The Siege of Malta, 1565

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the event of which Voltaire, two hundred years later, said 'nothing was more well known'. The Ottoman Empire had already driven the Knights Hospitaller from their headquarters in Rhodes, in 1522, after a siege and wanted to do the same in Malta. The siege of 1565, one of the fiercest recorded, ended with a victory for the Knights, raising questions of why the Ottomans failed to press their advantage home. It became one of the most celebrated events of C16th, for Christians in Europe, and changed the perception that the Ottomans were invincible. It also marked a new period of Spanish dominance in the Mediterranean. The image above is the Death of Dragut at the Siege of Malta (1867), after a painting by Giuseppe Cali. Dragut (1485 – 1565) was an Ottoman Admiral and privateer, known as The Drawn Sword of Islam and as one of the finest generals of the time. With Helen Nicholson Professor of Medieval History at Cardiff University Diarmaid MacCulloch Professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford and Kate Fleet Director of the Skilliter Centre for Ottoman Studies and Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge Producer: Simon Tillotson.