Empires of the Sea: the Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto and the contest for the center of the world


I read the whole book. About as exciting as action movie script, with plenty of historical details, written like some intense AAR.
This is a little before ETW's time era, from the early 1500s to the late 1500s. The book is made in three parts, a bit like a trilogy.
1 - Siege of Rhodes
2 - Siege of Malta + pirate wars
3 - Siege of Cyprus + Battle of Lepanto

Those who played RTW would know exactly where Rhodes is (with one of the Seven Wonders of the world). Malta is a little island south of Syracuse; the distance between Malta and Syracuse is about the same as from Lilybaeum to Carthage, and closer than from Crete to Sparta. In other words, very close. Cyprus, well, every RTW fan knows where that is. And Lepanto is a bay on the Greek coast, roughly around Thermon.

Siege of Rhodes, Siege of Malta and Siege of Cyprus are all land battles, and each one is like Alamo, multiplied a thousands times. It's siege warfare with arquebus and cannons, trench battles and a lot of sword and hand-to-hand battles. Different ways of resisting a massive Ottoman amphibious invasion. Some won and some lost. For spoilers I won't say which one (though you can simply find out by Wikipedia, but it's better to not know and read the book).

Battle with the pirates and battle of Lepanto were naval wars, and very exciting to read. Also, the book talks about the origin and rise of the Barbary Pirates, also the origin of the vestigial fear&awe associated with pirates. They were, in the mediterranean at least, Islamic jihadis and raided coast destroying towns and carrying captives to be sold as slaves in North Africa. Barbarossa (red-beard) was a actual person, a Turk by the name of Orcun with red hair. Orcun however was enslaved by the Knights of St-John, so the sides are not all black and white, unfortunately. The states of Europe were very weak at that time, and the Ottoman Empire (named after Osman, or Uthman, the 3rd original Caliph of the Muslims) was expanding till the gate of Vienna. It had roughly the land area of East Roman Empire at the start of BI, plus North Africa because of Barbary pirates. In the Mediterranean, the Ottomans were expanding till the coast of Italy.

It's a very well written and researched book of epic battles, both land and sea.


Excerpt that I don't remember word for word, so I paraphrase:

during the battle of Cyprus:
Venetian (from city-state of Venice) commander decides to lay an ambush for the Ottoman Turks after several days of siege. In the meantime, a Venetian fleet came rampaging through the Ottoman fleet off shore, but the Venetians didn't have enough ships to end the blockade of Cyprus. After some combat, the Venetian fleet left during the night.
Before daybreak the Venetian commander (in a besieged city on Cyprus) ordered that all the flags be taken down and no one is to stir and no smoke or any sign of life be revealed. After sunrise, the Turks saw that no one was on the city ramparts, no flags were flying and there was no sound whatsoever. They then assumed that all the Venetians were evacuated by sea during the night with the departing Venetian fleet. There was a massive rush towards the city walls.
When the Turks were in firing distance, the entire Venetian garrison stood from behind the ramparts where they were hiding, and sent volleys into the massed ranks of totally surprised Turks....And that way they beat back another attack on the besieged city.

during the battle of Malta (or, should I say, Thermopylae):
It was terrible trench warfare and tunneling (RTW vocabulary: sap point) by the Ottomans to take over the fort of St. Elmo (lol, several hundred years ago, they probably didn't expect a stuffed animal to be named after the same name). The Turks had many hundreds of sharpshooters aiming their arquebus all day ready to shoot anything poking over the ramparts. Anyone firing muskets or throwing hand-grenades (they actually made those) or trying to halt the construction of siege equipment had high probability of getting shot. The casualties were mounting and each dead Turk had another ten stepping up to take the place, but each dead defender of St. Elmo fort had no replacement. They used fire rings (I forgot the name in the book), rings that were used around wine barrels, were dipped in tar, dried, painted over with flammable substance, dipped in tar again, dried, painted over again, dipped in tar again, and so on. The result were rings thick as tires. [some pages in between I don't remember] The Ottomans mounted another assault with the elite janissaries troops leading, the defense was breached and innumerable Turks poured over the outer wall, the combat went by the sword and hand to hand. Fire rings were lit, and thrown among the assault waves. It lit the Turkish soldiers on fire, then screaming and running they lit others on fire. The fiery rings went rolling and bouncing among the Ottomans....and they somehow drove back the Ottomans. Some hundreds of janissary troops lay dead in the ditch, along with a substantial portion of the defenders.

during the battle of Lepanto (of 1571), the largest naval battle in the world at that time, and the largest casualty rate until WWI:
The Italians, Spanish and Venetians had musket soldiers on their ships. The Ottomans had soldiers with musket as well as many archers. The archer can fire 30 arrows during the reload time of a firearm. In battle [some ship from Europe] was struck by some many arrows that they seemed to grow out of the mast. [pages in between] Then moorings were thrown and soldiers from both sides swung aboard the other ships with swords and scimitars. The admiral (or some general, I think Don Juan)'s pet monkey was seen, during the rain of arrows, pulling them out one by one from the mast with its teeth.