De Guiral’s battery is situated on the extreme right of Fort St Angelo when one looks at the fort from the Valletta side. Today, it is an empty space enclosed by two plain walls at right angles to each other filled with flattened soil, stones and shrubs.

An arquebusier

On July 15, 1565, Mustapha Pasha, in command of the Turkish Army besieging Malta, launched a massive and well-planned attack by land and sea on the walled western side of the Senglea peninsula. In addition, Mustapha held back 10 large black boats with 1,000 elite janissaries, personal guards of the Sultan. 

These were children of Christian parents who lived within the Ottoman Empire, which, at the time, included among other countries Serbia, the Balkans and the Southern Ukraine. At the age of seven, the strongest and most intelligent of them were taken to Constantinople and trained for war. They were not allowed to marry. In battle, they were considered to be invincible. 

Mustapha, seeing that the battle on the western side of Senglea was taking longer than expected, ordered his 1,000 janissaries in their 10 large boats to join battle. They rounded the spur of Senglea to land above the Great Chain and enter the city through its soft underbelly, the side of which was not walled.

A janissary soldier

Mustapha’s plan was a brilliant one. Had the battle-hardened janissaries managed to make a landing, they would have sacked, killed, raped and looted the whole of Senglea. They would then have been able to attack the defenders at Fort St Michael from their rear, where the main battle was raging. Moreover, if successful, the janissaries would then have been able to open the way for the core of the Turkish army, made up of 40,000 troops, to swarm into Senglea. The fall of Vittoriosa across the narrow stretch of water on the opposite side of the creek would probably have happened within a matter of days. 

However, unknown to the Turks, there was a well-concealed battery almost at sea level below Fort St Angelo. The battery was under the command of the French knight Francisco (François) de Guiral, hence its name.

At this stage, de Guiral and his men were not directly involved in the fighting that was taking place on the other side of the Senglea peninsula, but when de Guiral saw the Turkish boats rounding the Senglea spur in his direction, he correctly guessed their intentions. 

He ordered his gunners to load but waited until the Turkish boats were closer and in his line of fire, that is in a position where his guns could not miss. At the opportune time, de Guiral ordered a salvo from five of his guns which reduced the Turkish boats to smithereens. A second salvo demolished what was left of the Turkish boats except for one which limped back to base with many of its troops on board wounded. The Turks lost 800 janissaries and Levantines.  The vigilant de Guiral, who must have been an excellent artillery commander, had saved the day! 

This battle is well known to the Maltese so, at this point, I must confess that the reason for recalling this episode of the Great Siege is two-fold. Primarily, I must pay due tribute to de Guiral and, secondly, to appeal to the local authorities concerned to restore the battery to its former state. 

Admittedly, it is not possible to affix commemorative plaques in memory of the many heroes who gave their lives to defeat the Turks. But we are indeed lacking in this respect. Francisco Balbi Di Correggio wrote in his day-to-day diary: “… the battery of Commander Guiral was in the judgement of all the salvation of the island. There is no doubt that if these boats had managed to land their troops, we should not have been able to hold out any longer”.

The onus is now on our generation to make amends and better acknowledge the contribution that this French knight made towards the defeat of the Turks.  The best way to do this is to restore the battery bearing de Guiral’s name. 

I have looked at maps and read the descriptions of the battery as described in Balbi’s historical narrative. Balbi was an Italian arquebusier fighting with the Spanish Corps in Senglea and an eyewitness during the siege. His descriptions are no doubt as accurate as one can expect them to be.

At the opportune time, de Guiral ordered a salvo from five of his guns which reduced the Turkish boats to smithereens

In some old paintings, the guns are shown placed in the embrasures in the low defensive wall of the battery. In others, the guns were fired through casements. In both cases, the guns are shown practically at sea level. All depictions show an echaugette (watch tower/gardjola) where the two walls of the battery meet at about right angles to each other.

Another good reason for the restoration of the battery is that it will remove this dilapidated part of the fortifications, which is now long overdue.   

An artist’s impression of how it might look if restored.

The protagonists

The Turks were led by Mustapha Pasha who came from one of the oldest and most distinguished families in Turkey. He fought against the Knights at Rhodes and took part in Hungarian and Persian campaigns

He was in the van of 180 galleys invading Malta. Another 200 small sailing and large transport ships accompanied the fleet carrying 48,000 troops including 6,000 janissaries who were elite Turkish soldiers, 100,000 iron shot and a large amount of barrels of gun powder, guns and siege equipment.

The knights and the Maltese were led by the 70-year-old Grand Master of the Order of St John – Jean Parisot de Valette. He came from an ancient Provençal family. He was battle hardened. When younger, he was taken prisoner when his galley, the San Giovanni, was captured by the Turks and served for a year as a galley slave. A description of this indomitable warrior reads: “He was a very handsome man, tall, calm and unemotional”.

He was, above all, a man of steel, never considering terms of surrender. Forces at his disposal at the beginning of the siege were only about 500 knights and 6,000 soldiers, mainly Maltese. Records of the losses are conflicting but all agree that the large majority of the dead were Maltese.