Septuagenarian Saviour of the West Whilst taking a break from inventing the perfect vacuum cleaner Herbert Hoover once said that it was old men who start wars but young men who fight and die in them. Whilst wars would undoubtedly be much shorter, less bloody and with far more breaks for a sit down if this weren‘t the case, there are occasional and notable exceptions. One such exception was what has come to be known as the First Siege of Malta (to distinguish it from either the later German invasion of 1942 or indeed a sit in at a Taverna by England fans who had had their Ouzo confiscated prior to World Cup qualifier in 1993.) From May through to September of 1565, the tiny islands of Malta and Gozo held out against an Ottoman invasion force of 30,000 men. The islands were home to the Knightly Order of St John (a sect of the Hospitallers: a throwback to the era of Crusades) and its leader; the 71 year old Grand Master Jean Parisot de la Valette, an ancient leader (for the times) referred to by his men behind his back as Grandma Jean. The Order, whose sole function was to fight Islam in servitude to God, drew volunteers from all over Europe. These were hardy aggressive types who thought nothing of shaving in cold water with a blunt knife and doing good in the service of God. The times however, they were a-changing. Ideas such as nationalism were spreading across the Continent in place of Papal allegiance and this shift began to marginalise the Orders. For the past hundred years, the Knights had resorted to piracy both to fight the Ottoman Turks whilst making some money on the side, and this inevitably created enemies on both sides; from Muslims whose wealth they appropriated and from Christian monarchs jealous of the Knight‘s increasing prosperity and their ability to afford customised cod pieces.
Valette was an undoubtedly strong man. He joined the Order at twenty, and was captured in the 1540s by a Turkish galley. For a year the young man struggled to survive as a galley slave. By the age of seventy, he was a man hardened by a life spent fighting, a man of fanatical devotion to his cause and greatly respected by the Order. By the early 1560s, Suleiman the Magnificent, leader of one of the most powerful empires in history, had had enough. He had evicted the Knights from their previous stronghold of Rhodes 43 years earlier, but their new home had become another thorn in his side. Numerous cargo ships travelling across the Mediterranean were snatched every year and the attacks were becoming more frequent as the Knight‘s navy grew in strength. This, combined with