Description
In the spring of 1565 Solyman the Magnificent, Sultan of Turkey, despatched one of the largest invasion fleets in history against the island of Malta. Two hundred ships and forty thousand men came sweeping out of the Levant to subdue the Christian bastion. The siege which followed was a classic in the history of warfare.
The attack occurred at the height of the Ottoman power, when most of Eastern Europe lay in Turkish hands and when every day brought news of fresh reverses to the rulers of Christian Europe. It was not so many years before that the Sultan had driven the Knights of St John out of their island fortress of Rhodes. Now only a few hundred knights and a few thousand fighting men under La Vallette, Grand Master of the Order, stood between the Sultan and mastery of the Mediterranean.
From May until September the Turkish forces remained in the island, and the fighting employed every device and strategem of sixteenth century warfare. There were conflicts between armed galleys, hand-to-hand combats, siege weapon and artillery duels, cavalry charges, and even a battle in the Grand Harbour between armed bands of swimmers. When the Turkish forces at last withdrew defeated, the Ottoman power had suffered an immense reverse. In the long war between East and West, the Great Siege of Malta proved one of the turning points of history.
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