Sword and Scimitar by Simon Scarrow
Author:Simon Scarrow
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Historical, Azizex666, General Fiction
ISBN: 9780755359042
Publisher: Headline
Published: 2012-05-01T04:00:00+00:00
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Thirty-five thousand men, you say?’ La Valette slowly stroked his beard as he digested Colonel Mas’s report of the interrogation. The Grand Master was standing with his officers on the bastion assigned to the knights of the langue of Castille, one of the strongest positions in the line of defences that protected Birgu. Thomas had been summoned to the bastion in the early hours. Throughout the night the Turks had been moving into position in a wide arc around Birgu and Senglea, their progress revealed by the torches that flickered across the landscape, and the noise of orders shouted from the darkness. Dawn had revealed the enemy drawn up in formation just beyond the range of the cannon mounted on the bastions along the walls.
As the pale light spilled across the island the enemy had gone down on their knees in response to the wailing cries of their imams and the sound of their chanted prayers carried clearly to the ears of those watching from the walls and bastions defending the two promontories. The spectacle of the horde ranged against them had stilled the tongues of the defenders who looked on in awe and apprehension at the array of coloured cloth and glinting weapons in the dense ranks sprawling across the landscape. On the high ground behind the enemy formations Thomas could see Turkish engineers labouring to level the ground for the artillery batteries. Each gun had been laboriously drawn by hand from the beaches where they had been landed the previous day. Soon they would be in position, ready to bombard the defenders, although the enemy seemed keen and arrogant enough to attempt to rush the walls without waiting for their cannon to open fire.
‘Yes, sir.’ Mas nodded sombrely. ‘And they are expecting a further force of ten thousand to arrive under the command of Dragut.’
The other men of the inner council stirred uneasily at the mention of the corsair warlord. Dragut’s ships had brought terror and destruction to ports and shipping across the Mediterranean. Tens of thousands of people had been seized from their homes by his men and sold into slavery. The corsairs who followed him were all experienced men, ready to fight as fiercely as the most devout Muslim fanatic, but for loot rather than faith.
‘With Dragut, that makes some forty-five thousand in all,’ Mas continued. ‘Together with around a hundred cannon of various calibres, a thousand engineers, and plenty of siege equipment. And of their fleet, no less than two hundred are warships. Not only do the enemy vastly outnumber us, they also outnumber any force that Don Garcia can assemble on Sicily.’
‘What is the latest count of our strength?’ asked La Valette.
Mas consulted his notes briefly. ‘We have less than seven hundred knights, one thousand two hundred Spanish and Italian mercenaries, and the five hundred soldiers from the galleys. There’s perhaps two hundred Greek and Sicilian volunteers and ninety squires. And then there’s the militia. We’ve been fortunate there, the latest strength returns show that over five thousand of the local men have taken up arms - far more than we estimated.
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