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Helen Nicholson

Diarmaid MacCulloch

Kate Fleet

Simon Tillotson

In Our Time: The Siege of Malta, 1565

in-our-time_110118_e_get.jpg

11/01/2018

The Siege of Malta, 1565

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, The Siege of Malta, 1565

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Ottoman attack on the Knights Hospitaller in Malta.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the fierce contest for Malta, which the Ottomans tried to prise from the Knights Hospitaller who they they had already driven from Rhodes in 1522.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the event of which Voltaire, two hundred years later, said 'nothing was more well known'. In 1565, Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman leader, sent a great fleet west to lay siege to Malta and capture it for his empire. Victory would mean control of trade across the Mediterranean and a base for attacks on Spain, Sicily and southern Italy, even Rome. It would also mean elimination of Malta's defenders, the Knights Hospitaller, driven by the Ottomans from their base in Rhodes in 1522 and whose raids on his shipping had long been a thorn in his side. News of the Great Siege of Malta spread fear throughout Europe, though that turned to elation when, after four months of horrific fighting, the Ottomans withdrew, undermined by infighting between their leaders and the death of the highly-valued admiral, Dragut. The Knights Hospitaller had shown that Suleiman's forces could be contained, and their own order was reinvigorated. 

The image above is the Death of Dragut at the Siege of Malta (1867), after a painting by Giuseppe Cali. Dragut (1485  1565) was an Ottoman Admiral and privateer, known as The Drawn Sword of Islam and as one of the finest generals of the time.

With 

Helen Nicholson
Professor of Medieval History at Cardiff University

Diarmaid MacCulloch
Professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford

and

Kate Fleet
Director of the Skilliter Centre for Ottoman Studies and Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge

Producer: Simon Tillotson.

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