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THE DEFENCE OF MALTA BY THE KNIGHTS OF ST. JOHN AGAINST THE TURKS IN 1565.

In London, L’Isle Adam lodged at the provincial hostelry of the order, St. John’s Clerkenwell, still a house of entertainment, though of a very different kind. Henry VIII. received him with apparent cordiality, and shortly afterwards confiscated all the English possessions of the knights! This was but a trifle among their troubles, for in 1565 they were again besieged in Malta. Their military knowledge, and especially that of their leader, the great La Valette, had enabled them to already strongly fortify the place. La Valette had 500 knights and 9,000 soldiers, while the Turks had 30,000 fighting men, conveyed thither in 200 galleys, and were afterwards reinforced by the Algerine corsair, Drugot, and his men. A desperate resistance was made: 2,000 Turks were killed in a single day. The latter took the fortress of St. Elmo, with the loss of Drugot—just before the terror of the Mediterranean—who was killed by a splinter of rock, knocked off by a cannon-ball in its flight. The garrison was at length reduced to sixty men, who attended their devotions in the chapel for the last time. Many of these were fearfully wounded, but even then the old spirit asserted itself, and they desired to be carried to the ramparts in chairs to lay down their lives in obedience to the vows of their order. Next day few of that devoted sixty were alive, a very small number escaping by swimming. The attempts on the other forts, St. Michael and St. Angelo, were foiled. Into the Eastern Harbour (now the Grand), Mustapha ordered the dead bodies of the Christian knights and soldiers to be cast. They were spread out on boards in the form of a cross, and floated by the tide across to the besieged with La Valette, where they were sorrowfully taken up and interred. In exasperated retaliation, La Valette fired the heads of the Turkish slain back at their former companions—a horrible episode of a fearful struggle. St. Elmo alone cost the lives of 8,000 Turks, 150 Knights of St. John, and 1,300 of their men. After many false promises of assistance, and months of terrible suspense and suffering, an auxiliary force arrived from Sicily, and the Turks retired. Out of the 9,500 soldiers and knights who were originally with La Valette, only 500 were alive at the termination of the great siege.