Great Siege of Malta 1565: The last Great Knightly Order Saves the Western Mediterranean
Another round of the Ottomans and the Knights Hospitaller fighting over an island, this time the strategically important Malta. The Knights had to relocate after Rhodes was finally taken in 1522. Malta wasn’t good for much other than natural harbors so the Hospitallers took up naval raiding against the Ottomans. After several successful raids, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent had had enough.
A massive fleet of over 150 ships and about 40,000 men prepared for about 6 months. The Grandmaster Jean Parisot de Valette heard the warning of Ottoman preparations right away and began work on several fortifications around Malta’s Great Harbor.
Like Rhodes, a peninsula divided two great harbors and the point of the peninsula saw the construction of Fort St. Elmo. Two other forts were built or extensively repaired and the whole population prepared to fight off the Turks.
When the Ottomans arrived they immediately focused on Fort St. Elmo. de Valette figured that the Ottomans would try for the crucial fort and focused his best troops and artillery there. The fighting for the fort lasted a month, sometimes lasting well into the night. Ottoman cannons kept up a constant stream of fire on the fort and the new construction was reduced to rubble in a few weeks.
Slowly but surely the Ottomans gained pieces of the fort, usually by way of Janissaries. By June 23 the fort was finally captured and the Ottoman commander Pasha had the thousands of defenders beheaded and sent across the bay to the rest of the knights. de Valette responded by beheading his Ottoman prisoners and firing their heads from cannons into the Ottoman camps. This set the grim tone for the rest of the siege.
With the capture of St. Elmo, Christian Europe became worried; Malta was a springboard into the Western Mediterranean. Only 600 troops were ready to reinforce from Sicily, however. But when they snuck through Ottoman lines and into Malta, the spirits of the defenders rose tremendously.
An Ottoman amphibious assault through the bay was expertly defended through the foresight of de Valette as he placed hidden sea-level cannons along assault route. The elite Janissaries could do nothing but drown after about 80 transport ships were sunk in the bay. As many as 800 Janissaries were killed in this attack.
In one sector the Ottomans finally broke through a wall and began an all-out assault. A raiding force of Maltese had been riding around the walls and forced a premature Ottoman retreat as the Ottomans assumed that masses of Christian reinforcements had finally arrived.
As the Ottomans were losing hope they launched several more desperate attempts to gain more than a foothold on the island, but they failed. The Maltese defenders were wearing thin but had hope for reinforcements and they saw the fading Ottoman spirits. When Christian reinforcements finally arrived, the Ottomans were already preparing to leave. A Christian assault for good measure inflicted great casualties on the fleeing and demoralized Ottomans and they broke the siege for good.
Though the Ottomans would still dominate the Mediterranean for several years, they would not threaten Western Europe with an invasion. The Knights of Malta were treated like heroes for defending Europe.