The Great Siege of Malta

The Great Siege of Malta, fought between May and September 1565, was one of the most celebrated military operations of the sixteenth century. The siege was launched by Suleiman the Magnificent with an army of perhaps 30,000 to 40,000 men, supported by the Ottoman navy, against the small island fortress of the Knights Hospitaller in the central Mediterranean. The defence, mounted by the Knights of St John under the French Grand Master Jean de Valette, and by the Maltese population, lasted for four months. The siege is treated here in its own right; a general account of the Ottoman military and warfare and of the broader history of Ottoman gunpowder siege warfare provides the wider context.

The strategic context

The Knights of St John, expelled from Rhodes in 1522 after the Ottoman siege of the island, had been granted the island of Malta by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1530. From their new base, the Knights had become a major obstacle to Ottoman control of the central Mediterranean. Their corsairs, based at Malta, preyed on Ottoman shipping and on the rich ports of the North African coast, and the island was a staging post for Christian raids on the Ottoman possessions. Suleiman had resolved to capture Malta for some years before the siege, and the operation was part of a long-running contest for the central Mediterranean.

The Ottoman army of 1565 was a major expedition. The forces included a strong contingent of Janissaries, supported by Sipahi of the Porte cavalry, the provincial sipahi levies, and a substantial artillery train. The fleet, under Kapudan Pasha Piyale Pasha, was the largest the Ottomans had sent into the central Mediterranean since the reign of Suleiman’s father, and it was designed to blockade the island and to prevent relief from Sicily or from Spain.

The defence of the island

The Maltese defences consisted of four main forts: Fort St Elmo, at the tip of the Sciberras peninsula, which commanded the entrance to the Grand Harbour and the Marsamxett Harbour; Fort St Angelo, on the Birgu peninsula; Fort St Michael, on the Senglea peninsula; and the older castle at Mdina, in the centre of the island. The garrison, on the eve of the siege, numbered perhaps 700 Knights and 8,000 soldiers and Maltese irregulars. The fortifications were in poor repair, and the Knights had not received the reinforcements they had expected from Spain.

The Ottoman army landed on 18 May 1565 at Marsascala, in the south of the island. The first objective was Fort St Elmo, which controlled the entrance to the Grand Harbour. The siege of St Elmo lasted for a month, and the fort was defended to the last man. The fall of St Elmo, on 23 June, was a heavy blow to the defence, but it gave the Ottomans a foothold at the tip of the peninsula, and the rest of the campaign was fought around the fortified positions of Birgu and Senglea.

The four months’ battle

The siege of Birgu and Senglea lasted from the end of June to early September. The Ottoman army attempted to take the two peninsulas by a series of frontal assaults and by a series of mining operations. The defence was marked by a series of sorties, by the steadfastness of the Knights, and by the discipline of the Maltese militia. The Ottoman army was unable to break into the fortresses, and the cost of the siege, in men and material, was rising sharply. The arrival, on 7 September, of a small Spanish relief force under Don García de Toledo, with a handful of Italian and Spanish soldiers, was the signal for a final Ottoman assault.

The final assault, on 11 September 1565, was repulsed with heavy loss. The Ottoman army withdrew to its ships, and the siege was lifted. The losses on both sides were severe. The Knights lost perhaps a third of their number, and the Maltese population had suffered heavily. The Ottoman army had lost perhaps 20,000 men, and the failure of the siege was a serious blow to the prestige of the empire.

Aftermath

The failure of the Great Siege of Malta was the first major Ottoman defeat in the central Mediterranean. The Ottomans had failed to take a small island, defended by a small force, despite a major effort. The defeat, coming shortly after the disaster of the Christian victory at the battle of Djerba in 1560, did not prevent further Ottoman operations, but it marked the limit of the empire’s ambitions in the western Mediterranean. The Knights remained in Malta, and the new city of Valletta, founded by Grand Master Valette, was built on the peninsula of Sciberras in the years after the siege.

The Great Siege of Malta is widely remembered in the history of the Mediterranean. The siege has been the subject of extensive historical and literary treatment, and the anniversary of the lifting of the siege, 8 September, is celebrated in Malta as a national holiday. The siege is, with the siege of Vienna of 1529 and 1683, one of the three great sieges that mark the boundaries of Ottoman expansion into Christian Europe.

Related articles

• Ottoman military and warfare — A general account of the Ottoman military, of which the Malta expedition was a major operation.
• Ottoman gunpowder siege warfare — The general history of Ottoman siege warfare, of which the Malta operation was a particular case.
• The Ottoman navy — The fleet that blockaded Malta and supported the army during the siege.
• The Janissary corps — The elite infantry that formed the storm troops of the Ottoman army at Malta.
• The siege of Vienna — The 1529 and 1683 sieges that mark the other great moments of Ottoman siege warfare in this period.