TWO GENTLEMEN OF PERUGIA
When I compare our systems to that of the Turk, I tremble to think what horrors the future must bring. . . . Once he has made peace with the Persians, he will come at us with the entire combined armies of the orient—what our preparedness may be, I dare not say.
Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, 1560
Christian warfare has repeatedly been marked by visions, from Constantine’s dream of the cross the night before he seized Rome in 312 to the (demonstrably fictional) Angel of Mons in 1914. In 1339, St. Ambrose appeared on the battlefield of Parabiogo, riding a white horse and swinging a cudgel at the enemies of his beloved Milan. In AD 884, St. James arrived to help Christian Spain in its fight against Muslims at Clavijo. He alone killed sixty thousand Moors, and in the doing became the patron saint of Christian Spain. This was powerful help and was paralleled at Malta. Robert of Eboli, recovering from wounds received at Fort St. Michael, fell into an ecstasy and saw Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and John the Baptist. The trio, he reported, had been inclined to chastise the knights for previous bad behavior (and certainly there was no shortage of that), but were impressed by their current valor and return to the path of virtue.1
Robert was not the only witness to such visions: “Turks while fighting were terrified by an apparition of a woman robed in white, and several times by a wild man robed in skins, but of divine appearance, and of a white dove.”2 On the vigil of Our Lady’s Ascension, “a white dove was seen resting above the miraculous image of Our Lady of Filermo, which for many hours did not fly off; and this made the people pious, and was taken as an augury that they would soon be freed from the siege.”3 Some even claimed that there were manifestations in Constantinople itself.
All this was encouraging, as was the news from another deserter that the aga of the Janissaries had been killed and that the “pasha of the ground troops” was feeling ill.4 This was encouraging, but it did not kill Muslims. Mustapha had returned to the dull repetitive routine of bombardment. It seemed scarcely worthwhile, as a good part of the walls were as far demolished as they were likely to become. In parts of the town, a single inner wall “about the height of a man” and at places no more than ten to twelve feet thick was the only barrier between Turk and Christian.5 The men lining the defenses were lying prone on top of the rubble and waiting for the Ottomans either to come within arquebus range or to present themselves for hand-to-hand combat. The Ottoman troops were at least getting a deserved rest.
Robles, leader of the Piccolo Soccorso, whose position was less broken down, wanted to know how things stood. It was late in the day and presumably he thought there was enough light to see, but not enough to put anyone in danger. In a moment of absentmindedness, or anxiety, or ill-advised bravado, or of trust in the half-light of evening, or perhaps because it was simply too uncomfortable, he neglected to put his helmet on. An Ottoman sniper instantly put a bullet through his head. He lived through the night, reportedly in great pain, and died the next morning.
At a time where death was commonplace, Robles’s fall had a powerful effect on the survivors. All contemporary accounts note that the mourning for this man was extensive and heartfelt. Always “as a devout man, in every assault he carried a crucifix in his hand, encouraging his men to fight in ever greater fury.”6 Soldiers under his command, hard men made harder by the unspeakable horrors of the past two months, could not bring themselves to look at his corpse. Valette ordered the body to be laid out in the Church of St. Lawrence, his casket to be covered in black velvet. The grand master further decreed that Robles should be buried with the honors of a grand cross of the Order, an extraordinary gesture to any man, all the more so since Robles was not a knight of St. John.
Letters between Philip and Don Garcia made their three weeks’ journey on a regular basis, the viceroy giving updates and explanations, the king offering advice and cautions. He wanted Malta to be helped, but he wanted his fleet to remain intact. He left matters up to Don Garcia’s best judgment, but forbade any attack on the Turks. There are times Philip was resigned to the fall of Malta and comforted himself with the thought that it could be retaken at some later date. Indeed, Philip was open-minded enough to allow Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, duke of Alva, to meet with Hajji Murad, an Ottoman emissary then traveling in France. The subject was peace between the empires. Nothing came of it, but the very fact that such a meeting took place was telling.7
Whether Don Garcia was aware of this meeting is not known; regardless, he did not let up in his efforts to save Malta. Throughout the summer he had canvassed Europe for volunteers and had quartered and fed those men who had gotten as far as Sicily. He “effected the equipping of triremes, constructing barges more spacious than usual to disembark soldiers, and was gathering from all parts the provender, arms, oarsmen, and however much was necessary to such a mutable war.”8 Already by July 27 Don Garcia could write to Valette that he had one thousand to twelve hundred foot under the charge of Vincenzo Gonzaga, prior of Barletta, and that Gianandrea Doria was en route to Syracuse with twenty-seven galleys and four thousand foot, mostly from Florence and under Chiappino Vitelli.9 Freebooters and mercenaries were plentiful enough and would fight well if the money was good. Don Garcia was not just trying to gather ships and cannon fodder; the viceroy needed commanders who could lead these men. One man he especially wanted was Ascanio Della Corgna.
Ascanio Della Corgna—nephew of a pope, brother of a cardinal—was a condottiere, a contract soldier, and a good one. The sixteenth century was a busy time for men in that trade, and profitable as well, provided one could stay alive. Small wars were plentiful, and Della Corgna’s talent was exceptional. He could command a full army, and even after the loss of one eye had destroyed his depth perception, he could take on the strongest swordsmen in single combat. More than three thousand spectators gathered at Pitigliano (Tuscany) to witness Della Corgna’s 1546 duel with an insolent subordinate named Giannetto Taddei. Shopkeepers and home owners whose windows overlooked the square rented out the view. Taddei was killed, honor satisfied, and Della Corgna’s reputation confirmed. For those who missed it, the bloody event, a matter of short swords and long daggers, is immortalized in fresco on the walls of Della Corgna’s palace at Castiglione del Lago.
We get a good portrait of the man from these pictures—a long, thin face, receding hairline and long nose, the full pointed beard characteristic of the era, proud, confident, and utterly effective. (A contemporary bronze bust suggests a rounder head—something for the art historians to ponder.) In an age where distinguished soldiers were reasonably thick on the ground, his name was well known across the continent. An anonymous poet calls him a vero figliuol di Marte, a true son of Mars.10 Don Garcia would have known him (along with Chiappino Vitelli and Don Álvaro de Sande) from their common service in the 1552–1559 war against Siena, one of the interminable power struggles of the Italian city-states. As viceroy, Don Garcia was adamant that this man be put in charge of the major force that he, Don Garcia, was collecting to save Malta.
There was, however, a problem. Ascanio was sitting in a papal jail cell in Rome’s Castel Sant’Angelo “on several charges” (per alcune imputationi) in Bosio’s delicate phrasing, but that others elaborate as theft, rape, and murder.11 Serious allegations, possibly even true, but they meant nothing to Don Garcia. He wrote to Philip, who wrote to the pope and asked for indulgence. So did Maximilian the Holy Roman emperor. Ascanio’s brother, Cardinal Fulvio, also a member of the Order of St. John, argued passionately for his release. Valette also chimed in, noting that such a valiant soldier would do Christendom far more good by fighting the Turks than by rotting in jail.
The argument was hard to deny. So was Fulvio’s transfer to the pope of twenty-five thousand gold ducats and two towns in Romagna. On August 3, Pius relented, and twelve days later, with a number of Roman and Perugian gentlemen, Della Corgna was headed to Messina.12 Don Garcia was “delighted beyond measure and provided him accommodation in his own house, extending him endless kindnesses and always consulting with him.”13 Once having arrived, Della Corgna did not waste time. He wanted a firsthand report on how things stood. And by good fortune, Anastagi, hero of the Marsa battle and effectively the ranking intelligence officer, was a fellow Perugian.
It was not only Don Garcia and Della Corgna who were hungry for information. The ongoing events in Malta were being followed with interest throughout Europe, and not just among the political and military captains. Up-to-the-minute reports were published throughout the siege, notably in Paris, of which a handful survive to this day.14 Even Protestant Europe was paying close attention. On August 27, a pamphlet appeared entitled, Certayn and tru good nuews from the fyege of the ifle Malta, with the goodly vyctorie wyche the Chriftenmen, by the favorer of God have ther latlye obtained agaynft the Turks, before the forteres of faint Elmo. The contents are further described as having been “transflat owt of French yn to Englysh,” likely by a Flemish printer with an eye for the British market and a shaky grasp of the language. It purports to contain a copy of a letter from Valette to Don Garcia dated June 18, followed by an account of events made by Orlando Magro, who rode the galley into Messina on June 27. It gives a fairly accurate, if truncated, account of the St. Elmo siege and some moving afterthoughts: “Item, that the great mafter was veari forrowful for the death of Capitayn Mirande.”
This is not the only such notice in English. There are some pitifully small fragments of a second document, greatly damaged, that relate the final victory, as the pages refer to “the delivuery of Malta.” One can imagine the man on the London street grabbing at the pamphlet, reading it aloud at some tavern to his tablemates, heartened to hear the victories of the knights (wicked Catholics though they be), while the more thoughtful wonder what exactly the consequences of a Turkish victory might mean for England. Sympathy for Christendom was also the official line from the English court. Spain’s ambassador to England wrote to his king that Elizabeth “expressed sorrow that all the Princes should leave your Majesty alone with the Turk.”15 Not that she was going to pitch in, of course, she having the body of a weak and feeble woman, and there being no princes invading the borders of her realm. Still, the ambassador could report that “great importance is attached here to what is passing in Malta, and the Queen has ordered a general prayer for victory.”16 The interest is not hard to understand. Islam had proven to be a formidable enemy, and the final outcome of this struggle was not at all certain. God’s will was obscure, and Muslims could easily summon a sense of entitlement—a great motivator for any army.
Back in Constantinople, Suleiman also wondered how things stood. A letter to Mustapha dated July 17 read:
“I sent you over to Malta a long time ago to conquer. But I have not received any message from you. I have decreed that as soon as my order reaches you, you should inform me about the siege of Malta. Has Dragut, Beylerbey of Tripoli, arrived there and has he been of any help to you? What about the enemy navy? Have you managed to conquer any part of Malta? You should write to me telling me everything.”17
Just to make sure that this letter arrived, he sent a copy to the Doge of Venice, a tame neutral who had rejoiced at the fall of Fort St. Elmo, asking that he should forward it to the general, and that he also should send back any news Venice itself might have learned on how things were going.18
What could Mustapha say? The best men of his army were already dead, both the fanatics who had questioned nothing in their zeal to eradicate the infidel and the Janissaries who had believed that bravery and skill were enough to take the island. The sick and wounded filled the infirmaries he could not even protect. Many of his corsair allies began drifting away. This was no longer a battle they saw much future in. While they fought the fanatic knights, Christian sailors were cruising the shipping lanes, intercepting vessels carrying staples intended for the Ottoman army. It was galling for the corsairs, impatient at the tedium of a siege and the futility of frontal assaults against hardened positions. Surely their time would be better spent on the water. Janissaries were slaves to the sultan, and Iayalars might wish to die from religious conviction; but the corsairs were mercenaries, and if there were no profit on Malta, the expedition was a waste of their time. Independent men, they had other options. Even among the Janissaries, when Mustapha asked the men to sacrifice more, they began to balk.
Janissaries were a difficult proposition at the best of times. Their bravery and ability were unquestionably first-rate, but they, like any soldiers, needed a reason to keep going. A commander who could not lead them to victory would soon find himself facing a very truculent group of dangerous men indeed. They were not above outright mutiny if circumstances called for it, and they would not hesitate to bring their grievances directly to Suleiman himself. Mustapha ordered them to fight, cajoled, insulted them, called them dogs and unworthy of the name Sons of the Sultan. They wouldn’t budge. The impasse was broken on one condition only: the Janissaries would attack, but only with Mustapha in the vanguard.
Mustapha was no coward. He would do it. Time—the siege’s and his own—was running out.
If Muslim corsairs were trickling out of Malta, Christian soldiers and adventurers were pouring into Messina. Knights of the Order who had failed to get to Malta before the Turks arrived now waited in that city and pestered Don Garcia just as they had before the Piccolo Soccorso. Nerves were frayed on both sides and with some reason; Messina can be appallingly hot in August. Already under considerable pressure, Don Garcia, at times a petulant man, at one point took their ranking officer, Louis de Lastic, to task for neglecting to use the viceroy’s honorific of Excellency. This was too much for the Frenchman: “If we can come to the aid of Malta in time, most excellent lord, I will call you Excellence, Highness, Majesty, and give you all these high and mighty titles that Your Excellency might ever wish or presume.”19
Lastic, this “grand old man of much standing,” ignored Don Garcia’s very real strategic and political concerns.20 Circumstances had changed to a degree, but were still fluid. Ottoman and corsair fleets still patrolled the waters around Malta, sometimes beyond, and they were still better equipped and larger than anything Don Garcia had on hand. The Piccolo Soccorso had been a calculated gamble played in a very specific and limited window of time, and it had been blessed with extraordinary good luck. Its success could not necessarily be repeated—at least, not just yet.
His caution gave rise to the common charge that Don Garcia did nothing. This is, as we have seen, nonsense. Besides the constant solicitation for men and matériel, besides the regular mail couriers that slipped into and out of the island, he had indeed authorized various other attempts to land small groups of soldiers. These failed to reach land either because the ships’ captains thought the passage too dangerous, or because the defenders of Malta itself, Valette and Don Mesquita, or as we have seen, Anastagi, warned the approaching ships away. What Don Garcia had always been holding out for was an overwhelming force to go up against an exhausted enemy, and by late August, with sixty galleys, he was nearly there.21
On August 21, the viceroy called for a council of war at Messina. By now men could see the end of summer and consider what effect that would have on their options. Factions had formed, and there was heated argument over next steps, taking the same positions men had taken over the Djerba invasion. The season was late, the weather was unpredictable, and the risk to sailing was significant. If there was no immediate threat of Malta’s collapse, then relief ships could wait until the following spring, when they could depart and arrive earlier than any ship from Constantinople. Why risk lives and ships when they could do as much good by waiting? Indeed, the Turks might have left already, Constantinople being that much farther away than Sicily. And even if the Turks did succeed in taking the island, well, they would only have a pile of rubble to defend, easily taken, perhaps earlier the following year before they had a chance to rebuild.
Others at the meeting—the knights, of course, and Gianandrea Doria—found that delay only whetted their appetites. Nor was it just youngbloods. Among the knights was yet another octogenarian, the bailiff of Majorca, Fra Nostre de Monsuar, eager to end his life in this grand fight. But even the ambitious acknowledged that there would be difficulties. By mid-August, the Algerians had been ordered to patrol the island perimeter with thirty galleys, basically to keep anyone from reaching there.22 The island could not supply any relief force with food, and carrying their own would be a significant task. As the men droned on, Don Garcia sat and listened. The respect of the captains required at least the appearance of polite attention, even if the final decision was his. How seriously he was taking their advice—how seriously he was listening at all—is unknowable. He needed to appear impartial. He did, however, have a friend in the audience. Della Corgna now rose to speak.
Della Corgna was among the more forceful proponents of heading on, and his speech was reported at length in Viperano: “Will we have enough grit to take back the island once it is already lost? Do we wish to be spectators to a disaster among our brothers instead of their saviors?” and so on in this vein.23
But he had more than emotion to back him up. The envoy Captain Salazar had recently returned from Malta, where he had ridden the countryside in the company of Vincenzo Anastagi. It was Anastagi who wrote “a most particular account on the state of the war.”24 It was this “most particular account” that Della Corgna pulled out and read to the assembly.
The report describes the enemy not as the unbeatable foe that Philip presumably feared, but instead as a weakened, sickly force that was near mutiny and wanted nothing more than to go home. Their ranks were thinned, their powder low, their morale in shreds. Even Anastagi’s rampage through the Marsa did not prompt the Ottomans to dig trenches around the camp. Mustapha had arrived with twenty-two thousand men and was now down to only twelve or thirteen thousand soldiers, “of whom the only ones worth anything are the janissaries; the flower is dead, and the survivors no longer dare approach the walls, even though they are forced with cudgel by the Pashas and other captains.”25 They wanted water, food, and sleep. Anastagi then goes on with harder information, including the scheduled routine of the twenty to twenty-five ships (not sixty to eighty) that patrol the islands, and the larger numbers that the Muslims held in reserve. He gives advice on where to land and how the defenders were prepared to help him.
Given that its purpose was to coax an allegedly reluctant Don Garcia into action, the report may have overstated the enemy’s weakness—more or less correct in its outlines, but perhaps stretching a point in particulars. How key this single report was in tipping the balance is open to question—Don Garcia had been in regular correspondence throughout the siege and was monitoring the pulse of events from the outset. He had, however, voiced some skepticism of Valette’s earlier claims (his June 2 letter to Philip) that the enemy was “always in disorder.”26 Don Garcia tended to keep his own council. If he was already inclined to relieve Malta, then Anastagi’s letter may simply have been most useful as a debating point to sway the reluctant. It’s solid material from an experienced, intelligent professional, compelling in its details, and sound in its advice. The relief force was, as with the Piccolo Soccorso, a matter of timing, nicely calculated and razor thin. Regardless, when Della Corgna had had his say, Don Garcia rose, looked around at the gathered captains, and made his pronouncement. The hour was late, but it was not too late. The fleet, he declared, would rendezvous at Syracuse and then sail to Malta.
Valette hoped for an army. Mustapha would have settled for some food. He had sent Ragusan supply ships filled with grain to Djerba, where it could be baked into biscuits for his troops, and he was still waiting for them to return. While waiting, he ordered another assault on Fort St. Michael—a night attack this time, to be followed the next day by a general assault on the breaches. The three thousand Ottomans were unblooded novices, supported by veterans.27
The artillery had done all that could be done in bringing down the walls, and further pulverizing was not going to make much difference. Two months earlier this might have been a walkover. Now, the bravest soldiers were dead or wounded, and the remainder felt truculent and homesick. Many were not even soldiers. Despite this, they were the best that Mustapha had, and his only hope lay in turning them into a facsimile of the real thing. As Don Mesquita had done in Mdina, Mustapha dressed his men in robes of the chosen warriors and put them in conspicuous places. Those who did their jobs properly and survived, Mustapha promised to enroll as proper Janissaries. And when the time of battle came, he also made sure to lead them in person.
From August 16 to 19, there was continuous bombardment, which had little effect since the walls were by now as far destroyed as they were going to be. A few small attacks, by day or night, came to nothing, as both sides geared themselves up for the inevitable. The Ottoman troops were no longer the fire-breathing soldiers of springtime. Some were almost sympathetic. They called out, “Hold on, you dogs, because already there are not many oxen to kill, and only sheep are left and they are not fat. There is not much flour and the next assault you will be free,” which the defenders took as meaning that the best of the Ottoman army was dead, replaced by nonsoldiers with little powder, and that the next assault would be their last.28
Thin sheep or fat, the attackers were to put up a powerful fight. Mustapha and Piali targeted Senglea and Birgu, respectively, and if Senglea held firm, Birgu, specifically the Post of Castile, very nearly did not. The strategy was to hit Senglea first and hard and wait for Valette to send reserve troops across the pontoon bridge from Birgu. Once those had moved, Piali Pasha was to deploy his four thousand chosen men against the now weakened Birgu.
Valette failed to do his part. Piali eventually lost patience and simply attacked. Initially things went well. His men advanced toward the breaches and soon planted the Ottoman standard, “red, extremely large, with a horse’s tail and golden apple capping the top of the shaft,” on the post of Don Rodrigo Maldonado, an outcrop of the Post of Castile.29 Wind carried smoke into the faces of the defenders, obscuring their targets, burning their eyes, and making the shouts of oncoming soldiers all the more frightening. A mine under the wall was successfully exploded and turned part of the wall into a large slag heap, giving Piali’s men a breach to enter the town. Women shrieked, thinking the enemy had entered the town.
All this time, Valette had been at chapel, not letting the start of the battle interfere with his devotions. His spiritual duty in the house of God now ended, he and his attendants came outside to the material world, where all hell was breaking loose. A flood of people, civilians and soldiers, rushed from the direction of the wall. White-faced, bewildered, they saw the grand master and shouted, “Monsignor, we are lost! The Turks have entered the Post of Castile!”30 Valette, urged to retreat to the safety of Castel Sant’Angelo, instead grabbed one of the young men by the arm and sent him back to the fight. He ordered another to sound the church bell. No one could be spared from this crisis, not these lay brothers, least of all Valette himself. He took his helmet from his page, seized his pike, and made his way to find the enemy.
Valette’s crew arrived at what was left of the wall and saw their comrades fighting on the unsteady rubble. The Christians, many still dazed from the initial burst, were getting the worst of the fight. Valette threw himself into the thick of the mob, shouting, “Brothers, my children, in the name of God, let us all go to die together, with weapons in hand—today is our day!”31 More soldiers streamed toward the breach, pushing the enemy back up the ruined wall, looking for men to kill. Through a fog of light brown dust both sides came at one another. Gunfire from a distance was all but useless as friends and enemies were barely distinguishable. Men pressed forward with steel weapons, close enough to choke on the same clouds of burnt powder and stone as they swung their blades at each other. Convalescents, those who could, hobbled from the infirmary to take up arms, recalling, presumably, the fate of the Ottomans at the Marsa.
Valette was shouting encouragement to his men and defiance at the enemy, thrusting the needle point and sharp edge of his pike at the oncoming Muslims. At some point, a missile knocked off a stone shard that gouged Valette’s left calf. Blood began to pour out, and men nearby urged him to withdraw. Don Pietro de Mendosa turned to Valette and said, “Ah, Illustrious Monsignor, would you wish that they kill you and all be lost?”32 Apparently Valette was indeed willing to risk it and pointed to the crescent flag still standing on a high point in the breach. As long the banner stood, he shouted, he would not leave the fight. A soldier immediately climbed over the slope of rubble toward the offending banner and tore it down, and again his men urged Valette to withdraw. By now the best of the assault was over, and Valette, confident that the Ottomans had retreated for good that day, allowed himself to be led away and have his wound tended to.
Corsairs might have been leaving, but among the Muslims who remained, personal bravery was still found, as if it were shameful to live when so many companions had died. Cheder, sanjak-bey of Bosnia, an old soldier of the Ottoman army, magnificently clothed, “in person being most resolute to conquer or die, came with some of his most ferocious men.”33 He and his chosen spahis fought their way to the Post of Maestro di Campo and planted the standard, then held the position for some hours. It was the bey’s misfortune to face none other than Captain Juan de La Cerda.
Whatever La Cerda might have been doing since the fall of St. Elmo has escaped the attention of the otherwise exhaustive chronicler Bosio. Any punishment for his bad attitude is apparently not worth mentioning. His actions this day, however, could not be ignored. He was among those who broke out from the Christian lines and ran headlong toward the Ottoman standard. The sanjak bey’s “most ferocious men” were unequal to these mad Spaniards. Within minutes, the cordon protecting the bey had been cut through, the bey himself was dead, the enemy repulsed, and the Ottoman standard taken. All this, however, did not come cheaply. La Cerda was now wounded, and badly; his comrades bore the captain back to the infirmary, where he died ten days later, his honor restored.
Balbi says the two (Bosio counts six) assaults on Senglea lasted a full five hours, as fierce as anything they had yet seen, and it may have been so.34 But the number of casualties had fallen dramatically from earlier battles. After five hours of fighting, two hundred Muslims were dead. Perhaps it was a reflection of the reduction in soldiers. Certainly it was no reflection on the commanders. On August 20, Mustapha was again in the vanguard “with a most valorous spirit.”35 At some point—we are not told when—a shot from Birgu knocked off his turban and stunned him. He remained in the ditch outside St. Michael for the rest of the day. No one appears to have noticed him or thought him or his corpse worth saving. Hours later, under cover of darkness, he roused himself enough to crawl out under his own steam. We can only imagine the effect of his staggering out of the shadows and back into camp. Perhaps Allah was favoring this expedition after all.