Part 17 (1/2)
Just after the first reinforcements had been thrown into St. Elmo there arrived on the scene Ali, the Lieutenant of Dragut. This corsair came from Alexandria with six galleys, on board of which were nine hundred men, reinforcements for the Turkish army. A few days after this the famous Dragut himself appeared, with thirteen galleys and two galleots, on board of which were sixteen hundred men.
What must not have been the despairing feelings with which the defenders viewed the arrival of this augmentation to the swarming ranks of their foes! From afar they noted the vessels and knew, while Philip of Spain and Garzia de Toledo still procrastinated, that now was added to the number of their enemies the most famous captain who served the autocrat of the Eastern world. Very naturally the arrival of Dragut was hailed with acclamation by the Turks: every gun in that vast armada spoke in salute, every trumpet blared, every drum rolled to welcome the man honoured of the Padishah, notorious throughout the whole world of Europe for his implacable enmity to the Knights. The first preoccupation of the corsair was to inform himself as to the conduct of the operations. These, when disclosed to him, by no means met with his approval. This real leader immediately made it clear to Piali and Mustafa that which they should have done. In the first place they should have made themselves masters of the castle of Gozo, and then captured the Citta Notabile. By doing this the supplies to the town and fortress of Il Borgo would have been cut off: besides--and more important than aught else--they would in this manner have closed the road to those succours expected by the Christians. Piali, who had desired from the first to undertake nothing without the advice of Dragut, now said that the siege of St. Elmo was not so far advanced after all, and, if the Basha of Tripoli should so direct, it could be raised at once. To this, however, Dragut would by no means consent.
”That would have been well enough,” he said, ”if the affair had not gone so far; but, after the opening of the trenches and several days of attack, it is not possible to raise the siege without sullying the honour of the Sultan and discouraging the valour of the soldiers.”
It cannot be denied that, in acting as he did, the corsair displayed a self-restraint and a loyalty to the Sultan hardly to be expected in the circ.u.mstances. The jealousy which so often obtains among rival commanders was singularly in evidence in the forces of the Padishah: Dragut had good cause to be dissatisfied with the dispositions which had been made, and yet, for the reasons which we have quoted, he allowed them to proceed.
Before the Basha had left Tripoli he had been engaged in communications with Muley Hamid, the then King of Tunis, who was feudatory of Spain.
Anxious as was the corsair to aid in attacking his implacable enemies, the Knights, he could not afford to leave his own flank unguarded in Africa. He succeeded, however, in arriving at an understanding with the King of Tunis, and, further than this, he had a.s.sured himself, by means of his spies, that the succours which were to be sent from Sicily by the Spanish King could not possibly arrive for another two months. It was the negotiations which he was obliged to undertake with Muley Hamid which had caused his late arrival. As far as it is possible to judge, it was this circ.u.mstance, which (added to their own incomparable valour) turned the scale in favour of the Knights.
Among all those brave men at Malta, on both sides, in this flaming month of June 1565, there were none who excelled the Basha of Tripoli. ”No one had ever seen a more intrepid general officer,” says de Vertot. ”He pa.s.sed entire days in the trenches and at the batteries. Among his different talents none understood better than did he the direction and conduct of artillery, which was his special _metier_. By his orders on June 1st a second battery was constructed closer to the fort and parallel to the one already in existence, in order that an absolutely continuous fire might be maintained. He mounted four guns on the opposite side of Marsa Muzetto Harbour on a projecting point of land, from which a further enfilading fire smote the doomed fortress on the flank: this point has been known ever since as the Point Dragut.”
A ravelin in advance of the fortress on the land side was scourged without ceasing by the arquebus fire of the Janissaries. One evening, as the return fire had slackened and all seemed quiet within this work, some Turkish engineers stole forth from the trenches to reconnoitre. Approaching the cavalier, all was still as death; the bold sappers pushed on as far as the ditch by which the work was surrounded, creeping on hands and knees. They let themselves down noiselessly into the ditch, and then, one standing on the shoulders of another, peeped in upon their Christian foes. Whether or no the sentry had been slain by a stray shot, or whether he too slept, can never be known; but the cavalier was unguarded; all within it slept the sleep of men utterly exhausted. The sappers crept back to their trenches, fetched scaling-ladders, swept like a flood over the rim of the cavalier, and put to death every man whom they found. Profiting by their advantage, the Turks dashed over the bridge connecting the cavalier with the fort; here, however, they were met by Sergeant-Major Guerare and a handful of soldiers aroused by him. These men were instantly succoured by the Chevaliers de Vercoyran and de Medran, who were immediately followed by the Bailli of Negropont and several other Knights. An obstinate hand-to-hand combat now ensued; fresh Turks came up to the attack, but were mown down in swathes by an enfilading fire from two cannons which the defenders of the fort managed to bring to bear upon them. More pioneers arrived from the trenches, carrying planks and sacks filled with wool. These men tried to effect a permanent lodgment, but the fire was too hot on the Christian side, and men fell in hundreds. Nothing daunted, the Turks reared their scaling-ladders against the sides of the fortress itself, and attempted to scale the walls; but for this the ladders were too short, and the a.s.sailants were hurled back into the ditch. This attack, in which the Turkish arms were rewarded by the capture of the ravelin behind the cavalier, is said to have cost them the lives of three thousand men. It lasted from daybreak until midday.
On the side of the Christians twenty Knights and one hundred soldiers were slain; but worst of all, from their point of view, the ravelin remained in the hands of their enemies. The chevalier Abel de Bridiers de la Gardampe having received a ball through his body, some of his comrades ran to place him under cover. ”Count me no longer among the living,” said the Knight.
”You will be better employed in defending the rest of our brethren.” He then, una.s.sisted, dragged himself to the foot of the altar in the chapel, where his dead body was discovered when all was over.
So far communication remained established between St. Elmo and their comrades in Il Borgo on the opposite side of the harbour; in consequence the wounded were removed and their places taken by one hundred fresh men under the Chevalier Vagnon. To the Bailli of Negropont and the Commandeur Broglio, La Valette sent a message to return to Il Borgo. These gallant and aged veterans, both of whom were wounded, whose faces were scorched by the sun and blackened with powder, whose bodies were well-nigh worn out with perpetual vigil and hand-to-hand fighting, refused stoutly to quit their post, which now was naught but a dreadful shambles filled with corpses mangled out of recognition and heads and limbs which had been torn and hacked from their bodies.
Dragut now proposed to erect batteries on the same side of the Great Port as that on which Il Borgo was situated; on the point now known as Ricasoli, but which was then and for centuries afterwards known as the Punta Delle Forche (or Point of the Gallows, because it was here that all pirates was executed; and their bodies, swinging in chains, were the first objects that met the eye on entering the Great Port). In this he was overruled ruled by Piali, who declared that he had not sufficient men to spare, and the Knights of II Borgo would soon render the battery untenable even if they should succeed in erecting it, which the Turkish admiral now considered extremely doubtful. The siege of St. Elmo, which Mustafa had said would last at the outside for five or six days, had now been in progress for four weeks; and, although the fort was in a ruinous condition, nothing seemed capable of daunting those invincible warriors by which it was held.
The position in St. Elmo now was that the Turks still held on to the ravelin which they had captured; this they had built up to such a height that they could look over the parapet of the fortress and shoot down with arquebus fire any one whom they could see. Meanwhile the Turkish sappers delved night and day in their endeavour to undermine the parapet, which, if blown up, would give them free access to the interior of the fort; while another party, by use of the yards of galleys and huge planks of wood, busied themselves in constructing a bridge to connect the ravelin with the parapet. Lamirande, one of the most active of the defenders of the fort, viewed these preparations without undue alarm, as he was aware that, by the nature of the ground, it would be almost impossible to excavate sufficiently under the parapet to place an effective mine. As, however, the sapping was causing the parapet to incline outwards, and it was possible that it might almost at any moment fall over into the ditch, he caused a second parapet to be erected inside the first and artillery to be mounted thereon. Having done this he caused a false sortie to be made on the following night, and when the Turks rushed to the attack he, accompanied by a party of sappers, sallied out into the ditch and burned the bridge which had been made. The Turks, returning after their fruitless a.s.sault, found their bridge destroyed, but with untiring activity set to work and constructed it afresh. Dragging cannon to the very edge of the ravelin, they, on the very next evening, revenged themselves by also making a false attack: they swarmed into the ditch, and, placing their scaling-ladders against the walls, pretended that an escalade was to be attempted. The garrison, deceived, appeared on the parapet in large numbers, when a murderous fire at point-blank range was opened upon them from the ravelin.
So great was the execution done on this occasion that the garrison lost more men than had hitherto been the case in the most determined attacks which they had sustained.
It now seemed as if indeed the end had come, that the garrison had done all that was in the power of mortal man and nothing was left for them but to retire while there was yet time. Accordingly choice was made of the chevalier Median to represent the desperate extremities to which they were reduced to La Valette. It was well known that for none among the Knights had the Grand Master more respect than he had for Medran, one of the bravest and most chivalrous of them all. He, at least, could never be suspected of cowardice, feebleness, at a desire to desert his post. This gallant Knight crossed the harbour on his dolorous errand and was received by his chief: to him he represented the state of affairs as it has here been set down, a.s.suring him that at best the fort could but hold out for a few days longer.
A chapter of the Knights Grand Cross was immediately held and the most part of them were of opinion that the time had come to abandon a hopeless position. But this decision did not meet with the approval of the Grand Master. No one was more sensible than he of the peril to which their brethren were exposed; at the same time, he contended, that there were occasions on which it was necessary to sacrifice a certain number for the good of the whole Order. He had certain information that, if St. Elmo were abandoned, the Viceroy of Sicily would hazard nothing for the relief of the island; that upon the arrival of succours depended the existence of their ancient and honourable confederacy: therefore, at no matter what cost, they were bound to hold out as long as possible. So dominant was the personality of the Grand Master that, in a short time, he had won over the votes of the chapter and Medran was ordered to return to St. Elmo and deliver to the garrison a message that the siege must take its course.
Medran accordingly returned and reported to his comrades the result of his emba.s.sy. Several of the older Knights received the command with due submission, but among those who were younger there were murmurings. These men deemed the answer to their appeal hard and cruel; they could see no object in the loss of their lives, which they well knew would all be sacrificed in the next a.s.sault. They accordingly, to the number of fifty-three, wrote a letter to the Grand Master, demanding permission to abandon St. Elmo and retire to Il Borgo. If their request were denied they announced their design to sally forth, sword in hand, and perish in the ranks of the enemy. The Commandeur de Cornet was the bearer of this letter, which was received by the Grand Master with sorrow and indignation. To rea.s.sure them, he sent three commissioners to inspect the place. This was done, and one of them, a Knight of Greek descent named Constantine Castriot, reported that the fort could still hold out a while longer. When he announced this at St. Elmo the recalcitrant Knights were so furious with him that the Baili of Negropont had to sound ”the alarm” to prevent a disgraceful fracas. The commissioners returned to Il Borgo. After hearing their report La Valette wrote a letter to those by whom he had been memorialised to the following effect:
”Return to the convent, my brothers; you will there be in greater security; and on our part we shall feel a greater sense of security in the conservation of so important a place, on which depends the safety of the island and the honour of our Order.”
Never were men so taken aback as were the Knights in St. Elmo when they received this response; here it was intimated to them that that which they refused to do on account of the danger thereof was to be undertaken by others. This was no more than a fact, as La Valette was besieged with applications from, not only the Knights, but also the simple soldiers of the garrison, to be allowed to pa.s.s over to St. Elmo and die if necessary to the last man. It was, therefore, with prayers and tears that the Knights besought the Grand Master to allow them to remain. At first La Valette was adamant. He preferred, he said, the rawest militia which was prepared to obey his orders, to Knights who knew not their duty. In the end, however, he yielded, and in the fortress of St. Elmo, that crushed and ruined charnel-house, its defences gaping wide, its every corner exposed night and day to a sweeping murderous fire, there remained a host of men sadly torn and battered, but animated by such a spirit that nothing the Turks could devise made upon it the least impression. These great and gallant gentlemen had had their moment of weakness; they had been heartened to the right conception of their duty by the n.o.ble veteran who was their chief. To him had they turned at last, as his obedient children who had had their moment of rebellion in a trial as hard as was ever undergone by man. And now, as the inevitable end drew near, it was as if they would imitate the Roman gladiator with that terrible chorus of his: ”Ave Caesar morituri te salutant.”
All day and every day did the garrison fight, s.n.a.t.c.hing such repose as was possible when their pertinacious enemies, worn out by fatigue and the terrible heat, could no longer be led to the attack against those whom they now firmly believed to be in league with Shaitan himself; ”For how else,”
demanded Janissary and Spahi alike, ”could infidels like these make head against those chosen of the Prophet like ourselves.”
At this time the garrison took into use a device attributed to the Grand Master himself. This consisted in hoops of wood which were first thoroughly soaked in alcohol and then boiled in oil; they were then tightly bound with cotton or wool, also soaked in inflammable liquids mixed with saltpetre and gunpowder. Once these fiendish contrivances were set alight nothing availed to put them out, and they were feared as was naught else by the Turks during the remainder of the time they were in Malta. They were particularly deadly against the Turks, and at times two or more soldiers mounting the breach would be caught in one of these fiery circles, and the unfortunate wretches would be burnt alive. Even the Janissaries refused to advance at times when these fireworks were being flung down upon their flowing garments.
On June 16th another attack was made on the fortress, and, incredible as it may seem, it was repulsed with such awful slaughter that at last the Turks would not face the swords of the garrison. Alter this the enemy succeeded in drawing so close a cordon round the place that no more succours could reach it, and the end was but a matter of time. The day before it came Dragut, who, with his usual intrepidity, was standing in the midst of a hot fire, was struck on the side of the head by a stone dislodged from a wall by a cannon-ball. At the moment when this happened he was holding a council of war in the trenches with Piali, a Sanjak, and the princ.i.p.al Turkish engineer. The same shot which wounded Dragut killed the Sanjak on the spot.
Piali caused a cloak to be thrown over the body of the corsair in order that his state should not be observed by the soldiers, and as soon as possible had him removed to his tent, where he lay unconscious till the following day.
The council on which the corsair had been engaged when he received his mortal wound had for its object the complete isolation of St. Elmo from Il Borgo; his dispositions were completed and his orders given to the engineer just before he was struck.
The agony of St. Elmo was drawing to an end; completely hemmed in by the latest dispositions of Dragut, the fortress was at its last gasp; a brave Maltese swimmer managed to slip through the cordon, swim the harbour, and deliver to the Grand Master a letter from the Bailli of Negropont. The Grand Master made one last effort to throw succours and reinforcements into the place, but these were beaten off with terrible slaughter: nothing now remained but to await the inevitable tragedy.
[Ill.u.s.tration: DEATH OF DRAGUT AT THE SIEGE OF MALTA.]