THE END OF THE BATTLE
The castel of St. Elmo is taken and all within it hewn to pieces.
Phayre to Cecil
June 23 was the eve of the feast of St. John the Baptist. Fort St. Elmo had held out for twenty-nine days, and the Ottomans were impatient to be done with it. Throughout the night, their thirty-six heavy guns fired from three points on land and several of Piali’s ships on the water, illuminating both the sky and the fort and proving if nothing else that they still had a vast amount of ordnance to waste. Dawn broke. The Muslim soldiers on Sciberras gazed up at the smoking ruins and saw the white-and-red crossed flag still flying, still defiant. Presently they made themselves ready for what would have to be the final assault. Across the water, the men at Fort St. Angelo, all too aware of what was coming and helpless to stop it, stood and watched the final act play out.
Inside St. Elmo scarcely sixty men remained, scattered among the breaches and placed in the remains of the cavalier, outnumbered by the dead, who lay where they had fallen. Few of those left alive had escaped injury; all were determined to hold on to the last instant.1 The captains were focused on a hard fight, a good death.
One more time the kettledrums pounded, brass horns shrilled, men shouted, and the order to advance was given. Mustapha reported to the sultan that his troops, “shouting ‘Allah, Allah!’ and accompanied by the souls of the martyred,” began to charge the walls.2 Janissaries, spahis, and their corsair allies, impatient for victory, crossed over the rubbish pit of stone, earth, and broken weaponry, climbed over the corpses, scrambled up the incline toward the breaches, and braved a single, weak volley from inside the fort.
If they expected the job to be easy, they were disappointed. The first Muslims into the breach were met with a hedge of sharp steel, pikes, swords, lances, and a hail of stones. An hour passed, and although men on both sides fell, the fort did not. Another hour passed, and the attackers fell back, re-formed, came forward again, and again were held off by the stubborn Christian line. Both sides licked their wounds and dragged their dead away. From time to time there followed small diversionary attacks of no particular consequence, each a prelude to the next general assault.
When the final assault came, the first Janissaries to cross the rise found, to their astonishment, Captain Miranda, strapped into a chair and gripping a pike. The commander was maimed and bandaged, but still possessed of the soldier’s skills of thrust and parry. Even now in a position of weakness he managed to slash and gut a handful of enemy soldiers before his fellow Christians were able to repel the attackers one more time. The Muslims, however, managed a final parting shot that killed Miranda.
Command now devolved on d’Eguaras. His leg had been shattered, and so he too was confined to a chair. Seeing how the number of his men had dwindled, he thought to improve the odds by consolidating his remaining forces. He ordered the gunners on the cavalier to fall back and join their comrades inside the fort. This move was a boon for the Muslims, who quickly moved to fill the cavalier with sharpshooters. From its heights they could look down inside the shattered fort and signal to their comrades just how diluted the Christian force truly was.3 All tactical advantage now lay with Mustapha. Marksmen on the ravelin and on the cavalier could fire down on the Christians from the rear while Muslim infantry could attack from the front and flanks. (Oddly, Balbi says that the Muslims confined themselves to throwing stones.)4
A little past eleven that morning, the final assault began. Janissaries, corsairs, and anyone else who wanted to be in at the kill, drew their blades and overtopped the crumbling edge of the fort and poured into the main piazza. The area soon resembled a Roman amphitheater in the final stages of a gladiators’ show, a confused mass of desperate men fighting in separate brawls “in which there ran rivers of blood from the multitude of the dead and the wounded on all sides.”5 D’Eguaras was among the first to die. Knocked from his chair, he managed to raise his sword and limp toward four Janissaries. One of the four brought a scimitar down on his neck and severed his head, which Mustapha would later order stuck on the end of a pike.
With their comrades gone, not wishing to survive them, unable to see beyond the moment or to hope for a life in this world, the remaining Christians lashed out with a superhuman fury at any Muslim who came within reach. At the door of the chapel, Chevalier Paolo Avogadro swung a broad sword with both hands and soon created a half-circle of Muslim dead around him. It took a volley of arquebus fire to put an end to this slaughter, and the dying knight collapsed on top of the pile of men he himself had killed.
The few small fights were winding down as force of numbers made good the Ottoman effort to leave no man standing. Colonel Mas, last of the commanders and also confined to a chair, swung a two-handed sword until he was himself cut down. Fortunio Escudero, last gunner on the cavalier, headed a small group of soldiers wielding broadswords on the crest of the fort, clearly visible from across the water at Fort St. Angelo, until he and they too succumbed to greater Muslim numbers. Official reckoning was now only minutes away. Mehmed ben Mustafa, who had captured La Rivière on the first day of the invasion, had the honor of seizing the knights’ ragged banner for his general as well, after which he “entered the bastion of the infidels and chopped off some heads.”6 The end was marked when a wounded knight, Frederico Lanfreducci, went to his post at the marina and gave the final agreed-upon smoke signal (una fumata) that the fort was lost.7 Moments later he was taken prisoner, becoming one of nine Christian survivors captured in Fort St. Elmo’s last battle.8 A handful of Maltese, able swimmers, were able to escape.
The fight was over. It had taken four hours.9
“After having occupied that post for several days, [Mustapha] bombarded Fort St. Elmo and attacked night and day with heavy formations, then, following the attacks, with a uniform and impatient force, and with the help of God, the fort was taken.”10
So wrote the Ottoman historian Selaniki in his brief account written years after the fact. In the days after the taking of St. Elmo, Mustapha appears to have commissioned forty-two lines of poetry extolling the Muslim troops, Suleiman, and Mustapha himself.11 Piali Pasha is mentioned, but not named, and due respect is paid to Turgut Reis. Composing this kind of poetry was a common practice in the Ottoman army, and Mustapha may have hoped that it would soften the harsher realities of the campaign.
The taking of St. Elmo, the proposed work of well under a week, in the end cost the Ottomans thirty-one days, four thousand men, and eighteen hundred rounds of artillery.12 Mustapha’s initial reaction was one of horror and dismay: “If this is what such a small son has cost us, what price the larger father?”13 The fort’s new occupants busied themselves with hauling up a new collection of pennons and flags. Mustapha Pasha’s men were relieved that the worst of it was over, and cheered as Piali’s fleet sailed into the safety of Marsamxett Harbor.
Mustapha’s final report was prepared and a fast ship ordered to Constantinople with the good news, along with a collection of various Christian guns, small trophies from a small fort too hard won. Mustapha could only hope that these (and the poem) would mollify the sultan when he read the casualty reports. Royal displeasure in the sultan’s court could cost a man his head, and this knowledge would weigh on both Piali and Mustapha. In his report, Mustapha refers to “one hundred galleys of the imperial fleet that guarded and impeded the Maltese barges and caiques from bringing reinforcements to the defenders of St. Elmo”—a measure of overkill that might have led some to wonder why the siege had taken so long.14 He also had his engineers draw up a map of the siege to accompany news of the victory back to Constantinople. This chart is brightly colored and minutely detailed, and gives a recognizable outline of the area and each side’s deployments. It is (like some of its Christian counterparts) somewhat out of proportion, suggesting to the observer a more formidable target than a strictly accurate illustration might.
The corsairs concentrated on the search for loot. There wasn’t much—broken weapons, the cannons, some of the coins that Captain Miranda had had brought over to boost the men’s morale. More mundanely, there was leftover grain and three cisterns of water.15 There were also a handful of Christian survivors. Always on the lookout for a business opportunity, the corsairs gathered those unhappy few who might be worth a ransom and protected them against the Janissaries, who still had spleen to vent. Mustapha settled the matter by paying the corsairs four gold zecchini a head, whether as living trophies or as a capital investment is uncertain, though we do know that Lanfreducci was set free in Constantinople six years later at a crippling cost to his family.16
As for the Janissaries, they found an outlet for their lingering rage among the surviving defenders too far gone for the slave markets. Soldiers they killed and hacked to pieces. Those identified as knights had their legs bound and were hoisted upside down through a ring in the roof of the chapel normally used for the chandelier. The victims were then gutted like cattle, their hearts (“still beating” according to the chroniclers) torn out, their heads cut off.17 A quartet of these heads were stuck on poles and lifted up to gaze back over the waters on their comrades at Fort St. Angelo—a grisly attempt at intimidation. The victims were assumed to be d’Eguaras, Miranda, Medrano, and Mas, but at that distance, who could tell? It scarcely mattered. The four heads, covered in flies and quickly turning black in the scorching heat, were emblematic of all who had fought and died at Fort St. Elmo.
Meanwhile, a messenger was sent back to the Turkish camp. He hurried to enter Turgut’s tent, then leaned down and gently whispered to the semiconscious man that Fort St. Elmo was theirs. Hearing is the last sense in the dying to go. Moments after the words were spoken, Turgut Reis, Drawn Sword of Islam, lay back on his pillow and died, faithful to the soothsayer’s prediction. Four galleys carried him back to Tripoli for burial, and Uludj Ali, the onetime Calabrian peasant, now became the city’s governor. Mustapha and Piali would have had another reason to regret Turgut’s death. Ottoman historian Kâtip Çelebi wrote that the noncorsair “should consult corsairs and listen to them” in naval affairs, one reason being that should an enterprise fail, this will “save him from being the only one to bear the blame.”18 (Mustapha took the opportunity of Turgut’s death for his “gold coins, his money, his personal belongings and six kula infidels, his horses, his mules etc.” to be listed and if possible brought over for the use of the siege.)19 Bosio ends his chapter on St. Elmo with an extended peroration on the wickedness of Turgut and the debt owed by Christendom to the knights who finally killed him. Balbi refers to him as el perro, “the dog,” a rare bit of abuse from this normally generous man, but leaves it pretty much at that. Cirni, ever one for the humiliating detail, notes that his “tongue was lolling out.”20 The English made no editorial comment; his stature was enough that this death needed only one line in the reports sent to Queen Elizabeth: “Torgut Reis is slain.”21
For Mustapha, the victory was Pyrrhic. Soldiers want easy victories, and they value and admire the leaders who arrange them. Mustapha’s engineers had promised that St. Elmo would be a walkover. For superstitious men—and both soldiers and sailors can be exceedingly superstitious—this broken promise was a bad omen. Why should they respect Mustapha? Not only had he failed to bring quick victory, but his unwillingness to press his case against Piali was the only reason they were at St. Elmo in the first place. Instead the supreme commander of the army had allowed himself to be browbeaten by his junior in a quarrel over strategy. And it was no comfort that the legendary Turgut had agreed with Mustapha’s original plan to leave Fort St. Elmo until last, or that the plan was probably sound—both facts merely underscored this failure. No doubt if the old corsair had shown up earlier, he would have won the point and might still be with them, bringing victory.
Certainly the news did not go down well in Constantinople. The French ambassador to the Grand Porte wrote home to say, “I will only tell you that the death of Torgut Reis has brought great sadness to Suleiman and even taking Malta would not bring him pleasure, if it comes at the price of so valiant a captain. Yesterday morning, by the arrival of a courier, we wanted to believe that Malta had been captured.”22
Nevertheless, Suleiman’s next letter to Mustapha was an order to “encourage the army and the Janissaries to fight against the enemies and you should conquer the island of Malta. I trust that you and everybody else will succeed in this feat.”23 From now on, it would be uphill work for Mustapha to regain the respect of his men.
Valette moved out of the grand master’s palace. Common gossip held that he could not bear to see the Muslim banners flying over St. Elmo, though it is just as likely that he wanted to be closer to the next phase of the operation. A new hardness came to him. The dead would not be allowed to undermine Christian resolve, and so long as the enemy was still on the island, grief was a luxury. Valette ordered no public mourning for the husbands, brothers, or sons who had died. Instead all Christians were to mark the feast of St. John, which occasioned the weird phenomenon of two enemies engaged in twin celebrations, since the Ottomans as good Muslims also held St. John in “great reverence” and noted the occasion with “large bonfires and great firing of artillery.”24
After three weeks of almost constant cannon blast, the sudden quiet the following day must have been both welcome and eerie. Any psychological respite, however, would be short-lived. Valette’s injunction to leave the dead unmourned was about to be put to the test. The morning after the fall of St. Elmo, watchmen on the walls of Fort St. Angelo saw four pale objects floating in the water. Eyes can play tricks on even the most farsighted, especially where water is concerned, but as the currents brought the objects closer, there was no doubt as to what the watchmen were seeing. They called for Valette. Gently bobbing like so much driftwood toward the tip of Senglea were four large wooden crosses on which were nailed the supine remains of as many dead Christians.
The pallid, sea-washed bodies, skin white as marble, had had their chests slashed twice in a grisly imitation of the red cross on their order’s uniform (possibly as a subtle suggestion that Mustapha had no quarrel with the Maltese, only with the knights). The corpses were gently pulled ashore with the reverence due to martyrs and brothers, and where possible, identification was made by those who knew them best. It was a ghastly and wholly unnecessary excess, “contrary to all law of war and all humanity.”25 Piali Pasha himself is said to have protested the action, and Mustapha reproved him for doing so.26 Mustapha had a point to make, both to his own men and to the holdouts across the bay.
The sight of their butchered comrades was distressing even to the hardest veteran, and Valette spoke at some length to the soldiers, seeking to calm their fears and reinvigorate them for the rest of the siege. The fall of Fort St. Elmo, he said, should not dismay them, but rather should cause them to redouble their courage. Death comes to all men, but those who died at Fort St. Elmo exited life gloriously, sacrificing themselves nobly and of their own free will in the name of Jesus Christ, than which there was no finer or more desirable death. They were Christian soldiers fighting against impious barbarians, valiant warriors fighting against ignoble brutes, skilled soldiers fighting against undisciplined hordes.
Even for an accomplished public speaker, his was a weak response, and no words could really measure up to this horrid action. Outrage must answer for outrage. Valette, his speech done, went to Fort St. Angelo and ordered all Muslim prisoners to be brought out of their cells. When they emerged from the dark, blinking at the bright sunshine, he gave the order that they were all to be executed and their heads thrown over the wall in front of Birgu. He ordered the same to be done at Mdina.
Modern historians starting with Vertot have embellished the story by having Valette stuff the heads into cannon and fire them into enemy lines.27 Contemporary records, when they mention the affair at all, state only that heads were cut off and thrown at the enemy camp (capita versus hostium castra iactata sunt).28 The story seems excessive on the face of it. Aside from the question of how well a human head might weather that kind of treatment, there is Valette’s need to husband powder, exacerbated by the recent explosion of his powder factory. (There is no record of what happened to the bodies; their treatment is unlikely to have been in accordance with Islamic law or tradition.)
Cannons or not, later writers, Porter chief among them, have tut-tutted Valette for this act, “unworthy of his character as a Christian soldier,” which shows little appreciation of just how desperate his situation was.29 In addition to the need to prove his own ruthlessness to a ruthless enemy, there is the plain fact that these prisoners were, like horses, cows, and dogs, useless mouths whose presence required valuable food, water, and the manpower needed to keep an eye on them. They were, moreover, a potential danger. Hostile prisoners (led by a Knight of St. John) had, after all, broken out of their prison and guaranteed the 1536 conquest of Tunis. To chastise Valette for this act, given all that had gone on before, is to ignore the utter barbarity of war in general. Unquestionably, the gesture sent a strong message to the Ottomans. Until now, the invaders could assume that capture did not mean certain death. It’s a comforting thought in war, where comforting thoughts aren’t all that thick on the ground. Piali, objecting to the slaughter in Fort St. Elmo, seems to have realized this. With all assurance of chivalry gone, the Muslim foot soldier had one more incentive to leave, and one more reason to doubt his commander’s ability. Conversely, as Mustapha hoped, they might have one more reason to stay and exact revenge from the infidel knight Valette.
Regardless, both sides had shaken off the trammels of tiresome humanity in order to expedite a fight. The devil had pitched a tent on Malta.
Map of Grand Harbor, by Chris Erichsen.
Suleiman the Magnificent. Anonymous Venetian woodcut in two blocks, ca. 1532, in William Stirling-Maxwell, Examples of Engraved Portraits of the Sixteenth Century (London, 1872).
Charles V of Spain. Oil portrait by Juan Pantoja de la Cruz, El Escorial, Madrid.
Khairedihn Barbarossa. Engraving from André Thevet, Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustres (Paris: Kervert et Chaudière, 1584).
Sinan Pasha. Etching by Giacomo Franco, Effigie naturali dei maggior prencipi et più valorosi capitani (Venice: Giacomo Franco, 1596).
Jean de Valette. Etching in M. Manger and J. Praetorius, Atrium heroicum Caesarum regum, (Augsburg: Custos, 1600).
Gianandrea Doria. Etching in M. Manger and J. Praetorius, Atrium heroicum Caesarum regum (Augsburg: Custos, 1600).
Don Garcia de Toledo. Etching in Cesáreo Fernández Duro, Armada española: Desde la unión de los reinos de Castilla y de Aragón, vol. 2 (Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, 1896).
Ascanio Della Corgna. Etching in William Stirling-Maxwell, Don John of Austria (London: Longmans, 1883).
Vicenzo Anastagi. Oil portrait by El Greco, Frick Collection, New York.
Fort St. Elmo. Rendering courtesy of Stephen C. Spiteri, Fortresses of the Knights (Malta: Book Distributors, 2001).
Fort St. Elmo after the loss of the ravelin on the left. Rendering courtesy of Stephen C. Spiteri, The Great Siege: Knights versus Turks, MDLXV: Anatomy of a Hospitaler Victory (Malta: Gutenberg Press, 2005).
Fort St. Angelo. Rendering courtesy of Stephen C. Spiteri, The Great Siege: Knights versus Turks, MDLXV: Anatomy of a Hospitaler Victory (Malta: Gutenberg Press, 2005).
Fortress near Humt Suk, Djerba. Wood engraving, 1886, by Fortuné Louis Méaulle, from a drawing by T. Taylor.
The Tower of Skulls (Djerba). Steel engraving, 1841, by E. Benjamin, from a drawing by Sir Grenville T. Temple, Bart.
Galley of Knights of St. John. Etching by Jacob Custodis in Joseph Furttenbach, Architectura Navalis (Ulm: J. Saurn, 1629).