The Siege of Malta - Taschenbuch

Translated with an introduction by Ernle Bradford "This is the true account of everything that happened from day to day in the siege, as I myself saw it...." At dawn, on 18 May 1565, the Grand Master Jean de Valette Parisot and his Knights of the order of St John watched solemnly as the vast armada of Sultan Suleiman of Turkey approached Malta. For nearly 6 months the Knights, with some 9000 soldiers, defended their small island bastion against a Turkish army of 40000, in one of the crucial sieges in the war of faith between Christendom and Islam. This was also a strategic struggle for domination of the mediterranean, as the Knights' presence in Malta formed an obstacle to the Ottoman Empire's expansion into Europe. Francisco Balbi, a wandering poet who fought to defend Malta as an arquebusier in the Spanish corps, provides a compelling eyewitness account, vividly bringing to life a decisive episode of European history. "Not only could (Balbi) say "I was there", but he left for posterity his history of one of the great battles of the world" Ernle Bradford