MALTA: A CASE STUDY IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF FORTIFICATIONS. THE SPANISH-PORTUGUESE BASTIONED TOWNS AS A WORLD ROUTE AMONGST THE FIVE CONTINENTS.

David Mallia

(Malta)

Summary:

The growth of the Aragonese Empire and its spread eastwards into the Mediterranean: islands and North Africa meant that a clash with the Moslem East was inevitable. Malta and Sicily became the Eastern frontiers of the empire. The rise of the Ottoman Empire and the devastating raid of the Barbary corsairs induced king Charles V to fortify the coast against the corsairs. This was implemented all over the empire including Sicily and Malta. In 1530 the arrival of the Knights of St. John in Malta made the island a focus for attack and the siege of 1565 was the natural escalation of these raids. The success of the Knights made them famous and they were given assistance in the rebuilding and expanding the fortifications. This was part of the development of the fortifications on the eastern littoral of the empire which included the fortresses of Malta, Syracuse, Augusta and Messina. Ironically, the fortress of Malta fell to Napoleon in 1798 without any resistance.

Introduction

The growth of the Aragonese - Catalan empire can be regarded as an integral part of the reconquista of the Iberian peninsula. Although political, religious and national reasons are often seen as the principal motivation behind the expansion, economic interests were also extremely important and gradually the maritime empire expanded to include many of the islands of the Mediterranean: the Baleares early in 13^th century and Sicily and Malta late in the 13^th century. The empire extended into the Aegean but these acquisitions were of an ephemeral nature.

The marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castille united the Spanish crowns but the focus of the two kingdoms was not really unified. Castille concentrated on the conquest of Granada while Aragon continued to centre its attention on the Mediterranean islands and Italy. During the 16^th century the empire came to include African ports such as Melilla, Mers-el-Kebir, Oran, Bougie, Valez and Tripoli. The policy behind the establishment of these presidios was to try to reduce the effect of the pirate raids on the coastal regions of the empire.

The expansion of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the regency or sanjac in Algeria soon turned the tide of the Aragonese expansion. After the death of Ferdinand in 1515, a number of the North African presidios were lost to the corsairs and the new king, Carlos I, had to deal with an almost impossible situation. Corsairs based in North Africa raided the coasts seizing anything they could lay their hands on, thereby wrecking the economy and weakening the society. This was not a new phenomenon since by the 14^th century there were guards on the lookout on the mountains surrounding Palermo who were ordered to light a fire on sighting an enemy vessel. Indeed by the fifteenth century each adult male on the island of Malta had to take his turn in serving in the 'Deima' or local militia. Militia lists were drawn up annually and their duties were to watch for enemy landing every night.

The arrival of the Knights of St. John in Malta

In 1530 Carlos I gave the Maltese Islands and the fortress of Tripoli to the Knights of St. John who had been homeless for a number of years following their defeat and subsequent expulsion from Rhodes at the hands of Suleiman the Magnificent. This not only gave a new home to the military order but also ensured the security of the south-eastern corner of the Aragonese Mediterranean empire. The wisdom of this move on the part of the King of Spain was soon to be proved.

At about this time a few coastal towers were erected in Sicily to facilitate the protection of the coast. In 1549, the viceroy De Vega proposed an initial plan to build more coastal towers. These were built in 1553 and 1554. In 1579 the Cortes of Sicily decreed that the entire coast of the kingdom should be protected by these watch towers and that the existing ones should be repaired and new ones erected where necessary. An example was the tower at Pozzallo, which guarded the grain stores from which grain was exported to Malta. In Malta the coastal towers were not completed until the middle of the 16^th century.

However these lonely watch-towers were no match for the skill, courage and determination of the most feared corsair: Draguth Rais. This intrepid pirate soon established a fearful reputation for himself and his name was soon used by parents to frighten children. It is recorded that attacks were made on the island of Gozo in 1533, 1540, 1541, 1544, 1545, 1546, 1547 and 1550. In fact it is probable that the presence of the Knights of St. John on the island of Malta only made it more attractive to the corsairs. This may have been because the Knights themselves attacked Turkish shipping whenever possible. From his base in North Africa, Draguth organised an annual series of raids during which he attacked shipping and the coasts of the central Mediterranean. During the raid of 1544 on the island of Gozo, his brother was killed and it is therefore not unlikely that Draguth had an especial hatred for the Gozitans.

The 1551 campaign was particularly memorable. After an unsuccessful attack on Malta, Draguth turned his attention to Gozo where after a siege lasting only three days he captured the castle and took most of the population as slaves. Not satisfied with his prize, he sailed to North Africa and after a siege which lasted six weeks, he managed to oust the Knights of St. John from the fortress of Tripoli. Tripoli was lost to the Knights forever and the captives soon filed the slave markets of Constantinople.

The Great Siege of Malta

The news of the capture of Gozo and Tripoli sent shock waves throughout the empire and military engineers were called to inspect and improve the fortifications of the fortress cities of Augusta, Syracuse, Messina, Milazzo, Palermo and Malta. Indeed the fortification of the coastal settlements became a priority throughout the Mediterranean as exemplified by those constructed at Alicante. The fears of the Viceroy of Sicily and The Grand Master were well founded because in 1565 a large Turkish armada set sail from Constantinople with orders to exterminate Malta, which the Sultan considered to be a nest of vipers.

Fortifications had evolved considerably during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and the principal developments were a reaction to the improvements in artillery. Siege guns had become a well-developed weapon, as the siege and capture of Constantinople in 1453 had shown. The high mediaeval walls were no protection against the battering onslaught of cannon balls and the study of the ideal city as exemplified by the humanist theorists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Francesco di Giorgio Martini. Walls were now lower but thicker and scarped so as to deflect cannon fire. The development of the bastion, which is a fortified work composed of ramparts built at salient angles, was derived from the corner towers of the mediaeval period. These had been adapted as gun platforms from which to fire at the enemy. A series of bastions, which were linked by curtain walls, encircled the city and the ensemble was called an enceinte. The city of Palmanova is a complete example which has survived unscathed to this day. Numerous Italian military engineers were commissioned in the redesigning of the fortress cities of Europe during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and the list of military engineers employed by the Order of St. John in Malta (see appendix 1) reflects this. The system could be adapted to almost any configuration and this is exemplified by the fortification of entire islands as fortresses. Mediterranean examples include the island of Tabarca, near Alicante; Augusta and Ortygia (Syracuse) in Sicily.

The siege of Malta in 1565 has been widely acclaimed as the high water mark of the Ottoman Empire. Indeed Voltaire writing some two centuries later said that rien n’est plus connû que le siège de Malte. Having only been established in Malta for some thirty-five years, the Order of St. John had quickly taken advantage of the strategic possibilities offered by its new base. The large and deep natural harbours were ideal for the development of the Order's maritime activities. The local population too, skilled in the arts of boat building and navigation must have soon found employment in the Order's naval arsenal. Autumn and winter were spent repairing and refitting the vessels as well as building new ships. Spring and summer were spent corsairing. With so many Moslem ships plying the Mediterranean, there were many rich prizes to be had and even after the percentage due to the Grand Master was paid, many sailors found themselves rather well off at the end of the season. However each successful capture of a Moslem vessel merely added to the chorus of complaints at the court of the Sublime Porte and the siege of 1565 can be seen as an attempt, by the Sultan, to rid himself of this menace. The Grand Masters were only too well aware of the preparations in Constantinople and various measures were taken to fortify the harbour. These included the building of a new city and fort St. Michael on the peninsula called Isla; and the strengthening of the fortifications of Fort St. Angelo and its Borgo. New bastions were added to the existing mediaeval fortifications since there was no time to rebuild the entire fortification system. A great chain was stretched across the entrance to the inner harbour. This could be raised or lowered from fort St. Angelo. Finally a small fort, called fort St. Elmo, was built at the tip of the Sceberras peninsula. In 1565, the expected Turkish invasion happened and for five long months the islands, but principally the harbour fortresses, were besieged. The new fortifications responded well to the enemy's battering and assaults: extremely well. It is not the purpose of this paper to describe the siege in any detail, but suffice it to say that by the end of summer, despite heavy casualties on both sides, the Turks had only managed to capture fort St. Elmo. The arrival of a relief force from Sicily, sent by the Viceroy, Don Garcia de Toledo, put paid any hopes of a Turkish victory and the defeated armada sailed away. This victory was widely acclaimed all over Europe and gave the Order much prestige. More importantly, large sums of money and expertise were given to the Order, thereby enabling the development of the fortifications around the harbour. These works continued until the end of the eighteenth century and resulted in the creation of a large, fortified harbour surrounded by fortified settlements. Owing to this victory any ideas about the depopulation of the islands, such as had also been proposed for other islands subject to pirate raids like Menorca, were abandoned for good.

The development of the harbour fortifications

The first development was the building of a new city on the Scebberas peninsula. Founded in 1566, this city became the capital city of a Malta: Valletta. Named after the Grand Master of the Order at the time of its foundation, the fortified city protected the North side of the harbour. It was designed by Francesco Lapparelli da Cortona and his design paid tribute to the theoretical design for ideal cities by adoption a grid iron orthogonal street pattern for the city plan despite the fact that the uneven terrain resulted in some extremely steep streets. It must be noted that similar designs were imposed in the replanning of Catania after the earthquake of 1693 and the creation of the pair of orthogonally placed streets in Palermo in the early seventeenth century by the architect Giulio Lasso.

In 1598 king Philip II donated forty thousand scudi and sent the military engineer Giovanni Rinaldini to the Order of St. John for the fortification of Gozo. The accession of the bourbon dynasty in Spain marks, perhaps, the confirmation of the ascendancy of French influence in Europe. The establishment of the Bourbons in Sicily, which incidentally was the occasion for the employment of Filippo Juvarra in Spain, brought about new prosperity throughout the kingdom. The added safety and prosperity brought about an inevitable increase in population and before long the existing settlements were too small to contain the population. Floriana, a fortified suburb was added to Valletta in the first half of the eighteenth century and the town of Bormla was surrounded by the Firenzuola lines, but the greatest planned expansion was that implemented during the reign of the Grand Masters Raffael and Nicolo Cottoner. These two brothers, whose family hailed from Mallorca, paid for the longest stretch of baroque fortifications ever built on the Maltese Islands: the Cottonera lines. Begun in 1670 and never fully completed, they greatly increased the area of fortified territory. The Cotoners' plans were long term indeed since, although no settlements were actually built in this area during the eighteenth century, this area is being inhabited in the twentieth century

As in many Mediterranean islands the main industry during this time in Malta was wool. The life of the inhabitants began to improve, as Malta was sought after by all because of its ideal location in the centre of the Mediterranean.  Although no other large fortified cities were planned after this time, the development of the fortifications continued unabated thorughout the eighteenth century. The theories of the leading exponent of the period, Sebastien le Prestre de Vauban, who established the French Engineering corps were applied by some of his pupils when they served the Order in Malta. They added a complex series of outworks to the main lines of fortifications in an attempt to increase the distance between the enemy and the fortified settlement. Development continued until the end of the eighteenth century and the last major fortress to be constructed was Fort Tigne in 1792. This was to be the fortress of a projected fortified town on the Tigne peninsula, which was never built.

Conclusion

In 1798, the storm clouds of revolution, which had been billowing over Europe, moved towards the Mediterranean. The Order of St. John was overtaken by events having been virtually bankrupted by the confiscation of all its property in France. The Island, now full of pro-French Jacobin supporters, fell to Napoleon’s army, which was on its way to Egypt, virtually without the firing of a single shot. Ironically, the powerful fortifications, which had been built at such great effort and expense during the previous two hundred and fifty years, fell to the enemy untried.

List of military engineers employed by the Order of St. John in Malta

The Grand Masters of the Order of St. John (1530-1798)

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