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of 1522 was a profound upheaval on a massive scale _ but the Order
survived the loss of Rhodes, as it did the loss of Acre in
1291, and indeed as it would (in a sense) the loss of Malta
in 1798. There was only one explanation for that _ the institution's
`astonishing resilience', its innate ability `to maintain
its cohesion'. What the Order lost permanently in 1798 _ apart
from the Maltese islands _ was `its miltary raison d'etre';
and this not as the outcome of Napoleon's military might,
but `through the evaporation of any genuine holy war in the
Mediterranean'.6
The idea of Malta
Historians, closely familiar
with Giacomo Bosio's Istoria,7
written in 1594, build whole arguments in support of the view
that the idea of Malta first belonged to Ettore Pignatelli,
Charles V's Viceroy in Sicily, admitting, at the same time,
that the origin of this question cannot be traced back to
any documentary evidence.8
On this matter, Bosio makes no passing reference to any form
of documentation. Their arguments generally rest on the difficulties
which Sicilian viceroys had consistently encountered in late
medieval years in their endeavour to keep the Maltese islands
from falling into enemy hands. The cost of the islands' defence
was so exorbitant, or so they claimed, the responsibility
for it far too onerous, that they were only too zealous to
part with them, to pass the unenviable task to somebody else.
And if this `somebody else' happened to be the Order of St
John, it would be a rare stroke of good fortune, an unexpected
windfall, which it would be too naive to allow to pass unexploited.
The Hospitallers were traditionally renowned both for their
audacity and bold defiance whenever and wherever they came
face to face with the Muslim enemy, as well as for their brave
expertise in naval and military affairs. The Knights' defence
of the Maltese islands would conceivably, and indeed conveniently,
extend to cover the entire central Mediterranean region
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that would include the coasts of Sicily, Sardinia, and Southern
Italy _ ever so exposed (as the smaller islands were) to piratical
incursions. All this is attributed, without the slightest
trait of evidence, to l'Isle Adam's brief sojourn at Messina,
other, of course, than Giacomo Bosio, who was not a contemporary
observer; nor was he a member of l'Isle Adam's inner travelling
circle. It is, admittedly, an argument which sounds fairly
valid and plausible, but which is unfortunately unacceptable
to empirical historians. The whole question of the Maltese
islands, I think, should be approached within the wider central
Mediterranean and North African policy adopted by Spain shortly
after the expulsion of the Moors from Granada in 1492. By
the end of the fifteen century and the beginning of the next,
the coasts of Algeria and Tunisia were rapidly developing
into rallying grounds of Muslim corsairs, seeking vengeance
for their Christian persecution by attacking Christian ships
and coasts. The shores of the Papal States, like the whole
western Mediterranean, were daily haunts of Moors and Turks,
and indeed French pirates too. It was in response to these
pirate raids, that Spain, under the forceful impulse of Cardinal
Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, the militant Archbishop
of Toledo, ventured on extending her reconquista in
Africa, on occupying a number of strategic port towns along
the Moroccan and Algerian coasts, east of the Peñón
de Vélez which the Spaniards seized in 1508. In 1497
Spain had captured Melilla; in 1505 Mers-el-Kebir; in 1509
Oran; then Bougie; a year later they took Algiers and Tripoli.
`The form of presidio,' we are told, `that the Spaniards
set up was a garrison isolated from the hostile hinterland
in which it was set, and demanding a firm link with Spain
by sea.9
It was this series of Spanish
conquests, with which violence and brutality were so intimately
associated, that ushered in the process `by which Ottoman
power was [gradually] extended to the area'. It was the time
of the famous two
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