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The 1565 Siege – The Dawn of the Cottonera Region
The Emergence of Cottonera
The Cottonera Lines – The Land-Side Consolidation
The Linking and Developing of Galley and French Creeks – The Seaward Consolidation
The Dockyard and the Socioeconomic Consolidation
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The 1565 Siege – The Dawn of the Cottonera Region

Birgu and Senglea besieged by the Turks.

Cottonera’s fate as a unified region was ironically sparked off by the sultan who once sought to destroy it. In the autumn of 1565, Suleiman the Magnificent was determined that “the sons of Satan shall for their continual piracy and insolence be for ever crushed and destroyed”. At that time, the Knights of St John along with their servants at arms totalled just 540 while their garrison consisted of a mere 1000 Spanish Infantry and 4000 Maltese engaged in the local militia.

On the 18th May 1565, the Turks led by Admiral Piali and General Mustapha approached Malta with some 40 000 men on board 200 vessels. After mooring at Marsaxlokk and encamping in Marsa, they decided to neutralise the small fort of St Elmo so they could berth in Marsamxett. Therefore they deployed their artillery on Mount Sciberras, immediately incurring heavy damage upon St Elmo. The Order could use the sally ports of Birgu to send reinforcements to the Fort and to ferry the wounded back. However this would only serve to delay St Elmo’s inevitable fall.

Later, Field Commander Torghoud Rais – known as Dragut – arrived in Malta to take effective command. He disapproved of the Turkish strategy as he would have preferred to first secure Mdina before concentrating on Forts St Angelo and St Michael. However he repositioned the Turkish batteries for more effective shelling of St Elmo, and he also introduced night patrols in the Grand Harbour so as to sever contact between the Fort and Birgu. St Elmo fell to the invaders on the 22nd of June although Dragut was to lose his life in the process.

The Turks were then free to move to Marsamxett, from where they dragged some of their vessels to Marsa and turned their guns towards Senglea and Birgu. This way, the defenders were blocked from the landward as well as the seaward side.

Turkish siege guns firing on Senglea
from the overlooking heights.

At one point Senglea was nearly taken and would have fallen were it not for a timely attack by the Mdina Cavalry on the Turks’ Marsa base. This ferocious raid led the Turks to mistakenly believe that a relief force had arrived to Malta and so they sounded the retreat. On the other side, an exploding mine created a breach in the Post of Castille – still known as Breach Bastion – and the Turks raised the crescent on the ramparts as they surged forward. That day Grandmaster La Valette was wounded in the leg as he led a counter charge. Both sides suffered heavy losses and a lowering of morale but for the defenders the situation was desperate as Cottonera, and consequently Malta, was on the verge of collapse.

On the 6th of September, an 8000-strong relief force arrived from Sicily and landed in Mellieħa. Estimating higher numbers, the Turks called a general retreat and evacuated the Island.

Throughout the Siege the aggressors had lost about 30 000 men. The defenders had lost comparatively less – around 250 Knights and 7000 Spanish and Maltese. For Malta this was nevertheless a high price in terms of physical devastation and human losses. However the real outcome of all this meant that Malta had now entered the realms of modern history.

Indeed the Siege had sown the first seeds that germinated a sense of solidarity amongst the people of the various localities involved. Later this feeling of unity was to prove instrumental in consolidating them into a cohesive Cottonera region.
 
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