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Barbarossa brothers, a strife marked by their equally devastating
activities. It was a time when, as a result, possessions along
the Barbary Coast were lost and won `with sometimes bewildering
rapidity.' It was in fact the year before the Order settled
on Malta that the presidio in the harbour of Algiers
was forced to surrender. Collectively, these presidios
were in practice synonymous to a broken chain of military
garrisons, planted haphazardly on the North African shore.
They could have hardly been expected to offer any effective
resistance to the westward advance of the Ottomans. `It is
often forgotten,' Edward Armstrong observed in 1902,10
`that the African coast round Tunis lies north of Southern
Sicily, and the distance between the two is so slight that
the Western Mediterranean at least might have been closed,
while aid could have been given to the outposts of Christianity
further east,' like the Knights of St John at Rhodes, for
example, or the Venetian settlements in the Morea and the
Archipelago, in Crete and Cyprus.'
Ferdinand the Catholic (of Aragon) had failed
to appreciate the need for these isolated fortified garrisons
to be formed into one `connected Spanish province, paying
its own way, and drawing its own supplies from the interior.'
There was no intercommunication between them, no co-ordination,
no territory in the hinterland. `Unsupported advanced posts'
as these were, they were rendered incapable of assuming any
offensive policy. After the death of Isabella in 1504, this
was a reflection of Ferdinand's attitude towards North Africa,
determined (so to speak) by metal more attractive. Dynastic
problems, the discovery of the New World, the contest that
was developing in Italy among the European States, and not
least his spirit of tolerance, left him hardly any room for
adventure let alone for conquest. His was a policy of `containment'
rather than conquest, `a policy of limited occupation',11
one that would eventually be again adopted by Philip II, but
for which Spain in later years would have `to pay a
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heavy price'. The renunciation of Jiménez's crusading philosophy
in Spain's North African policy made possible the rise of
the Barbary Regencies. Indeed, it created them. In the long
interval between the reigns of these two Spanish monarchs,
Charles V endeavoured to venture on `a forward policy' towards
North Africa, a feeble continuation, perhaps, of that of Jiménez.12
Malta, `the missing link half-way between
Sicily and the Maghrib',13
fitted in neatly within this policy. It formed an important
military zone whose strategic value, explains Fernand Braudel,
`derived from its position on the central axis of the sea.
It was Italy's maritime front against the Turk.'14
There is no doubt that the Maltese `haven' which Charles was
offering the Order was meant to `serve as a deterrent to the
enterprise of the Barbary pirates and as an outpost to help
defend the Spanish realm of the Two Sicilies'.
The island's geographical proximity to `enemy'
territory, rendering possible the continuation of the holy
war; its spacious harbours; and its conveniently safe distance
from the Catholic mainland, safeguarding the Order's autonomy
and neutrality without involving it in too many international
complications _ all must have favourably counterbalanced in
l'Isle Adam's mind the island's military, political, and economic
liabilities: the poor quality of the soil, the meagre yields
of its Crown lands, its dependence for continuous food supplies
and raw materials on Habsburg Sicily, the despicable state
of the fortifications, and its repulsive exposure to Muslim
corsair attacks.
L'Isle Adam had had bitter first-hand experience
of current Ottoman military power, of its naval strengths
and strategies. Syria and Egypt were fairly recent examples.
Belgrade was another. Rhodes was still too painfully fresh.
If a similar force or an armada of some 50 to 100 galleys
were to be employed against the Maltese islands _ militarily
threadbare as they
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