The Last Crusaders: The Great Siege Read Online Free PDF

he wills. He can fall on the Italian coast, the Spanish, the French—’
    ‘The French!’ roared Blackbeard with sudden violence. ‘The French deserve all they get!’
    The fairhead nodded at his comrade. ‘My Brother John here does not care for the French.’
    ‘Those mincing treacherous milk-livered cotqueans! Only twenty years ago, that woman of a king, their Francis, made secret alliance with Suleiman, to spite the Emperor Charles V and the Hapsburgs. Do you not recall?’
    ‘I remember it,’ said Sir Francis. ‘All of Christendom was disgusted.’
    ‘The French,’ concluded Blackbeard, and made an extraordinary noise, somewhere between a snort and a growl. Nicholas thought of the she-bear devouring the little boys in the Book of Kings. ‘Don’t speak to me of the French , nor expect any aid from that quarter. They are born cowards and collaborators all.’
    ‘Is Grand Master Jean de la Valette not a Frenchman?’ enquired Sir Francis.
    ‘No,’ said Blackbeard. ‘He is a Knight.’
    There was a silence, and then the fairhead resumed.
    ‘The delicate matter of France aside,’ he said with the lightest irony, ‘if our island fortress of Malta should fall – as fall it surely will, without aid, in only a few days – then the Grand Fleet of the Turks will be free to pass westwards, even beyond Gibraltar. To roam the Atlantic, to capture the Spanish treasure fleets returning from the Americas laden with the silver and gold of the Indies. To sail onward to the New World, even, and plant the Green Banner of Islam on the American shore. It is only twenty-five days’ sailingfrom Cape Florida to the Scillies on a good wind, after all. And northwards too, up the English Channel, the Scheldt, the Rhine … the Thames? Before long, the minarets of the Mohammedans might soon appear in place of the towers of Christianity, in Antwerp, and Cologne, and London. The unearthly cry of the muezzin will be heard drifting over the spires of Oxford …’
    Sir Francis grimaced. ‘You have a poet’s fancy.’
    ‘Perhaps. But you understand me? If Malta should fall, the balance of power in Europe will be for ever changed. Suleiman will have complete mastery of the sea. And he who rules the sea, rules the land.’
    Sir Francis Ingoldsby brooded long and deep. ‘It will take time for me to raise any small aid—’
    ‘Time we do not have!’ cried the fairhead in a sudden passion, stepping forward. ‘Forgive me, Brother Francis. But day and night the forges of the Ottomans are ablaze, the great furnaces fed by the forests of Armenia and the Crimea. The waters of the Bosphorus glow red with their flames, the arsenals are stacked high with cannon, cannonballs, powder barrels. The greatest of their guns, the monstrous basilisks, could bring down the walls of Krak des Chevaliers!’
    ‘War has changed,’ murmured the old knight sadly. ‘Oh to have fought and died at Krak des Chevaliers! But now guns and gunpowder reign over all, and chivalry is no more.’
    ‘There is always chivalry,’ growled Blackbeard unexpectedly.
    ‘Suleiman’s army numbers perhaps forty thousand men,’ said the fairhead, ‘and his corps of Janizaries – well, you know the Janizaries.’
    ‘No warriors more ferocious under heaven,’ murmured the old knight.
    ‘They long to die for the faith, and go straight to their promised Paradise. They champ at the bit for war like maddened horses. Suleiman’s navy is the greatest fleet seen on the Mediterranean since the days of Ancient Rome. And over this vast force presides Suleiman himself, seventy years of age, and not a whit more peaceable for his white hairs. Scarce one decade of his life has been spent at peace. And he is in a hurry now to finish the job. Before he dies. To destroy Christendom once and for all.’
    Sir Francis’s old face, battered and weather-beaten, furrowed with disbelief. ‘You really believe he could do this?’
    ‘I do,’ said the fairhead quietly. ‘He has planned