Part 16 (2/2)
”A formidable army, composed of audacious barbarians, is descending on this island; these persons, my brothers, are the enemies of Jesus Christ. To-day it is a question of the defence of our faith as to whether the book of the Evangelist is to be superseded by that of the Koran? G.o.d on this occasion demands of us our lives, already vowed to His service. Happy will those be who first consummate this sacrifice.
But that we may indeed be worthy to render it come, my dear brothers, to the foot of the altar, where we may renew our vows. Let each one rely on the blood of the Saviour of men and in the faithful practice of the sacraments; in them we shall find so generous a contempt for death that we shall indeed be rendered invincible.”
The Knights then, headed by the Grand Master, took themselves in procession to the church. Here they confessed and received the sacrament. ”They went out from thence as men who had received a new birth.” The Knights, we are then told, tenderly embraced one another in all solemnity; vowing to shed the last drop of their blood in defence of their religion and its holy altars. It was in this lofty frame of mind that the Knights of Malta awaited the coming of their hereditary foe. Into the hearts and minds of these gallant gentlemen of the best blood in the world the Grand Master had instilled some leaven of the greatness by which he himself was inspired.
When belief is so wholehearted as it was in the case of La Valette; when it is allied to a genius for war, and a supreme gift for the inspiration of others, then that man and the force which he commands are as near to invincibility as it is permitted to fallible human beings to attain. There were two things in which the Knights were supremely fortunate on this occasion: the first was that they had La Valette as Grand Master, the second that Dragut was not in supreme command of the Turks, and that the siege had opened before he arrived upon the scene. In this expedition, as in previous ones, the Turkish commanders had orders to attempt nothing really important without the advice of Dragut. They found themselves without him when they arrived and made an initial mistake. With La Valette in command there was no room for blundering; the ultimate result of their blunder was the defeat which they sustained.
Grand Master, Knight, and n.o.ble, soldier, peasant, and mariner, strove valiantly with the task of putting the island into a state of defence, and when at last the long-expected armada of their foes rose above that distant blue horizon in the north all had been done that skill and experience could dictate.
It was upon May 18th in the year 1565 that the Turkish fleet arrived at Malta. It was composed of one hundred and fifty-nine galleys and vessels propelled by oars: on board of these was an army for disembarkation of thirty thousand men, composed of Janissaries and Spahis, the very pick and flower of the Turkish army. Soliman the Magnificent was leaving as little to chance as was possible on this occasion; he well knew the temper of the Knights, and that this expedition had before it a task which would try both the army and its leaders to the very utmost of their strength. Behind the main body of the fleet came a host of vessels, charged with provisions, the horses of the Spahis, the siege-train of the artillery, all the innumerable appliances and engines of war which were in use at that day. The initial mistake on the part of the Turks was in embarking cavalry for a siege; they knew, or they should have known, of the extreme smallness of the island which they were about to attack, and that they were by no means likely to be met with armies in the field owing to the enormous preponderance of numbers which they had a.s.sured to themselves.
Piali, as we have said, was in command of the fleet, and Mustafa of the army; the corsairs did not arrive on the scene till some days afterwards.
The Turks landed some men who encountered the Chevalier La Riviere and some Maltese troops, with whom they had some lively skirmishes. Unfortunately, in one of these the Chevalier was captured, put to the torture, and eventually beheaded for having wilfully misled the Turks. A council of war was held by Piali, Mustafa, and their princ.i.p.al officers, to deliberate on the best manner of prosecuting the enterprise on which they were engaged.
The admiral, wis.h.i.+ng to conform strictly with the instructions of Soliman, voted to delay all initiative until the arrival of the famous corsair.
Mustafa, however, held a different opinion: the unfortunate Chevalier La Riviere had, before his death, informed the Turkish general that large and powerful succours were expected daily from Sicily. Secretly disquieted by this news, which he had at the time affected to disbelieve, Mustafa now urged immediate action. His opinion was that, in the first instance, they had better attack the castle of St. Elmo. It was a small and insignificant fort which at best would only delay them some five or six days; when this had fallen they could proceed to the more serious business of taking Il Borgo, the princ.i.p.al fortress on the island in which the Grand Master and most of the Knights were established. By the time St. Elmo had been taken they might reasonably expect that Dragut and his corsairs would have arrived, and, with these seasonable reinforcements, proceed to the really formidable portion of their task. In their decisions both admiral and general were wrong; to delay attack, once the troops were landed, was a counsel of pusillanimity hardly to be expected of Piali, but showing at the same time how he dreaded above all else departing one iota from the instructions which he had received. To attack the castle of St. Elmo first was a military mistake, because it could be--and was during the whole of the siege--reinforced from its larger sister Il Borgo.
The discourse of Mustafa prevailed in the council of war, and the siege of St. Elmo was decided upon and immediately begun.
CHAPTER XX
THE SIEGE OF MALTA
The siege of Malta by the Turks; The capture of the fortress of St.
Elmo; The death of Dragut-Reis
[Ill.u.s.tration: JEAN PARISOT DE LA VALETTE, GRAND MASTER OF THE KNIGHTS OF MALTA, AT THE SIEGE OF THAT ISLAND BY THE TURKS IN 1565.]
There was an entire disregard of human life among the leaders of the Ottoman Turks at this time which is almost incredible; to attain their end in war they sacrificed thousands upon thousands of men with an absolutely callous indifference. In no chapter of the bloodstained history of their Empire was this trait more in evidence than it was at the siege of Malta.
There was, however, a reason for this, which developed itself more and more as the ceaseless a.s.saults on the positions of the Knights went on. From a military point of view, all the operations which took place were those of the siege of a fortress; as when at length St. Elmo fell the Turks turned their attention to the fortress of Il Borgo. The time-honoured method of the attack on a fortress, of approaching it by sap and mine, was here almost an impossibility, as the island of Malta is composed of solid rock through which it was practically impossible to drive trenches. It is true that the rock is of an exceptionally soft nature, easily cut through with proper tools; but you cannot cut through rock, no matter how soft it may be, when your operations are opposed at every step by a brave and vigilant enemy. Mustafa and the council of war had, as we have said, decided to begin operations by the siege of the fortress of St. Elmo. This place had been built from the designs of the Prior of Capua, an officer of the Order, and was situated at the extreme end of the promontory of Mount Scebera.s.s, which juts out between the Great Port and the harbour of Marsa Muzetto. The fort was in a commanding position and dominated the entrance to the two princ.i.p.al harbours in the island. It was admirably adapted for repulsing an attack from the sea; but, owing to the proximity of other points of land upon which artillery could be mounted, was easily capable of attack by such an enemy as that by which it was now a.s.sailed.
The princ.i.p.al preoccupation of the militant Prior of Capua had been to make it formidable on the side facing the sea; perhaps the designer had never contemplated the possibility that the day might dawn when it would be attacked from the landward side! However this may have been, Mustafa decided that it could and should be carried on this, its weakest face, and made his preparations accordingly.
As far as it was possible to open trenches this was done, at the most prodigal expenditure of the lives of the pioneers. Where the rock proved absolutely impossible of manipulation redoubts were constructed of ma.s.sive beams on which thick planks were bolted, the whole covered with wet earth which had to be collected with incredible toil from the country at the back. Disembarking their siege-guns, and utilising the cattle of the islanders for transporting them, the great cannon of the Turks were dragged up the slopes of the Mount and got into position; and by the 24th of May fire was opened on St. Elmo with ten guns which threw b.a.l.l.s weighing eighty pounds. Besides these there were two culverins which threw b.a.l.l.s of sixty pounds, and a huge basilisk, the projectile from which weighed no less than one hundred and sixty pounds. A terrible fire was opened against the walls of the fort, and so destructive did it immediately become that the Bailli of Negropont, the Knight in command, very soon became aware that his trust must be in the stout hearts and strong arms of his garrison; as the walls by which they were surrounded were hourly crumbling into nothingness.
Regarding the matter from this point of view, he sent at once to the Grand Master by the Chevalier La Cerda demanding succour; this officer, ”rendered eloquent by fear,” exaggerated the peril to which the fort was exposed and stated that it could not possibly hold out for more than another eight days.
”What losses have you had?” demanded the Grand Master.
”Sire,” replied La Cerda, ”the fort may be compared to a sick man in his extremity, in the last stage of weakness, unable to sustain himself except by perpetual cordials and remedies.”
”Then I myself will be your physician,” said the Grand Master with contempt, ”and I will bring others with me. If that cannot cure you of fear it will, at all events, prevent the infidels from seizing upon the fort.”
There was no real hope in the mind of La Valette that St. Elmo could be saved from the enemy. The place was too weak, and none knew this fact better than the man to whom all the defences of the island were as familiar as the hilt of his own good sword; but, though he secretly deplored the necessity, he felt that if Malta were to be preserved it could only be done by delaying until succour should come from outside; every day, nay, every hour, was of importance, and he was prepared to sacrifice St. Elmo and the lives of its entire garrison to attain his end. He did not, however--to continue the simile of La Cerda--prescribe for others a medicine which he himself was not prepared to take, and when he said that he would go to the fort of St. Elmo it was no mere figure of speech. The council of the Knights, however, would not hear of the Grand Master thus sacrificing himself; well did these n.o.ble gentlemen know that there was none among them like unto him, that his name and his influence were worth an army in themselves. The outcry was so loud that La Valette had to yield; which he did the more readily when he saw the splendid emulation among his brethren to cross over to the beleaguered and crumbling fortress which promised nothing but the grave to those who should pa.s.s within the circle of fire by which it was now surrounded. To the Chevaliers Gonzales de Medran and de la Motte was conceded the proud privilege for which all the Knights were clamouring; and, accompanied by the tears and the prayers of their brethren, they pa.s.sed to that place where, if death were certain, honour at least was immortal. Truly the heart warms somewhat to the days of chivalry when one reads of what was done at the siege of Malta. The motto of _n.o.blesse oblige_ was no dead letter in the sixteenth century. By this time the whole of Europe was awake to the peril of the Order, and, galloping for dear life across Europe, came the Knights, anxious and willing to share in the danger. For most of these gentlemen Sicily was the goal at which they aimed; arrived there they flung themselves into any boat or shallop which they could hire, and, heedless of the risk of capture by the Turkish fleet, totally ignorant of what was pa.s.sing in Malta save that the infidel was at her gates, they pa.s.sed across the channel which separates the two islands and joined their fellows at Il Borgo.
Greatly heartened by the reinforcements brought to them by de Medran and de la Motte, the garrison of St. Elmo made a sortie, surprised the Turks in their entrenchments, and, under cover of the guns of the fort, succeeded in destroying nearly all the works which the enemy had so painfully built up.
The Turks, however, when they had recovered from the surprise, were in such large numbers as to be able to rally and drive the Christians from the vantage points which they had gained; and to oblige them once again to retire into the fort. From this time onward there was never a day in which the garrison and the besiegers were not hand to hand in the trenches.
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