A major new history of the epic siege of the island fortress of Malta 'Marcus Bull's
revisiting of the siege through the eyes of the Ottomans and a global lens that shifts our
angle of vision has made a considerable contribution to our understanding of the events of
1565... his approach is investigatory based on a forensic study of all the available evidence
and posing open-ended questions... the coverage of the siege itself is succinct and full of
interesting perspectives' - Roger Crowley Engelsberg Ideas Even as the great siege began it
was understood by both sides to be an epic - a potentially decisive encounter between an uneasy
assortment of soldiers native Maltese adventurers and Knights Hospitaller on a strategically
crucial but near waterless island and a vast seemingly all-powerful Ottoman armada. With three
quarters of the Mediterranean's coasts already in the hands of the Sultan and his allies all
eyes were now on Malta. This superb new account of the siege emphasises the crucial importance
of the siege while at the same time putting it in a far wider context. While since mistakenly
recast as a climactic battle between the West and the East it was also much more interesting
and nuanced than that - both sides had many other interests and priorities beyond Malta.
Süleyman the Magnificent had conquered and subsumed regions from Hungary to the Persian Gulf
Philip II was building an empire in America and Asia. Drawing on a wide range of eyewitness
stories Marcus Bull gives a vivid sense of the period's technologies values and assumptions.
It was a grim world built on the labour of many thousands of disposable galley-slaves
shockingly brutal forms of warfare and religious absolutism. But it was also a world filled
with the most extraordinary new discoveries and ideas. Both these worlds come together in the
siege and in this book.
