During this time, the Turkish commander was pressing the siege with vigor. Day and night, the batteries thundered on the ramparts of the devoted fortress. The ditch was strewed with fragments torn from the walls by the iron tempest; and a yawning chasm, which had been gradually opening on the south-western side of the castle, showed that a practicable breach was at length effected. The uncommon vivacity with which the guns played through the whole of the fifteenth of June, and the false alarms with which the garrison was harassed on the following night, led to the belief that a general assault was immediately intended. The supposition was correct. On the sixteenth, at dawn, the whole force of the besiegers was under arms. The appointed signal was given by the discharge of a cannon; when a numerous body of janizaries, formed into column, moved swiftly forward to storm the great breach of the castle.
Meanwhile the Ottoman fleet, having left its anchorage on the eastern side of the island, had moved round, and now lay off the mouth of the Great Port, where its heavy guns were soon brought to bear on the seaward side of St. Elmo. The battery on Point Dragut opened on the western flank of the fortress; and four thousand musketeers in the trenches swept the breach with showers of bullets, and picked off those of the garrison who showed their heads above the parapet.
The guns of the besieged, during this time, were not idle. They boldly answered the cannonade of the vessels; and on the land side the play of artillery and musketry was incessant. The besieged now concentrated their[{424}] aim on the formidable body of janizaries, who, as already noticed, were hurrying forward to the assault. Their leading files were mowed down, and their flank cruelly torn, by the cannon of St. Angelo, at less than half a mile's distance. But though staggered by this double fire on front and flank, the janizaries were not stayed in their career, nor even thrown into disarray. Heedless of those who fell, the dark column came steadily on, like a thundercloud; while the groans of the dying were drowned in the loud battle-cries with which their comrades rushed to the assault. The fosse, choked up with the ruins of the ramparts, afforded a bridge to the assailants, who had no need of the fascines with which their pioneers were prepared to fill up the chasm. The approach of the breach, however, was somewhat steep; and the breach itself was defended by a body of knights and soldiers, who poured volleys of musketry thick as hail on the assailants. Still they pushed forward through the storm, and, after a fierce struggle, the front rank found itself at the summit, face to face with its enemies. But the strength of the Turks was nearly exhausted by their efforts. They were hewn down by the Christians, who came fresh into action. Yet others succeeded those who fell; till, thus out-numbered, the knights began to lose ground, and the forces were more equally matched. Then came the struggle of man against man, where each party was spurred on by the fury of religious hate, and Christian and Moslem looked to paradise as the reward of him who fell in battle against the infidel. No mercy was asked; none was shown; and long and hard was the conflict between the flower of the Moslem soldiery and the best knights of Christendom. In the heat of the fight an audacious Turk planted his standard on the rampart. But it was speedily wenched away by the Chevalier de Medran, who cut down the Mussulman, and at the same moment received a mortal wound from an arquebuse.[1316] As the contest lasted far into the day, the heat became intense, and added sorely to the distress of the combatants. Still neither party slackened their efforts. Though several times repulsed, the Turks returned to the assault with the same spirit as before; and when sabre and scymitar were broken, the combatants closed with their daggers, and rolled down the declivity of the breach, struggling in mortal conflict with each other.
HEROIC DEFENCE OF ST. ELMO.
While the work of death was going on in this quarter, a vigorous attempt was made in another to carry the fortress by escalade. A body of Turks, penetrating into the fosse, raised their ladders against the walls, and, pushed forward by their comrades in the rear, endeavored to force an ascent, under a plunging fire of musketry from the garrison. Fragments of rook, logs of wood, ponderous iron shot, were rolled over the parapet, mingled with combustibles and hand-grenades, which, exploding as they descended, shattered the ladders, and hurled the mangled bodies of the assailants on the rocky bottom of the ditch. In this contest one invention proved of singular use to the besieged. It was furnished them by La Valette, and consisted of an iron hoop, wound round with cloth steeped in nitre and bituminous substances, which, when ignited, burned with inextinguishable fury. These hoops, thrown on the assailants, inclosed them in their fiery circles. Sometimes two were thus imprisoned in the same hoop; and, as the flowing dress of the Turks favored the conflagration, they were speedily wrapped in a blaze which scorched them severely, if it did not burn them to death.[1317] This invention,[{425}] so simple,—and rude, as in our day it might be thought,—was so disastrous in its effects, that it was held in more dread by the Turks than any other of the fireworks employed by the besieged.
A similar attempt to scale the walls was made on the other side of the castle, but was defeated by a well-directed fire from the guns of St. Angelo across the harbor,—which threw their shot with such precision as to destroy most of the storming party, and compel the rest to abandon their design.[1318] Indeed, during the whole of the assault, the artillery of St. Angelo, St. Michael, and Il Borgo kept up so irritating a fire on the exposed flank and rear of the enemy as greatly embarrassed his movements, and did good service to the besieged.
Thus the battle raged along the water and on the land. The whole circuit of the Great Port was studded with fire. A din of hideous noises rose in the air; the roar of cannon, the rattle of musketry, the hissing of fiery missiles, the crash of falling masonry, the shrieks of the dying, and, high above all, the fierce cries of those who struggled for mastery! To add to the tumult, in the heat of the fight, a spark falling into the magazine of combustibles in the fortress, it blew up with a tremendous explosion, drowning every other noise, and for a moment stilling the combat. A cloud of smoke and vapor, rising into the air, settled heavily, like a dark canopy, above St. Elmo. It seemed as if a volcano had suddenly burst from the peaceful waters of the Mediterranean, belching out volumes of fire and smoke, and shaking the island to its centre!
The fight had lasted for some hours; and still the little band of Christian warriors made good their stand against the overwhelming odds of numbers. The sun had now risen high in the heavens, and as its rays beat fiercely on the heads of the assailants, their impetuosity began to slacken. At length, faint with heat and excessive toil, and many staggering under wounds, it was with difficulty that the janizaries could be brought back to the attack; and Mustapha saw with chagrin that St. Elmo was not to be won that day. Soon after noon, he gave the signal to retreat; and the Moslem host, drawing off under a galling fire from the garrison, fell back in sullen silence into their trenches, as the tiger, baffled in his expected prey, takes refuge from the spear of the hunter in his jungle.[1319]
As the Turks withdrew, the garrison of St. Elmo raised a shout of victory that reached across the waters, and was cheerily answered from both St. Angelo and the town, whose inhabitants had watched with intense interest the current of the fight, on the result of which their own fate so much depended.
The number of Moslems who perished in the assault can only be conjectured. But it must have been very large. That of the garrison is stated as high as three hundred men. Of these, seventeen were knights of the order. But the common soldier, it was observed, did his duty as manfully throughout the day as the best knight by whose side he fought.[1320] Few, if any, of the[{426}] survivors escaped without wounds. Suck as were badly injured were transferred at once to the town, and an equal number of able-bodied troops sent to replace them, together with supplies of ammunition, and materials for repairing, as far as possible, the damage to the works. Among those who suffered most from their wounds was the bailiff of Negropont. He obstinately refused to be removed to the town; and when urged by La Valette to allow a substitute to be sent to relieve him, the veteran answered, that he was ready to yield up his command to any one who should be appointed in his place; but he trusted he should be allowed still to remain in St. Elmo, and shed the last drop of his blood in defence of the Faith.[1321]