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


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


[10] Edward Armstrong, The Emperor Charles V: 2 vols.: i (London 1902), 269..
[11] See J.H. Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469-1716 (Pelican Bks 1970).
[12]
Ibid., 270.
[13]
Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. Trans. S. Reynolds. 2 vols. London 1972-73.
[14] Ibid., 849, 850.

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