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Contents |
Day 1 |
Day 2 |
Day 3 |
Day 4 |
Day 5 |
Day 6 |
Day 7 |
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To understand a thing or two about Malta is to understand that the greatest moments in its history were sieges. The first great siege (named, coincidentally, The Great Siege) occurred in 1565 when the Turks attacked the island and attempted to conquer it. The Turks, in command of a great fleet with an army of at least 30,000 men (though estimates range as high as 48,000 men) faced off against the 500 Knights of the Order of St. John -- a Crusader force who took rulership of the island following the loss of their base at Rhodes -- and some 5,600 additional men also given to the protection of the island. This force, realizing its numerical inferiority, trusted to the best protection of smaller forces against larger ones in those days: fortresses. Rather than attempting to fight the Turks on open ground, they put themselves behind walls and prepared to fend off the onslaught with iron balls, steel blades and stone buttresses. The leader of the Maltese contingent was the Grandmaster of the Order of St. John, a man by the name of Jean Parisot de la Valette. He personally oversaw the construction of the fortifications and prepared the island's defenses. While I could go into a long and detailed history of the story of the Great Siege, suffice to say that the Turks were beaten to the retreat with great loss, Malta was saved from conquest and the Knights of the Order of St. John, also known as the Knights Hospitaller, kept the islands until 1802, when Napoleon conquered Malta for lack of anything better to do on the way to Egypt. Following The Great Siege, the Knights, and Valette in particular, realized that they were better served by fortifications than by vast armies in a place such as Malta and they knew they needed places to hole up should more armies desire these small but strategic islands. So they decided to build a fortified city on one of the Maltese peninsulas, which would allow them protection from land attack, since there was only one way an army could come if it wanted to attack by land. Plus, with some tall walls and forbidding cliffs, any unfriendly navy that attempted to assist in the siege would be better served to stay away, since it would be under the guns of the shore batteries if it sailed close enough to provide assistance. Thus, the city was begun and it was named for the Grandmaster who saved the islands: Valette. Thus, as our bus traced the shore, I was able to see a great, towering wall of smooth stone that soared up from the water to a height hidden by the roof of the bus. Clearly, anything that looked like that had to be the old fortress city of Valletta. It would not be long now. Welcome to Valletta. I'll be your fortress for the day. |
Malta - Day TwoValletta - How to Get One A Brief, Possibly Correct History of Valletta |