Empires of the Sea - the Final Battle for the Mediterranean 1521-1580 Read Online Free PDF Page A

vents—direct attacks were mounted and repulsed, unknown thousands of Ottoman troops perished. Suleiman’s master gunner had his legs blown off by a cannonball—a loss said to have been more grievous to the sultan than that of any general. The men became reluctant to attack; on September 9 they had to be driven to the walls “with great strokes of the sword.” Casualties within the city were far fewer but much more serious—each man killed was an irreplaceable loss. On September 4 alone, the knights lost three leading commanders: the captain of the galleys, the standard-bearer Henry Mansell, and the grand commander Gabriel de Pommerols, who “fell from the walls as he went to see his trenches…and hurt his breast.”
    Suleiman watched from a safe distance beyond the reach of gunshot and recorded the unfolding battle in a series of laconic entries in his campaign journal. For the end of August he simply noted: “26 and 27, combat. 28, order given to fill in the ditch with branches and rocks. 29, the batteries of Piri Pasha, which the infidel had knocked out, start firing again. 30, the ditch is filled in. 31, bitter combat.” A sense of Olympian detachment pervades these pages; the sultan speaks of himself only in the third person, as if the man who was the Shadow of God on Earth were too elevated to admit to human emotions, but in the journal it is possible lightly to trace a trajectory of expectation. His general, Mustapha Pasha, had told the sultan that the siege would take a month. As the town was shaken by a succession of explosive mines during September and breaches widened, it seemed likely that a final assault was not far off. On September 19, Suleiman recorded that some troops managed to get inside a sector of the walls. “On this occasion, certain knowledge was acquired that inside there was neither a second ditch nor a second wall.” On September 23, Mustapha Pasha decided the moment had come. Heralds went among the army to announce an imminent all-out attack; Suleiman addressed the men, stirring them to deeds of valor. He had a viewing platform erected from which to follow the final push.
    In the predawn of September 24, “even before the hour of morning prayer,” a massive bombardment opened up. In the concealing smoke, the janissaries, Suleiman’s crack troops, began their advance. The defense was taken by surprise. The janissaries established themselves on the walls and planted banners. A furious battle ensued. The ground was contested for six hours, but the grand master managed to rally the defenders, and a hail of cross fire hit the intruders from the bastions and concealed positions within the outer wall. Eventually the Ottomans wavered and fell back. No threats could return them to the breach. They fled the field, leaving the rubble smoking and bloody. Suleiman wrote just one sentence in his journal: “The attack is repulsed.” Next day he declared his intention to have Mustapha Pasha paraded in front of the whole army and shot full of arrows. The following day Suleiman reversed the decision.
             
     
    MUFFLED NEWS OF THE SIEGE was relayed across the Mediterranean world. Though they did nothing, the potentates of Europe understood how much Rhodes mattered. It was the dam holding back the Ottoman maritime advance. The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V foresaw that the island’s loss would open up the central seas; the Ottomans would proceed to a seaborne assault on Italy, “and finally to ruin and destroy all Christendom.” Unfortunately for Rhodes, this brilliant strategic insight had no material consequences. During October just a couple of small ships broke the blockade, bringing a few knights. In Italy the Order had raised the cash for two thousand mercenaries, who made it to Messina on Sicily but no farther; without armed escorts they dared not sail. In faraway Britain, some English knights prepared an expedition. It departed too late in the season and foundered with the loss