saturated solution of bichromate of potash and gum-water. This prepared paper is exposed to light under the ordinary glass negative, and the portion of bichromate of potash acted on becomes insoluble in water, but without changing colour (this is a peculiar property of bichromate of potash). The print is then covered with the greasy lithographic ink, placed face downwards on a metal plate and passed through a press until it becomes almost black in appearance.

It is then washed with a solution of gum arabic and hot water, and brushed with a camel's hair brush; this removes the portions not acted on by the light, by dissolving the bichromate of potash, and leaves a print of a light brown colour in lithographic ink.

This can be either transferred to the copper plate, as a guide to the engraver, by burnishing; or it may, in the same way, be transferred to the zinc plate, and printed from immediately, without any further process, by simply being inked with printer's ink.

Friday, January 25th, 1861.

Captain E. PACKE, in the Chair.

THE HISTORY OF THE FORTRESS OF MALTA.

By Major PORTER, R.E.

THE history of the Fortress of Malta is a subject which I consider ought to command the willing attention and interest of the Members of a society so peculiarly professional as is ours. Having been for some years stationed at Malta, I have had, perhaps, more facilities than fall to the lot of persons generally of becoming acquainted with those details by which the fortress has gradually risen from a very small beginning to the position which it now occupies. Whilst there, I had the opportunity of studying the numerous records left by the Knights of St. John when they were expelled from the island. These are to be found, partly in the Royal Engineer Office, at the station, and partly at the Public Record Office; which latter I was enabled to inspect through the kindness of the authorities.

But, before I commence the actual history of the fortress itself, I think it right, with your permission, to give a brief and hurried summary of the antecedent history of that fraternity, half soldier and half monk, under whose auspices, and through whose munificent liberality, the island was raised from the position of a mere barren rock to become one of the finest strongholds of Europe.

The development of Christianity in Europe had brought with it a practice, which ere long became very general,- for the pious to make pilgrimages to the Holy Land; and, as the influx of these visitors produced a considerable revenue to the emperors of the East, that practice was encouraged in every way. When, however, the successors of the impostor Mahomet had, amongst their numerous other acquisitions, brought the province of Judæa under their domination, the position of the pilgrims who still continued to flock thither from Europe became very much deteriorated. It is true, the Mahometans did not altogether prohibit these pilgrimages; they were too keen-sighted and politic for that, and perceived that a large revenue would be received by them, as it had been before by the emperors of Constantinople; still they pillaged and harassed the pilgrims in every possible way.

Under these circumstances, some pious merchants of Amalfi, in Italy, obtained the permission of the Caliph Mustapha Billah to establish a hospital in the city of Jerusalem, for the succour and maintenance of visitors to the Holy City. This hospital was the first germ of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, which, sprung from that slender stock, was destined to become renowned throughout Europe and the East for its military prowess and power.

We all know how Peter the Hermit, having made a visitation to the East, endeavoured on his return to arouse the religious enthusiasm of Europe for the purpose of rescuing the Holy Land from the grasp of the infidel, and we know how his efforts resulted in the first Crusade, and how Godfrey de Bouillon succeeded in tearing the Holy City and parts of the adjacent country from the Saracens, and in establishing a Christian kingdom.

The Hospital of St. John was at this time presided over by a pious man named Peter Gérard; and under his auspices such of the Crusaders as stood in need of succour were hospitably entertained by the fraternity. Godfrey de Bouillon, to mark his gratitude, endowed the institution with a gift of land; and, his example being followed by many others, the hospital became ere long extremely wealthy.

The successor of Peter Gérard, Raymond du Puy, who had been a knight, and had taken the vows of the Order, attracted by his admiration for the charity and devotion of its members, felt ere long a craving to return to his previous martial life; and, as he could not possibly gratify his longing in any other way, he proposed to the King of Jerusalem that the Order of St. John should become military. Under these circumstances, it was established as a military order; not abandoning its previous vows of poverty, chastity, and humility, it was still a monastic order, but it had added thereto the further obligation of fighting in behalf of religion.

I need not trace their career during the existence of the kingdom of Jerusalem, of which they, in conjunction with the rival fraternity of the Templars, were the main support. After the city fell into the hands of Saladin, the Order was removed to Acre, where they continued their struggle against the Infidel, until, at the close of the thirteenth century, that city was torn from their grasp. It was the last stronghold the Christians retained in the East, and after its fall the Knights of St. John were driven to abandon the Holy Land.

After a short sojourn in Cyprus, they made themselves masters of the island of Rhodes, and proceeded to establish their convent there.

Up to this time their organisation had been entirely military, but now that they were settled in the island of Rhodes they found themselves compelled to change their tactics, and to adopt a maritime career. They fitted out galleys with which to protect the commerce of the East from the depredations of the Infidel corsairs, who swarmed in those seas. The pirates of the Levant were at that time the scourge of the Mediterranean; and, as the order of St. John constituted themselves the police of that sea, they became ere long objects of as much terror and hatred to the Infidel on the water as they had before been on the battle-field.

Accordingly, in 1480, the Sultan Mahomet II. determined to besiege Rhodes and extirpate these troublesome antagonists. That siege ended in the rout of the Infidels, and the army of Mahomet was forced to retire in disgrace and confusion from the island; but in 1522 Solyman, surnamed the Magnificent, who had then lately succeeded Mahomet, again besieged Rhodes, and, after a struggle protracted during six months, expelled the Knights, who were thus once again deprived of their homes, and become wanderers on the face of the earth.

After a lapse of eight years, Charles V., King of Spain and Emperor of

Germany, made an offer of the island of Malta to the homeless Order; and thus it was that this barren rock became an important fortress. The antecedent history of Malta itself may be dismissed in a few words. It had been originally colonised by the Phoenicians, who were expelled by the Greeks after the siege of Troy. Nearly three centuries later the Greeks were expelled by the Carthaginians, and they in their turn gave way to the Romans. The Romans held the island until Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, drove them from it. It was subsequently retaken by Belisarius, but soon fell into the hands of the Saracens, when they made their way into that portion of Europe. It was wrested from the Saracens by Count Roger, and attached to Sicily, and with Sicily it remained until after the tragedy of the Sicilian Vespers, when it fell into the possession of Spain, by whom it was transferred to the Order of St. John.

When the knights arrived in their new home they found that the only work of defence in the island was a small fort mounting two guns, and dignified by the appellation of the Castle of St. Angelo. In fact, the only attraction which the island possessed for the knights lay in its magnificent harbour. This harbour is divided in two by a promontory called Mount Sceberras; the larger portion is in its turn subdivided by two tongues of land, thus forming creeks, each of which affords good anchorage. This harbour is called the Grand Port; and the other, which is neither so large nor so commodious, is called the Marsa Muscetto, or quarantine harbour. When the Grand Master, L'Isle Adam, arrived in Malta, his first care was to house his fraternity in a little village on the shore of the Grand Port, called the Bourg, and situated on one of the promontories above mentioned. The revenues of the Order being at that time in a very exhausted condition, the only work of defence he was enabled to undertake was a line of rampart and ditch of very slender profile across the head of the promontory. This was constructed during the first year of the Order's residence in Malta, viz. 1530. In 1541 an Italian engineer, named Caramolino, was called on by the Grand Master, John d'Omedes, to advise as to the best mode of strengthening the island. He considered that the position which had been taken up at the Bourg was a bad one. It was overlooked by a high hill called Mount Salvator, and other portions of the adjacent country, so that, in his opinion, it was impossible to fortify the position sufficiently. He therefore recommended that they should occupy the Mount Sceberras, where he said the convent ought to have been originally fixed. At that time, however, there were no funds to carry out his proposition, and the Knights were compelled to remain in the Bourg, contenting themselves with deepening its ditches, and raising a cavalier in the Castle of St. Angelo, to dominate over the hill which had previously threatened them.

Still, the Order did not feel safe. There were rumours of expeditions on the part of the Turks, and they felt that at any moment they were liable to an attack; they therefore called in a Spaniard, named Don Pedro Pardo, the chief engineer to Charles V. In 1553 this officer designed two forts, one to occupy the extremity of Mount Sceberras, and called Fort St. Elmo ; the other the promontory of St. Michael, by which name it was afterwards known, and these works were executed in accordance with his designs.

The succeeding Grand Master, Claude de la Sengle, still feeling dissatisfied with the strength of the position, resolved to surround the entire peninsula of St. Michael with a rampart, and to establish a town within its

enceinte. This town took the name of its founder, and has been ever since called Senglea. Such was the position of the fortress when La Valette, successor of La Sengle, became Grand Master. It was now evident that a siege on the part of the Turks was imminent. A piratical empire, as I may call it, had been established at Algiers by the brothers Barbarossa, Horuc and Hayradin, and their lieutenants Sinan and Dragut, of whom at this period the latter was the sole survivor,

As ruler of the city of Algiers and the adjacent territory, he was tributary to the Sultan, and was prepared to render every assistance in his power to an expedition against his sworn foes the Order of St. John. Solyman the Magnificent, the same sultan who had expelled the fraternity from Rhodes in 1522, was still on the throne, and, irritated at the constant successes of the knights over his own naval armaments, he determined, as the last act of his lengthened and prosperous career, to expel them from their newly-established home, and organised a powerful expedition for the purpose in the arsenals of Constantinople.

This expedition arrived in Malta on the 18th May, 1565, and consisted of 130 vessels, under Admiral Piali; the land force, under Mustapha Pacha, numbering 30,000 men. The army landed partly in St. Thomas's Creek and partly in Marsa Scirocco, at which point they combined and marched on the town.

The garrison of the island at this moment consisted of 474 knights, 67 servants-at-arms, and 8,155 men-partly militia of the island, partly regular troops in the pay of the Order (principally Spanish), and partly volunteers from Italy. During the latter portion of the siege a reinforcement of 40 knights and 700 men succeeded in making their way into the place. Mustapha and Piali had received instructions from the Sultan that they were to pay great deference to the opinions of Dragut, the corsair Dey of Algiers, at that time considered one of the most able generals of the day. Dragut not having arrived, there was a difference of opinion between Mustapha and Piali as to their immediate line of conduct. Piali was for awaiting his advent; but Mustapha, fearing the arrival of succours to the besieged, determined upon at once commencing the siege by attacking the Fort of St. Elmo, the small work already alluded to, which had been erected at the extremity of Mount Sceberras. Its trace was that of a star fort with four salients, but on the land front the star form had been broken into bastions; and on the opposite side arose a cavalier, which dominated over the remainder of the work. The inclosure was very confined, containing but a small garrison, and was most inconvenient for defence. Mustapha therefore determined to attack it at once, believing that in a few days he could effect its capture.

He opened his trenches on Mount Sceberras, but did not carry them completely across the peninsula, being desirous of screening them from the enfilade fire of Fort St. Angelo. The evil which arose from this mode of attack was, that a free communication could be maintained between the garrison of St. Elmo and their comrades of the Bourg.

Fire was opened from the besiegers' batteries on the 31st May, and in a very short time a practicable breach was effected. The garrison, anxious

* The position of the besieger's batteries at this point and elsewhere throughout the siege is marked on the annexed map, which also shows the extent of the fortress at that time.