Knights of Malta, 1523-1798 | Page 2

time the war between Charles V.
and Francis I. was at its height, and the quarrel between France and
Spain was reflected within the ranks of the Hospitallers. As the French
and Spanish Knights formed the greater part of the members, the unity
of the Order was 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