This country is celebrating the 450th anniversary of the 1565 Great Siege when Malta withstood a much larger invading force of Ottoman Turks after a three-month long siege and the death of thousands of Maltese and Knights and foreign soldiers.
Among the celebrations being held, pride of place must go to the great exhibition put up at the Grand Masters’ Palace in Valletta by Heritage Malta, details of which can be found on pages 22 and 23. It is a pity that two items which would have been central to this exhibition are not there – the sword and dagger that Philip II gave to Grand Master de Valette in recognition of his valour and leadership in the siege, and de Valette’s own sword used during the siege which is kept in an oratory in Vittoriosa (though we understand the local council is holding an exhibition there too).
On TVM, the series L-Assedju has had good viewership and had many details which many people did not know. Among the details people are not normally aware of is the importance of the de Guiral battery, down at sea level at Fort St Angelo. Here, when the Turks launched what they thought was the definite assault on Vittoriosa on 15th July, after the fall of Fort St Elmo, they thought it was easy game, until the hidden guns opened up and smashed the incoming boats.
That was the definite turning point of the siege. It is a great pity that the previous administration gave this important location to a consortium to build a restaurant and we hope this agreement will be reversed.
But over and above the tactical and other details of the siege, we must understand the sheer importance of the Great Siege in the whole history of Europe. In the immediate post-Siege centuries, this was given huge resonance, as witnessed by Voltaire’s often quoted words “rien est plus connu que la siege de Malte” (nothing is so well known as the Siege of Malta).
Nowadays, people seem to fall between two stools: on one side there are those who want to avoid a clash of civilisations while on the other people seem afraid to arouse sectarian repercussions: in fact not one but several proposals of a film portraying the siege, which would have done Malta proud, have been put on the back burner, at least for the time being.
Why is the Great Siege of Malta so important in European history?
It is not because an invading force was pushed back by a vastly inferior number of defenders, nor because it may be a textbook example of when confusion between components of an attacking force and the lack of a proper strategy pulled defeat from the jaws of victory.
After the Great Siege, the Ottoman Turks never ventured into the Western Mediterranean any more.
One other little-mentioned consequence of the Great Siege was the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1571. Following the Ottoman conquest of the island in 1571, about 30,000 Turkish settlers were given land when they arrived in Cyprus, Additionally, many of the islanders converted to Islam during the early years of Ottoman rule. Nonetheless, the influx of mainly Muslim settlers to Cyprus continued intermittently until the end of the Ottoman period. The fact that Turkish was the main language spoken by the Muslims of the island is a significant indicator that the majority of them were either Turkish-speaking Anatolians or otherwise from a Turkic background which bequeathed a significant Turkish community, today’s Turkish Cypriots.
Two months after the fall of Famagusta, the naval forces of the Holy League, composed mainly of Venetian, Spanish, and Papal ships under the command of Don John of Austria, defeated the Turkish fleet at the Battle of Lepanto in one of the decisive battles of world history. The victory over the Turks, however, came too late to help Cyprus, and the island remained under Ottoman rule for the next three centuries.
The Battle of Lepanto, a direct consequence of the Siege of Malta, broke the back of Ottoman domination in the Mediterranean. The rest, as they say, is history.