Siege of Malta (1565)

Great Siege of Malta
Part of the Ottoman-Habsburg wars
The siege of Malta—"Arrival of the Turkish fleet" (Matteo Perez d' Aleccio)
Date 18 May – 11 September 1565 (3 months, 3 weeks and 3 days) Location Grand Harbour, Malta Result Christian victory
Belligerents
Ottoman Empire	Order of Saint John Maltese Militia Spanish Empire
Commanders and leaders
Mustafa Pasha Piali Pasha Dragut † Salah Rais Occhiali	Jean Parisot de Valette Jean de la Cassière Mathurin Romegas Goncales de Medran † Melchior de Robles † García de Toledo
Strength
70,000	3,500-5,000
Casualties and losses
10,000-35,000	2,500 troops 7,000 civilians

The Great Siege of Malta (Maltese: L-Assedju l-Kbir) took place in 1565 when the Ottoman Empire tried to invade the island of Malta, then held by the Knights Hospitaller. The Knights, with approximately 2,000 footsoldiers and 400 Maltese men, women and children, withstood the siege and repelled the invaders. This victory became one of the most celebrated events in sixteenth-century Europe. Voltaire said, "Nothing is better known than the siege of Malta," and it undoubtedly contributed to the eventual erosion of the European perception of Ottoman invincibility and marked a new phase in Spanish domination of the Mediterranean.

The siege was the climax of an escalating contest between a Christian alliance and the Islamic Ottoman Empire for control of the Mediterranean, a contest that included the Turkish attack on Malta in 1551 and the Ottoman destruction of an allied Christian fleet at the Battle of Djerba in 1560.

The Knights Hospitaller are also known as the Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta, or Knights of Malta, Knights of Rhodes, Knights of Saint John, and Chevaliers of Malta. By the end of 1522, Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Sultan, had forcibly ejected the Knights from their base on Rhodes after the six-month Siege of Rhodes. From 1523 to 1530 the Order lacked a permanent home. They became known as the Knights of Malta when, on 26 October 1530, Philippe Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, Grand Master of the Knights, sailed into Malta's Grand Harbour with a number of his followers to lay claim to Malta and Gozo, which had been granted to them by Holy Roman Emperor Charles Vin return for one falcon sent annually to the Viceroy of Sicily and a solemn Mass to be celebrated on All Saints Day. Charles also required the Knights to garrison Tripoli on the North African coast, which was in territory that the Barbary Corsairs, allies of the Ottomans, controlled. The Knights accepted the offer reluctantly. Malta was a small, desolate island, and for some time, many of the Knights clung to the dream of recapturing Rhodes.

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