 Thank you very much. If you can't hear me back, I've been accused of having a low voice and I'm willing to believe it. Make it known. You can't embarrass me that way. Malta. If you read anything at all about the siege of Malta, at some point you'll come across the quote from Voltaire who says, Nothing is better known than this siege and leaves it at that. The irony being, of course, that many people have no idea what the siege of Malta is about. The first lecture I gave on this was... Oh, turn it on. You said? Wrong button. It was in New Jersey and the local folks advertised it as the great siege of Matla, so clearly we've got a groundwork cut out for us. So to start with, where is Malta? Because clearly they don't know. It, as he says, is dead center in the Mediterranean between Gibraltar and Constantinople. It's also not midway closer to Sicily than North Africa, but if you have one you're going to be interested in the other. It's essentially rocky. It's barren. There's not enough water for too many people. It's not the easiest place to scratch out a living. It is, however, a possessive world-class deep water harbor and as such it's going to be very desirable for anybody in that part of the world who's got any ambitions for empire building. You can picture a cross section of the... Well, there it is. Big time. That's the island itself. The prize, of course, is Grand Harbor. The tip of it you see is a place called Fort St. Elmo in which commands entrance to the harbor. At the time we're speaking of, the signal points are at Fort St. Elmo and also in the two peninsula there, one called Sanglia, the one on the left and Birgu on the right, which is where the knights of the time were situated. So, who were the knights? The knights were a holy order of monks who started out in 1023 as caregivers for Christian pilgrims to Moslem El Jerusalem. They were bankrolled by a bunch of Italian bankers who were trying to get points for going to heaven. And they might have remained as healers of the sick if not for the first crusade of 1099. When the Christian soldiers came in, the streets of Jerusalem were covered in blood, and the monks were there to set the wounds straight for the wounded Christians. The care was so good that several of the inspired knights decided that they would like to join the order. They didn't really have too many skills in medicine, but they were really good at fighting. So the order managed to change into a half heal the sick and half, well, go to arms. They essentially said, well, taking care of pilgrims and helping them against bandits of which there are many in the area, and beating up in Muslims whenever they could, that pretty much fulfilled their requirements. They did quite well for quite a while for about 200 years, but they were eventually kicked out. They were kicked off to the island of Rhodes, which is offshore. It's not likely that they were going to be able to take the holy land back again. And so they bided their time with little commerce on the side and little raiding, mostly Muslim shipping. In 1521, they were pushed off the island of Rhodes by the young Suleiman the Magnificent, who was just starting out. They were returned to Rome as guests of the Pope, who was their commander-in-chief, so to speak. But there's really not a whole lot for them to do there. At the time, Europe is going through its internal squabbling over Protestantism and Catholicism, and who was going to get control of Italy. And since they were a pan-European order, they really couldn't take sides. So they basically sat around for seven years. 1532, things calmed down a bit, and Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, I'm sorry, that's Suleiman in his younger days, love the hat. Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, who had, amongst all the other possessions that he inherited, the island of Malta and the city of Tripoli, North Africa, and he basically saw the knights as a cheap way of holding on to this territory. And yes, he did get an annual tribute of one Maltese falcon. And no, he never did get a jewel-encrusted one. They didn't have the money at the time, but he did get a Maltese falcon. The last one of those is actually found to be extinct about 100 years ago, because the Maltese are big on shooting birds, but that's another story. The downside was that the knights, now that they had a place to call home, they had a lot of time in their hands, and a new crusade for the Holy Land was not going to turn up any time soon. They had nothing to do, so what do they do? They essentially go out and become pirates again, and they have a religious coating for the whole thing, but technically they're pirates. More legitimately, they were able to take part in several of Charles' campaigns against North Africa, and they did quite well on that. Their presence was mostly symbolic. They were, after all, a pan-European brotherhood, but they did their part. They helped Charles seize Tunis in 1535, which was a high point of his career. They were also present when he tried to take Algiers in 1541, which was probably the most terrible, that was a low point of his career. It makes for grim reading. It's in the book. You don't want to know. But they were not able to stop the growing power of the Ottoman-backed Barbary Corsairs, mostly based out of Algiers, which is why they were trying to take it, but who seemed to be able to cross the western Mediterranean more or less at will. A side note on the Barbary Corsairs, they were the Muslim counterparts to the knights, but unlike the knights, they did not restrict their members to the aristocracy. They would take anybody who had ability and ambition, which means they had a lot more people in their ranks. Their origins date to about 1492 when Ferdinand and Isabella kicked the Moors out of Spain. And these ex-spaniards looking for something to do themselves and annoyed at having been kicked out, used their local knowledge of the area and of the shoreline and such to essentially get their own back. Pickings were so rich in that area that the other pirates came from the eastern Med and it just kept growing and growing and growing, such that the western Med was something of a mess for anybody who was living there, which gets us back to the knights. In 1551, one such expedition actually commanded by the Corsair Torgut Reis, along with a bunch of Ottoman, sorry, a Muslim expedition commanded by Torgut Reis and a bunch of Ottoman ships landed on the sister island of Gozo and essentially kidnapped the entire population and sailed off of them. And there was nothing that the knights could do. It was too overpowering and the Grand Master at the time was a very weak man. This same expedition then went directly to Tripoli, still technically under the knights' control, and they took that in an even more humiliating defeat. Not that they ever really wanted Tripoli. The knights thought it was too much trouble to hold on to, but you don't want to get rid of it either, since you're basically a renter and not an owner. And at this point the Pope himself was wondering if perhaps the responsibility of all this was a bit too much for them and maybe they should try to find something less challenging for them to do. Well, that shook them up a bit. And in 1558 they elected Jean de Valet as Grand Master. This is an interesting fellow. He's very strong-minded, very strong-willed. He's a tough guest. Imagine D'Artagnan and the three musketeers and you've kind of summed him up. He was also a veteran of roads and a number of sea battles, and he was damned if he was going to let his order go the way of all flesh. To prove how serious he was, in 1560 he and the new viceroy of Sicily got together and approached Philip II, now King of Spain, son and heir of Charles, and said that they wanted to take Tripoli back. And Philip agreed. The expedition did not go well. There was bad organization, there was delays, there was incompetent leadership, the usual things that go wrong. None of this is as Valet's fault, by the way. The operational commander was the viceroy while Valet stayed back in Malta. But the viceroy was not a military man. He had been a courtier back in the court of Philip, and he really wasn't up to the job. The combined Christian fleet went down to Tripoli. He took one look at the defenses and said, this isn't going to work, I can't do this. But I can go over to the small, ill-defended island of Gerba just off the coast, which he knew to be a haven of pirates, and we can probably take that. Everybody told him not to do it, but he was in charge, and what he said went, they took it, no problem. The locals sort of didn't care who was in charge. And he started rebuilding the fort on the north shore, spent the rest of the season doing that, and he felt he had done rather well. This lasted until the Ottoman fleet showed up from Constantinople to throw them out. The Ottoman fleet commanded by Turgut's old sailing comrade, the young admiral Pieli Pasha. That's Philip, that's Pieli Pasha. Remember that name. They swept down on a disorganized Christian fleet and essentially sank, captured nearly a lot of them. Those who could, including the viceroy, retreated into the fort. There is much celebration by the Muslims that night, the viceroy and a few of the VIPs managed to sneak out, commandeer a boat, and get back to Sicily, leaving the rest to endure the long summer in a grim siege that they ultimately lost. You can read about that in the book too, and it's interesting reading. So here we are in 1560. The knights have suffered a series of defeats and have been associated with failed operations. It's no surprise that the order is beginning to look like a losing proposition. At this point, if Suleiman had decided to take on Malta, he probably could have done it. And he would have been able to quash the knights once and for all, which was something he always wanted to do. But he didn't do that. He had other things going on at the time. And Valet never wanted to give up. He doubled his efforts against the infidel and basically in the form of raids, heading into the eastern Med and taking whatever he could find. The banner year was 1564. And that year they managed to snaffle not one, but two governors of Egypt. The 90-year-old favorite nanny of Suleiman's favorite daughter, who was on her way to Mecca for the Hajj, and most impressive, the Suleiman's personal flagship, the Sultana. This was a huge vessel, high walls, many guns, Janissary warriors to discourage pirates. It was interesting at this point because the residents of Suleiman's harem had pooled all their money, bought a bunch of luxury goods, and were planning to sell them all in Venice, where they had serious trading connections. But rumors fly at the ocean, and the knights heard about this, and they didn't let it happen. They surrounded it with seven galleys, and after several hours of back-and-forthing, they took it. This is, of course, one insult to many, and Suleiman would have to retaliate, and Molta was back in play. It was not, however, just to punish the knights for this one thing. He really wanted the island for all the other reasons you have it. You don't really care about Molta so much for yourself. What you want is to make sure the other guy doesn't have it. It's mostly a stepping-off-place point for taking Sicily. If you have Sicily and North Africa, as the Arabs did for about 200 years, you don't care about Molta, and during that period, nobody was living in Molta, just as a side note. But if you have Molta, you can get Sicily, or not, they'd been there before, they'd done it. They had Sicily, they had South Italy, they could do it again. Preparations went on that entire winter from across the Ottoman Empire, Suleiman gathered men and materiel to build ships, cast cannon, grind gunpowder, enlist soldiers. All of this alarming activity did not take long to reach Europe, but even with advance warning, it was a bit of a struggle to get things set up properly. The second was still chafing to the loss of his fleet in 1560, a gerba, and mindful that it had been Vallet who had been in part the one who talked him into that. Molta, however, had a champion in the person of Don García de Toledo, son of the old Naples viceroy, and now viceroy of Sicily in his own right, operating Adam Cena. He was a gifted military veteran of many years standing, had fought alongside the knights, but although he was decidedly not a well man at this point and would have liked nothing better than to retire from the call of duty, he felt the call of duty. He asked for when he got special powers to organize the defense, even though these powers were stymied by other imperial officers who were slow to help him. There are a good number of letters between de Toledo and Philip, urging haste at all costs and complaining about these people not getting up to speed. In the April of 1565, Don García brings a number of soldiers and supplies to Molta and consults with Vallet on what is best to be done. He makes the rounds, makes some recommendations and leaves behind his son Federigo to join the order in the Spanish League. His son's illegitimate, which technically means he can't join, but they make exceptions in exceptional circumstances. Meanwhile, the Ottomans are finalizing their plans. Their spies have taken the measure of the Grand Harbor and a scale model was built for the experts in Constantinople to ponder. The Ottoman army, they decided, would be commanded by Mustafa Pasha. I don't have a picture of him, unfortunately. A cousin of Suleyman, a veteran of roads and of wars in Hungary, this was going to cap his career with something really big. In charge of the fleet was going to be our friend Piyalli Pasha, now married to Suleyman's granddaughter as a reward for his work at Gerba. He had also sailed with Turgut Rais, of course, apparently amicably, and it was felt that they would make a logical good team, all having worked together. It didn't turn out that way. They set off in March, they arrived in April, weeks before they were expected. Valet had thought he had time to rid the island of so-called useless mouths, women, children, foreigners, prostitutes, and bring more soldiers than waiting in Sicily. Now the Ottomans are here and the navy was circling the island. That wasn't going to happen. There was enough room for swift boats to bring messages back and forth, but in terms of anything more significant, that just wasn't going to happen. Piyalli anchored the fleet on the south-facing shallow harbor of Marsak-Schluck and not dissimilar, in many ways, from Gerba. Mostofi led his men out, headed north towards Grand Harbor, drew first blood and a few skirmishes before settling down to the business at hand. It was now that things began to go sour between Mostofi and Piyalli. The plan in Constantinople had been for the army immediately to target Fort St. Elmo, again at the tip of the harbor. The logic was that taking that fort would allow the Ottomans access to the northern side of the harbor, which was otherwise unguarded and making it easier to supply troops. It would also deny any chance of sea access to the areas of Sungly and Birgu there on the bottom. Mostofi thought that this was nonsense. He thought that it was just a short, five-mile trek from the bay in the south, and he's a land soldier. He's used to that sort of thing. He said that, you know, let them defend St. Elmo and let it wither in the vine, let them waste their resources there. It's nothing to me. He was outvoted by the rest of the senior command and not least of all by the navy. Piyalli Pasha's mandate had been to prosecute the fight, but also to preserve the fleet. And after what he'd seen as Jirva, he was sensitive to how easily a fleet and shallow water in ill-defended water could be overcome. Mostofi caved in, though it cannot have been good for his temper or for his standing. As will happen, word of the arguments reached the enlisted personnel. We know because renegades and prisoners reported it to the Christians. Mostofi was modified somewhat when his engineers said that taking Fort St. Elmo would be the work of five days at most. You'll notice that there's no input from Turgut Rais. He hadn't arrived yet. Presumably he would get there, but who knows. Strange things happen at sea. Canons brought up. The bombardment begins. The defenders can do nothing. Ottoman sharpshooters are so good that if you are foolish enough to peek over the top of the ridge, they will shoot you. They had primitive guns with long barrels. Nevertheless, their marksmanship was spectacular. It's commented upon in many sources, not just here, but also in Hungarian campaigns and elsewhere. The knights and the Spanish soldiers watch behind the walls and endure the siege cannon that is knocking away bits and pieces until nightfall. One day of this, they send one of the Spanish captains back across the bay to file a situation report. Fortunately, there's no moon, so the short trip is relatively safe. The Spaniard reports that this isn't fighting. This is a waste of time. This is not what he came for. And that they should all just give up on Fort St. Elmo and come back to... I'm sorry, could I have some water? And they put up the fight up there. This is in subordination, but the difficulty was that though the Spanish contingent was technically under his command, it was a little diplomatically difficult. So they let used humiliation to get his way. He basically said that if the people there weren't up to the job, he would find people who were. The Spaniard back down. But it was not the last time that this would be a problem. Thank you so much. Could you speak up a little? Absolutely. A week passed and the fort still held. This was supposed to be five days, now seven have passed. Finally, Turgut and his men arrive. His response on learning that the plan was to take Fort St. Elmo before anything else was despair. It turns out that he agreed with Mostafa better to let Fort St. Elmo wither in the vine rather than taking it. This is spilt milk, however, and he's a professional. He throws himself into taking Fort St. Elmo. But you can see how this turnaround would have been... would have put both Mostafa and Piali's respective noses out of joint. Worse, despite some damage to the fort and some serious assaults, they're making much headway. And the best of Mostafa's soldiers are getting killed. Christian dead and wounded are fewer than Ottoman, but they're still considerable. The wounded are ferried across the bay at night. Reinforcements are sent to replace them. But it's only a question of time before this cannot continue. Younger knights now directly send a petition to a velet. It's close to mutiny, really, but when the Spanish did it, these men have an oath of obedience to their grandmaster. They say that let us either make an offensive attack from the fort, which will be a suicidal, but let us do it, or let us return to Birgu and join everyone else, because this current strategy won't work. Velet shames them in his staying one more time and manages to convince more volunteers to join them out the fort. It buys him time, but he's correct. They're correct. It is a doomed enterprise. Draguot is fine-tuning the final attacks. On June 18th, he's overseeing a battery of calibrating angles of cannon fire. The story goes that he miscalculated and the discharge chipped off a stone nearby, which ricocheted and struck him in the temple. He was knocked unconscious and carried to his tent, coming from his ear and nose. Alternatively, the story goes that it was a shot fired from across the bay that he had a stone. Who knows? June 23rd, last day, it makes for very grim reading. The walls have all been leveled. The Ottomans have the high ground from outside the fort. They're able to fire directly into the fort. The defenders are few. Most of them are wounded. They're facing almost certain death. The final day, the surviving Christian commanders already wounded themselves, unable to stand, ordered themselves brought up to the breaches and tied it to chairs. Swords and halberds are ready at hand for them. The final assault comes. The Ottoman forces find themselves facing this unlikely sight, but they managed to take it down. It still took them four hours. The job of five days had taken four weeks. Mustafa walked into the place and said, if this is what the child cost us, what cost the father? What it cost him was a greater part of his finest shock troops. On the day the fort was finally taken, it also cost him dragout, who expired at the same time as the fort did. Suleiman got word of that, and he was more upset with the loss of dragout than the time it took to take the fort. Mustafa lost his temper. He ordered Christian heads removed and placed on pikes. He also ordered the headless bodies of three knights, bound them supine on three crosses, carved crosses on their chests, and launched them across the water to Sanglaya. Popular accounts say that Valet's response was to bring out Turkish prisoners, cut off the heads, and fire them from cannon. The head part is true. The cannon part is made up by a 17th century French historian. If you go back to the original sources, they all say yes, they threw the heads over, but cannon's not mentioned, and you think they would because that's such a good story, assuming it's a possible. At this point though, it's clear that this is any hope that this being a civilized fight is pretty much over. Meanwhile, back in Sicily, Don Garcia is still gathering troops. He's in the awkward situation. Philip II is a micromanager two weeks away in Spain, and like Suleiman, he doesn't want to risk the fleet, but he also wants to make sure that anything possible to be done for Malta is being done. The troops who arrive in Sicily have to be housed, watered, and fed. The knights among them are pressuring Don Garcia to let them go to Malta as soon as possible. Don Garcia is reluctant. The problem is Malta is being patrolled by Piala Pasha's navy. As I say, you can get these swiftboats in with the message, but trying to get in any large group of people, it's not going to be easy. He had tried it once or twice, in fact, but each time the cord was too thick. He couldn't do it. He was, however, keeping tabs on the island. He knew the Ottomans were concentrating on Fort St. Elbow, and he knew that once they took it, they would redeploy around Sanglia and Bergu, which would make relief of those two towns pretty much impossible. What he needed to do was to calculate the point at which the Ottomans were most exhausted but not yet paying attention to Sanglia and Bergu. He kind of nailed it. He gave the green light for a relief force, the so-called little relief of official knights and their allies, some 600 men, to go off to Malta with their proviso that if Fort St. Elmo had fallen, they were to come back. They went, they arrived undetected, they learned from some peasants that Fort St. Elmo had indeed fallen. They ignored the order. They pressed on against all odds. They ghosted their way across Malta, past the Ottoman lines, past the Ottoman camps, and somehow managed to get themselves into Sanglia and Bergu, which, again, you see in the bottom there. Mustafa was furious, of course. Bialapasha, for letting the ships go through, Bialapasha pointed out that they were able to cross all of Malta and get from the far side of the island to there. Again, they don't get along. Mustafa is ready to attack Sanglia now. It is to be a combined land and sea operation. He set up army bases at the base of Sanglia. You can see that on the bottom right there. And he dragged galleys from the north bay across the peninsula, you can see it marked there, and launched them, followed the arrows. They were stopped short by palisades of strings, stopped short by a palisade of chains strung across ports, posts sunk into the ground. The galleys hit these. They were stopped dead in the water. The Muslim soldiers are forced to disembark and wade across the shore on under fire from the walls of Sanglia, not high walls. They're about eight feet, maybe. And land on the beach. The Ottomans mounted scaling ladders and engaged in a mixture of hand-to-hand fighting and gunfire. They nearly break through once or twice, but fail. Some 10 ships tried to skirt to the palisade. You can see them, that one on the top of the arrows. Cannon did for them, taking perhaps 800 non-swimmers to drown. The attackers finally called the quits and discovered that the galleys that had brought them across to the peninsula were no longer waiting for them to return. They begged the Christians for mercy, but the Christians were not in a forgiving mood to try and went up St. Helmows' pay before they went and killed them. With that attempt having failed, Mustafa ordered the remaining galleys dragged back across the peninsula, and they weren't going to try that method again. Long days of cannon fire to bring down the walls at Sanglia and Birgu. There's the odd Sally, their calls for surrender, more cannon fire. Mustafa gets a boost from the arrival of Corsairs from Algiers, but that doesn't help him but so much. He's making some progress though, and by August 7th he feels he's finally ready for a serious, massive attack that he believes will take the day. He gathers all his able-bodied men, including much of Piali Pash's fleet, and lines them up against Sanglia and Birgu. He thinks that the defenders cannot withstand attacks from both fronts at once. He's probably right. He needs the assault of Sanglia. He leaves Piali Pasha to do Birgu. The defenders can't help but be impressed by what they're seeing, and soon find themselves having a hard time of it. Despite gunfire, grenades, hot oil, steel, most of the soldiers are beginning to get to the tops of the walls, and fighting takes place again hand to hand. Massive rush or two, it appears that Sanglia will fall and Mustafa will win. Right, the cavalry arrives. That's Fort St. Elmo. That's Tragu dying. That's our cavalryman. Nice pants. The portrait's in the Frick Gallery. This gentleman's name is Vincenzo Anastagi. He came to the order rather late, but he rose rather quickly. He's a cavalryman at Mdina, which is the medieval city in the middle of the island, and they were essentially ignoring because it wasn't but so important strategically or anything else. But he's also an intelligence officer, and he had gotten word on this assault and brought his men out early to anticipate it. Basically, they could look at the sidelines because there were 60 of them. They couldn't make any headway against Mustafa's army, of course. They didn't even try. What they did was what the French did at Agincourt. They attacked the Muslim camp and the hospital. They trampled the support staff, the wounded, and set fire to the place. It doesn't take long for the soldiers on both sides of the battle to see the smoke and the rumors start flying that the Spanish Great Relief Force had finally arrived. It hadn't, but rumors have a life of their own. The assault melted away, and by the time the Muslims arrived at camp they realized what had happened. Anastasia's men had vanished, leaving a burning and bloody mess behind. Mustafa was now flustered, caught between two targets he wished to punish. He sends Bialy to Mdina to punish the cavalry. As they approach the old walled city, they see an unsuspected mass of soldiers on the ramparts. The closer they get, they see a flash and puff of smoke. And the cannon fire, which is too far off to hit them, but clearly the people in Mdina are not going to be easily intimidated. They retire thinking it's not worth the trouble. In fact, that whole thing was a Potemkin village. The soldiers are mostly civilians dressed up to look the part. The gunfire is an attempt to keep the Muslims far away, but it's using up very scarce gunpowder at this point. It doesn't matter, the deception worked. Back in Messina again, more soldiers than knights are gathering anxious to head off. Don Garcia is concerned with the Ottoman fleet. Philip is still leaning over his shoulder, and Garcia does not want to go out until he knows he is sure of victory. By August he finally gets the notion that this is probably about right. The end of the fighting season, spring and summer in those days, was now in sight. The let was had only to hold out a little longer, and Mustafa had to make only one last push. But he really didn't have much in the way of men or material at this point. His last great push was on August 20th. The cream of his forces are now dead. He was reduced to inducting support personnel into the army. They were reluctant fighters at best. Certain that the battle could not be won, they refused to fight at all, unless Mustafa, who is in his 70s by the way, agrees to lead them in person. He does. Give the man credit, he was no coward. He pushes on, leading from the front. They do manage to make it up to some breaches, but are pushed back. Valet himself, likewise 70, has gone to the front and is holding it, not without difficulty, but holding it. Mustafa is yet again struck in the head, and he collapses by the wall. The Ottomans retreat. Darkness descends. We can only guess what the High Command's reaction was when Mustafa showed up a few hours later, having recovered from being knocked out. The affair now becomes a slogging match. A matter of morale, the Ottomans become despondent. The Christians begin to get hope. Corsairs, practical men, they begin to slip away. Valet's council suggests holding up in the far reaches of Fort Sandangelo, but Valet says that that would be dishonorable. The Maltese are not to be abandoned. Neither are the others who have helped them so far. If they're going to go down, they're going to go down together. Mustafa is desperately trying whatever ploys come to mind. He cannibalizes some ships to make assault machines. They don't work. He creates a siege tower, which a single cannon shot by the Christians destroys before it can make any headway. Many of the walls are now sort of non-existent, and soldiers are close enough that they can talk to each other. They can exchange food and gossip. The Ottomans are astonished that they're getting fresh bread traded for their moldy cheese. They are not aware that the Russians are actually being cut drastically, but again, impression means everything. Don Garcia has finally received an intelligent report from our friend Vincenzo Anastagi, saying that the Ottomans on their last legs and now is the time to come. The report's mostly true, though of course Anastagi, like any good knight, is anxious for the great leaf to hurry up. Don Garcia gives the green light. The armada sets out. The difficulty is that we are now in September, and the Mediterranean is not an easy place to sail on a shallow-bodied boat like a galley. Storms kick up, and it takes a few attempts before they finally arrive. Once arrived, a strong force of Muslim ships by matter of hours, Don Garcia handed command over to others. He then left in part on orders from Philip, and in part I suspect because he didn't want to avoid any conflict, whether it was he or Vallette who was in command. He told his men, listen to Vallette. The Ottomans at this point were in fact just about ready to leave. They probably would have left if Don Garcia hadn't shown up. Timing is everything. Mustafa, hearing that they had arrived, figured that this was his last chance. He figures that he would be able to fight these people on open ground and not in siege warfare. And if he could defeat them on the ground, that Vallette would lose all hope, and they would actually finally win. He would be able to overwinter on the island, and by spring they would be able to get reinforcements and win the day. So he orders his soldiers off the boats. They march inland for one last showdown. Then if this is to fail, they will rendezvous at Piala Pasha's fleet in the northern bay and consider their next moves then. The relief force have gotten word from Vallette. They're stationed in the middle of the island. They have not reached the towns of Sanglia and Birgu. And they ask him what they should do. He says, you're the best judgment. Unfortunately, senior commanders had little respect for each other, did not like each other, and tended to argue over who was actually in charge. At this point it scarcely mattered. The relief forces now at Mdina saw that Mustafa's arm was marching west, torching everything in their path. While their commanders argued whether to swoop down or to wait for Mustafa to come to them, the men themselves decided the matter on their own. These were after all men who had been waiting all summer for a fight, and now they saw one at hand. They weren't going to give up the opportunity. They swept down without orders onto the Ottoman troops and let out their frustration they had felt all summer. The day is reported as having been unseasonably hot, and for Malta in summer that's kind of saying something. Men in leather and plate steel died of heat exhaustion. Those who were still alive pressed on. They came down to the sea, forcing Mustafa to engage in that most difficult maneuver, the orderly retreat under fire, which he pulled off rather well. His men managed to meet up with Pialipas at St. Paul's Bay and make their way on board the ships. They waited that night, exhausted, keeping their relief forces at a distance with gunfire, and then they left the following warning, September 11 as it happens. Relief in the west. Don Garcia arrives. Pialipas and the Ottomans, but not very seriously. He's happy just to see them off. Pialipas are back to Mustafa, are back to bickering. One Ottoman account says that Pialipa threatened to tie Mustafa to a cannon and fire it. He restrained himself. But when they got back to Constantinople, they had to arrive in the dead of night in case the locals should take it out, their disappointment in rioting. They got that order from Suleiman. Even so, westerners and Christians in general, then in Constantinople, had to keep a low profile for the next few weeks to avoid any unpleasantness. We get that from ambassadors who were there at the time and merchant accounts. There was no joy in Constantinople. Suleiman was going to execute both men, but their family, he thought better of it. He retired Mustafa. Piali, he let sail for another few years, though thought that he would try another attack on Malta the following spring, but it didn't happen. Instead, the Ottoman army in 1566 headed north into Hungary and Suleiman, assuming that if you want something done right, do it yourself, went in person. This was a mistake. He was too old, he fell ill, he died, leaving the empire to his son Selim. In the west, Valet was offered a cardinal's cap, but he turned it down. He preferred to stay in Malta. He was grandmaster for the next few years. He finally died of a stroke while out falconing. The city he envisioned on the ruined base of Fort St. Elmo is now called the city of Valeta, capital of Malta. Don Garcia was scapegoated for being slow and unaggressive. He remained, however, as viceroy, and his opinions were eagerly sought by the young Don John of Austria prior to the battle of Lepanto. Eventually, it was evident that his suggestions were adopted for that battle if you ever read into it. So we started out this by pointing out Voltaire's quote that nothing is better known than this battle. And you see that in any quote, any account of the battle that you read, and at some point they put it in. What they don't put in is the second clause in which he says, where all Suleiman's hopes ran aground, what dreams would these be, and why should we care? This gets in the realm of the counterfactual things that didn't happen but could have, for want of a nail, that sort of thing. Academic historians don't like this sort of things, since, fair enough, they're dealing with verifiable fact. But I think counterfactuals serve a purpose. We look back in hindsight, we know how the story ends. We have only to tidy up the narrative. Those in the middle of what's going on don't have that luxury. They cannot be fatalistic. They have to act on what they know and on what they can imagine. By considering the greatest fears and hopes of the players, we can get a notion of why they acted the way they did. So what would have happened if the Ottomans had taken Malta? There are various scenarios, none of them palatable for the West. The Lett would have been dead or in chains. Fair to say that this time the Knights would not have been permitted to walk away in peace as they had been from Rhodes. The Barbary pirates might have taken some of the Knights for ransom, which would have done a number on the Order's finances. They failed to campaign in Morocco, bankrupted Portugal when they had to pay ransom to the nobles who survived that fight. Most of all, it would have ruined what was left of the Order's reputation. They'd lost the Holy Land, they'd lost Rhodes, they'd lost Tripoli, they'd lost Malta. Who needs them? What good are they? Their properties throughout Europe might have been in jeopardy. Henry VIII had already taken the English properties. If you've ever been there, St. John's Wood, that used to be theirs. Younger sons would no longer wish to join, no one would wish to host their fleet in case it bring unwelcome attention, Constantinople. The lost Malta would have been the beginning of the end for the Order and with that, the last of the genuinely pan-European military orders. For the Ottomans, it would be a new lease on the Western Med. Malta would now be an Ottoman stronghold, not a fiefdom like Algiers, but a fortress island wholly under Constantinople's control, likely populated with people chosen by Suleyman, as had been the case when his grandfather took Constantinople. The psychological effect would have been considerable. Barbary Corsairs, who had been free-booters, would recognize the Ottomans were exercising real power in heading west. Remaining Muslims in Spain would take heart from the advancing power of the Ottomans. They did rebel in 1568, but unsuccessfully had the Ottomans been there who can say what would have happened. Same thoughts would run through Christian Europe. Attitudes were highly malleable. The church was losing membership to Protestants. And as the Barbary Corsairs have shown, given the right incentives, even cradle Catholics were willing to take a better deal from the Ottoman Muslims. Suleyman would not have felt the need to take the 1566 campaign into Hungary and would likely have lived at least a few more years. Who knows with what consequences? The Holy League might well not have coalesced. The Battle of El Panto, the great Christian victory, would never have happened. Could they have taken Sicily? They had been there before. Within living memory, just barely, they had been in Spain. None of this was out of the question. In the 1550s, France had even been willing to ally themselves with Suleyman with the idea of divvying up Sicily. It didn't happen, but who's to say it couldn't have. None of this happened is frankly down to the knights and the people of Malta and the events of 1565. Which is about all I've got. I will happily take questions. I can't guarantee answers, but if I've missed something, please let me know. Any questions? Sir? Where did the Knights of Malta fit into this in history? How do you mean? There was an organization that was an organization that made some malta that originated there. When did they originate? In 1022, they originally started out as a hospital order protecting pilgrims to the Holy Land. They morphed into a fighting order, had long history. They're still out there, by the way. They have gone back to doing good works. They were kicked out of Malta by Napoleon of all people. He arrived in 1798, and that was pretty much to the end of them as a fighting order. But by then they were long since back numbers by that point. By that point they were sort of a stop on the grand tour. Young men from England or Germany going out for adventure would sign up for a cruise on their galleys. Let's see if we can take out a Muslim trade ship, or if not, it's still a great good adventure. It's their idea of Disneyland, I suppose. All rather silly, but that's one of the ways they occupied their time. Since the fort was an important part of the island, who built it? Various people. It went through different stages. There was a small fort there, not very well made at the time that the knights arrived. But it's one of those things that the position is so clearly important that whoever holds the island figure has got to build a fort here, so leave it to archaeologists. My understanding is that Malta played a significant part in World War II. Indeed it did. They dropped more bombs on Malta than they did on London. Admiral wanted it as a British base. The British took it over in 1800 and didn't leave until 1963. He essentially used it as a naval base, but it was a serious thorn in Rommel's side in North Africa. He wanted it taken out and they spent a good deal of effort making that happen. Most of the damage to the old city dates from that period. The island itself was given a communal St. George's Cross for the bravery of all the Maltese who never gave up. That's a whole story in itself, but you're quite right. There are three islands shown in your map. True. Two? No, true. Are they all considered Malta? Yeah, they're all part of the sister island. The second largest one is called Gozo. The smaller one is a place called Comino. I don't even think people live on it. Whose flag is on it now? Maltese. They got independence from Great Britain in 1963. And it's about time. They've had hell of a time. It's been one group of people after another taking over and saying, this is such a lovely island, so useful. We'll take it for ourselves now. Maltese is interesting anyway. The Maltese language is the... It's basically drawn from Arabic with a lot of Italian and few foreign words put in there. It's the only Semitic-based language which is used at the Roman alphabet. And it's not an easy language. I don't speak it. I don't even read it. But for people who are into linguistics, it's a fascinating study in its own right. What lessons can we learn from that to our present situation? That's a policy question. I'm a historian. I don't touch that kind of thing. What's the impact on the civilian population of Maltese at that time with all of the battles going on and so forth? What's your significant population? There was. The plan had been to take the greater part of the civilians off and settle them in Sicily. Don Garcia had told the Sicilians at Messina, treat these people like honored guests. And they were trying to move them off island to get them to Sicily at the times to avoid all the troubles. But the Ottomans came too soon, so they weren't able to get, but so many out there, which wasn't too bad a thing. If you read the accounts at the time, the historians who kind of looked down at the Maltese as peasants repeatedly say they fought like real men. Who would have fought? Even the women and children were doing their bit. So yeah, they definitely did their part. They're national heroes to this day. One of their cavalrymen was a fellow named Tony Vallada. There are even comic books about him in Malta. He's that much of a local hero. So there are ethnic Maltese people then who really are back from that era? Absolutely. Absolutely. Ma'am? I was just going to say that the renaissance do have a unit called the Knights of St. John. Do they? And they trace it back to Malta. I did not know that. There are various organizations which try to piggyback on the name of Knights of St. John. There's a Protestant order in fact in England, but the real true order is now headquartered in Rome. And it's a different kettle of fish. And they do worldwide good works, mostly medical relief and stuff like that. What religious component was there too, the Knights? It sounds like there were fighters, but did they actually go to school, take ecclesiastical training? No, just younger sons of nobility signed up. I don't think it took anything more than that. They're technically Augustinians, but that was a label. It gave them a certain amount of leeway that other orders might not have done. Do they have religious orders? Oh, yes. How do we put this? Were there priests and bishops and cardinals and all that type of thing? Not cardinals. Some of them did hold holy orders, but they all took vows, which didn't stop them from having families. Valet had at least three legitimate children, so they took it as seriously as they could. I don't know if that totally answers your question. Any other questions? Thank you very much.