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Updated: May 1, 2025
Dragut, though aware of the project, was at sea, devastating the Gulf of Genoa, and paying himself in advance for any loss the Christians might inflict in Africa: his nephew, Hisār Reïs commanded in the city. When Dragut returned, the siege had gone on for a month, without result; a tremendous assault had been repulsed with heavy loss to the besiegers, who were growing disheartened.
Dragut now returned to Constantinople to receive congratulations upon his escape, and to take part in a fresh design of stirring up the Sultan against the Christians. All who professed this faith were naturally obnoxious to the corsair; but his private and personal hatred was entirely directed against the Knights of Malta, with whom he had been at war all his life.
In all his venturesome life things had never gone so badly with Dragut as upon this occasion. On the one side, should he and his men land they would be massacred; on the other hand, his road to the open sea was barred by an immensely superior force. Recognising the logic of circumstances, and seeing no way of escape, the white flag was hung out by the Moslem leader.
The Order paid as ransom for its heroic warrior hundreds of slaves, ships, and cargoes, as if he were a prince. Years afterward, Don Priamo, upon entering a Maltese galley found the intrepid Dragut in turn chained to a rower's seat. The scene was repeated in reverse, with no sign of surprise from either, as if the event were perfectly normal. They clasped hands. "Casualties of war!" said Febrer.
Added to this he was albeit by no means so cruel as most of his contemporaries one of those men before whom all trembled: as we have seen in the case of the corsairs who defended "Africa," "they feared the wrath of Dragut more than death itself."
Dragut saw at once the mistake that had been made, but saw also that to abandon the siege of St. Elmo would too greatly elate the Knights: the work must go on; and on it went with unexampled zeal.
The Grand Master of Malta clasped the hand of the terrible Dragut upon finding him his captive. The Mediterranean man, fixed on the shores that gave him birth, was accustomed to accept all the changes of history, as the mollusks fastened to the rocks endure the tempests. For him the only important thing was not to lose sight of his blue sea.
At the moment when this happened he was holding a council of war in the trenches with Piali, a Sanjak, and the principal Turkish engineer. The same shot which wounded Dragut killed the Sanjak on the spot.
Amongst all those principalities and powers against which Dragut contended during the whole of his strenuous existence, there was no one among them which he held in so much detestation as the famous Knights of Saint John, known in the sixteenth century as the Knights of Malta. This militant religious organisation had its origin in Jerusalem in peculiar and interesting circumstances.
So it is that, whatever other opinion we may hold of Dragut, we cannot deny that in this captain of the Sea-wolves were blended rare qualities, which caused him to shine as a capable administrator, a fine seaman, but above all as a supreme leader of men. Dragut died with arms in his hands fighting those whom he considered to be his bitterest enemies.
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