08/09/2026
I dag firar vi dagen då belägringen av Malta bröts. Det är en av våra tre årligen återkommande högtidsdagar.
The Great Siege of Malta AD 1565
It was the summer the world held its breath.
In May 1565, the horizon north of Malta turned black. Two hundred Ottoman galleys, the personal fleet of Suleiman the Magnificent, the most powerful man on earth, came for a tiny rock in the middle of the sea.
On that rock stood 700 Knights in steel, with red cloaks marked by a white eight-pointed cross, and about 2,000 mercenaries, 3,000 Maltese militia and villagers who refused to leave. Facing them were 40,000 Janissaries and Sipahis — veterans who had never known defeat. Suleiman’s order was simple: wipe the Knights Hospitaller from history, then use Malta as the stepping stone to Sicily and Rome.
The cannons spoke first at Fort St. Elmo.
For 31 days and nights, the tiny star-fort at the tip of Sciberras bled. The Ottomans fired 18,000 cannonballs into it. When its walls were dust, its knights kept fighting with swords in the breach. Not a single defender survived, but they had bought Malta time. Suleiman had lost his best men and his summer.
Then the storm moved to the other side of the Grand Harbour — to Fort St. Angelo and Fort St. Michael in what we now call Vittoriosa and Senglea.
Grand Master Jean de Valette, an old warrior of 70, made a vow: he would never surrender. He slept in his armor. The Maltese women carried cannonballs to the walls. Priests carried the wounded. Every Ottoman mine, every tower, every assault was met and thrown back into the sea. The forts were on fire, the wells were poisoned, the food was gone, but the white cross still flew.
By early September, both sides were ghosts. The Knights could barely stand. The Ottomans were dying of dysentery, waiting for a relief force they thought would never come.
Then, on the morning of the 8th of September, lookouts saw dust in the north.
The Gran Soccorso — 8,000 men from Sicily — had landed at Mellieha. They came down the ridge shouting, “San Giorgio! San Giorgio!”
The Ottoman army broke. Tents were abandoned, cannons left in the mud, wounded left on the beach. They scrambled for their galleys and fled.
On the bastions of St. Angelo, only six hundred men could still hold a sword. They raised their battered flags. The bells of Malta rang for the first time in four months. It was September 8th.
That is why it is a public holiday in Malta
The Maltese call it Il-Vitorja — Victory Day. But it’s never been just one victory.
On the same date in 1800, the French occupiers who had starved Malta for two years finally surrendered.
On the same date in 1943, the radio crackled: Fascist Italy had surrendered. The bombs that had rained on Malta for three years in the Second World War were finally over. The Italian fleet sailed into St. Paul’s Bay to surrender to the island they had tried to destroy.
And by a coincidence that Maltese people see as providence, September 8th is also the birthday of the Virgin Mary — Il-Bambina. So while soldiers march in Valletta and oarsmen race eight-oared boats across the Grand Harbour in the old Victory Regatta, in Naxxar, Senglea, Xaghra and Mellieha, statues of a small Mary are carried through streets lit with fireworks.
One date: a siege that saved Europe, an occupation that ended, a world war that lifted, and a birth that is celebrated.
That’s why on 8th September, Malta doesn’t just remember a battle. It remembers why it exists.
