Shields High: The Siege Of Malta Part One

that changed the course of history. People understand and agree that whatever you think of them, whatever side they were on at the time, these were men who were excellent at their craft of warfare and who made an enormous impact on history. Who was the most fearsome warrior of his age all time? Again, I'm sure some of you

have answers that immediately come to mind. Leonidas, king of Sparta, and famous because of the movie three hundred, perhaps for many, but known all throughout the ages, vasili Zaitsev, the Soviet sniper US Marines, Carlos Hathcock during Vietnam, or if you want to go back a little bit in history verse Jeerics, the Gallic chieftain who fought fiercely but unsuccessfully against Julius Caesar. Also on the list, maybe even Hernan Cortez and his

campaign against the Aztecs. Fearsome warriors, people that you think of as not only leaders of men in battle, but also excelling in the craft the tactical fighting aspect. People that were on the front line lines, that were combatants. They weren't just in the back with the gear in the rear. And let's add one more category to this impact.

This would be those great men of the military in the past whose actions directly led to history changing and era defining moments, battles that change the tide of history. The Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo in eighteen fifteen, for example, Scipio Africanus of Ancient Rome defeating Hannibal Barka to end the Second Punic War. So we're talking about three things here, great military leaders, skilled warriors, and men who changed history. So the greatest generals, the

most fearsome warriors. What if I told you that there's someone that I would argue should be on the list, maybe not at the top of the list, but should be on the list. Ape actually if you combine a great commander with a great warrior who absolutely changed the course of history, Genghis Khan would fall into that category, and he changed the world, no question about it, and conquered a larger empire than by landmasks anyone else in human history. But what about a fellow that you've probably

never even heard of named Romega? No, you're probably thinking, what the heck is Buck talking about? Who is Roma Ga? And why does it sound like he's ordering a fancy bottle of wine out on a date. I'm going to explain to you who this incredible warrior was and why his role in history should be something that a lot more people know about. But first, from our sponsor, I want to tell you that you know, free Wi Fi

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Knights of Saint John or the Knights Hospitaller. And if you look at his life after the fall of Constantinople leading up to the Great Siege, the Great Battle of Malta, of which he was one of the primary participants at the command level as well as on the front lines as a soldier, and then at the Great Battle of Lepanto that turned back the Ottoman advance in fifteen seventy one, after uninterrupted conquest stretching back for decades, you realize that

this guy Romaga, we should know more about him. And when you look at his life story, when you look at what was going on around him and the role, the direct role that he played in it, he changed the course of the most profound civilization molding conquest of over a thousand years, the Islamic conquest of the Near East, North Africa and Europe. Were it not for Romaga, his nights and the brave but mercurial Christian forces alongside him

at Malta and then at Lepanto. The Islamic conquest would have stretched deep into the heart of Europe, changing the world we know and you need to know his tale. But first I have to give you some of the backstory. Here we left you in the Last Shield High fourteen fifty three, the fall of Constantinople, the death of the Emperor of Constantinople. Rarely do you see a major city like this, a great city that stood for a thousand years lost and also the leader killed in battle as

an active combatant. That's what happened. This was a calamity for Christendom. Nobody ever really thought that Theodosian walls could be taken down, Nobody ever really thought that they could storm this the single most strategically located city of the ancient world. There's a reason why this was at one point a city estimated to have up to a million inhabitants at a time when other major European cities would

have had in the tens of thousands. Before it was even thought of as Europe, Constantinople was the great gateway to the East, and it was also the single most important symbol of Eastern Orthodox Christianity in the world at that time. They thought of themselves as Romans, they thought of themselves and so this was the greatest city really in Western civilization at the time, and it fell to the Ottoman Turks. This is terrifying for Europe at the time.

And then a string of conquests after it that showed this was the great bulwark of Christianity. A city of Constantinople was holding back the Ottoman horde actually a word that comes from the Ottoman massive armies of the time. And so once it fell, not only was there an imminent land threat to Christianity, but there was the very real prospect that the Mediterranean Sea was going to turn

into an Ottoman lake. With that, not only would there have been the unsurpassed wealth accrued, I mean the Ottoman Empire knew that trade at this time was only really possible and profitable by sea route. You couldn't move bulk spices and silks and all these incredibly valuable goods from the East coming as far away as India and China

the famous Silk route. People think of the Silk Road the only way to distribute those goods to the west was by ship through the Mediterranean basin and some of the greatest arable land at the time, in places like the Nile Delta of Egypt. The distribution of those goods, which were necessary for keeping many city states around the Mediterranean alive and fed, was only possible by ship. If you wanted to be a great and wealthy nation at the time, you had to have access to the sea.

And the Ottomans, with the seizure of Constantinople and fourth fifty three, put themselves in a place where, under the banner of Islam, they could spread not only across all of Christendom deep into Europe, but seize the entirety of the Mediterranean Sea. And that was the plan. Now to some this might sound a little bit exaggerated. You don't learn this in school. They're not going to teach you

about this. In fact, all you really learn about this period from the islam Christianity perspective and these wars and conflicts is there were these really terrible things called the Crusades, and there was the spread of this new religion that just popped up and no big deal. Some stuff happened. The Reformation in Europe, and then now let's just jump to the New World. That's generally what you get taught in school about this. Right, in fourteen hundred and ninety two,

Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue. Well, you know what was also happening in fourteen hundred and ninety two. The Ottomans were planning the conquest of all of Europe. And in fact it was Columbus's patrons, the King and Queen of Spain, who were the only real kingdom that could try to match up sword for sword against the Ottoman threat. But all you have to do to understand the scale of the threat to Christendom, to its eradication, was to look

at the string of conquests that came in succession. After mac Met the Second, the Ottoman Sultan, was victorious at Constantinople in fourteen fifty three, he immediately pushed deeper into Europe. By fourteen fifty nine, what is now Serbia was conquered by the Ottomans. In fourteen sixty three, they took Bosnia. In fourteen seventy eight, Albania was taken. Now it's worth noting that during this period of rapid westward Ottoman expansion The only European power that was doing anything to really

slow the advance of the Ottoman were the Venetians. The Statau Damar. They call it the state of the Sea, for that's exactly what Venice in the mid to late fifteenth century was. Usually great cities are only situated on fantastic geographic locations with yes access to the water, but the great cities of antiquity also needed nearby arable land and fresh water to drink. Not so for the Venetians. This is a place that I'm sure you think of now is perhaps a romantic getaway in it is lovely,

the canals, the history. But what you might not gather from buying some Venetian glass as a tourist there today and the somewhat pungent smells you may come across there with the open canals in the summer, is that Venice was one of the wealthiest cities in the world, and in the fifteenth century it was operating a true maritime empire, setting up way stations, naval bases, trading ports all along

the Eastern Mediterranean in places like Corfu and Negroponte. And it was a republic led by a doge and a Senate, where the rule of law was generally considered fair but severe. All deals were to be kept, and profit was the most important purpose of day to day life. The Venetians were traders. They merely wanted to expand insofar as it helped the bottom line. They wanted to make money, and because they made all their money moving goods on the sea,

they were expert sailors. As a result of their commercial interests, their reach stretched as far as the shores of the Black Sea, and the Venetians, much to the chagrin of their European Christian counterparts, had no problem when all trading with the Muslims. Whoever could get the best goods at the best price in the best place, or whichever sultan or vizier controlled the trade route on pain of death for anyone violating it didn't matter to the Venetians. They

just wanted trading partners. They sought wealth, not war. But as we've seen all throughout history, you can't pursue trading interests without having men with clubs, swords, and later on guns to stop people from plundering them, notably in the Mediterranean Pirates the Mediterranean Sea. Despite what people may think, because of all the movies about the high age of piracy in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean Sea is the

great cradle of piracy as well as civilization. There were entire cultures built upon piracy, entire cities constructed and adorned with the plunder and booty taken from other cultures, from other places all around on the Mediterranean. In fact, the very term piracy comes from the ancient Greek word for to attempt, as into attempt to steal. One of the great accomplishments of Alexander the Great back in the fourth

century BC, was curbing piracy around ancient Greece. In fact, the ancient seafaring people, the Phoenicians, are best known to us today for the Phoenician alphabet, which we use and was the precursor to ancient Greek written language, But they

were best known at the time as fearsome pirates. And I'm sure some of you remember back in history class you may have heard briefly about how in seventy five BC, Silesian pirates in the aegeanc grabbed a guy named Julius Caesar, and this didn't turn out so well for those Silesian pirates. Caesar wasn't afraid of them at all. In fact, he thought their initial ransom demand was too low. He said, I'm worth more, and he told them that he was good for the money. He in fact offered to help

arrange for the ransom himself. Julius Caesar settled in with these pirates and befriended them, but from time to time he would make a joke about how one day he was going to have them all crucified. They would laugh uneasily at this. After a little over a month in captivity, Caesar was set free after the ransom was in fact delivered, and then Caesar went back to Melitis and raised a

naval force. He wasn't actually even a military official at the time, went out, found the pirates, camped on an island, brought them back in chains, and then did in fact have them all crucified. Julius Caesar was not messing around. So the Mediterranean in a sense is the greatest largest pirate cove in all of human history. And you can't

understand trade without understanding piracy and vice versa. This also led the Venetians, bringing us back up now into the fifteenth century, to become not only able sailors, but also to be fearsome warriors on the sea. They would often rely on mercenaries for their ground forces, or the Italians would bring on someone called the condottiere, essentially a mercenary war lord, a paid military expert who would run their

affairs for a given campaign. But it was only the Venetians after Constantinople, who were in regular contact with the Ottomans on the sea and had any hope, any prayer of pushing back on the Ottoman navy. Unfortunately, the tiny Venetian state, with a relatively small population, a minuscule land force, and just built atop I mean the actual state of Venice was in a lagoon on a series of shoals. The Venetians didn't do well in their first battles with

the Ottomans. From fourteen sixty three to fourteen seventy nine, they lost negropont Day on the east coast of Greece, Lemnos, Albaniavanette, they lost a number of important way stations for trade, and in fact, with some periods of common between the Ottoman Venetian wars would extend all the way up into the early seventeen hundreds. But let's just turn our attention

for a moment too. How big a threat in the fourteen seventies, eighties and into the beginning of the sixteenth century, the early fifteen hundreds, how big a threat was the Ottoman Empire, which was clearly the largest, wealthiest and to those not a part of it, most menacing state in the world. How big a threat were the Ottomans really to Christian Europe in this period. As I've said, in our own schoolrooms and in our textbooks, there's really very

little focus put on this. Our attention is immediately shifted westward to Columbus, the discovery of the New World and the age of exploration. Maybe learned a little bit about King Henry the Eighth in the early sixteenth century, and then in fifteen seventeen Martin Luther the Reformation. He analysis ninety five ccs towards a door in Wittenberg, Germany, And that's pretty much the history you learned then. For whatever reason, and there are a number that I can come up

with off the top of my head. What you don't learn about in school is the enormous expansion of the Muslim Ottoman territory through conquest that occurs from fourteen fifty three. Pretty much unbroken until fifteen sixty five the Siege of Malta. You're talking about nearly a century of nothing but conquest for the Crescent Moon of Islam and losses for all

of Christendom at that time. And it should be noted that this was a period of highly brutal warfare where captives were routinely slaughtered, even after negotiations for cities with the promise of safe conduct from the Sultan himself. Sometimes he would change his mind to side that everyone's going to get their heads chopped off, or everybody would be impaled a real punishment, or an individual was hoisted atop a spear and then slowly dies, which the Ottomans specialized in.

And later on you would come to know a fellow named Vlad the Impaler, the basis for the Dracula legend, who took this Ottoman practice and used it back against them. But a quick look at the scorecard in the late fifteenth century shows you that Europe was in deep trouble. The Ottomans were seizing Eastern European territories seemingly at will with each campaigning season, and there was no power on

land in Christendom. That's scene that would ever be able to stand up and beat the Ottomans in open battle on land. The situation of the Christian States felt increasingly hopeless at sea. Ever since the defeat of Concepts at Opal in fourteen fifty three, the Ottoman navy had become the pre eminent power in the region as well. This was even more troubling because that meant that even Italy

itself was open to invasion. The seat of Christendom at the time in Rome, home of the Pope, could in fact be invaded by these Ottoman forces, And in fact, they came much closer to this than pretty much everybody these day realizes. In fourteen eighty a d Ahmet Pasha took the city of a Toronto on the southeast tip of Italy. This was explicitly done to set up a beachhead for a full on invasion and takeover of Italy. They were going to take Rome, They're going to take

the Pope prisoner, conquer the heart of Christendom itself. Yeah, something I don't think anybody really learns these days, and I think we probably should. The only reason this project was abandoned. They successfully took a Toronto on the Italian coast, but the Ottoman forces with drew from this forward operating base because the Sultan met Met the second died. Europe got lucky here, but it didn't last long. In fifteen twelve, Salem the Grim takes over as Sultan, and then the

Ottomans continue the conquest. Fifteen seventeen they take Egypt, and then some very interesting things start happening on the north coast of Africa, which we know best as the Barbary Coast, right to the shores of Tripoli. My friends, we know about the Barbary War the United States fought in around

eighteen hundred. Well, it was three hundred years before that that two brothers became known to history as Brothers Barbarossa Redbeard, would, after humble origins as the sons of a potter in the Aegean Islands, make their way into the service of pirates and get involved in a series of coups and conquests in the north of Africa that would end with the younger of the two brothers, Oric was the elder.

He ended up getting killed, but hyrod In, the younger, in charge of Algiers, but he realized that his grip on power there was tenuous. So what do you do when you're a pirate who has seized a kingdom you can't control, but you're in a very strategic position in the Mediterranean, and you want to make sure that the biggest, baddest,

toughest guys are going to be on your side. You offer up this new kingdom, or you offer up the title of Sultan of Algiers to the Ottoman Sultan Salim the first Salim the Grim and asked for his protection. And that's exactly what hered and Barbarossa did. Later on this Barbarosa would become the chief admiral of the entire Ottoman fleet and a scourge to all of Christendom. In fact, Barbarossa became a tale that parents would tell their children

along the Mediterranean in Christian lands to terrify them. He was a boogeyman. And the reason for this is that there was a system of slavery throughout the Mediterranean at this time that was incredibly widespread, and Barbarossa would constantly go on slaving missions along the coasts of Spain and

Italy and the islands around them. Now, this is a very important dynamic to understanding what's going on here and leads up to these epic battles like the Siege of Malta and the Battle of Lepanto in fifteen sixty five and fifteen seventy one, respectively. We're certainly going to talk about those battles, but just for a moment here, I got to talk to you about something else, and it's our sponsor, Bambi, Because when running a business, HR issues

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audit today. Just go to bamby b A M b ee bamby dot com slash effortless right now to schedule your free HR audit. That's Bambi dot com slash effortless spelled b A M b ee bamby dot com slash effortless. Now back to Shields High fourteen ninety two. We think of it as the Year of Columbus, but it was all so the year of the expulsion of the Moors

from Spain. From the Iberian Peninsula, many thousands of Muslim inhabitants were told that they had to leave and go across the Strait of Gibraltar and resettle in the Muslim lands of what is today's North Africa, and this led to a tremendous bitterness that would play out in battles

for decades to come. The expelled Muslim inhabitants became known to the Spaniards as Mauricecos, and they brought with them to North Africa a sense of betrayal and hatred of the Spanish, of the Christians, and also, even more importantly, detailed knowledge of the fortresses, harbors, fortifications, customs and ways

of their hated enemy, the Christians. Many of these Mauricecos would join in the service of pirate kings like Barbarasa, who, in order to extend their wealth and control, would raid coastal towns and take hundreds, even as many as a thousand at a time of Christian captives intended for the harems and for the rowing benches of the galleys. You have to remember that during this period, piracy wasn't just

about grabbing stuff, it was also about grabbing people. Christian and Muslim alike would grab the people from the opposite religion wherever they could on the open seas and then force them into slavery. For the women, the harem was often the place that they were sent in the Muslim lands, but for the able bodied men it was either the minds, general servitude in a domestic context, or most of all, at this period, galley slaves. Now why did they need

galley slaves? You have to remember that they didn't have particularly advance a sailing ships at this time. What they had were really just advances over the ancient technology of the Greek Trireme galleys and their variations were mostly or propelled.

They did have sails, but the sailing rigging wasn't particularly adept at dealing with bad or weak winds, and so the fastest and most maneuverable way to get around was oar power, and you needed a lot of human beings chained down below deck two benches moving these massive oars in unison. That is how warfare and trade galleys got around at the time, and as you can imagine, this

was an absolutely miserable and often short lived existence. The galleys slaves were chained to their oars where they were They ate and slept at their benches. If they became too fatigue, they would be whipped. If they did not continue a row. Once they had been whipped, they would simply be thrown overboard to drown. A large galley in the fifteenth and sixteenth century could require a few hundred

rowers oarsmen at one time. This also meant there was a constant menace on board if you had a Muslim galley with entirely Christian rowers chained below deck. During that fateful moment of battle of one or two of them could get unshackled and get to their co religionists, they would incite a slave mutiny and happily mutilate and kill the people who had been whipping them and chaining them for weeks, perhaps months beforehand, and be reunited with their

co religionists, who would then free them. Of course, on the other side of this equation, you can imagine that whether it was Ottomans with a large number of immiserrated Christian captives below death, or Christian sea captains who had captured Muslims that they were putting to inhumane use, when the tide of battle turned and the ship began to sink, they didn't care what happened to the men chained to

those oars below deck. They drowned on mass. Indeed, galley warfare in the fifteenth and sixteenth century was a brutal, nasty, and short existence for thousands and thousands of men impressed into the service of the religious group that they hated, and thus the stakes for capture on the high seas were unthinkably high, whether you were traveling on a merchant vessel or were a sailor or a crossbowman or arqueboozier, the name for what was essentially a very early version

of the rifleman. This was a soldier who used something called an arquebus, which was a precursor to the musk. It's even less advanced than a musket. Well, there was a firearm and widespread usage in the fifteen hundreds that with the help of a stand while aiming, it could be quite effective and quite deadly at limited range. The crossbow, of course, a medieval technology that was still in widespread usage because well, it was faster to fire and a

whole lot more reliable than the arquebus. Clearly, gunpowder was in military usage at the time, and there were cannons on board these military vessels, but the cannons were primitive inaccurate, firing solid shot, and often as dangerous to the crew firing it as to the intended target. But these were the modern implements added to naval warfare, which, once you took away gunpowder and the improvements in armor and steel, technology was largely the same basic premise as it had

been over a thousand years prior. As the captain of a galley ship engaged in a naval confrontation, you'd want to out maneuver your opponent fire missiles from distance to soften them up, to weaken the hall if you could then ram the ship for boarding, at which point the struggle turned to fierce hand to hand combat. Swords, axes, knives, halbird, scimitars, pikes, all the sharp edged and blunt weapons you can think of used in hand to hand combat came into play

during these galley battles. So this was the Mediterranean world and the backdrop for the rise of Barbarossa's pirate kingdom on the north coast of Africa. And this also brought

the Ottoman Sea Battle to all of Europe's doorstep. With the Ottoman pirate Barbarossa on the open seas, no merchant vessel could be safe, no villager could sleep soundly at night along the coast of Italy, France or Spain, knowing that at any moment Barbarosa's men could show up and kidnap him in his whole family, sell them into slavery,

and disappear back out onto the sea. Before the Christian forces even received word of the raid, the noose was tightening around Europe and all of the leaders, all the princes and monarchs, the Pope him self, knew it, and then things scott worse. Suleiman the Magnificent ascended to the Ottoman seat of power in the year fifteen twenty, and Suleiman, even more so than Salim the Grim, decided that it was time to crush all nearby opposition to Ottoman power.

In fifteen twenty one, during a campaign, Suleiman took the fortress city of Belgrade, and then in fifteen twenty two he himself commanded a momentous siege that would be a precursor, perhaps to what we would see in fifteen sixty five in Malta, the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent took the

fortress at Rhodes. Rhodes was this island off the coast of what we think of as Asia Minor in antiquity today's modern Turkey, and Rhodes had become the home of a famous order of warrior monks known as the Knights Hospitaller or the Knights of Saint John. Of course, our friend Romaga is one of them, and we'll get to

Romagon just a moment. But what happened? How is it that it took until fifteen twenty two for Suleiman the Magnificent, at the absolute height of Ottoman power, military prowess, and expansionism, that all of a sudden he has to turn his eye to an order of monastic knights that were a

true relic of the Crusades. At this point, the Knights of Saint John had been around for centuries, stretching back the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the period in which the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller were the two most powerful fighting orders of the Christian warrior monks during the Crusades.

Originally formed to provide yes protection and medical hospital services for those pilgrims who were traveling to Jerusalem and the Holy Land, the Knights Hospitaller were among the final Christians to leave during the reconquest of the Holy Land from the Crusaders, which culminated in the Siege and Fall of Acre in twelve ninety one. So the Knights Hospitaller, the

Knights of Saint John, same thing. They're not quite as famous as the Knights Templar because the Knights Templar, I think we're in that Dan Brown book or something, and people really get excited about the Knights Templar. The Knights Hospitaller left after the Siege of Acre when the Muslim forces took that back. So now what we think of today as Israel, Lebanon, Syria. There were a number of

crusaders city states there. Aker was the last one to fall, and so the Knights Hospitaller had to retreat and they took to the island of Rhoads now Rhodes is just off the coast of what is modern day Turkey, and the Knights of Saint John were able to conduct piracy and harassment of the Ottoman shipping, but the Ottoman navy was really nothing impressive. It took them quite some time. So the Knights of Saint John were able to stay in roads because the Ottomans were a land based power.

But then with the fall of Constantinople in fourteen fifty three, the Ottomans had built a major navy and realize that naval power was essential to the ultimate conquest of Christendom. And so Suleiman says, these Knights of Saint John, this nest of vipers, as the Ottomans thought of it, had

to go. Brought a massive force estimated by historians that around eighty to one thousand to a long siege of the Knights of Saint John in Rhodes, and they were successful, but Suleiman allowed the Knights because they finally capitulated, allowed them to leave the island. He was particularly gracious on that occasion, something that would come back to haunt the

Ottomans decades later. Once the Great Crusading Order of the Knights of Saint John had been kicked out of their home in Roads, they were given a number of forward operating bases by Charles the Fifth, the Holy Roman Emperor. Charles gave them the islands of Malta and nearby Gozo, another island that will factor into our tale here, as well as the city of Tripoli in what is today's Libya. This was not done out of the kindness of his heart.

There was nobody as committed, fierce and capable of fighting on land and sea at the time in the name of Chrism as the Knights of Saint John. The Ottomans and their barbary vassal states in North Africa were breathing down the neck of all the Christian coastal countries, and so Charles the Fifth right in about fifteen thirty, decided to put the Knights of Saint John directly on the front lines in harm's way, hoping that they would hold the Ottomans at bay. He couldn't realize how right he was.

And it is into this cauldron of piracy, great power, struggles, fanatical religious warfare on land and sea, that our story turns to the fearsome commander of Christian forces and eventually the de facto leader of the Knights of Saint John, the Grand Master of the Order, although he was a victim himself of some palace intrigue. We'll have to get to that later. But in fifteen twenty eight, a fellow by the name of Matheron Do de Lescu, who would

become called Roga, was born. Now I might sometimes say romagas because I kind of want to americanize it the way that we took Notre Dame and made it Notre Dame. But in the friendship would be Romaga. And Romaga was a badass, dude, let me tell you. Born to a rich noble family in Gascony, in a southern France. At the age of eighteen, he signed up for became sworn to the Knights of Saint John the Holy Order, which by this point was already based off the island of Malta.

Now we don't know much about Romaga's period of life from his signing up for the Knights of Saint John, who took a vow of chastity, poverty and obedience to the Order, and of course added into that a blind hatred for what they viewed as the infidels, the Muslims and particularly the Turks. But we know that Romagaw became one of the many young apprentices on the Knights of

Saint John's galleys. He was constantly a board ship for almost a decade or so from fifteen forty six when he joined the Order until fifteen fifty five or so, constantly at war with the various Ottoman backed pirates and also engaging in no small share of his own piracy. The Knights of Saint John had rich people who were donating to it, but it also was in constant search

of its own additional funds. Galley warfare was a very difficult and expensive business, and Romagaw and his compatriots would look for fat galleons full of treasure or spices and other very valuable commodities that they could plunder in pillage, and only added to their delight that this, of course enraged the Ottoman Sultan, who viewed himself not without reason, as the single most important and powerful man on the

entire planet. But Romaga became famous and starts appearing in some of the written histories from the time because of what happened in the harbor of Malta in fifteen fifty five. The chroniclers from the period talk about a freak storm, a kind of whirlwind on the sea that overturned a number of very large vessels. This included the galley that Romaga at this point, a senior captain of the Order of the Knights of Saint John's Galleys, was sleeping in

the morning after the storm. With ships overturned, there were hundreds that had drowned, some still chained down below, others crushed as their massive ships turned over. But then there was something of a miracle, as the knights and villagers from the nearby town around Malta tried to save anybody who was still alive. They heard a tapping from the hull of an overturned ship. They cut a hole in

the wood and outsprung a monkey. It was in fact the pet of Romaga, who kept a monkey on board ship with him as a companion, because after all, what great pirate doesn't have a monkey, a parrot, some kind of exotic pet. But once they had taken the monkey to safety, then they realized that Romaga himself was still alive.

He had managed to find a pocket of air up by the hull of the ship, and though it was overturned and everyone else on board had drowned or been crushed, Romaga found this air pocket and stayed alive in the cold water overnight for many hours in pitch black darkness. While Romaga would suffer what is believed to be permanent neurological damage, his hands were known to shake. Ever after this incident, everybody after this thought, this is one tough dude,

Because it was something of a miracle. The story spread far and wide among the Order of the Knights of Saint John and beyond, but among his fellow knights and certainly the enemies who heard of him, Romaga's ordeal in that overturned ship became a symbol of who he was in the years to come, a fierce, unrelenting, tough as

Nail's pirate. It was in the years preceding the Great Siege of Malta in fifteen sixty five that Romaga solidified his reputation as the greatest sea wolf of Christendom, a crusader buccaneer driven by ideological fervor for the Cross against the Crescent, and for the substantial riches and fame that came from life on the high Sea as a pirate in the Mediterranean in the middle of the sixteenth century.

In fact, Romagau was so good at what he did that the mere mention of his name would strike terror into the hearts of Muslims. Ottoman mothers would tell their children be good, or Romagau will come for you, and

the kids were terrified. On the other hand, when Christians would hear that Romagaun his small fleet of four or five galleys and galleots a smaller, faster reconnaissance style model of the larger ord galley ship, when they would pull in to the port in order to take on provisions, peasants from all across the countryside would come down to pay their respects, bring food, and thank Romaga for protecting

them from the scourge of the Turk. It was said that nobody in the entire Mediterranean was as well acquainted with all of the coasts, the islands, every port, every creek. Mamaga was a true master of his naval area of operations. He was considered fearless, brave, even in the most intense combat.

In the written record, there's an incident where a galley belonging to a renegade from Calabria named Consin Yusif, whom Romagah considered both an infidel and a traitor to Christendom, was surprised by the fleet of Romagah pulling up alongside for battle, and, as was so often the case in galley warfare, turned into a fierce life or death competition. Twice the man under Romagas's command tried to board consine ship,

and twice they were pushed back after suffering heavy casualties. Finally, Captain Romaga lost his patience, leaped across the water from his ship to Consin's galley and shouted, so all could hear Consine, you, old bastard, where are you is? Romaga Yusef replied, here is Consin, the son of the Devil, And then a long single combat ensued between Yusef Consin

and Romaga. After enough slashing and bashing, Romaga managed to out maneuver and outthink Consin and knocked him into the galley slaves area below deck, where he was promptly ripped to pieces by the imprisoned Christians, overjoyed at the prospect of exacting revenge on their tormentor who had converted to Islam. One hundred and thirty Turks were taken captive by Romaga after he told them that if they did not surrender forthwith, he would throw them all down to the Christian Galley

slaves below to be ripped apart limb from limb. Soon thereafter, the Sea Wolf of the Knights of Saint John liberated the two hundred Christian slaves who been kept below deck by Consin. Romaga spent the early fifteen sixties plundering and pillaging the Ottomans on the high seas. He was so skillful in this task and so trustworthy that Lavalette, the Grand Master of the Knights of Saint John on Malta, entrusted Romaga with two galleys that he funded out of

his own pocket. But at this time of near ceaseless retreat for Christendom from the Islamic forces of the Ottoman Empire and the Barbary coast on the Mediterranean Sea. It was the sea captain Romaga who constantly struck back at the hated Turk. His raids on the high seas were relatively speaking, small affairs. A handful of his galleys, with seasoned, hardened sailors and infantrymen aboard, would track and ambush targets

of opportunity. Occasionally, these prizes were a great bounty. Some of the ships that Romaga seas had tremended treasure, spices and other valuable goods aboard. This was on top of the continuous need for more slaves to row the galleys. But it was Romaga's success in tracking such targets that led directly to the decision by the Sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent to launch what was supposed to be the beginning of the end of the Christian resistance to the Ottoman conquest.

It would lead right to the very siege of Malta itself. It was in the summer of fifteen sixty four June of that year, when Romaga was cruising off the coast of Greece with his squadron of fearless Christian pirates that he came upon a massive galleon a treasure ship, with a small flotilla of the Sultan's galleys to defend it. It turned out that the ship belonged to the chief Eunuch in the Sultan's court, a very powerful person within the Ottoman Empire. The gallean was taken back as a

prize to Malta, where it sat in the harbor. As a continuing insult to Suleiman himself, Romagah's summer of pillaging continued. Off the coast of the Anatolian Peninsula. He attacked and seized several Ottoman ships and took the Governor of Cairo and the one hundred and seven year old former nurse of Suleiman's daughter, Mirima prisoner. They were returning from the pilgrimage to Mecca. Mere days after this, Romaga off the coast of Alexandria, took the Governor of Alexandria on his

way to Constantinople to meet with the Sultan. These naval escapades were taken as a slap directly in the face of the then most powerful man in the world, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Suleiman the Magnificent, the nest of Christian vipers, the Knights of Saint John on this island Malta had harassed him long enough. The Ottomans could never have true naval supremacy as long as Romaga and his kind were able to roam the sea. Suleiman made the decision to launch the full scale assault that had

been building for years, perhaps decades. He would once send for all, destroy this remnant of the Crusades the Knights of Saint John on the island of Malta, and from there use it as a ford operating base for a direct assault on Sicily, on the Italian mainland, and then into the heart of Christendom itself. This campaign would come to be known as the Great Siege of Malta of fifteen sixty five, and it will be our next episode, So be sure to subscribe to the Buck Sexton Show

podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. Now the battles of the past defined the present. This is Shields Hi