The Siege of Malta, 1565
In Our Time: History
01/11/18
•49m
About
Comments
Featured In
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the event of which Voltaire, two hundred years later, said 'nothing was more well known'. In 1565, Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman leader, sent a great fleet west to lay siege to Malta and capture it for his empire. Victory would mean control of trade across the Mediterranean and a base for attacks on Spain, Sicily and southern Italy, even Rome. It would also mean elimination of Malta's defenders, the Knights Hospitaller, driven by the Ottomans from their base in Rhodes in 1522 and whose raids on his shipping had long been a thorn in his side. News of the Great Siege of Malta spread fear throughout Europe, though that turned to elation when, after four months of horrific fighting, the Ottomans withdrew, undermined by infighting between their leaders and the death of the highly-valued admiral, Dragut. The Knights Hospitaller had shown that Suleiman's forces could be contained, and their own order was reinvigorated.
The image above is the Death of Dragut at the Siege of Malta (1867), after a painting by Giuseppe Cali. Dragut (1485 1565) was an Ottoman Admiral and privateer, known as The Drawn Sword of Islam and as one of the finest generals of the time.
With
Helen Nicholson
Professor of Medieval History at Cardiff University
Diarmaid MacCulloch
Professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford
and
Kate Fleet
Director of the Skilliter Centre for Ottoman Studies and Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge
Producer: Simon Tillotson.
Previous Episode
Thomas Becket
December 14, 2017
•52m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the man who was Henry II's Chancellor and then Archbishop of Canterbury and who was murdered by knights in Canterbury Cathedral (depicted by Matthew Paris, above). Henry believed that Becket owed him loyalty as he had raised him to the highest offices, and that he should agree to Henry's courts having jurisdiction over 'criminous clerics'. They fell out when Becket agreed to this jurisdiction verbally but would not put his seal on the agreement, the Constitutions of Clarendon. The rift deepened when Henry's heir was crowned without Becket, who excommunicated the bishops who took part. Becket's tomb became one of the main destinations for pilgrims for the next 400 years, including those in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales where he was the 'blisful martir'.
With
Laura Ashe
Associate Professor of English at Worcester College, University of Oxford
Michael Staunton
Associate Professor in History at University College Dublin
And
Danica Summerlin
Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Sheffield
Producer: Simon Tillotson.
Next Episode
Frederick Douglass
February 8, 2018
•52m
In a programme first broadcast in 2018, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of Frederick Douglass, who was born into slavery in Maryland in 1818 and, once he had escaped, became one of that century's most prominent abolitionists. He was such a good orator, his opponents doubted his story, but he told it in grim detail in 1845 in his book 'Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.' He went on to address huge audiences in Great Britain and Ireland and there some of his supporters paid off his owner, so Douglass could be free in law and not fear recapture. After the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, he campaigned for equal rights for African-Americans, arguing against those such as Lincoln who had wanted freed slaves to leave America and found a colony elsewhere. "We were born here," he said, "and here we will remain."
With
Celeste-Marie Bernier
Professor of Black Studies in the English Department at the University of Edinburgh
Karen Salt
Assistant Professor in Transnational American Studies at the University of Nottingham
And
Nicholas Guyatt
Reader in North American History at the University of Cambridge
Producer: Simon Tillotson.
If you like this episode you’ll love
Promoted