The Flight of the Turks by Matteo Perez d' Aleccio, early 17th century.
Posted on 09/11/2019 6:46:47 AM PDT by Antoninus
September 11 is known in our times as the date of a cowardly suicide attack by Islamic radicals which resulted in the massacre of over 3,000 innocents in New York City in 2001.
But on September 11 nearly five hundred years ago, another Islamic attack was coming to its ignominious conclusion for the invaders. For on this date in AD 1565, the Great Siege of Malta was drawing to a close. The Turkish army, under the command of Mustapha Pasha, was making preparation for withdraw after a stunning defeat by the Knights of Saint John after a four month long siege.
Worn down by the ironclad resolve of the Knights whose fortifications he could not take, Mustapha decided to evacuate his still-superior forces upon the arrival of a relief army from Imperial Spain. With the Turks on the defensive, the combined Catholic forces attacked. Here is how the scene is described in Angels in Iron, a brilliant novel by Nicholas C. Prata:
A Knight raised his sword into the sky, his powerful voice carrying over Naxxar.“Attack!”
With that the mounted Knights thundered down the ridge toward the Turkish infantrymen. Many foot soldiers followed.
De la Corna decided it wiser to harness the emotion than to attempt a recall. He ordered a charge and his men responded with cries of delight. They descended on the Turks even as Don Mesquita’s cavalry arrived from Mdina to worry the Moslem flank.
The Hospitaller horsemen smashed through Mustapha’s lines like hammers through glass. Many Turks, dejected by the endless siege and overmatched by the fresh enemy, broke and fled.
“Saint Elmo!” the Knights cried as they bathed their swords in blood.
Click for more info. It took only a short while for Mustapha to see that the islands reinvestment was ill-planned and potentially disastrous. He ordered a retreat north toward St. Paul’s Bay and, all that day, conducted a difficult rearguard action. Finally, after untold carnage, the Turks reached St. Paul’s Bay and found Piali waiting. The maddened Knights, who outdistanced their foot soldiers, pushed the Turks into the sea. Moslems were killed on the beach, struck down in the shallows, crushed beneath the hooves of angry warhorses.
“Saint Elmo!” the Knights bellowed.
Not all Mustapha’s army wilted, however. A daring counterattack by Hassem’s Algerians saved the Turks from obliteration. Hassem, eager to redeem his disastrous assault on Senglea, arranged arquebusiers in the hills around the bay and directed heavy shot at the Knights. The Hospitallers, still without their infantry, were obliged to fall back.
The Turks abandoned many wounded in the frantic surge to reach the anchored ships and Piali wasted no time sailing to safety. The fleet was on the move long before the Christians could bring up artillery. Three thousand Turks floated dead in narrow St. Paul’s Bay.
The Great Siege had ended.
Mustapha watched Malta shrink on the horizon. He had said nothing since his flagship had got under oar. A physician tugged his robe. “Lord, Pasha,” he said. “May I dress your injuries?”
Mustapha had been wounded in numerous places. His had been a desperate, valiant effort on the long retreat from Naxxar to St. Paul’s Bay and his old body had paid the price. Two horses had been shot out from beneath him and, when the Knights had killed his bodyguards, only the Janissaries had prevented him from falling into Christian hands.
“Lord Pasha, you’re bleeding,” the physician said.
Mustapha leaned against a rail, regret blurring his vision. “Two years for nothing,” he whispered.
“Pasha?”
Mustapha drew his jeweled scimitar and dropped it into the water. It barely left a ripple as it disappeared into the blue sea. He turned and walked away from the surgeon.
I posted another excerpt from Angels in Iron about the beginning of the siege here.
And here is another one about the surrender of Rhodes which precipitated the siege.
If you haven’t experienced Angels in Iron yet, do yourself a favor and read it. You'll thank me later.
The Flight of the Turks by Matteo Perez d' Aleccio, early 17th century.
There was another siege about a hundred or so years later, in the 1680s around the same time in September (10th or 11th), where the Siege of Vienna ended in Turkish retreat. Most historians mark that as the beginning of the end of Ottoman military supremacy over Christendom.
The 1683 battle is the subject of Day of the Siege. Available on Amazon Prime Video and (I believe) Netflix.
Catholic history ping!
Good movie!
There is something about Mattias Tannhauser... And there is a sequel, The Twelve Children of Paris, set during the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, in 1572 Paris.
9/11/2001. I turned off the news this morning. I feel so much sorrow towards those destroyed by the Islamic scum who did this. But I don’t remember all the fuss and naming of the names as a kid in the 50s, over the Pearl Harbor attack.
That’s because we WON WW 2. The Japanese were utterly decimated. They begged for peace and have been good little boys (for the most part) ever since.
So what happened. Once again from Korea onward we decided not to win a war. Then we allowed our enemies to flood into the country as if THEY won and they’re here and they are staring at our throats. (Thanks Bushes)
American politics is so stupid and subservient to globalists as to infuriate the populace and make them have endless memorials over an attack that was by appearance the day America lost its sovereignty.
And that defeat marked the decline of Islam for the next several centuries.
Islam only did well when conquering and expanding. They NEEDED the wealth of conquered Christian countries, and slaves who understood how to run a civilization. When that flow of wealth and slaves ended, Islam sank down into poverty, until a new source of unearned wealth appeared, with the discovery of oil in Arabia.
Now that source of wealth is going to end eventually, which is why the Muslim countries are desperate to conquer Europe and America via immigration.
Our sovereignty was lost long before that day. 9-11 just sealed the deal.
Just look 18 years later who is holding seats in Congres and high level government positions shaping national policy at every turn, then tell me who is winning the “War on terror”.
September 11, 1941 was the date of Lindbergh’s notorious Des Moines speech, that pretty much ended “America First” as a serious movement.
Patton was right. And killed for it.
We won the war we were in. But too short sided to see the future. Perhaps because socialist FDR (then Truman, a stooge) loved the heck out of the Soviets.
So here, for your listening pleasure, is the song...
"We remember...in September...when the Winged Hussars arrived!"
(BTW...the movie clips in the song were from the movie "Day of the Seige" about the Battle of Vienna.)
I love Truman’s bombing of Hiroshima/Nagasaki. I loath his lack of balls for not nuking China before they had the bomb. Hell we had more bombs than the Russians we should have threatened them with the bomb when they stole Eastern Europe in 1945. But no. We had Soviet spies from Alamogordo to the state departments.
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