The Last Crusaders: The Great Siege (53 page)

He was right.

With the start of the campaigning season in the spring of 1566, the Lord of the Universe attacked Christendom not by sea but by land, and not Malta, but the hard-pressed marches of Hungary. This time he would take Vienna, the Danube valley, and seize the heart of Europe.

Suleiman himself rode at the head of his army, dropsical, sallow, eyelids sagging, eyes haunted. They muttered that their lord was a broken man. He had seen many of those closest to him die – and worse, he had ordered the deaths of several of his beloved sons, to secure a succession without bloodshed, as was the Ottoman way. His son Mustafa was strangled before his eyes. Another, Beyazid, with four of his own sons, also died choking on bowstrings wielded by deaf mutes. Suleiman’s successor was to be the one called Selim, son of the Sultan’s favourite wife, Roxelana. Behind his back, he was already called Selim the Sot. He was obese, stupid, vindictive and generally drunk.

That last Hungarian campaign was not a success, the weather was terrible, and the Ottoman army became bogged down in the Siege of Szeged. The fortress was eventually taken, but Suleiman never knew it. He died in his tent the night before, on 5th September 1566.

Jean de la Valette outlived his old enemy, dying on 21st August 1568, at the age of 73. He was buried in the chapel of Our Lady of Victory, in the new capital of Valletta arising on Sciberras, where the
Turkish cannon had roared all summer long, three years before.

Today you can still read his Latin epitaph, composed by Sir Oliver Starkey. In its stern, proud and laconic style, it is the Grand Master to the letter.

 

HIC ASIAE LIBYAEQUE PAVOR TUTELAQUE QUONDAM

EUROPAE EDOMITIS SACRA PER ARMA GETIS

PRIMUS IN HAC ALMA QUAM CONDIDIT URBE SEPULTUS

VALLETTA AETERNO DIGNUS HONORE JACET

 

Here lies La Valette, worthy of eternal honour
.

The scourge of Africa and Asia
,

the shield of Europe
,

whence he expelled the barbarians by his holy arms
,

he is the first to be buried

in this beloved city which he founded
.

La Valette himself insisted on the new capital being so described in his epitaph.

‘This beloved city,’ he murmured as he lay dying. ‘This beloved island.’

TIME LINE
 
1453:
Wednesday 29th May: The Ottoman Turks under Mehmet II capture Constantinople, the last redoubt of the Eastern Roman Empire
1492:
Fall of Granada, the last Moorish kingdom of Spain, to Ferdinand and Isabella. Muslim exodus to North Africa, the beginning of the Barbary Corsair kingdoms
1517:
Martin Luther nails his famous 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg Church. Christendom slowly begins to break apart into Protestant and Catholic
1519:
Charles V elected Holy Roman Emperor
1520:
Suleiman becomes Sultan
1521:
Pope excommunicates Luther
1522:
Turks capture Rhodes from the Knights of St John
1526:
Suleiman’s Turks annihilate Hungarian forces at the Battle of Mohács, and kill King Louis of Hungary
1529:
Turks invade Austria, but fail to capture Vienna
1531:
Henry VIII declares himself Head of the Church of England
1537:
Turks declare war on Venice and ravage Southern Italy
1538:
Turks capture Spanish-held Castelnuovo in Montenegro
1542–43:
The French ally with the Turks to attack the coast of Italy and sack Nice. Barbarossa’s North African corsairs briefly occupy Toulon
1556:
Philip II, son of Charles V, becomes King of Spain
1558:
Death of Charles V
1560:
Charles IX becomes King of France, with Catherine de’ Medici as regent
1562:
Massacre of Huguenots in France
1565:
Siege of Malta
LIST OF PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
 

All those marked with an asterisk were real historical figures

 

Franco Briffa, Maltese fisherman; his wife Maria, and their children Maddalena, Mateo and Tito

*Luqa Briffa, celebrated Maltese folk-hero

*Luigi Broglia, commander, died at Elmo

*Candelissa, Greek Christian renegade turned corsair

*Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547–1616). His father was Rodrigo de Cervantes, an apothecary-surgeon with pretensions to nobility. Cervantes’ early life is obscure, but by 1569 he was serving in Spain’s Navy’s
Infantería de Marina
– the Marines. He went on to fight at Lepanto in 1571, where he was wounded three times, and in 1575 he was captured by Algerian corsairs, and held for fives years until ransomed. Later in life he turned to writing, and gave the world his immortal
Don Quixote

*Grand Marshal Copier, marshal of cavalry

*Dragut (1485–1565), Ottoman corsair and naval commander, died in the siege of Malta

*Bartolomeo Faraone, Portuguese novice knight, died of torture at the hands of the Turks

*Bridier de la Gordcamp, French knight, died at Elmo

*Melchior de Guaras, Spanish knight, died at Elmo

Matthew Hodgkin, manservant and friend of Nicholas Ingoldsby

Sir Francis Ingoldsby, of the County of Shropshire

Nicholas Ingoldsby, his son

*Don John of Austria (1547–1578), bastard son of Charles V and
his German mistress Barbara Blomberg, and therefore half-brother of Philip II of Spain. A knight of Malta

*Francesco Lanfreducci, Italian knight, died at Elmo

*Chevalier Medrano, Spanish knight, died at Elmo

*Don Pedro Mezquita, Portuguese knight, Commander of Mdina

*Captain Miranda, Spanish knight, died at Elmo

*Mustafa Pasha (1500–1580), commander of the Ottoman forces at Malta

*Henri Parisot, nephew of Jean de la Valette, died in the siege

*Piyale Pasha (c.1525–1565), Admiral of the Ottoman Fleet

*Adrien de la Rivière, French knight, captured by the Turks, died under torture

*Mathurin Lescaut, known as Romegas, French knight, born 1528, and one of the greatest naval commanders of the age. Was said to have destroyed more than fifty Ottoman galleys, and liberated more than a thousand slaves. Harried the Ottoman Fleet at Malta, and went on to fight at Lepanto in 1571

*John Smith, English knight

*Edward Stanley, English knight

*Sir Oliver Starkey, Englishman, Latin Secretary to La Valette

*Suleiman the Magnificent (1494–1566), Sultan of the Ottoman Empire

*Don García de Toledo, Spanish nobleman, Viceroy of Sicily

*Federique de Toledo, son of Don García, died in the siege

*Jean Parisot de la Valette (1494–1568), Provençal nobleman, Grand Master of the Knights of St John from 1557 until his death

AUTHOR’S NOTE AND FURTHER READING
 

Any keen reader of historical fiction will soon ask, How much of this is true? How much has the author invented? In the case of
Clash of Empires
, the honest answer is that a great deal is accurate and follows the facts closely. If you glance at the List of Principal Characters, you will see that almost all of those in the book are genuine. The main exception is my protagonist, Nicholas Ingoldsby himself. Edward Stanley and John Smith were both there at the siege, although sadly we know little else about these two mysterious figures.

As an English writer, I am naturally proud that a handful of Englishmen, at least, fought at this most heroic of battles, and I have put English characters at the heart of the story; but I wouldn’t suggest that this was in any substantial way an English victory. The Siege of Malta, 1565, one of the most extraordinary episodes in the lamentable, 1,500-year conflict between Christendom and Islam, was overwhelmingly a victory won by Italians and Spaniards, Frenchmen and Portuguese – and the staunch, stubborn, often overlooked people of Malta themselves.

If you want to know more of the history, unadorned – or untainted – by a novelist’s imagination, and check how much is accurate, then three books stand out. Ernle Bradford’s
The Great Siege: Malta 1565
, first published in 1961, will probably never be surpassed as a sober, vivid and gripping account of the battle. Bradford served in the Royal Navy during World War II, and was also a passionate sailor of the Mediterranean for many years, both of which contribute to the power of his narrative.

Three other books I found particularly inspiring were Roger Crowley’s
Empires of the Sea: The Final Battle for the Mediterranean, 1521–1580
, a colourful, compelling and brilliantly researched history of the entire period; Barnaby Rogerson’s excellent
The Last Crusaders: East, West and the Battle for the Centre of the World
; and
Suleiman the Magnificent: Scourge of Heaven
by Antony Bridge, now sadly out of print, but freely available second-hand, and a wonderfully readable, often dryly amusing portrait of the greatest of all the Ottoman sultans.

Other books to which I owe a considerable debt include
The Shield and the Sword: The Knights of St John
, also by Ernle Bradford;
The Monks of War: The Military Religious Orders
by Desmond Seward;
Victory of the West: The Story of the Battle of Lepanto
by Niccolo Capponi;
Malta 1565: Last Battle of the Crusades
by Tim Pickles and Christa Hook;
The Renaissance at War
by Thomas Arnold;
The Ottomans: Dissolving Images
by Andrew Wheatcroft;
History of the Reign of Philip II
by William H. Prescott;
Don John of Austria
by Sir Charles Petrie;
White Gold
by Giles Milton;
Muhammed and the Conquests of Islam
by Francesco Gabrieli;
Anthology of Islamic Literature
, ed. by James Kritzeck; and
The Janissaries
by Godfrey Goodwin. And keen-eyed readers will recognise immediately that the ‘old ballad’ quoted on page is of course a straightforward steal from G. K. Chesterton’s magnificent poem
Lepanto
.

I would also like to acknowledge the endless help and support of Patrick Walsh, agent extraordinaire; Jon Wood, Genevieve Pegg, Natalie Braine, Jade Chandler and all at Orion, and my eagle-eyed copy editor, Gabby Nemeth; cover artist Steve Stone, and Hemesh Alles for the wonderful maps.

If you tire of reading, then you can always visit the island of Malta itself, so packed with history at every step – despite its very twenty-first century traffic. The city of Valletta remains a splendid monument to a certain stubborn Grand Master. You can walk the narrow, winding streets of the town of Birgu on the opposite side of the harbour, among the people who are direct descendants of those stalwart sixteenth-century citizens, and visit the great fort of San Angelo, parts of which are now leased back by the Maltese Government to the still-flourishing Knights of St John (these days
more committed to charitable works than crusading). And you can stand on the walls of Fort St Elmo, much changed and restored though it is, and look out across the sparkling Mediteranean, as one day in April 1565, a small, fearful but determined band of brothers looked out, and saw a vast armada approaching from the East …

William Napier

Wiltshire, 2010

By William Napier
 

Julia
Attila
Attila: The Gathering of the Storm
Attila: The Judgement
The Last Crusaders: The Great Siege
The Last Crusaders: Blood Red Sea

 
Copyright
 

An Orion ebook

First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Orion Books as
Clash of Empires: The Great Siege
Ebook first published in 2011 by Orion Books as
Clash of Empires: The Great Siege
This ebook published in 2013 by Orion Books

© William Napier 2011

The right of William Napier to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All the characters in this book, apart from those already in the public domain are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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