The suffering of the innocent : wartime violence and the common people - the case of the Great Siege of Malta of 1565

Abstract

War is arguably the most extreme scenario for the exertion of violence. All warring parties suffer in one way or another but those who suffer most are usually those who least deserve it—the common folk. The paper will take as a case study one of the epic Mediterranean battles in the ongoing Christian versus Muslim conflict of the Early Modern Age. Happening in 1565, though micro in scale, the four-month engagement known as the Great Siege of Malta which was fought between the Ottoman Turkish troops and their Barbary Coast partners on the one side and the Hospitallers of the Order of St. John and their European and Maltese allies on the other side, was macro in its significance. This fierce clash left its destructive mark not only on the warring adversaries but the more so on the Maltese inhabitants who found themselves immersed in a war which was not strictly theirs but of which they were forced to endure the hardships, participate in the ongoing combat, and face the daily extreme psychological pressure and physical cruelty which are generally meted out to the defenceless and the most vulnerable in the war zone. No brutality was spared and extreme violence was the order of the day