http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
xiii, 323 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : color illustrations, color maps ; 24 cm
"A major new account of the epic siege of the island fortress of Malta. Even as the great siege began it was understood by both sides to be an epic - a potentially decisive encounter between an uneasy assortment of soldiers, native Maltese, adventurers and Knights Hospitaller on a strategically crucial but near waterless island and a vast, seemingly all-powerful Ottoman armada. With three quarters of the Mediterranean's coasts already in the hands of the Sultan and his allies, all eyes were now on Malta. This superb new account of the siege emphasises the crucial importance of the siege while at the same time putting it in a far wider context. While since mistakenlyrecast as a climactic battle between the West and the East, it was also much more interesting and nuanced than that - both sides had many other interests and priorities beyond Malta. Suleiman the Magnificent had conquered and subsumed regions from Hungary to the Persian Gulf; Philip II was building an empire in America and Asia. Drawing on a wide range of eyewitness stories, Marcus Bull gives a vivid sense of the period's technologies, values and assumptions. It was a grim world built on the labour of many thousands of disposable galley-slaves, shockingly brutal forms of warfare and religious absolutism. But it was also a world filled with the most extraordinary new discoveries and ideas. Both these worlds come together in the siege and in this book"--Publisher's description.
Introduction: sieges and what they mean -- Violence, vanity and vocation: the Knights of Malta -- The rewards of relative efficiency: the Ottomans -- The Cruel Sea -- 1551: the precursor of the Great Siege -- The Great Siege begins -- The guns of July and August -- Relief -- Meanwhile... -- And in the end.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 245-[264]) and index.