Knights of Malta, 1523-1798 | Page 2

threatened by the quarrels between them that arose out of national sentiment. The Reformation was rapidly spreading, and was likely to prove dangerous to the lands of the Order in Northern Europe, and various monarchs were meditating the seizure of the Hospitallers' estates now that the Order was temporarily without a justification for its existence.
The Grand Master showed himself a skilful diplomat, as well as a brave soldier. From 1523 to 1530 the Order remained without a home, while L'Isle Adam visited the different European courts to stay the grasping hands of the various Kings. All this time negotiations were proceeding between Charles V. and the Knights for the cession of Malta. The harsh conditions which the Emperor insisted upon in his offer made the Knights reluctant to accept, while his preoccupation with the war against France made negotiations difficult. Further, the cause of the Knights had been damaged when the Pope--who had acted as their intercessor--joined the ranks of Charles's enemies, and Clement VII. was now a prisoner in the Emperor's hands. In March, 1530, an agreement was finally arrived at, which was the most favourable the Emperor would grant. One harassing burden the Knights could not escape: Charles insisted that Tripoli must go with Malta, a gift which meant a useless drain upon their weak resources, and which fell in 1551 to Dragut-Reis and the Turkish forces at the first serious attack. L'Isle Adam had insisted that he could not take the island over as a feudatory to the King of Spain, as that was contrary to the fundamental idea of the Order--its impartiality in its relations to all the Christian Powers. The only condition of service, therefore, that was made was nominal: the Grand Master henceforth was to send, on All Souls' Day, a falcon to the Viceroy of Sicily as a token of feudal sub-mission.[1]
This was a splendid bargain for the Emperor. Malta had hitherto been worthless to him, but henceforth it became one of the finest bulwarks of his dominions. To understand the supreme value of the island, we must take a glance at sea power in the Mediterranean in the sixteenth century.
The beginning of the century had seen the growth of the Corsairs' strength to a most alarming extent. While all the European Powers were fighting among themselves, these Barbary Corsairs (as they were later called) had become the terror of the Western Mediterranean. Spain, by its unrelenting persecution of the Moriscoes, following on centuries of bitter conflict between Christian and Mussulman, had earned the undying hatred of the dwellers on the North African coast, many of whom were the children of the expelled Moors. These Moors had wasted their energy in desultory warfare up to the beginning of the sixteenth century, when the genius of the two brothers, Uruj and Khair-ed-Din Barbarossa, had organised them into the pirate State of Algiers, which was to be a thorn in the side of Christendom for over three centuries. The Corsairs were not content with merely attacking ships at sea: they made raids on the Spanish, Italian, and Sicilian sea-boards, burning and looting for many miles inland. The inhabitants of these parts were driven off as captives to fill the bagnios of Algiers, Tunis, Bizerta, and other North African towns. These prisoners were used as galley slaves, and the life of a galley slave was generally so short that there was no difficulty of disposing of all the captives that could be seized. Cupidity, allied with fanaticism, gave this state of war a cruelty beyond conception: both sides displayed such undaunted courage and such fierce personal hatred as to make men wonder, even in that hard and bitter century. Those low-lying galleys, which were independent of the wind, were ideal pirates' craft in the gentle Mediterranean summer, and many a slumbering Spanish or Italian village would be startled into terror by their sudden approach. The audacity of their methods is illustrated by the raid on Fundi in 1534, when Barbarossa swooped down on that town simply to seize Giulia Gonzaga--reputed the loveliest woman in Italy--for the Sultan's harem: the fair Duchess of Trajetto hardly escaped in her nightdress.
The Eastern Mediterranean, after the capture of Rhodes, was almost entirely a Turkish preserve. Though Venice at this period still kept her hold on Cyprus and Crete, the former of which was not yielded by the Republic till 1573 and the latter till 1669, yet the Treaty of Constantinople in 1479 had definitely reduced the position of Venice in the Levant from an independent Power to a tolerated ally. The growth of the Ottoman sea power had been alarming enough, but it became a distinct menace to the Christian Powers of the Mediterranean when the Corsair chiefs of the North African coast became Turkish vassals. All the African coast