The Significance of the Sieges

If we compare the three sieges described in this chapter we may be surprised to find that it is the least known that had the widest importance. If Aubusson had lost Rhodes in 1480 the Turks might have been masters of Italy twelve months later. The taking of Rhodes in 1522 merely confirmed the footing of overwhelming strength that Turkey had by then gained in the Levant. The stand at Malta in 1565 was of enormous moral importance to Europe, since it halted the advance of Turkish power which for thirty years had seemed irresistible; on the other hand one has to recognise that if Malta had fallen it would probably soon have been retaken, with much less difficulty, by the Spanish; and even if that attempt had failed the further advance of the Turks could have been contained, though at the cost of devoting a far larger share of Spain’s military effort to the Mediterranean. The struggle to avert the loss of the Netherlands and the despatch of the Armada to England might have been impossible, and, in short, the verdict of the seventeenth century would have been reached in the sixteenth. Thus the main effect of the defence of Malta was perhaps to assist the European hegemony that Spain enjoyed for the next seventy-five years.

For the Knights of St John, on the other hand, the importance of the siege was incalculable: if

They had lost two islands in the space of half a century their reputation as the shield of Christian Europe could hardly have survived. The Order would doubtless have disintegrated into national fragments, an obsolete relic of the past. Instead La Valette and his band of knights had given

Europe an exploit of such enduring resonance that two centuries later Voltaire could write, 'Rien n*est plus connu que le siege de Make.’ The fame of 1565 was to make the Knights of Malta the acknowleged paragons of Christian chivalry for as long as that ideal held sway in Europe.