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

of all hands in the Bay of Biscay.
    The attacks went on. The walls were repeatedly undermined and assaulted; five attempts on the English sector were beaten back in ten days; by early October most of the English knights were either wounded or dead. On October 10, events took a more serious turn. The Spanish wall was breached and the intruders could not be dislodged; they were contained by a hastily constructed inner wall, but the Ottomans were there to stay. “It was an ill-starred day for us,” wrote one of the knights, “the beginning of our ruin.” Further bad news next day: a marksman spotted Tadini studying the defenses through an embrasure and shot him in the face. The ball smashed his eye socket and exited out of the side of his skull. The doughty engineer, though grievously wounded, proved too tough to die. He was out of action for six weeks. In the meantime the number of serviceable cannon was dwindling by the day, and powder supplies were running so low that the grand master ordered no gun to be fired without permission.
    The town succumbed to a witch hunt for spies. In a mixed population of Latins, Greeks, and Jews, supported by a sullen gang of enslaved Muslims, everyone could imagine a fifth column of enemy sympathizers. Early in the siege, a plot by the Turkish women slaves to set fire to the houses had been foiled and the ringleaders put to death. Despite being closely guarded, the male slaves continually escaped; they dropped over the wall at night or slipped into the sea and swam out of the harbor. Suleiman learned from a deserter that the attack of September 24 had cost the lives of three hundred men and the significant loss of key commanders. The same month a Jewish doctor, a deep mole planted in the town by Suleiman’s father years earlier, was caught firing a crossbow bolt over the wall with a message attached to it. The jittery population started to imagine spies everywhere; rumors of treachery and prophecies of doom spread like wildfire. In late October a second Jew was caught preparing a crossbow message; he was the servant of the chancellor of the Order, Andrea D’Amaral, a surly, unpopular figure who had been passed over for the office of grand master. The knights were now prepared to believe anything. D’Amaral was arrested and tortured. He refused to confess to aiding the enemy but was found guilty and hanged, drawn, and quartered. The head and dismembered body parts were spitted on pikes on the walls. Fear stalked the camp.
             
     
    AS THE LIKELIHOOD of relief slipped away, the knights had one last hope: the weather. Campaigning throughout the Mediterranean basin was a seasonal affair. By late autumn, once the rains start, soldiers dream of a return to their barracks, conscripted men of their villages and farms. The seas become too rough for the low-slung war galleys—disaster awaits the fleet that outstays its welcome. No one observed this calendar as prudently as the Ottomans; the traditional campaigning season began each year on the Persian New Year’s Day—March 21—and was over by the end of October. On Rhodes it began to rain on October 25. The trenches filled with water, churning the ground to mud. The battlefield resembled the Somme. The wind swung east, whipping the cold straight off the Anatolian steppes. The miners found it difficult to grip their shovels with frozen fingers. Men began to die of disease. It became harder to urge them on. The attackers were losing heart.
    Any Ottoman commander left to his own devices would now cut his losses. With the fear of having his fleet smashed on the rocks and his army murmuring and weakened by disease, he would turn for home and risk the sultan’s wrath. With Suleiman in attendance, this was not an option: the sultan had come to win. A failure so early in his reign would severely dent his authority. At a council on October 31, the fleet was dispatched to a secure anchorage on the Anatolian shore; Suleiman commanded a