muscetto harbour, and drawing some ships across the promontory at the landward end, below Floriana, launched them on the upper bay of the "grand harbour," and thus completely invested the two strongholds of the Order by sea; while from Corradino, Zabbar, Bighi, Ricasoli, and the lower St Elmo, they raked the fortifications from the land by a nearly complete circle of batteries. The traveller, viewing the scene of the conflict from the height above (the upper Barracca), and reading that the Turkish army numbered forty thousand, might well wonder that they did not, to quote Hushai the Archite (2 Samuel xvii. 13) "bring ropes to that city and draw it into the water, until there be not one small stone found there." And so, indeed, in spite of the most heroic endurance and bravery on the part of the knights, they would have done, but for the ineradicable sloth and indiscipline of an oriental force. They neglected to seize, as they could at first readily have done, Citta Vecchia, the capital of the island, a few miles inland; from whence a small garrison constantly harassed their rear by unexpected attacks, one of which at least saved the besieged by creating a diversion at the very moment when their storming-party were on the point of success, having planted their horsetail standards on the summit of the walls. One of the most graphic and interesting, although little known, narratives of the events of the great siege, was printed at Perugia in 1567, by F. John Anthony Viperan, who had served in the garrison of the capital. His chronicle gives us to understand how imperfectly, in spite of the cordon of troops and batteries, the Moslem blockaded the town. Reinforcements found their way to St Angelo through the Turkish lines; and even within a few weeks of the termination of the siege, an emissary, sent by the Viceroy of Sicily to report upon the state of affairs in Malta, traversed the enemy's intrenchments, between dawn and sunrise, with a small escort, and without a challenge from a sentinel or an interruption from a patrol. Indeed, but for the jealousies which sundered the councils of Christendom, a more frightful calamity than that which actually befell the besiegers, might have been their portion. The Viceroy of Sicily, hampered by the prudent and grudging instructions of his master, the cold, calculating Philip, only sent assistance at the eleventh hour, and then to the least extent compatible with his own credit and the security of the force detached. Again the Turkish generals by land and sea blundered, scuttled to their ships, squabbled, and disembarked their army to receive a more crushing defeat, and Malta was saved.
General Porter's account of this protracted conflict is one of the best examples yet afforded of the way in which military history ought to be written. Without technical pedantry, and equally without that loose exaggeration of word-painting which passes muster in the present age for picturesque narrative, he sets before his reader the whole detail of the scene, as from day to day increasingly desperate efforts of attack and defence were made by either side. The gigantic artillery of the besiegers, pounded with huge missiles the friable stone of which the ramparts were composed until the wall was reduced to a mere mound of crumbled dust, up which the Turkish levies were driven sword in hand by their officers and janissaries, to be hewn down in heaps by the well-armed and spirited handful
