William Napier - The Great Siege

His face was heavy with care. The burden of responsibility, thought Nicholas, for the lives not only of his soldiers but of all the people of Malta, nursing mothers and eager ignorant boys and babes in cradles — it must be well-nigh more than any man could bear.

La Valette said, ‘Elmo was a month of heroes, and sheer bloody attrition. Janizary faced knight across a single ditch, and both died. It was a simple affair. The siege of Birgu will be very different. More mobile and varied, fought over a much wider front, and I do not doubt that the wily dog Mustafa will try many tricks to break in on us. We have tricks prepared too. But — we also have women and children. It will be a very different battle in this never-ending war. And you will see not only your fellow knights and soldiers maimed and killed. Be ready for it.’

He gestured to his secretary, and Oliver Starkey spread a map over the table.

‘We hold Birgu and Senglea, both promontories largely surrounded by water, and protected on the landward side by their curtain walls. The Turkish fleet still cannot sail into the Grand Harbour itself, or they will be blasted in pieces by the guns of San Angelo. I do not expect any attack over the water.’

‘But then you should expect the unexpected,’ said Mezquita, stroking his fine moustaches.

‘Quite so. Every gun on the harbourside is primed and ready, manned day and night.’

‘Senglea,’ murmured Don Pedro, waving an aristocratic hand over the map, slender fingers gleaming with jewelled rings, raising his delicate eyebrows. His bloodline went back to the Visigothic kings, it was said, and even to the Spanish Emperor Hadrian. Yet he was a very fine soldier. ‘Is it worth holding?’

The others could see what he meant. Birgu was a populous, tight-packed city, the beating heart of Malta. But the neighbouring promontory of Senglea was thinly inhabited, with a few mean houses and some creaking windmills, and the little fort of St Michel at its tip overlooking the harbour. To defend it was to stretch defensive lines thin indeed.

‘You mean pull back, consolidate? Abandon Senglea, defend only Birgu? Yet you see that Senglea is already conjoined to Birgu in three ways, by the great chain across Galley Creek, by a pontoon bridge behind, and by an inner chain boom we have laid across as well.’ La Valette’s voice was steely. ‘No. We surrender not one inch, no matter what the military textbooks and manuals might advise. As at Elmo, we give not a handful of dust away. The Turks must fight and bleed and die for every forward footstep.’

He indicated again. ‘The Turkish main camp and field hospital remain at Marsa. The forward camp is here, on Santa Margherita, and their biggest guns. They have further gun emplacements on the Corradino Heights, on Mount Salvatore across Kalkara — very close indeed to your post, Don Pedro — and also on Gallows Point, and across at Sciberras, albeit at long range.’

‘That is truly a ring of fire,’ said Smith softly.

‘The main attack will come from land, against our walls. And no matter how many tens of thousands Mustafa commands, only a wave of a thousand or so can attack at a time. They will also try to get miners in close as soon as possible — as they are already. They may attack across the creeks in small boats. They will try everything. But we will be prepared.’

They stood and shook hands.

‘To your posts, gentlemen. And God go with you.’

After he had spoken with them, La Valette had a private matter to attend to, and he could not bear that any man should even know of it. He had assessed the amount of food left in the city, and it was not good news. There was no choice.

He buckled on his dagger, opened a door in the corner of the great state-room, and two lean and beautiful hunting dogs bounded out. They leapt at him with joyful little yaps, licking his hands in panting excitement. It had been so long since they had hunted out over the island. Surely today was the day. La Valette fondled their silken ears and they playfully bit his hands, their great jaws as gentle as a maiden’s handshake.

Everything about a dog was noble. Its candour and affection, its love unto death, its freedom from words, and therefore from lies. Dogs knew everything about loyalty and fidelity, the beauty of running with the wind, the joy of the world. And they knew nothing of princes and politics, bankers and gold, treachery and war. He embraced them around their powerful necks and lean ribbed sides in a manner that was strange to them, and gazed long at them, and they saw it in his eyes. They looked uncertain, crestfallen, knowing there was to be no hunt today. But there was something else. They snuffled at him pleadingly, tails curling between their legs. And when he came to lead them down the steep stone stairs to the cellar below — they followed him obediently, of course, to the very end — he had to go slowly, holding on to the rail, for his eyes were so blurred with tears.

‘Can we truly defeat such an army?’ asked Franco Briffa. ‘We have seen the numbers of the Turks, and they are as numberless as the sands of the shore. Their guns are like dragons, a child could curl up and sleep in the mouth of one. Their trenches advance daily to our walls like snakes. We are so few, mere people of the land and the sea. You believe we can defeat them? You who survived Elmo?’

‘Yes,’ said Nicholas. ‘Yes I do.’

But the boy looked away as he spoke and did not meet his eyes. And Franco Briffa knew he was lying to him, though it was a noble lie.

That night, Franco Briffa held his wife very close to him. In the morning, she watched him go over to the cradle and take up the bambino and hold the gurgling smiling infant very close to his chest, tears running down his face, and she went and held them both in a human trinity.

‘When will they come?’ people asked. ‘When will the guns start to roar?’

They kept looking out to sea, for the sight of Spanish or Papal galleys. None came.

The waiting was terrible, and though the preaching of Roberto di Eboli had put fire in their hearts, yet it was beginning to die again. They were trapped in their little town, surrounded, and no one was coming to help. The villages beyond were laid waste and desolate, and the size and number of the Turkish guns, glimpsed from the walls, ranging up against them line on line, was truly terrifying. Elmo, that had seemed such a heroic tragedy lately, now seemed like the stirring up of a hornet’s nest. There would be no mercy.

La Valette and the more experienced knights knew why the guns were still silent. It was not only them that would begin the battle. Mustafa was preparing other means. When it began, everything would come at once. And the three thousand fighting men, knights and soldiers, bakers and shoemakers and apprentice boys and urchins — they would not be enough.

It was to people’s amazement then that news spread that Mustafa Pasha had sent a messenger to parley. He was proposing terms.

It was an old Greek slave who came and stood before the post of Provence, carrying a white banner. He was led to La Valette.

‘Mustafa Pasha,’ he stammered, ‘Supreme Commander of the Ottoman Forces of Suleiman, Lord of the Universe, Possessor of Men’s Necks, Viceroy of Allah, Master of the Two-’

‘Suleiman’s nicknames do not interest me,’ cut in La Valette icily. ‘What is your message?’

‘My, my master,’ faltered the poor Greek slave, as old as La Valette but a good deal more decayed, ‘decrees that if you depart from this island as you once departed from Rhodes, without further resistance, you would be granted free and unmolested passage to Sicily. Not a shot will be fired, not a man, woman nor child harmed.’