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Updated: May 1, 2025
He mounted four guns on the opposite side of Marsa Muzetto Harbour on a projecting point of land, from which a further enfilading fire smote the doomed fortress on the flank: this point has been known ever since as the Point Dragut." A ravelin in advance of the fortress on the land side was scourged without ceasing by the arquebus fire of the Janissaries.
The Genoese admiral heard that his prey was at Jerbah; he repaired thither without losing a moment, found that he had been correctly informed, and anchored at the mouth of the harbour, at a place known as La Bocca de Cantara. Dragut was completely hemmed in, Doria was in such strength that he could not, reckless as he was, attempt to force the passage.
Another circumstance which had led to the now frequent raids on the littoral of the European countries was the countenance and support accorded to the corsairs by the Grand Turk: so admirably did they fit into the scheme of his ambitions, that by the time Dragut arrived at a commanding position they were, so to speak, officially recognised as a fighting asset of the Sublime Porte; and, as we have seen, the Sultan did not hesitate to lend his picked troops, the Janissaries, to the corsairs when engaged in their ordinary piratical business.
Gazing from the heights at Il Borgo, the fortress on the opposite side of the harbour where the Knights then dwelt, Sinan demanded of Dragut, "If that," pointing to the fortress, "was the place which he had told the Sultan could easily be taken?" Dragut, whom no peril ever daunted, coolly replied: "Certainly, no eagle ever built his nest on a rock more easy of access."
In the armoury is the very suit painted by Caravaggio, by the side of the armour of the noble old La Valette, whose heroism saved his island from the efforts of Mustapha and Dragut, and an army quite as fierce and numerous as that which was baffled before Gibraltar, by similar courage and resolution.
But this was not all, as the shore as well as the sea yielded up to them its tribute in the shape of slaves and booty, and Christian mothers trembling in the insecurity of their homes would hush their wailing children with the terror of the names of Barbarossa, of Dragut, or of Ali Basha.
Elmo must be held to keep the Turks back till reinforcements arrived. So of course they went on. Dragut brought up some of his largest yards and laid them like a bridge across the fosse, and a tremendous struggle raged for five terrible hours on Dragut's bridge. Again and again Mustafa marshalled his Janissaries for the attack, and every time they were hurled back with deadly slaughter.
Alter this the enemy succeeded in drawing so close a cordon round the place that no more succours could reach it, and the end was but a matter of time. The day before it came Dragut, who, with his usual intrepidity, was standing in the midst of a hot fire, was struck on the side of the head by a stone dislodged from a wall by a cannon-ball.
There were two things in which the Knights were supremely fortunate on this occasion: the first was that they had La Valette as Grand Master, the second that Dragut was not in supreme command of the Turks, and that the siege had opened before he arrived upon the scene.
Dragut!" pealed the war-cry of the corsairs; foot by foot and yard by yard that spearhead of dauntless dare-devils pressed onwards into the packed masses of the "Africans," who, fighting stubbornly, nevertheless were borne back by the fury of the terrible onslaught.
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