime was to be able to ramp up the language of holy war, knowing that the other side would very happily respond in kind. And they do. Valette orders his cannon to fire the heads of beheaded Turkish prisoners back in a kind of crude tit for tat. And at that point, one senses that, yes, this was always a holy war. It would be impossible for a knight of the Order of the Catholic Church and the Ottoman Empire to come to blows without this being a heavily religious moment. But from that point, after St. Elmo, I think that holy war rhetoric goes up a notch and becomes much more important.

[Dan Snow]

So now they turn their Attention to these other two forts around the harbour. You talk in the book about this being one of the greatest artillery bombardment. Possibly. Is that point in history? I mean, is this important in the history of warfare just because of the use of artillery?

[Marcus Bull]

Yes. The ottomans brought about 70 cannon to prosecute the campaign. Virtually all of them are then brought to bear after St Elmo Falls on the defences of the two peninsulas. Artillery warfare had really taken off over the previous 40 or 50 years, perhaps earlier, perhaps in the early Italian wars involving the French as early as the 1490s. One of their great strengths as a military machine was that the extent of the empire as it had grown by Suleiman's time meant that it controlled regions that individually and collectively supplied it with the material of 16th century warfare very effectively, including tin for bronze, which was imported from England of all places. It had the wherewithal to develop sophisticated shipbuilding and gun making facilities. So the cannon arrayed against the defences around grand harbor were ultimately evidence of the Ottoman Empire's luck with the natural resources at its disposal, and which had also allowed it to grow into a formidable naval force. So, yes, it would be wrong to say that this was, I feel, like a revolutionary moment in the history of artillery warfare, but it was an affirmation that if even amphibious warfare could now be conducted with the full might of the Ottoman artillery Park raid, and yet.

[Dan Snow]

They got blown out of the Indian Ocean by Portuguese cannons and ships. I don't understand it. I don't understand it. It's so strange. Anyway, let's keep on Malta here. These artillery pieces are battering these walls. Are there kind of ferocious infantry battles going on here as well? People launch themselves into the breach.

[Marcus Bull]

The story of the siege is really punctuated by what the Christian sources called the great assaults. Wave after wave, often lasting 5, 6 hours, picking their way through the rubble field which their own artillery had created. The defenders didn't have that luxury and they would gradually tire and weaken. So even if the first wave would be sacrificed, the hope was that the Christian defenders would ultimately be overwhelmed by sheer persistence. Though the Christian sources often talk about the Ottomans throwing 2, 5, 10,000 people into a great assault, in reality it must have been done in smaller bursts. And that made the difference because you couldn't throw thousands of people across a rough rubble field, fighting their way up a slight incline where the walls had been, towards the improvised defences created by the defenders. You'd have to do it in small groups, or those groups would break up as they struggled their way up through the rubble so the defenders simply had to devise ways to channel these successive waves into small, compact killing zones where the disparity numbers would be neutralized and deal with them bit by bit. They couldn't defend themselves against thousands, but if they could channel a few dozen at a time into a space, they would deal with them, rest as well as they could, wait a few minutes, deal with the next wave, deal with that, deal with the next wave. And you see in all the Christian sources an obsession with the relative number of casualties day by day, like a running score. We only lost 70 today, they lost 250. And it becomes an attritional war in which they're keeping score. And they can do so even though the attackers outnumber the defenders about four or five to one, they can do so by exploiting the fact that the Ottomans ultimately could not make their enormous advantage in numbers. Tell where it mattered, which is in the killing zone on the edge of the fortified line. It didn't matter whether there were 10,000 soldiers half a mile away. The Christians were able just to manage those killing zones in a way, which meant that they survived, more or less.

You listen to Dan Snow's history. More on the siege of Malta after this.

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[Dan Snow]

Such an extraordinary example of the force multiplying nature of fixed defenses, of these kind of defensive structures and as you say, leading the attackers into these horrific narrow defiles and cutting them down. How close the Ottomans come to Victory.

[Marcus Bull]

I think perilously close. It's impossible to gauge because we don't know what would happen had this moment gone differently and so on. But I think the margins were incredibly fine. I think the best evidence of that is the attitude of Jean de Valette, the grandmaster leading the defense. Several times in the later stages of the siege, he positioned himself in command of a kind of flying squad which would rush to in the age of any particular point in the defenses that was under particular strain. And at several points he threw himself forward, exposing himself and his members of his high command around him. Now, after the fact, this was spun as evidence of his fortitude, of his leadership qualities. I think it was really acts of desperation or resignation. He didn't want to be taken alive and he was convinced that today was the day that it will collapse. He was sacrificing himself, but luckily he survived. Out of the story could be reworked as an example of his resilience and bravery. The fact that Valet, I think, was convinced more than once that the game was up is evidence that the margins were incredibly fine. The defenders were just very, very lucky. A number of things did make the difference. The story of 16th century siege warfare around the world, certainly around Europe, is punctuated by plague or other epidemic disease, that the defenders were fatally weakened by disease. Miraculously, though, there is evidence that epidemic disease raged through the Ottoman camp, it doesn't seem to have affected those on the inside. That would have been lights out. They were able to preserve their water supply, the cisterns were never damaged by the Ottoman bombardment and their water was running very low by the end. He never ran out. That would have been a game changer. And also, again, though supplies were running low, by the end of the siege, the defenders were able to preserve at least some of their stocks of gunpowder, so that at one point they fired a mine towards the end, as if to show off the fact that they had gunpowder to spare. At one point, one of their powder mills blew up mid siege. Sabotage was suspected. But even that huge setback ultimately didn't mean that they ran out of that basic resource of 16th century warfare. So between the absence of disease, the availability of water, at least to some degree, and they were able to produce gunpowder in some quantities right to the end, those were the difference makers.

[Dan Snow]

It's shocking to think that so more Ottomans would have died because of disease, because of terrible disease, because of misunderstanding the nature, how to maintain and drink clean water and all that dealing with the consequences of all the waste products produced by that massive army camping in temporary lodgings, more people were probably killed by disease than by Christian shot and steel.

[Marcus Bull]

I think that's right. And the sad irony of it is that the Ottoman armed forces, the army in particular, had a reputation amongst Western observers for being far more attentive to matters of hygiene and medical care than Western armies. They were ahead of the game, even. They could not mitigate being forced to live on a cramped island with very little water. And once disease takes hold in those sorts of situations, there's inadequate medical science and it cannot be stopped. But the Ottomans, in fairness, were always an object lesson in their other wars, in at least a superior attention to matters of hygiene and medical care.

[Dan Snow]

Well, they had to be. They had to be. Great reason for their enormous success. What brings the siege to an end?

[Marcus Bull]

I think two things. The headline is that finally, the forces of Habsburg Europe, especially in those parts of Italy which were under the control of the Habsburg kings of Spain, are able to pull together a coalition of forces from which a relief force known as the Gran Socorso, or great relief, about 8 or 9,000 strong, lands on Malta in early September 1565, meets the Ottoman forces in a running battle in the center of the island, forces them back onto their ships, the survivors of that debacle aboard the Ottoman galleys, and they sail off. In reality, I think there's evidence that the Ottomans were already beginning to disengage from Malta even before the Gran Sikorso arrived. The defenders were seeing them starting to take down gun emplacements and to withdraw to more distant positions. And I think, in reality, the Ottomans would have had to have. Even if the Gran Sikorsa had never happened, the Ottomans would have had to, I think, made a decision. Do we tough it out over the winter, which would have been almost impossible, or do we withdraw? And I think they would have withdrawn. Don't forget that the siege took place before a great reform in the Christian calendar, the result of which was that when we think of the siege ending in the first half of September 1565, in meteorological terms, that is equivalent to later September today. So they were pushing closer towards autumnal weather conditions. They would have had to equip very soon. The Gran Sicorso provided that final push. But I don't ultimately think it was the reason why the siege ended. The siege was ending as the relief force arrived.

[Dan Snow]

As you say, survival, therefore, a victory for the defending side. It's always said, one of the great sieges of history. Certainly, in its intensity and drama as it was going on, it seems like it was. But does it matter? Does it leave a big strategic footprint imprint on subsequent history?

[Marcus Bull]

It is very important, but its importance is symbolic rather than strategic. When the knights regroup and attempt to ensure that there is never a restaging of the Great siege by fortifying the peninsula of Shibarras and building what is now the capital of the modern state of Malta, Valletta, they build the siege into their mythology by using the language of claiming that they have become what they called the bulwark of Christianity or the bulwark of Europe. This was a phrase that they banded around a lot. We were the front line defending Europe as a whole from the Ottoman menace. I think it was largely a rhetorical posture. Once Valletta had been built and the defenses of Malta enormously improved, the chances of the Ottomans trying to restage the events of 1565 were slim. There were scares, invasion scares into the 17th century. But I think the chances of the Ottomans trying again, their opportunity was only a year after. The fortifications were still ruinous. Half the knights were dead or severely injured. They missed their chance. So I think it was a symbolic moment. It achieved a lot of its longer term resonance by being twinned with the Battle of Lepanto. Six years later. It becomes the first part of a kind of double act, a 1, 2, which demonstrated that finally Western Europe, Mediterranean Europe, was able to organize itself and to meet the Ottomans on equal terms, if not better. I think the Great Siege benefited from being linked to Lepanto and thereby assumed a significance which in isolation it probably didn't deserve, at least in real strategic terms. Its symbolic importance was enormous.

[Dan Snow]

But that is important. I mean, is it fair to see the twins of Lepanto and Malta? So the Lepanto great naval victory won by sort of Christian alliance off the west coast of Greece. Were they right to say this represents a new chapter in Mediterranean history? That the era of slow, grinding advances by the Ottomans say it's going to come to an end. Is that fair, to see them together like that?

[Marcus Bull]

The most famous victim of the Corsairs around this time was Miguel de Cervantes. The author of Don Quixote, who fought at Lepanto, was injured at Lepanto. And he writes that though he had personal reasons to look back regretfully, on Lepanto, he lost the use of one of his hands. He wrote that it was the day when Christian Europe regained its confidence. It learned not to be afraid of the Ottomans again. And he was writing that some decades later. So I think, yes, it was important. The Ottomans remained active in the central and western Mediterranean for 10 or more years after Malta. But eventually they and the Habsburg kings of Spain realized that they were being sucked into an expensive arms race that neither of them really needed or wanted, or both of them wish to engage elsewhere and to divert resources away from the Mediterranean. And So by about 1580, the tension is dying down, which is to say that the Mediterranean doesn't become a safe place. The culture of corsairing is still there. It reemerges, in a way, after the great powers have partly withdrawn from the central Mediterranean. Malta is the last moment in this decisive change, but it is a signal moment in a process whereby the two great powers of the 16th century Mediterranean, the Ottomans and the Spanish Habsburgs, eventually agree to disagree, to draw rough lines of demarcation, and to more or less leave each other alone, or at least to allow themselves to pursue a war through small surrogates, the Order of Saint John on Malta and the various North African corsairs in what is now Libya, Tunisia and Algeria, over which the Ottomans had some kind of overlordship, but were ultimately left to do their own thing to make a living from corsairing. Another indication of that is that from about 1580, you see the beginnings of northern European traders, the English and the Dutch, muscling their way into the Mediterranean to pick up the spice trade from ports in the east. And muscling is the right word because these would be armed. They'd have to fight off corsairs. They're displacing the Venetians, the historic carriers of that spice trade. You get the sense that the Mediterranean is now being plugged into larger global economic circuits. The Ottomans at the other end, begin or develop systems to tap more effectively into the spice trade coming through from the Indian Ocean. So the Mediterranean is no longer the center of attention. It's simply one important part of a much larger circuit movement of goods in which many different players, the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean, the English and the Dutch in the Atlantic, they're all starting to be much more joined up. And in that sense, the siege was one of the last hurrahs of an older world in which people fought over the Mediterranean for itself, and then it becomes part of this much larger joined up world.

[Dan Snow]

What an interesting way of looking at. Thank you very much for that. Tell everyone. Marcus, what is your book called?

[Marcus Bull]

It's called the Great Siege of Malta.

[Dan Snow]

Go and get it, everybody. It's fantastic. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast.

[Marcus Bull]

Thank you very much.

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