Voltaire once said that there was nothing better known than the Great Siege of 1565.
But that was a time before the ‘cash me ousside, how bow dah’ girl,
so I think we can all use a bit of a refresher.
It was one of the most important battles in all Catholic history.
2900 crusader knights, their slaves and about ten thousand civilians squared off
against one of the greatest empires in history, and turned them back forever.
But more than that, it led to the creation of one of the smallest states on Earth.
Malta.
Some stories are simply better if you’re religious.
It’s kind of like betting on a sports game.
It's just more fun if you have skin in the game.
And when talking about the story of the Siege of Malta, it’s just easier to understand
if you feel the drive of religion.
So for those of you that don't, for the sake of history, I'd like you to imagine that you do.
I'd like you to imagine for a second that hell is real.
Everybody agrees.
And you certainly believe it.
And what’s more, you know you're going.
Because you’ve done things.
Things you feel guilty about.
Things you know are deserving of hell.
But the Pope had offered you salvation.
He says if you die in a crusade, fighting the Muslims, who I should note
have been offered the exact same thing by their religious leaders, you get to go to heaven.
If you do this, for all eternity you will be in paradise.
And if you don’t, hell.
I don’t know about you, but I’d probably go.
In 1530, the crusades for the holy lands were not going well for the Catholics.
It wasn’t just that it had been hundreds of years since they’d controlled Jersualem,
things constantly seemed to be getting worse.
The Knights Hospitaller, who were essentially an international religious military order,
had been not only pushed out of the Levant, but also their island stronghold in Rhodes.
Although they were militarily weakened, Catholicism was staring down the barrel of a very powerful enemy,
and every man counted, so the pope decided to give them another chance on Malta.
After all, if God was truly watching us, surely he’d be watching these knights first.
They’d been founded as a hospice for crusaders in Jerusalem over four hundred years before,
and they'd long since established themselves as pious.
But over the last few hundred years they’d seen their glory fade
as they were pushed back further and further into the Mediterranean.
Yet, even on the backfoot, these were devout young men who truly wanted to die for their religion.
The rich second sons of Europe, looking for glory in battle and eventually death.
The best modern equivalent would probably be the prominent Saudis of al-Qaeda.
By 1565, with Protestants rising in Germany and the Ottomans at the gates of Vienna,
Catholicism had rarely felt a greater threat.
To a wilting religious order hell-bent on returning to their former glory,
Malta seemed like a legendary place to die.
And the Ottomans were more than willing to oblige.
When that fleet of forty thousand troops arrived on these shores,
the Knights had fewer than three thousand trained soldiers.
They were facing one of the largest and best equipped armies in the world.
They were outclassed on both land and water.
They all knew that this would be their last stand.
But they were blessed in some ways.
They had the walls of one of the greatest fortresses in the world.
They had the brilliant military mind of Jean Valette, and perhaps most importantly,
their backs were against the wall, both as individual soldiers and also as good Catholics.
Malta was the lynchpin of the Mediterranean, and in the eyes of its defenders
losing it to the Ottomans would lead to the domino style conquest of Sicily, Genoa,
and potentially even the Papacy itself.
It would put them in direct confrontation with Spain, then likely the most powerful empire on the planet.
Yet, as long as it stood, Rome remained safe.
It was too risky to leave the enemy with such a valuable harbour behind their lines.
So if the Ottomans were looking to advance west, they needed to take Malta.
Which was nothing new.
The cycle that keeps Malta valuable has inversely always been its greatest curse.
From Bronze Age settlements to Arabian tax collectors to the modern EU,
ruling this island has always meant defending it.
It has always meant sustaining armies well beyond what the landscape can naturally allow.
It requires the the support of the citizens.
The knights, at least in those early days, understood this intimately.
So when those forty thousand soldiers arrived on these shores, they met an entire nation
dug in to a living fortress.
They met a people fighting for more than just land.
They knew that if they didn’t defend themselves, they would be annihilated.
Every survivor would be enslaved.
And it wasn’t an idle concern.
When the Ottomans took the neighbouring island of Gozo they spared nobody.
Those that didn’t die in the battle were shackled to a galley and forced to fight their own people.
And for three long months the Ottomans tried to take the forts of the Knights Hospitaller.
And for three months, Jean Valette and his men countered their every move.
Wave after wave hit their walls and wave after wave were turned back.
When it seemed like they just might storm the fortifications, cavalry swept in
from the rear and routed them.
On the way to their ships to flee back to Turkey, reinforcements from Catholic Spain arrived,
cleaning up anyone who remained behind.
It was almost as if it was divinely inspired.
The battle itself has been covered a thousand different ways by a thousand different sources.
So instead I want to talk about the aftermath.
Because the real value of the battle is how it changed the world.
The battle didn't stop Ottoman expansion.
This wasn’t what Europe needed to turn back the tides.
But it did have an effect, specifically on morale.
Because like I told you, Catholicism had been going through some very tough times.
And this was a big victory.
If you truly believed in God, this would have been auspicious.
A miracle even.
Christians from across Europe began to donate.
Money poured in to Malta.
The knights who had given everything to defend Christendom were now world famous icons.
Jean Valette would go down as one of the greatest heroes of Catholic military history.
Like a Middle Ages Kony2012, when people heard the story of the siege,
they simply felt compelled to donate.
Soon, the Knights of St John were wealthier and more powerful than they’d ever been.
In turn, Malta prospered.
The donations they received would be used to build a nation.
Defenses were upgrades, mills were constructed, and a majestic new European capital rose from the dust.
It would be named after their champion.
Valetta.
But as the crusades came to an end, so too did the purpose of the order
and it slowly began to rot from within.
Malta became little more than an aristocrat’s private clubhouse.
And when they were finally removed from power, the common people cheered.
The knights weren’t here to fight for Maltese independence,
and they certainly never granted it to them.
They were here escaping hell.
Escaping their families.
But whether it was their intention or not, they gave these islands an identity.
A brand for Voltaire to remember.
And when the British Empire collapsed into its so many disparate parts,
this was one of the parts.
The lynchpin of the Mediterranean.
The last stronghold of God.
Malta.
This is Rare Earth.