Yet whether it was some unexpected effect of tiredness, or some strange blessedness, the knights and the Spanish infantrymen ranged on the walls of Elmo fought like veterans of a thousand wars yet with the fire of fresh troops, and the Janizaries themselves could not make headway far over the two bridges nor up the fort’s sheer walls. Cannon fire continued to erupt out of the darkness, huge tongues of flame blaring suddenly out of the blackness that cloaked Mount Sciberras, and balls hurtle into the southern walls, yet to little avail if no men could follow it. The Spaniards formed close shoulder-to-shoulder ranks of long pikes and halberds, and the Janizaries repeatedly fell back, once their muskets were fired, saying that to run on was to run onto a dragon’s teeth. They themselves had always despised the pike as the weapon of the peasant, and refused to use it. Now they were paying for that arrogance.
The Turks were driven back from both new bridges, and once they had lost those, they made a swift and typically orderly retreat to their forward trenches to regroup. In the command tent of Işak Pasha, Janizary General, there was talk of bringing up one of the siege towers with its tall drop-bridge. But it could be moved only slowly over the rough ground, and the Christian guns would have plenty of time to blast it apart before it reached the edge of the ditch.
Then from beyond the forward trench there came a wild hubbub and howling.
‘What in Shaitan’s name …’ said Işak Pasha, standing.
It was Lanfreducci who led the crazed counter-attack, the Italian Chevalier shouting volubly and swinging his great Milanese two-hander over his head all the while. The Janizaries, pulling back, were astonished to see a small group of knights, red surcoats dark in the night, pursuing them out over the bridge.
‘To the trench!’ cried the Turkish officer. ‘Recharge your muskets and be ready for those mad dogs of Christendom!’
What hornets’ nest had they stirred up now?
Other knights paused only to rub their faces with earth and coat their armour hurriedly as best they could with more earth and spit to dull the gleam. And then within moments of their being under attack, they were dashing across the open ground to the right-hand end of the Janizaries’ forward trench. Luigi Broglia sent more after them.
Smith and Stanley went with Lanfreducci, firing on the fleeing, bewildered Janizaries, and then slamming down into the dust at the run, skidding forward, reloading their guns as fast as they could, before getting up and running again. Others brought brass firebombs and hoops, and coming to the head of the trench, fired them up and tossed them down upon the startled upturned faces of the Turks. A knight was shot at short range and spun and fell down into the trench, and then Smith and Stanley, the first knights with muskets to arrive, knelt swiftly at the head of the trench and shouldered their guns and let them loose. Medrano and De Guaras followed, firing the same, and instantly the Janizary trench was a shouting chaos, men scrabbling back into each other, knocking their comrades down, suddenly outflanked, all order gone and their trench being rolled up by these crazed, vastly outnumbered Christian musketeers.
‘Form a caracole!’ roared Stanley. ‘A levasse! The infantryman’s formation, be not proud, brothers! Leave your swords at your sides and keep reloading!’
Faces black with gunpowder, clambering awkwardly over the slain in front of them, the knights continued their extraordinary progress down the forward trench, in a repeated volley and pair formation. There was no room for them to retreat to the back of the column once they had fired, as was usual, so Smith and Stanley simply dropped down, and Medrano and De Guaras ran forwards over their prostrate bodies, knelt and fired. Only twenty feet away, two more Janizaries died, and another behind was disarmed by one of the balls continuing on. Never expecting such a counter-attack, they had built their trench dead straight, meaning there was no cornering for cover, and making this enfilading fire doubly murderous.
Medrano and De Guaras lay flat and two more arquebusiers moved over them, firing from the hip. Lanfreducci bellowed somewhere behind that he hadn’t brought a gun, and then in the brief moment that two of his fellow knights were reloading, he dashed onward and dropped down into the trench only two or three feet behind the scrabbling Janizary fugitives, sheathed his two-handed sword in the scabbard strapped across his back, and snatched up one of the guns of the fallen. One turned and hacked angrily at him, but he butted him hard in the face with the Turkish musket and clubbed him to the ground. Then he vaulted out of the side of the trench and sprinted back to his comrades. The moment he was out of the trench, there came two more shots and the Janizaries continued to be mown down.
Fire, drop, reload, fire, drop. Ramrod, wadding, powder, ball, ramrod. Check your matchlock or blow your wheel lock clean again, shoulder arms, brace, fire, hear the steel wheel whirr and fizz, the powder crackle and then bang, feel the big gun rear and recoil against you. Ignore your bruised shoulder, feeling like steak under a hammer. And no time to see who you hit. Drop, get walked over, kneel up. Ramrod, wadding, powder, ball, ramrod …
The advancing column, spitting out two arquebus balls every three or four seconds, was like a lethal snake uncoiling down the trench, and even a soldiery as fine and disciplined as the Janizaries reeled and broke and struggled to regain order. Their officer had been one of the first to die, which didn’t help. They piled back against each other like rats, and every shot could not fail to find a mark in Turkish flesh. Soon the knights were wading through a mulch of red earth.
Yet the resilience of the Turks was extraordinary, their capacity to take punishment and then hit back never to be underestimated. Some gallant souls who tried to run at the smoking, spitting guns of the knights with swords drawn, or paused to reload their own muskets, were quickly targeted and shot down. As they had always known — numbers aside — these accursed Knights of Saint John were every bit a match for them, in every respect. In cunning, ruthlessness, stark courage, there was nothing between them. In religion only did they differ from each other.
The moment of crazed counter-attack could not last.
A cry went up. It was Lanfreducci who first spotted the ominous white wave arising out of the darkness to their right. Coming up from the second trench in strict order, muskets held at hip height, and advancing through the night. A drum beat began to sound the slow, sonorous, unnerving dead-march rhythm of the Janizaries, feared from the windy plains of Hungary to the palm-fringed shores of India.
For a moment the knights were undismayed even by this prospect. Twelve of them in a trench with two hundred men ahead and another three hundred approaching from the right. Smith and Stanley took another shot forward, Medrano and De Guaras turned their guns over the back wall of the trench and fired into the oncoming line. One fell, one turned, but the rest continued at their steady march, implacable, heads held high, muskets lowered, only to fire when the order came. Truly princes among men, for all their infidel faith.
‘Time to pull back!’ cried Lanfreducci. ‘We are nearly surrounded!’
How they made it back out of the trench and over the rough ground and across the cavalier bridge into Elmo without another loss seemed afterwards a miracle. Reloading and ramming as they ran, turning and dropping to one knee, firing into the oncoming horde, as if a single ball could stop that mass of hundreds, now at a battlefield run. Smith pulled his horse-pistol from his belt where it sat pre-loaded and the wheel spun, sparks flew and the huge handgun roared. A Janizary fell to the earth clutching his thigh, spouting bright gore from a severed artery. Another stumbled over him but more came on.