Spread across 25 or so centuries of recorded military history, the names of only a few campaigns cause mouths to fall open in amazement, not only because the axis of history truly  pivoted on them, but because their outcomes were so close.....

At Marathon, the Persians were stopped; Hastings, when the Normans took England; Waterloo, Napolelon's last battle; Normandy, the liberation of Europe.

...and indisputably, Malta, 1565, when the military-religious Knights of the Order St. John of Jerusalem, Knights Hospitalers, stood, their Mediterranean island invaded, outnumbered, surrounded, besieged, trapped...by an enormous, merciless, veteran Turkish army. Sulieman knew, as did Hitler and Mussolini, he could not control the Mediterranean Sea until he held Malta. Sulieman turned his immeasurable might on the warrior-monks.

Durning the Late Renaissance in Europe, the Mediterranean saw a campaign which became epoch. Not long after Leonardo painted The Last Supper and Michaelangelo did his Pieta and the ceiling of the Cistine Chapel, just before Cervantes wrote Don Quixote and Copernicus observed the movement of celestial bodies, while England, Portugal, Spain and France were exploring and conquesting the New World, Magellen circling the globe, printing presses appearing all over Europe...

...in late spring of 1565, the Turks under Sultan Sulieman The Magnificent invaded the island of Malta, just off Sicily, on 19 May. The Knights' leader, Grand Master Jean Parisott de la Vallette, 72 years old, and in armour, fought on the battlements, in the Mediterranean summer, alongside his beloved Knights...

...German and French and Italian and and English langues fought and died, together...

...and somehow, emerged victorious, after FIVE MONTHS of continuous fighting, stopping Turkish expansion into Europe...and preventing the Mediterranean from becoming their "private lake."

Author Tim Pickles and artist Christa Hook are a primo team among Osprey's lineup of authors and artists. Malta 1565-- Last Battle Of The Crusades (not entirely accurate, Lepanto has equal claim thereto) as a work is a fine display of their joint and collaborative talents, 96 well-delivered pages.

Particularly stirring, haunting, frightening...is Ms. Hook's two-page illustration on the fall of Fort St. Elmo. Words cannot describe it, but here is an attempt.

Only a few Knights are left standing after a month of seige, of daily attacks, of never-ending cannonade. The walls have been breached, there is no retreat, escape or reinforcement possible. Those captured will be tortured to death by the Turks...skinned...or burned...or hands and feet cut off...or crucified...or disembowled...or impaled. The few surviving Knights, virtually every one wounded, stand in the breach, facing thousands of rushing Turks, grim, their best possible fate being a swift, bloody death in battle.

The night St. Elmo fell, the Turks floated stripped, crucified, decapitated, mutilated bodies of Knights on the tide from Fort St. Elmo to Fort St. Michel and Fort St. Angelo.

The next morning, Grand Master La Valette ordered Turk prisoners executed and their heads fired from St. Angelo's great guns back to the Turkish camp.

Seige warfare has a reputation for being the grimmest type of long-term combat, with no quarter or mercy given on either side. Who was the soldier who summed it all up? "Nothing remains but to fight."

The Knights Hospitalers and their Men-At-Arms and many of the Maltese populace...fought. Five hundred Knights and 5,000 men-at-arms against 60,000 Turks. Read the numbers again...and once more.

For five months straight, on that limestone island, in the summer heat, with no possibility of escape or surrender, they fought. Ninety miles across the water in Sicily, the continual cannonade sounded like thunder, around the clock, for five months. On 5 September, a relief expedition arrived from Sicily, to reinforce the Knights. It should have been considered, too small, too late, but...

...these were the Knights of St. John, led by Jean Parisott de la Valette...

...On 13 September, 1565, the bloody remains of the Turk army boarded their ships, leaving 30,000 dead on Malta. The Sultan ordered his fleet enter Turkish harbours at night, lest the populace see how few soldiers returned.

Grand Master La Valette lay in hospital, a lung punctured by a spear which penetrated his breastplate. (Remember, they guy was 72 years old, and he lived through that wound!) Over half the Knights, sergeants and men-at-arms were dead. Most survivors were wounded, some mortally, many grievously. The Turks never attacked Malta again.

Was it General Eisenhower who said 'the campaign at Normandy saved Western Europe from speaking German'? Using the same analogy, the Knights at Malta saved Southern Europe from speaking Turkish, almost 400 years earlier.

For the modeler of medieval subjects, the range of figures is rather extensive. 1565 was before the age of uniforms, though the Knights and their soldiers always wore "something" bearing the white Cross of the Order.  The Order's Eight Pointed ("Maltese") Cross or plain white Latin or more commonly, Greek Crosses appear on shields, banners, tunics and sometimes, engraved on breastplates and cuirasses. Monastic garb usually had the Cross on a black background, while battle wear, shields and banners usually had the Cross backed by red.

As Knights of the Order of St. John (and their Sergeants and Men-At-Arms) wore military and monastic "fashion" of the time, many readily available 16th century figures may be used and many more converted into the defenders of Malta. Imaginative vignettes and dioramas are endless in their possibility. Ramparts, field, cannons, cavalry, for the naval enthusiast, there are even a few Renaissance war galley kits around. There is also an excellent bust of a Hospitaler Knight available, but he wears (black) monastic clothing, rather than armour. Substantially fewer figures of Turkish subjects exist, but there are a few.

Literally tens of thousands of references exist on the military-religious Order of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and Of Malta, Knights Hospitalers. If  further subject matter is desired, one can bury oneself in the thousand-year history of the Knights. (See also Osprey's Knight Hospitaler Volumes I and II, Knight of Outremer, The Knights Of Christ , Renaissance War Galley and The Janissaries, for readily available, modern material).

Highest possible recommendation.

Review copy courtesy of the reviewer's chequebook.

Reviewed by James S. J. Hohenzy, OSJH, K.J.

If you would like your product reviewed fairly and quickly by a site that has around 300,000 visitors a month, please contact me or see other details in the Note to Contributors.