For all its fame, the Great Siege of Malta made no difference to the course of history

Strategically located in the narrows of the Mediterranean between Sicily and Tripoli, with a fine natural harbour, Malta has attracted the attention of successive conquerors for two millennia: Phoenician, Carthaginian, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Norman, Aragonese, French and finally British.

In 1565, the island was occupied by a power that was already beginning to look anachronistic: the Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem. The Hospitallers were an aristocratic order of monk-knights, founded at the end of the 11th century to shelter Christian pilgrims and defend the Holy Land during the brief period when it was part of the crusader kingdoms of the Levant. Since then, they had progressively retreated in the face of the advancing Muslim powers of the Middle East – first to Acre; then, when Acre fell, to Rhodes; and finally, when that too succumbed, to Malta.

When the knights took possession of the island in 1530 it was indefensible. They fortified the Grand Harbour on both sides, built the fortress of St Angelo on the promontory overlooking it and transformed the old Aragonese fort of St Elmo on the headland opposite into a powerful modern stronghold. A garrison was maintained of some 530 knights and sergeants in these places – an international force comprising Italians, Spaniards, Frenchmen and a solitary Englishman. A small fleet of four or five large manned war galleys based in the harbour preyed on Muslim shipping.

The mid-16th century was the zenith of the Ottoman empire, by far the most powerful of the Muslim states of the Middle and Near East. During the long reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, Ottoman armies advanced across eastern Europe, overrunning Hungary in 1526 and laying siege to Vienna three years later.