The Great Siege, Malta 1565: Clash of Cultures: Christian Knights Defend Western Civilization Against the Moslem Tide by Ernle Bradford
My rating: 4 of 5 stars "This was no ordinary enemy" Even though I knew the outcome of the Great Siege, listening to Simon Vance smoothly read Ernle Bradford’s 1961 history of the months-long Ottoman siege of Malta in 1565 was absorbing and suspenseful, because Bradford tells a good (his)tory: vivid, concise, clear, compassionate, and, for the time he wrote it, balanced. That is, although his sympathies may belong more to the Christian Knights of St. John than with the Ottomans, for he highlights the “fanaticism” of the “Turks” a bit more than that of the Knights (“The knights met, many for the first time, the burning fanaticism of Islam” vs. “The Knights had such determination to die rather than surrender”), and he spends a bit more time narrating from the point of view of the defenders than from that of the attackers, he does give a fair amount of the Ottoman background, goals, strategies, and strengths (as soldiers) etc. After introducing the antagonists--Suleiman the Magnificent and the Ottoman Empire against the Knights of St. John--and how they came to be where they were in 1565 and why the Ottomans wanted to take Malta and why the Knights wanted to defend it, Bradford describes the defenses of the island and the preparations of the defenders and of the attackers and then proceeds to recount the siege, starting with the lengthy Ottoman attack on the fort of St. Elmo. Throughout, Bradford serves up choice morsels of information about things like the conditions of galley slaves, the hierarchy and composition of the Knights, the composition and training of Janissaries, the lives of the local Maltese peasants, the surprisingly aged and vital leaders of the opposing sides like the 70-year-old Grand Master Jean de Valette and Musfafa Pasha, not to mention the 80-year-old super corsair Dragut, the pluses and minuses of armor, the implementation and effects of canons and firearms and incendiaries (Greek fire and firework hoops and infernal engines and siege towers!), mining and counter-mining, spies, the precious relic of the hand of St. John the Baptist, how the Maltese women were the mainstay of the defense, and more. Throughout there are impressive moments, like when the Ottomans roll a massive round slow-fuse bomb filled with shrapnel over a defensive wall only for the defenders to roll it back over the wall so it detonates among the densely packed attackers, or like when the Grand Master organizes a surprise chain-shot canon to deal with a threatening siege tower, or like when the Grand Master rallies the defenders at the point of a massive breach, or like the fall of St. Elmo, or, like, yes, the Grand Master executing all Ottoman prisoners and firing their heads from canons into the enemy positions. Bradford highlights the brutal holy war nature of the conflict. He vividly relates how good people are at destroying things and how desperate they are at defending them, as with the “storm of marble and metal” the Ottomans unleashed for months 24-7 on the forts and towns of Malta. It reminds me of Roger Crowley’s 1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West. Readers who like vivid military history about turning point moments would like Bradford’s book (though it is over sixty-years old now and may have been superseded by more current research?) View all my reviews
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Jefferson Peters
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