The Last Crusaders: The Great Siege by William Napier

Author:William Napier [Napier, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group
Published: 2013-06-06T04:00:00+00:00

3

It was late on the morning of May 20th 1565 that the guns of the Turks began their bombardment of St Elmo.

The Ottoman guns were so near that the watchers on the walls could glimpse the gunners moving behind their ramps and earthworks with their linstocks, even the flare of the matchcords as they put them to the powder. Then it was time to duck back down and pray.

‘Coming in!’ roared Captain Miranda.

There was nothing they could do but sit and huddle behind the walls and wait, and hope that a ball did not come straight through the wall that sheltered them and blast them through the air in pieces, like red rose petals on the wind.

But this first was ranging fire, only one ball struck home near the central wall, while two or three more hissed overhead. There came a pause while the gunners adjusted their trajectories, and Smith was up with his jezail in an instant. Answering shots rang out immediately from Turkish snipers in the forward trenches, under strict orders to keep the enemy pinned down behind his walls, and not let him harass the gunners. But Smith took the risk, keeping low and taking his time, sighting on one of the big guns. Men moved round her breech, mostly out of sight, but here and there was an obvious movement.

The jezail cracked out almost the same instant a Turkish musket ball hit the stonework inches from Smith’s face.

‘Damn!’ he bellowed, turning away from the splinters, but too late. A sliver had lodged in his cheek – but no real damage done. He glanced back. A flurry of panic around one of the guns. He clenched his fist and dropped back down behind the wall. He’d hit.

‘You’re cheek’s bloody,’ said Stanley.

Smith grubbed in his beard and pulled out a half-inch splinter and tossed it over his shoulder at the Turks. ‘The other fellow’s worse off.’

‘How that’ll mar your boyish looks,’ said Stanley.

‘You’ll not praise me for my marksmanship? That was a master engineer I just trimmed of his head.’

‘I won’t. You might grow proud.’

‘Coming in again!’ came Miranda’s cry. ‘On target now!’ Knights bowed their heads and crossed themselves. The air erupted.

The Ottomans knew exactly what they were doing. The basilisks were not used. There was no need against so feeble a target. But the biggest field guns alone threw balls of eighty pounds, striking the walls of Elmo in a relentless barrage, and soon the lime and sandstone walls began to flake and crumble. With expert eye, the master gunners had ordered concentration on the points of the stars themselves as the weakest salients.

But the noise was the worst. Nicholas and Hodge were sent crawling about giving out cotton wadding for ears. Still, by the time the hand-to-hand fighting came, they would all be half deaf.

It seemed like hours that they huddled in what shade they could, taking the inescapable punishment, the untroubled sun rising above them in the clear blue sky. Peek out over the

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