Great Siege of Malta, 18 May – 13 September 1565

The battle, stage by stage

1. 18–20 May 1565

   Landing at Marsaxlokk, camp on the Marsa

   On 18 May the Ottoman armada — perhaps 180–200 vessels under the admiral Piyale Pasha, with the army under Mustafa Pasha — is sighted off Malta. After coasting the island it anchors in Marsaxlokk Bay in the south-east and puts the army ashore from 19 May; one modern estimate has some 23,000–25,000 men landed, while contemporary Christian figures run much higher (see overview). Jean de Valette does not contest the beach: the Order's cavalry and Maltese skirmishers harass the columns near Żejtun while the population and livestock are drawn inside the walls. The Ottomans march north and pitch their main camp on the Marsa, the marshy plain at the head of the Grand Harbour, with outposts on the heights above the harbour. The defenders hold the two fortified peninsulas of Birgu (with Fort St Angelo) and Senglea (with Fort St Michael), the small star fort of St Elmo at the tip of the empty Sciberras peninsula — Valletta did not yet exist — and the old capital, Mdina.

2. 24 May – early June 1565

   The guns turn on St Elmo

   Overruling Mustafa's wish to strike Mdina or Birgu first, the Ottoman command decides to take St Elmo so that the fleet can shelter in Marsamxett harbour. By about 27 May some two dozen guns and a great basilisk are firing from the crest of Mount Sciberras. Dragut (Turgut Reis), the veteran corsair governor of Tripoli, arrives with his squadron around 30 May–2 June and has further batteries built north and south of the fort — on the point now called Tigné or Dragut Point, and on Gallows Point (where Fort Ricasoli stands today) — so that St Elmo is battered from three sides. On 3 June the Janissaries seize the fort's outlying ravelin. Night after night boats cross from Birgu with volunteers, powder and food, and carry back the wounded.

3. 16–23 June 1565

   The fall of St Elmo

   A general assault on 16 June is beaten off with heavy loss. On 18 June Dragut is mortally wounded while directing the batteries — by tradition by stone splinters from a Christian shot, though one recent reading suggests a burst Ottoman gun — and dies within days. Batteries and galleys now close the water route from Birgu; a last relief attempt has to turn back. On 23 June, the eve of the feast of St John, the fort is stormed. Nearly the whole garrison is killed, though a handful of Maltese reportedly escape by swimming the harbour. Accounts put the defenders' losses at up to about 1,500 over the month, and Ottoman losses (more uncertainly) at 6,000–8,000. The siege of a fort expected to fall in days has cost the Ottomans a month of the summer.

4. 29 June – 5 July 1565

   The Piccolo Soccorso and the boats over Sciberras

   The Ottomans now ring Birgu and Senglea with batteries — on Corradino, the Santa Margherita heights and the Sciberras shore facing St Angelo — and Hasan Pasha of Algiers, Dragut's son-in-law, arrives with his corsairs. A small relief from Sicily, the 'Piccolo Soccorso' of about 600 men and some 40 knights under Melchior de Robles, lands on the north-west coast on 29 June, waits at Mdina, and on the night of 5 July slips past the Ottoman lines to Mount Salvatore near Kalkara, where boats under Romegas ferry it into Birgu. Meanwhile, rather than run the guns of St Angelo, the Ottomans drag boats overland from Marsamxett across the neck of the Sciberras peninsula into the inner Grand Harbour. The defenders answer with a line of stakes and a chain in the shallows along Senglea's exposed shore, and a great chain already closes Dockyard Creek between St Angelo and Senglea.

5. 15 July 1565

   The assault on Senglea

   Hasan's men attack Fort St Michael from the landward side while Candelissa, his lieutenant, leads boats packed with troops from the Marsa end of the harbour toward the tip of Senglea. Some boats break the stake barrier and men get ashore under the walls, where the fighting is fierce; Maltese swimmers reportedly fight hand to hand in the water at the palisade. A further group of about ten large boats steering for the point runs past a hidden battery at water level beneath St Angelo, commanded by Francisco de Guiral, which by Christian accounts sinks nine of them at close range with heavy loss of life (one account gives over 800 dead). De Valette sends reinforcements across the floating bridge from Birgu, and the attack fails. Accounts of the numbers engaged and lost vary widely.

6. 7 August 1565

   The great assaults and the Mdina cavalry

   After weeks of the heaviest bombardment of the siege, the Ottomans make a simultaneous general assault: Mustafa against Fort St Michael and Senglea, Piyale against the Post of Castile at the eastern end of the Birgu land front, above Kalkara Creek. The walls are breached and the attackers are inside parts of Senglea's defences when they suddenly fall back. Some 100 horsemen under Vincenzo Anastagi have ridden out of Mdina and fallen on the lightly guarded camp on the Marsa, killing the sick and wounded and setting it alight; believing a relief army has landed, Mustafa calls off the assault. The ordeal at Castile continues: on 18 August a mine brings down part of the wall and de Valette himself leads the counter-attack, being wounded in the leg, and further assaults follow on 20–21 August and into early September.

7. 7–8 September 1565

   The Gran Soccorso and the lifting of the siege

   After false starts and storms, Don García de Toledo, Viceroy of Sicily, lands the 'Gran Soccorso' — perhaps 8,000 to 11,000 Spanish and Italian troops and volunteer knights under Álvaro de Sande and Ascanio della Corgna — at Mellieħa Bay (and, by some accounts, Għajn Tuffieħa) in the north of the island on 7 September, and the troops march to Mdina while the galleys return to Sicily. The Ottomans, weakened by losses and disease, abandon their guns and lines and fall back to Sciberras to embark at Marsamxett. Romegas reoccupies the ruins of St Elmo and raises the Order's standard. 8 September is still kept in Malta as Victory Day.

8. 11–13 September 1565

   The last fight near Naxxar and St Paul's Bay

   Learning that the relief force is smaller than he feared, Mustafa re-lands some of his best troops at St Paul's Bay and marches inland. The Gran Soccorso, with knights and Maltese from Mdina and Birgu, meets them on the ridge near Naxxar and San Pawl tat-Targa; the exhausted Ottomans are driven back in disorder to the shore and suffer heavily as they re-embark under fire. The fleet sails for Constantinople and North Africa. Sources disagree on the date of this fight (11 or 13 September): d'Aleccio's printed and painted siege cycle dates 'the flight of the Turks' to 13 September. Of perhaps 6,000–8,500 defenders, a large share were dead or wounded; Ottoman losses are put at anything from about 10,000 to well over 20,000.