Great Siege of Malta

For nearly four months in the summer of 1565, from 18 May to 8 September, a great Ottoman expedition sent by Suleiman the Magnificent besieged the Knights Hospitaller on Malta. A garrison of roughly 6,000, led by the elderly grand master Jean de Valette, held its forts through relentless bombardment until a Spanish-led relief force landed and the invaders withdrew. The defence was celebrated across Europe and helped weaken the belief that the Ottoman Empire could not be beaten.

Driven from Rhodes after the siege of 1522, the knights had no permanent base until 1530, when Emperor Charles V granted them Malta and Gozo for the token rent of one falcon a year, along with the duty of garrisoning Tripoli. They soon turned the island into a naval base for raiding Muslim shipping. In 1551 the corsair Dragut and an Ottoman fleet attacked Malta, then carried off most of the people of Gozo and took Tripoli. The knights responded by strengthening Fort St Angelo at Birgu and building Fort St Michael on Senglea and Fort St Elmo on the Sciberras peninsula.

In 1560 an Ottoman fleet routed a Christian expedition at Djerba, and the knights' continued raiding, including the capture of a ship belonging to a senior official of the sultan's palace in 1564, convinced Suleiman to destroy them.

The Ottoman fleet sailed from Constantinople on 22 March 1565. The order's historian Giacomo Bosio counted 193 vessels. Figures for the army differ widely: de Valette's early letter gave 15,000 to 16,000 landing troops, another contemporary 22,000, while the soldier-diarist Francisco Balbi listed about 40,000 in all; Bosio arrived at a total of about 30,000. Balbi put the defenders at about 6,100, including 500 knights, Spanish and Italian troops, galley slaves and some 3,000 Maltese.

The Ottoman fleet appeared on 18 May and landed its troops at Marsaxlokk. Command was divided between the general Mustafa Pasha, the admiral Piyale Pasha and, after his arrival, Dragut, and the decision was taken to reduce Fort St Elmo first to secure an anchorage. Bombardment began on 27 May and soon reduced the small fort to rubble, but de Valette kept ferrying in men and supplies by night. Dragut was killed during the siege, and only on 23 June did the fort finally fall. Its defenders were killed almost to a man, and the attackers lost at least 6,000.

On 15 July Mustafa attacked Senglea from land and water. A hidden battery at the foot of Fort St Angelo sank nearly all the boats, killing or drowning over 800 men. Some 65 siege guns then pounded Birgu and Senglea; Balbi claimed 130,000 cannonballs were fired over the whole siege. On 7 August the walls were breached, but the attackers pulled back when a cavalry raid from Mdina struck their camp and they feared a relief army had arrived. Further assaults in late August, using a siege tower and other devices, also failed, and de Valette refused proposals to abandon the town.

The viceroy of Sicily, García de Toledo, assembled a relief force slowly. A small advance party of about 600 slipped into Birgu in early July, and on 7 September he landed about 8,000 men at St Paul's Bay. The Ottomans, by now losing perhaps a third of their men to fighting and disease, were preparing to leave. Mustafa turned to attack the relief army near Mdina but was routed, and the fleet departed in mid-September.

Estimates of Ottoman dead range from about 25,000 to 35,000. The knights lost a third of their number, as did the population of Malta, and Birgu and Senglea were left in ruins. Money from grateful Christian states helped de Valette build a new fortified city on Mount Sciberras, named Valletta after him. Six years later a broad Christian alliance defeated the Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Lepanto.

Our 1530 map shows Malta just after it was granted to the knights, and the 1600 map shows the island still in their hands at the heart of the contested Mediterranean.