Great Siege of Malta (1565): The Knights Against Suleiman

The Great Siege of Malta was a nearly four-month Ottoman attempt, from May to September 1565, to capture the island of Malta from the Knights Hospitaller. Led by their elderly Grand Master, Jean Parisot de Valette, a few thousand knights, soldiers and Maltese islanders held the harbour fortresses against an army many times larger until relief arrived from Sicily. The siege became one of the most celebrated episodes in the long struggle between the Ottoman Empire and Habsburg Spain for control of the Mediterranean.

Background: the Knights and the Mediterranean war

The Knights Hospitaller, a Catholic military religious order founded during the Crusades, had ruled the island of Rhodes for over two centuries. In 1522 Sultan Suleiman forced them out after a long siege, an episode known as the Siege of Rhodes. In 1530 Emperor Charles V granted them Malta, Gozo and Tripoli in return for a nominal annual tribute of a falcon.

From their new base the Knights’ galleys raided Ottoman shipping and captured merchants and pilgrims, which made Malta a constant irritant to Istanbul. The wider sea war was also going badly for Spain: in 1560 an Ottoman fleet crushed a Spanish-led expedition at the Battle of Djerba. In 1564 the Knights captured a large merchant ship linked to senior figures at the Ottoman court, which helped persuade Suleiman the Magnificent to strike.

Malta’s main defences lay around the Grand Harbour. The knights held two fortified peninsulas, Birgu (with Fort St Angelo) and Senglea (with Fort St Michael), while the small star-shaped Fort St Elmo guarded the harbour entrance from the tip of the Sciberras peninsula. The old walled town of Mdina stood inland.

The forces

Valette, then about 70 years old, had served in the order since his youth and had himself been a galley slave after capture by the Ottomans. He commanded perhaps 500–600 knights and serving brothers, together with Spanish and Italian soldiers and several thousand Maltese militiamen. Totals are usually given as between about 6,000 and 9,000 fighting men.

The Ottoman expedition was much larger. Estimates of its size range widely, from around 22,000 to over 40,000 men, including Janissaries and other elite troops, carried by a fleet of some 180–190 vessels. Command was divided between Mustafa Pasha, the general in charge of the land army, and Admiral Piyale Pasha, who commanded the fleet. The veteran corsair Turgut Reis, known in Europe as Dragut, was to join them, and Suleiman reportedly told his commanders to defer to his experience.

Course of the siege

The siege of Fort St Elmo

The Ottoman fleet was sighted on 18 May 1565 and landed troops in the south of the island. Partly at Piyale’s insistence, the commanders decided first to take Fort St Elmo, so that the fleet could shelter in Marsamxett Harbour. They expected it to fall within days.

Instead, the small garrison, reinforced by night with boats from Birgu, held out for about a month under almost constant bombardment. Turgut Reis arrived in early June and set up additional batteries, but he was struck by a stone splinter from a cannon shot and died of his wounds around the time the fort fell. St Elmo was finally overrun on 23 June. Almost all its defenders were killed, and only a handful of Maltese escaped by swimming across the harbour. The month-long fight cost the Ottomans several thousand men and precious time.

Chroniclers recorded that the bodies of some knights were floated across the harbour on crosses, and that Valette responded by having Ottoman prisoners executed and their heads fired back from cannon. These grim stories come from accounts written soon after the siege and reflect the bitterness of the fighting.

The assaults on Birgu and Senglea

With St Elmo taken, the Ottomans turned on Birgu and Senglea. Around the turn of June and July a small relief force of about 700 men, known as the Piccolo Soccorso (little relief), slipped into Birgu from Sicily. Ottoman crews dragged boats overland across the Sciberras peninsula into the Grand Harbour, and on 15 July a seaborne attack on Senglea was defeated with heavy losses, helped by a defensive chain and a well-placed battery at Fort St Angelo.

Through July and August the Ottoman guns pounded the walls, and the army launched repeated mass assaults. On 7 August, during a major attack, cavalry from Mdina raided the lightly guarded Ottoman camp and hospital at Marsa. Believing that a relief army had landed, the attackers broke off just as they seemed close to breaking into Senglea.

On 18 August a mine exploded under the Post of Castile at Birgu, and Ottoman troops poured into the breach. Valette, according to the eyewitness Francisco Balbi di Correggio, led the counter-attack himself and was wounded in the leg. Further assaults over the following days were also beaten back. By late August both sides were exhausted, short of supplies and suffering from disease.

Relief and Ottoman withdrawal

The Spanish viceroy of Sicily, García de Toledo, had been slow to send help, partly because Philip II of Spain was reluctant to risk his galleys. A relief force, the Gran Soccorso, of around 8,000–9,000 men finally landed at Mellieħa Bay in the north of Malta on 7 September. An Ottoman attack on Mdina had already been abandoned after the small garrison made a confident show of strength on the walls.

Mustafa Pasha began to embark his troops, then turned back to fight the newcomers. On 11 September the relief army routed the Ottoman force near St Paul’s Bay, and the survivors reached their ships under fire. By 12–13 September the Ottoman fleet had sailed away.

Key people

• Jean Parisot de Valette (c. 1495–1568): French Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller from 1557. His refusal to abandon Birgu and his personal leadership became central to the legend of the siege.
• Mustafa Pasha: the Ottoman land commander, an experienced soldier who was blamed for the decision to concentrate first on St Elmo.
• Piyale Pasha: the Ottoman admiral and victor of Djerba, concerned above all to protect his fleet.
• Turgut Reis (Dragut): the famous corsair and governor of Tripoli, mortally wounded during the attack on St Elmo.
• García de Toledo: the viceroy of Sicily who organised the Spanish relief expeditions.

By the numbers

Consequences

The failure at Malta was a serious blow to Ottoman prestige, though not to Ottoman power. Suleiman died the following year during the Siege of Szigetvár in Hungary, and his successor Selim II turned the empire’s naval strength against Venetian Cyprus in 1570. Ottoman fleets remained formidable, but they never again seriously attempted to take Malta.

For the Knights, victory brought money and recruits from across Catholic Europe. On 28 March 1566 Valette laid the foundation stone of a new fortified city on the Sciberras peninsula, named Valletta after him. Malta remained the order’s home until Napoleon seized it in 1798.

Valletta was designed by the Italian military engineer Francesco Laparelli, sent by Pope Pius IV, and its grid of streets and massive bastions made the Grand Harbour one of the most heavily fortified places in Europe. Valette died in 1568 and was later buried in the city that bears his name.

The siege made a deep impression across Europe. Printed news sheets, maps such as Antonio Lafreri’s engraving of 1565 and eyewitness narratives, notably Balbi’s diary, spread the story widely. Later, Matteo Perez d’Aleccio painted a celebrated cycle of frescoes of the siege in the Grand Master’s Palace in Valletta.

The siege also helped rebuild Christian confidence at sea and formed part of the background to the Holy League’s victory at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.

Myths and facts

Myth: the siege saved Europe from Ottoman conquest. Malta was strategically important, but its loss would not by itself have exposed the whole of Christian Europe. Its fall would, however, have threatened Sicily, southern Italy and Spanish communications in the western Mediterranean.

Myth: the knights alone defended Malta. The several hundred knights were the core of the defence, but most of the fighting men were Maltese militiamen and Spanish and Italian soldiers. Maltese civilians, including women and children, carried supplies and repaired walls under fire.

Timeline

• 1530: Charles V grants Malta to the Knights Hospitaller.
• 1565, 18 May: The Ottoman fleet arrives off Malta.
• 1565, 23 June: Fort St Elmo falls after about a month of siege.
• 1565, late June–early July: The Piccolo Soccorso of about 700 men reaches Birgu.
• 1565, 15 July: A seaborne Ottoman assault on Senglea is repulsed.
• 1565, 7 August: A cavalry raid from Mdina on the Ottoman camp helps halt a major assault.
• 1565, 7 September: The Spanish Gran Soccorso lands at Mellieħa Bay.
• 1565, 11 September: The relief army defeats the Ottomans near St Paul’s Bay; the fleet departs soon after.
• 1566, 28 March: Valette lays the foundation stone of Valletta.

Why it matters

The Great Siege of Malta showed that strong fortifications, determined defenders and timely relief could defeat even the largest expedition of the Ottoman Empire at its height. It secured Malta for the Knights for more than two centuries, gave the island its capital, Valletta, and remains a defining event in Maltese national memory.