in May 1565 did not catch the Hospitallers unprepared since Grand Master Jean de Valette had ordered preparations to be taken in hand from quite some time before. Adequate provisions of wheat, powder, and arms were secured, troops and mercenaries recruited, and the fortifications strengthened in the best possible manner. The knights had been expecting a Turkish attack ever since the Djerba crisis brought about a deterioration in the general military situation and news of a new Ottoman armada had begun to filter into the West from Spring of 1563. Writing on the defence preparations before the siege, Bosio speaks of ‘armerie’ rather than ‘armeria’,12 bearing witness to the profusion of military equipment that had accompanied the hectic military activities and suggesting too, that although the logistical setup may have still focused mainly around a central armoury inside Fort St Angelo, tactical considerations had necessitated that each of the outlying fortresses be endowed, if not with their own permanent armouries, at least with temporary magazines and storage spaces. The nightly reinforcements of the hard pressed garrison of St Elmo during the initial stages of the conflict, with munitions arms and supplies from Fort St Angelo, on the other hand, clearly shows that the main reserve of military equipment was still the prerogative of the central armoury inside the old castle. The wooden pontoon which was set up to link Birgu and Senglea was not built only to ensure that troops could be easily transferred from one position to the other as the tactical situation dictated but also to ensure an uninterrupted flow of munitions and arms from St Angelo to the beleaguered garrison in Senglea. From Fort St Angelo too went out the arms and munitions required to equip and sustain the bulk of the Order’s defensive force, the Maltese militia.
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Left, the Hospitaller strongholds under attack during the Great Siege of 1565, from a print by D’Aleccio. Above, posthumous portrait of Frà Leone Strozzi who was partly responsible for the building of Fort St Elmo in 1552.