
The Pope helped to gather an army, primarily with the help of the Franks and the Holy Roman Empire. In 1070, when the Turks took control, they began to refuse Christian pilgrims into the area.īyzantine Emperor Alexius I called for help from the Pope with defending his empire from the Turks and to help push them out of the Holy Land. However, the Arabs had allowed Christians to pilgrimage and visit the city of Jerusalem. Prior to this, the Arabs had been in control of the land.

Elmo, the Ottoman forces ruthlessly took no prisoners.

Believing he would repeat this victory, the sultan sent an armada to Malta. John when he drove them out of their island fortress at Rhodes. John would emerge as one of the most famous and brutal military defeats in history.įorty-two years earlier, Suleiman had been victorious against the Knights of St.

But Suleiman's attempt to take the island from the Holy Roman Empire's Knights of St. To secure control of the Mediterranean between these territories and launch an offensive into western Europe, Suleiman needed the small but strategically crucial island of Malta. Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman sultan, had expanded his empire from western Asia to southeastern Europe and North Africa. In the first half of the sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire was thought to be invincible. The indispensable account of the Ottoman Empire's Siege of Malta from the author of Hannibal and Gibraltar.
