Giovanni Bonello

Histories of Malta: Volume Nine

Confessions and transgressions

Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti

REVIEWED BY NOEL GRIMA

Our information about the 1565 Great Siege of Malta mainly derives from two contemporary accounts – that by Francesco Balbi de Correggio, who took part in the hostilities themselves, and the narrative by Giacomo Bosio, the Order’s chronicler.

Over the years, further snippets and accounts have come to light which have mainly filled in previously unknown details.

Here, however, in Volume 9 of Giovanni Bonello’s Histories of Malta, we have two previously unknown accounts of the Great Siege, both by contemporaries, both living outside Malta during the Siege, both involved with the Gran Soccorso that waited far too long to come to the aid of the besieged, both less critical, for various reasons, of the delays and hesitations of the Spanish Viceroy Don Garzia de Toledo, than the Order-sponsored above-mentioned two accounts.

Dr Bonello found the first of these accounts in a 22-volume history of Florence during Cosimo de Medici’s time. The author was Giovanni Battista Adriani who describes the Siege of Malta from the point of view of the Medici, that is, a pro-Spanish (Hapsburg) point of view. He rarely speaks about Maltese heroism and does not stigmatise Don Garcia de Toledo’s delays. We may call it the Great Siege as seen by the Medici in Florence. The book contains a translation of the Adriani account (which could have done with some explanatory notes).

The second account is by an Italian adventurer, Pallavicino Rangone, a mercenary who fought in the Pope’s army who later volunteered to come help Malta in the Siege. But along with a large number of German barons, French Seigneurs and Spaniards of noble blood, he was forced to kick his heels in Messina while Don Garzia made up his mind. While he fumed, he reported back to the Pope his master, very much warning him not to praise Grand Master de Valette to high heavens as all Europe was doing, for the Great Siege, in his view, was the result of many of de Valette’s blunders – he brought the attack on him because the plunder and pillage that Romegas was carrying out in the Levant; he was late in preparing for the oncoming siege, and he should have evacuated Fort St Elmo when its situation became precarious rather than allow the fort to fall and the defenders massacred.

Rangone then came to Malta with the Gran Soccorso on 7 September and he explains about the various vicissitudes of that ‘help’ – not many know it attempted to land some days before but had to withdraw to Capo Passero because no one signaled it could land in Malta and also because of heavy seas, which led to a number of soldiers feeling seasick and not coming to Malta after all.

In another article in this book Dr Bonello delves into the Council registers at the time of the Great Siege and studies the criminal trials during the siege. Quite understandably, the last trial before the siege began is a rather humdrum one – a fight between knights. Then, equally understandably, criminal trials were halted during the siege, with the one exception of a summary execution of an Italian knight who said the Turks were too much and who urged surrender. Once the Turks lifted the siege, trials began in earnest, mostly trials in absentia against knights, mostly French, who did not come to help defend the island when ordered to do so by the grand master.

As is usual in the other Dr Bonello volumes, many of the articles in this book are reprints either of articles that have already appeared on the Sunday Times or in introductions to books (such as the Salvatore Lorenzo Cassar and the Girolamo Gianni ones) while a few have never been published before.

Of special merit in this regard is a very detailed account about the Turkish-Armenian question (that is still very much an issue hindering Turkey’s membership of the EU) and the incarceration after summary British justice of what were supposed to be the perpetrators of Turk massacres of Armenians but who were in reality the flower of the Turkish society – all 100+ of them – for many years in Malta.

This chapter includes a number of letters and photos during the incarceration, which to Dr Bonello must have brought up unpleasant memories of his own father’s similarly summary incarceration during World War II – equally illegal, so much so that at the end the Turkish detainees were simply let go.

Following what I said in my latest review of the Ignazio Saverio Mifsud sermons, I was very interested in the chapter regarding the words that the knights’ era bequeathed to the Maltese language. Here is a selection: ta’ Frankuni, il-Bombi, Fuq il-Monti, Fuq il-Fosos, il-Kamrata, Balzunetta, ta’ Braxja, Spiteri, Caruana, zbirr, farabutt, manigold, fitt, gwapp, Kistalnija, and many many more.

Equally interesting are the articles about tobacco under the knights and the sad story of justice gone wrong because of bent judges under the Order and later.