Invasion of Gozo (1551)
Invasion of Gozo | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Part of the Ottoman-Habsburg wars Ottoman-Maltese wars | |||||||
The Cittadella of Gozo in 2015 | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
Ottoman Empire | |||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Sinan Pasha Salah Rais Dragut | ) | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
10,000 | 10,000, mostly civilians | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
Unknown | 5-6,000 enslaved |
The Invasion of Gozo took place in July 1551, and was accomplished by the Ottoman Empire against the island of Gozo, following an unsuccessful attempt to conquer nearby Malta on 18 July 1551. It was followed by a victorious campaign with the siege of Tripoli.[4]
Attack
Malta
The Commander of the Ottoman fleet was
Gozo
The Ottoman then decided to attack nearby Gozo, which was under the command of Governor Gelatian de Sessa. After a few days of bombardment, de Sessa attempted to negotiate with Sinan Pasha, however the latter rejected the terms. A few days later the citadel capitulated. About 300 people escaped from the citadel by climbing down its walls and hid from the Ottomans. The other 6,000 people, including Governor de Sessa and the Knights, were taken captive and ended up in slavery, being sailed to Tripoli on 30 July. The Ottomans only spared a monk and forty elderly Gozitans.[4]
According to legend, one of the defenders named Bernardo Dupuo (also known as Bernardo da Fonte or de Opuo) fought bravely when Ottomans breached the city walls, and killed his own wife and two daughters preferring death over slavery before he himself was killed by the invading forces. A street in the citadel is named after him, and outside his house lies a plaque commemorating his death.
Consequences
Since few Christians remained on Gozo, families from
Following the attack the Order set up a commission made up of Leone Strozzi and Pietro Pardo, who were engineers, to examine the Maltese Islands' fortifications and make suggestions for further improvements. The Grandmaster,
The failure to take all of the
During the sacking of Gozo, the archives of the Università were destroyed by the Ottomans. The only surviving pre-1551 records relating to Gozo are a few documents in the
Legacy
A re-enactment of the invasion was made by Grade 5 students of San Andrea School in 1997, and a video entitled A Tale of a Gozitan City was released. The students played the roles of Turkish invaders, Knights, or Maltese peasants and filming was done on the schooner Charlotte Louise.[7]
Din l-Art Ħelwa produced a musical account of the invasion at Saint Michael's Bastion in the Citadel on 31 July 2009. This was centered on the legend of Don Bernardo de Opuo.[8]
In 2013 a memorial to the siege was set up at the gardens of Villa Rundle in
The siege of Gozo features in Marthese Fenech's book Eight Pointed Cross (2011), part of her historical fictional series set in Malta.
The invasion of Gozo features prominently in Dorothy Dunnett's book The Disorderly Knights (1966), part of her fictional series Lymond Chronicles.
Notes
- ^ Concise History of Islam Muzaffar Husain Syed, Syed Saud Akhtar, B D Usmani Vij Books India Pvt Ltd,
- ^ A Global Chronology of Conflict: From the Ancient World to the Modern Middle East [6 volumes]: From the Ancient World to the Modern Middle East Spencer C. Tucker ABC-CLIO,—
- ^ Historical Dictionary of Malta Uwe Jens Rudolf Rowman & Littlefield,
- ^ a b c d Badger, George Percy (1838). Description of Malta and Gozo. Malta: M. Weiss. p. 292.
- ISBN 9781741045406.
- ^ a b Grima, Noel (23 May 2015). "Notarial Archives discovery: Documents from Gozo dating to 1431 saved from the bin". The Malta Independent. Archived from the original on 11 August 2015.
- ^ "The Video of our Historical re-enactment: "A Tale of a Gozitan City"". San Andrea School. Archived from the original on 14 July 2014.
- ^ "Musical account of the 1551 July attack on Gozo". Times of Malta. 21 July 2009. Archived from the original on 14 July 2014.