Grandmaster Jean De LaValette, the Knights Hospitaller and the Great Siege of Malta 1565

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] our story begins in 1522 with the seemingly invincible ottoman forces of suleiman the magnificent crushing all opposition in their conquest of the balkans as they continue their march towards europe in the mediterranean they have similarly dominated the sea trade routes and supply lines that european princes depended on forcing them to look outwards towards the atlantic giving rise to the age of discovery by rounding the cape in south africa and eventually taking possession of the americas the mediterranean now slowly came to be viewed as a hostile and increasingly irrelevant backwater not worth the effort or cost to contest or control when so much more wealth was to be had by going around or in the new world and beyond having expelled all christian rulers from the levant and finally conquered byzantium or constantinople one of the last remaining strongholds in europe in the eastern mediterranean for the ottomans to conquer is the island fortress of rhodes held by the once formidable military order of the knights of sin john or jerusalem otherwise known as the knights hospitals along with their fellow military order of the knights templar the hospitals were long feared as fanatical christian defenders of jerusalem [Music] they were formed by a mysterious monk known as gerard who headed a hospital attached to a benedictine monastery in jerusalem well before the first crusade this hospital rebuilt by italian traders on the ruins of a much older hospital and chapel built by the lombard monk probus and then enlarged by the frankish king charlemagne eventually split from the monastery and was dedicated to st john the baptist by a new sect of monks that aided the poor sick and the wounded they treated christians jews and muslims alike something that was considered scandalous at the time but their interaction with these other groups made their knowledge of medicine and physiology superior to anything in europe and they were allowed to operate a number of hospitals despite the city being governed by a muslim caliph [Music] as word of their skill and activity spread grateful patients began donating ever greater sums of money and resources to the hospital many pilgrims and nobles were so inspired by their work that they clamored to join them the pope granted the monks a charter in 1113 giving them total autonomy from any king or feudal allegiance and answering only to him eventually as the crusades began in earnest their ranks came to be primarily made up of knights and other nobles who renounced their worldly possessions for the prestige of joining the order this made the hospital as wealthy but notably it also bolstered its military capability with a core membership of highly trained professional soldiery eager for glory at first they served as escorts for pilgrims through the dangerous terrain of the holy land but they soon grew to such a number that they had battalions of knights and sergeants building and controlling over 56 fortresses throughout the lebanon they rivaled the templars in both prestige and reputation for unyielding ferocity holding back the tide of islamic expansion for decades even as europe itself turned its back on them such was their fanatical devotion to duty that after the disastrous christian defeat at hattin the saracen general saladin always noted for his magnanimity and chivalry nevertheless had all 200 surviving knights beheaded in a frustrated demonstration of brutality not shown to other prisoners regardless of their nobility and the convention for ransom between both christian and muslim kings with their eventual retreat from the levant throughout the 13th century the hospitals began their slow decline retreating first to cyprus and then on to the island of rhodes significantly upgrading and fortifying the island they now called home they had little support or interest from a europe that was now so consumed and divided by internal political strife and religious protestant revolution that its kings increasingly began to view this multinational independent religious order as not just irrelevant and anachronistic but also a potential threat to their own ambitions back home as politics began transforming from purely dynastic feudal conflict into nationalist expansion moreover it was becoming apparent that the quest to liberate the holy land was by now effectively a lost cause given the rising star of the ottoman empire knocking at the gates of vienna thus the european powers were reluctant to finance and supply the hospitals who with their autonomy and fierce papal loyalty now appeared to be entirely obsolete the templars meanwhile turn to banking as a way to finance their continuing activities becoming fabulously wealthy by lending money to warring christian kingdoms and profiteering from their greed and debt something that was against the ethos of the hospitals eventually the power and influence of the templars became such a threat that the king of france heavily in debt and jealous of their power launched a campaign to seize their assets and exterminate them exerting his influence over the whole ec he had them declared as heretics making their assets forfeit and the templars fugitives in all christian lands the hospital is on the other hand still focused on the fight against islam but now left with only a few maritime holdings focus their attention on shipping transforming themselves into a highly disciplined naval force harassing muslim-held trade routes through privateering and plunder their piratical activity so irritated the sultan mehmed ii who had just done the unimaginable and conquered constantinople declaring himself the new caesar that in may 1480 he mounted a massive naval invasion of nearly 200 ships and 70 000 soldiers to invade roads and crush this last vestige of christian resistance in the mediterranean despite being just off the coast of turkey with resupply and reinforcement for the ottomans being easy the defenders of rhodes thoroughly defeated every wave of assault even counter-attacking and routing the enemy general and taking as a prize the holy battle standard of islam following the death of mehmet ii the new sultan sulaiman the magnificent eyeing the same prize got the message these knights hospital may have dwindled to a mere shadow of their former glory but they would certainly be no pushover and they sure knew how to build a fortress so it was that in order to dislodge them from this tiny island he formed the greatest armada in history up to that point and led an amphibious assault in 1522 of 200 thousand troops onto the island after an incredible and fierce resistance lasting six months by grand master philip billier delailadam and his seven thousand battle hardened knights with casualties mounting winter approaching and troops needed elsewhere the frustrated sultan afraid of the shame of calling off another siege as his forebear did offered the night's terms they would be allowed to leave safely with their arms and regalia if they surrendered he would even supply ships for them to leave in peace seeing no way to secure a victory for much longer against such overwhelming forces and no hope of resupply or reinforcement by a europe too disinterested to help the knights finally capitulated and were allowed to sail away to civil war-ravaged europe dispersing in all their ethnic diversity throughout the few small commandaries left the order now all but extinguished and any sense of christian unity in ashes as the years went by the ottomans filled the void and took ever greater control of the mediterranean as well as north africa where the barbary pirates had long terrorised merchant shipping and the european coastline raiding towns and cities looting pillaging and most notoriously enslaving hundreds of thousands and some say millions of helpless villagers as far away as scotland and even iceland in a lucrative slave trade that to a lesser and more clandestine degree still goes on today [Music] the most feared of all these pirates was turgot reese known to europeans as dragut considered by historians to have been a military and naval genius and arguably the greatest corsair captain in history and certainly among the most able of all the ottoman commanders about whose exploits alone an entire video could be dedicated such was his relentless raiding and daring that a coalition of european navies was repeatedly formed to destroy him but they were nothing like the unified chain of command that the hospitals and templars had created so in one masterful action after another he decimated spanish sicilian venetian and genoese fleets ports and cities until there was barely a ship left to face him and the european coastline lay bare and vulnerable to muslim attack [Music] desperate for any help in the face of a devastated navy and vulnerable underbelly the king of spain philip ii begged pope clement vii himself a hospital to revive the fortunes of the knights whose valor and naval prowess were already well established for which the spanish king would provide them with a permanent fiefdom in the vulnerable and tenuous holdings he had in malta and the north african city of tripoli so desperate was the king for their aid that all he asked in return was a single maltese falcon to be given in a symbolic tribute each year obviously this was somewhat of a poison chalice since malta was an isolated and barren outpost a hundred miles north of the coast of muslim africa while tripoli itself was a hostile and encircled city barely equipped to repel another ottoman attack the king of spain knew that the knights would pose a distraction and a threat to the ottomans who would likely make these targets a priority so giving spain time to rearm and rebuild its shattered navy the order wasted no time rising to the challenge and grand master villiere delilah adam put out a decree throughout the kingdoms of europe for his knights to muster and sail to their new home in malta and tripoli he immediately set about fortifying settlements on malta and its sister island of gozo but he was clear-eyed enough to only lightly garrison tripoli fully expecting it to be overrun at any time in a lesson well learned from roads and so was reluctant to waste precious resources trying to hold on to it over the next two decades the knights managed to fortify their strongholds at an astonishing pace while simultaneously assembling a significant fleet of ships that began raiding lucrative ottoman merchant shipping as the king of spain had surmised the sultan soon turned his attention to the marauding knights and decided to invade malta both to finally rid himself of the menace posed by them as well as to secure a base from which he could launch an assault on sicily and open a second invasion route into europe through italy now that the european powers were divided and squabbling in a strategy that would be revived over 400 years later by the allies in world war ii [Music] the sultan charged dragoot with the objective of feeling out the maltese defenses and so it was that in 1551 an ambitious assault of 10 000 troops landed on malta and made their way across the countryside they soon realized that the main city was far too fortified to take with the troops on hand and so they roamed around the baron interior looking for plunder and civilians to capture but these were forewarned and took refuge in the main citadels while a christian relief fleet attacked the anchored ottoman ships causing mayhem frustrated the ottomans crossed over to malta's sister island gozo and finally laid siege to the fortress which was packed full of over 6 000 fleeing civilians and defended only by a few dozen knights dragut began bombarding it fiercely and its commander governor galatian decessor low on supplies and assuming they would be given favorable and honorable terms as in the siege of roads surrendered within a few days dragut however was a berber pirate not a conventional ottoman commander and instead of honouring agreements as other commanders did he massacred the knights to the last man and sold every civilian man woman and child into slavery further cementing his reputation as a ruthless and terrifying enemy but in doing so he unwittingly galvanized the remaining knights hospital to expect no quarter in any upcoming battle and thereby resolve to stand or fall with malta remember these guys held off two hundred thousand troops for six months on roads so it was that they immediately began to significantly upgrade their defenses and decided that malta was going to be the knights equivalent of either the alamo or stalingrad [Music] [Music] having reconnoited malta raising gozo to the ground and capturing a bonanza of six thousand slaves dragoot now returns to tripoli which he took with ease as expected he and his barbary pirates then resumed their raiding off the italian and spanish coasts [Music] by now king philip of spain had rebuilt his fleet and once again formed an alliance to tackle drughoot but yet again though outnumbered by over two to one dragoot destroyed the spanish fleet at the battle of gerber unravelling over 20 years of spanish planning and now establishing the high water mark of ottoman domination in the mediterranean [Music] the knights were now more alone than ever their new grandmaster jean parisot de valette recently governor of tripoli was a veteran of the siege of rhodes and proved to be a competent and talented soldier who knew his enemy only all too well devolet was a high-ranking french nobleman from a long line of illustrious crusader forebears he joined the order at the age of 20 eager to take his place among the christian defenders of rhodes serving with distinction he accompanied delisle adam in the eventual withdrawal to rome but he never again set foot in his native france he was known to have a hot temper and more than once was disciplined by his superiors for taking matters into his own hands however his organizational skills and leadership became increasingly apparent and he did much to improve the morale and security in tripoli when he was governor when finally recalled to malta he was given command of a ship the son giovanni which he used to great effect against ottoman shipping however in a naval engagement off the barbary coast in 1541 his ship was crippled and devilette was wounded and taken prisoner he spent the next year as a galley slave on the oars mistreated and flogged by his captors which was an outrage and against all the conventions of war and code of honour for the treatment of noblemen adhered to by both muslims and christians alike the barbary pirates were another mata altogether though and frequently ran their own show often causing their ottoman overlords as many headaches as they did benefits devilette used his time in chains to learn both the turkish and arabic languages studying their tactics behaviour and maneuvers so that by the time he was finally released in a prisoner exchange he had not only developed a supreme hatred for the enemy but also a first-hand knowledge of their mindset and operations de vallette was soon given a new command and his fresh insights skill and bravery proved so effective that in 1554 he was made captain general of the entire hospital fleet his popularity soared and in 1557 when the current grand master claude de la sangler died he was unanimously voted to become the new grand master devilette was popular with his troops but also known to be a harsh disciplinarian he knew the future of the island and the very order itself hung in the balance so he ruled with an iron fist and didn't hesitate to execute traitors or anyone he perceived as a dissenter on the other hand he was a shrewd and pragmatic leader and established a solid network of spies all the way to byzantium a strategy that would pay off later [Music] the mediterranean was now virtually devoid of any independent christian ships aside from the modest and vulnerable flotilla of the hospitals so suleiman the magnificent having a total superiority over the sea laid plans for an invasion of malta fully expecting to wipe the isolated knights off the face of the earth within a couple of weeks devilette's spy network informed him of the impending invasion so he immediately began storing munitions and supplies as well as establishing fortifications centered around the grand harbour and capital city that would eventually be named after him in just six months he had built forts and elmo at the mouth of the harbour fort sent michael across the water as well as upgraded the existing fort santangelo which was his base these forts were now state of the art european design with sophisticated interconnecting lines of fire and kill zones that would provide maximum firepower and resupply mobility under even the most extreme siege [Music] so it came to pass in 1565 that the sultan finally gave orders to deploy now the largest mediterranean armada ever assembled with well over 200 fighting ships and hundreds of support vessels carrying an army of 40 000 professional soldiers among them 8 500 sipahis and over 6 000 of the sultan's most elite janissary corps the defending christians numbered only about 2 500 professional fighting men which included 500 battle hardened knights hospital and about 1200 regular spanish and italian infantrymen there was in addition to this a few hundred late recruits from sicily and greece a couple of hundred sailors redeployed onto land and a population of local civilians and galley slaves numbering several thousand making up a rag tag unreliable and potentially mutinous reserve that de valet nevertheless recruited whether man woman or child at the same time he gave orders to harvest all crops whether right or not to deprive the enemy of any resources in the field he also gave the difficult order to poison all the wells outside the citadel considering there are no rivers streams or lakes on malta it was a scorched earth total war policy that would cause horror to the invaders and lessen their morale while unpopular with the locals they now understood that if this defense failed they would be doomed to either slavery or death just like their neighbours on gozo in 1551 the ottoman armada arrived at dawn on the 18th of may 1565 and signs of trouble already began to show with the admiral of the navy piya le pasha and the general in command of the army mustafa pasha arguing over where to anchor the fleet and disembark the assault forces the admiral favored anchoring in the bay north of the main harbour called masashmet running the gauntlet of the solitary fort saint elmo but advocating a swift and concentrated attack on the peninsula confident of overwhelming it in a few days then pincering around fort santangelo and michael and then placing guns along the whole skibaris peninsula to hammer the last two remaining forts from all sides he was confident they could overrun the defenders within weeks [Music] on the other hand mustafa pasha advocated a more strategic plan of anchoring the fleet 10 kilometers south in the quiet bay of masashlok thereby avoiding risk to the tightly packed invasion fleet from the concentrated fire of the defenders and the potentially high cost of taking port saint elmo instead he planned to avoid attacking saint elmo altogether and marched the army across the countryside take the strategically important and lightly defended inland fortress of medina making it his base before approaching the harbor fortress from the rear his was a more cautious and risk-averse plan but the admiral was impatient for a quick victory with overwhelming assaults he argued that the fierce sirocco winds from the south would endanger the fleet in masterclock bay and was confident that now the hospitalists found themselves alone and without any chance of reinforcement or aid they would quickly capitulate as they did in gozo so they continued to bicker violently until the general exasperated finally relented and the fleet moved north this bickering was the direct result of the sultan giving both men equal command in the theater and to make matters worse they were both to defer to the opinions of dragut when he eventually arrived from tripoli this three-way leadership split was the crack in the ottomans plan that would eventually cause their undoing and it may have been the result of the sultan's own paranoia in giving one man too much power [Applause] de valette had correctly anticipated the ottoman plan and set up half his heavy guns at the fort of saint elmo shelling the entire fleet as it moved into the northern harbour inflicting significant damage he had expected that the assault forces would be demoralized by watching their ships burn in the harbour while they were throwing themselves at the fort nevertheless by the 27th of may the attackers had set up dozens of guns on the high ground at the base of the peninsula and began a relentless round-the-clock shelling of forts and elmo that reduced its outer wall to rubble within a week the artillery positions and camps were so well lit however that the hospital guns on the other two forts easily concentrated fire on the attacking units from across the bay causing mayhem and disrupting every wave of attack on the now crippled fortress [Music] additionally small vessels crossed the harbour at night evacuating the wounded and reinforcing the defenders to the great annoyance of the invaders who began to laboriously dig trenches in the hard rocky ground to avoid the gunfire a few days later dragood finally arrived with a contingent of his own barbary forces and furious that the battle had begun without his instructions and involvement tried to place guns to prevent any resupply of the knights but in details that are a bit sketchy he began bickering with the ottoman gunners about placement when either an accidental discharge or a shot by the knights from across the bay hit his trench and killed him this wasteful loss of this highly respected commander was a huge moral blow to the ottomans who were now deprived of the one man both the other commanders were meant to defer to nevertheless the shelling and the assaults continued with the ottomans hurling their entire elite janissary corps into the fray hoping to speed up the victory and on the 8th of june two weeks into the fighting the knights desperately sent a message to de valet asking for permission to evacuate because they could no longer hold what little was left of the fort he replied that they must hold out as long as they could in hopes a relief force from sicily would come to their assistance but in reality he must have known they would all perish in a demonstration to the ottomans of the resolve that was to characterize this battle wave after wave of assaults continued and intensified over the next two weeks and accounts tell us that even the slaves oarsmen and civilians fought back with bravery and ferocity matching the knights themselves finally on the 23rd of june a month after arriving the ottomans finally occupied what rubble was left of fort saint elmo executing every defender all 1500 souls reserving the last nine remaining nights for special treatment who mustafa decapitated and floated across the river mockingly crucified on the masts of several small boats appalled devilette in turn had all his turkish prisoners beheaded and loaded the heads into cannons which he fired back into the turkish camp the cost to the ottomans was unexpectedly high a loss of over six thousand men but more significantly over half of their elite janissaries were now dead in a miscalculated blunder that made the remaining ottoman soldiers increasingly nervous about attacking the two main forts which were much better defended than fort sent elmo the turkish general was recorded as saying if so small a sun has cost us so dear what price shall we have to pay for so large a father by the end of june word was soon spreading throughout europe from messages sent by devilette of the heroic exploits of the hospitals and the looming danger to europe from the south was such that both protestants and catholics began to pause and consider the big picture queen elizabeth of england a staunch protestant and no friend of the hospitals nevertheless wrote if the turks should prevail against the isle of malta it is uncertain what further peril might follow to the rest of christendom it seems that europe was finally starting to pay attention to the plight of the knights who seemed to be the last true defenders of the faith in an ocean of islamic conquest to the great shame and contrast of the rest of them calls began to go out for volunteers and princes began to offer troops in support of the beleaguered order having ignored and scoffed at them for decades so it was that a relief force began to muster in sicily and a contingent of 600 soldiers was urgently dispatched to reinforce the defenders while a larger army was still being levied these snuck in under the cover of darkness in small boats in early july boosting the morale of the defenders immeasurably as stories of an imminent grand relief army began to circulate the news must have reached the ottomans too because mustafa now ordered a full attack onto the inner senglia peninsula which housed forts and michael he had a hundred boats dragged across into the grand harbour where they thought they would be safe and loaded them with elite janissaries hoping to attack the fort from the bay while a second attack would commence from the land [Music] but de valette's spies and knowledge of enemy tactics prepared him for this possibility so he had wooden palisades suddenly erected to the dismay of the attackers who were forced to drift over towards fort san angelo where a specially prepared battery of artillery just above the water line unleashed on them at point-blank range that sunk all but one of the vessels within just a couple of salvos meanwhile the land would attack on the rear also collapsed when the knights set up a floating pontoon that transferred reinforcements quickly from one fort to the other the ottomans had now lost another thousand of their elite janissaries and the defenders were looking cockier than ever as they outsmarted every move that mustafa pasha was making in rage the ottoman general surrounded both the fort's landwood walls with a battery of 65 siege guns and unleashed a continuous night and day bombardment that was the largest in history to that point firing over 130 000 cannonballs and destroying one of the main wall bastions on the 7th of august nearly 6 weeks into the siege he ordered another massive attack eventually breaching the walls and seemingly overwhelming the defenders when suddenly they retreated in disarray and confusion it emerged that the inland fortress of medina had sent out its cavalry for a raid and its captain vincenzo anastagi seeing an opportunity attacked the turkish rear camps and hospital massacring everyone and disrupting supplies the turks mistakenly thought this was the long-awaited christian relief army so they panicked and broke off their attack just as they were about to seize victory by now the demoralized and humiliated ottoman forces were becoming nervous and desperate and the lack of water festering injuries and disease was wreaking havoc behind the scenes nevertheless the bombardment resumed and another massive assault was ordered on the same area on the 19th of august once again after fierce hand-to-hand fighting the turks broke through into the town square but the grand master hearing of the breach personally led his bodyguards into the fray wielding his sword and inspiring his men to counter-attack until they had routed the enemy in hand-to-hand combat not bad for a 70-year-old man with arthritis [Music] fully armored elite european knights must have seemed like a tank battalion from hell to lightly clothed and increasingly expendable peasant conscripts from the ottoman dominions who were rapidly losing their stomach to fight as their own elite janissaries seemed less and less invincible and dwindled in number despite all this the bombardment continued day and night with the maltese defenders hunkering down under a concentrated reign of bombs never seen before or until world war ii when hitler out did even the ottomans with the largest concentration of bombing on a single city in the entire war and similarly failed to crush their spirit some of the civilian population nevertheless began petitioning de valette to evacuate the town centre but he was adamant that the ottomans were close to collapse so he vetoed the resolution and grimly held on the turks tried everything even a roman style testudo formation with shields as well as armored siege towers but each time they attacked the hospital sappers toppled them causing mayhem [Music] as the weather began to turn on him and increasingly desperate for a morale boosting win in early september mustafa pasha ordered a significant detachment of soldiers to head inland for medina to try and capture it to secure a base to serve as winter headquarters to his dismay the lightly defended fort began firing their cannons even before the army came into range causing the attackers to assume they were so well stocked they could afford to squander cannonballs at long range already demoralized the attackers fell for the bluff gave up and turned back before even attempting to lay siege as they retreated back to the main army camp they burned and destroyed villages along the way when suddenly the long-awaited relief army from sicily eight thousand soldiers led by ascanio de la corna came into view this coalition of italian and spanish volunteers had landed unnoticed in the north of the island during the night of the 7th of september and were marching south when they came over a hill and into full view of the retreating turks seeing the trail of burning villages in their wake a number of inspired and battle eager knights of the relief contingent went berserk and charged straight for the enemy delacornia had no choice but to order a full charge as the knights were outnumbered and might have been entrapped but their ferocious attacks smashed into the retreating column breaking their formation and resulting in a complete route of the retiring enemy as news reached the ottoman camp what little morale there was soon collapsed with a hasty evacuation ordered and the last few thousand besieging troops soon boarding their ships in disarray and sailing away [Music] estimates vary but enemy casualties were over 85 or upwards of 35 000 of the 40 000 strong invasion force who perished or were captured the defending hospital has lost a third of their own soldiery along with a third of the local civilian population a far better outcome than the inevitable death or ottoman slavery destined for all of them had they capitulated from a statistical point of view disregarding civilian involvement the odds against the knights were well over ten to one an astounding defense against the heaviest single siege bombardment in history till world war ii where this well-established maltese tenacity would once again prove its work [Music] as news of the miraculous christian victory spread throughout europe the hospital has seemingly achieved what no one else was able to do to pause and unify a war-torn and fragmented european continent to once again take the initiative and halt the seemingly invincible spread of islam money and resources soon began to pour into malta from kingdoms all across europe as the knights rebuilt an elaborate and sophisticated super fortress on the ruins of the old along with headquarters for each of the multinational kingdoms that contribute their troops to the order the pope offered devilette a cardinal ship in rome but he declined some say out of a sense of humility and modesty though it may also have been to maintain an independence of the order from excessive direct control from rome the pope also sent his personal architects and engineers to design and construct a golden city in celebration of this desperately needed christian victory the foundation stone of this new civitas superbissima was personally laid by devilette in 1566 over the high ground on skiberis peninsula that the ottoman guns once occupied though he never lived to see the completion of this project that was to bear his name and become the shining capital city of malta [Music] foreign [Music] though knights of the order were meant to be celibate it is known that de valette had two children a son who was legitimized by the king of france and a daughter of whom he was particularly fond risking scandal by insisting on giving her away at her marriage the siege had taken its toll on him and as he now grappled with the task of rebuilding he was soon horrified to discover his daughter had been murdered by her new husband in a fit of rage who then absconded with all her fortune never to be seen again despite a significant manhunt heartbroken devilette feverishly immersed himself in the building project only taking occasional time out for his favorite sport of falconry until a month later he suffered a stroke while praying in a chapel and died on the morning of the 21st of august 1568. his remains are buried in a crypt of st john's co-cathedral in valletta this cathedral is unlike any other christian cathedral in the world [Music] being the resting place for a large number of whose tombstones comprise the floor of the cathedral in some of the most intricate and beautiful stone work ever seen in europe [Music] it is a cathedral dedicated to the military exploits of the knights as well as to the glory of god and the victory of the knights over invading muslim forces [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] the order which now became known as the knights of malta built headquarters in valletta for detachments from each of the european nations that contributed to its defence fostering dialogue and cooperation among christian princes to such a degree that within seven years a new coalition naval fleet was formed with better coordination and strategic planning that entrapped and sunk the entire ottoman mediterranean fleet at the battle of lepanto while the muslims still posed a significant threat on land and eventually rebuilt their navy they had by now lost all of their most competent and talented commanders and captains and never managed to regain their initiative on the sea and so began the slow decline of this once powerful and proud islamic empire on the other hand the experience and innovation christian nations gained from atlantic oceanic exploration meant that within a decade christian ships rapidly evolved in design from ored galleys that had changed little since the triremes of the roman empire into galleons and other fully rigged ships of the line that became floating fortresses in comparison the hospitals also went on to become wealthy and diplomatic traders and power brokers for centuries to come as they maintain their neutrality in the resumption of political turmoil colonial wars and expensive nationalistic conflicts in europe their principled refusal to participate in waging war against fellow christians ironically caused them an intellectual stagnation when it came to innovation in arms leadership and tactics until once again they slowly came to be viewed as relics of a bygone era their eventual demise came at the hands of an industrialized and enlightenment age europe locked in an arms race that equipped the development of the rest of the world old trade routes and income streams were extinguished almost overnight by the unstoppable and anti-clerical domination of the revolutionary french republic led by napoleon bonaparte who in 1798 took the entire country of malta in less than a week with only a handful of casualties and barely a whimper of a capitulation that would have made john de villette weak today the knights who maintain a small presence in rome have returned to their roots as a benevolent society that raises money for hospitals schools and aid for impoverished communities around the world and have once again been granted headquarters on malta in their old restored fortress of saint angelo [Music] [Music] [Music] by the center quick fight [Music] you

Channel: Triarius Project

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Keywords: Malta, knights hospitaller, St. John, Great siege, 1565, Ottoman, Jean De Valette, crusade, Rhodes, Holy Land, Christian, Muslim

Id: yr0Q-MSbpr4

Length: 52min 48sec (3168 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 25 2020