May 11, 2025 • 49 mins
In The Crease (ITC) is where history, mystery, and the human condition collide. Hosted by J E DOUBLE F, each episode blends storytelling, analysis, and dark humor to explore the strange, the forgotten, and the unsettlingly relevant.
🎧 New episodes release bi-weekly.
📅 Current Season: ITC Season 4 (Episodes 61–80).
🎧 New episodes release bi-weekly.
📅 Current Season: ITC Season 4 (Episodes 61–80).
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
M HM, streshold, omens, step, fruit passimpressive future. We are
(00:30):
not alone the time, think s S S The Crease.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Welcome back, my friends, to a brand new season of
End the Crease. I'm your host j E. Double f
and it is an absolute honor to have you here
kicking off season four. And if you're tuning in after
the one the Only Chronymics awesome show, I appreciate it.
I'm actually going to I'm not gonna say, touch on
a similar subject, but right along the same path, it seems. Now.
(02:45):
If you've been with us before, you know I try
not to bring lectures. We try to dive head first
into some of the mystery, some legends, histories, battles. We
may have our sword drawn or shield raised, and often
we'll usually have a life cold beer in our hand
while we do it. Today you're going to talk about
(03:05):
one of the most epic sieges in human history, battle
for the very future of Christian Europe hung by a thread,
a story where a handful of warrior, monks, fishermen, townspeople
all stood alone against what was then one of the
mightiest and not the mightiest empire on earth. It is
(03:26):
a story of faith, of courage, and the kind of
stubbornness that can move mountains or in this case, stop
an empire cold. So go grab your drink of choice,
your rosary if you want, and probably a sword. You're
going to fry and probably need all three for this
is the Siege of Malta. A picture the Mediterranean Sea
(03:52):
in fifteen sixty five. The sun is rising over endless
blue waters. Gulls are riding the thermals, the smell of
salt and citrus is in the air. Fishing boats are
bobbing lazily along the harbors. Somewhere out beyond the horizon
(04:14):
danger in the east, the sprawling mate of the Ottoman Empire,
the largest and most fearsome force on the planet at
the time, was flexing its muscles eager conquest. In the west,
you have Christian Europe, fractured, uncertain and trembling, and perched
(04:36):
between them a tiny speck of a rock called Malta,
but the size of a mid sized country fair, albeit
usually with more cannons and definitely usually weigh more rosaries.
Malta really wasn't much the look at rugged, rocky, wind swept.
(04:58):
It had a few scattered villages, some line livestock, a
couple fortified towns clinging to its craggy coastline. But strategically,
Malta was everything tagger pointed straight at the heart of
the Ottoman naval power in the Mediterranean. It was a
launch pad, it was a roadblock, it was a statement
(05:23):
you shall not pass. And right there holding the line
for the Knights of Saint John, the Hospitallers a warrior
monks who had spent centuries battling in the Crusades. They
weren't just professional soldiers, they were holy warriors, sworn to poverty, chastity, obedience,
(05:45):
and stabbing heretics in the face when necessary, you know.
For the Lord at the head of the order stood
Jean Patil de Vllet, nearly seventy years old, short, weathered,
(06:05):
as tough as a two dollars steak left out in
the Maltie Son. This man wasn't made in a palace.
He was made in blood, in sweat water, salt water.
Captured as a young knight, he spent a year chained
to an Ottoman galley, rowing twenty hours a day under
a task master's whip. He survived, and he never forgot.
(06:34):
When he became Grandmaster Deve that knew Malta was a target,
He knew the Ottomans weren't done, and he spent every
waking hour preparing for the storm he saw coming, long
before anyone else did. He rebuilt fortifications, He stockpile grain, water, ammunition.
(06:55):
He trained his knights in militia, not just to fight
to endure, because he understood something the world had forgotten.
Victory doesn't go to the biggest army, He goes to
the last man standing. Meanwhile, back in Constantinople, the Sultan
(07:17):
had his own ace of his sleeve. His name was Dragon,
the drawn Sword of Islam. If he mixed say Blackbeard, Hannibal,
and probably an angry grizzly bear, you'd probably get close
to this gentleman. He wasn't just a pirate, he was
a living legend. He had burned coastal cities to the ground,
captured fortresses everyone else thought impregnable, and made the Mediterranean
(07:41):
his personal playground. When Dragon said jump, the sea itself
would flinch. And now, well, now he had Malta in
his sights. This wasn't just going to be another raid.
This was going to be an extermination. Now a little
(08:07):
bit of a time out here because it's important. You
may get a little bit of a bigger picture. Like
I said, the Siege of Malta wasn't some random island scrap.
It was the front line in a global struggle between
Christianity and Islam. The Ottomans had already gobbled up Constantinople,
They steamrolled across Greece, the Balkans, most of Hungary. They
(08:29):
lead siege to Vienna once already, and they weren't done.
If Malta fell, Cecily would fall next, and after Sicily,
you'd have Italy, Spain, Granton, maybe even England itself. The
Pope knew it, The Kings of Europe knew it. Even Elizabeth,
(08:51):
the first sitting in Protestant England, admitted that if Malta went,
the whole continent could go up in flames. It really was,
that's serious. The spring of fifteen sixty five, the orders
spies in Constantinople start hearing whispers. A fleet is assembling,
(09:16):
thousands of soldiers are gathering, siege guns being loaded, and
the name on everyone's lips was Malta. Grandmaster Davillett got
word of this, and he knows this is that he
(09:36):
sends out urgent summons across Europe, come to Malta's defense.
Send men, send guns, send ships. Europe responded with a shrug.
Spain promises to send help eventually, maybe you know when
(10:00):
they get around to it. The Papal states wring their hands.
The French, Oh, the French are just too busy fighting
each other. It's like your house is on fire and
your neighbors are all standing outside arguing about who's hoose
is bigger. Malta is going to be on its own,
(10:29):
So the tiny island braces for the storm. On the
ramparts of Burgou, sing Gleis, Fort Saint Elmo, old cannons
are polished, walls are patched, and boys barely old enough
to hold a sword drill with sticks. In the town squares.
(10:49):
Priests are leading public prayers. Rosaries are clutched tight, Families
huddled together at night, listening for the distant thunder of
would be an guns. They know what's coming, and still
they're choosing to stand.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Then.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
On May eighteenth, fifteen sixty five, Maltese lookout standing atop
the limestone cliffs, spots sails on the horizon. Not just
a few ships, not even a dozen hundreds of ships,
an entire city of war afloat and bearing down on them, galleys,
(11:38):
galleyon supply ships, troop carriers, flags snapping in the Mediterranean wind,
red crescent banner shining in the sunlight. A true juggernaut.
It is said that the sea itself seemed to darken
under the mass of this fleet Ottoman invasion force. No
(12:03):
other way to put it is colossal. Contemporary reports claimed
forty thousand men, special units to the cavalry, the heavy
artillery crews, corsairs, even irregular infantry. Now, of course modern
(12:23):
historians debate these numbers, but even that twenty five to
thirty thousand is still enough to make you rethink your
life choices. On Malta side, not six thousand defenders total,
maybe maybe a little more, maybe a little less, but
all only five hundred of them are actual nights. The
(12:49):
rest other mercenaries, local militia, villagers with rusty muskets and
kitchen knives. This is real David and Goliath hours. The
Ottoman fleet drops anchor at the bay, the soldiers disembark,
(13:12):
a living tide of men, horses, cannons, siege towers, trenches, tents.
You have Ottoman engineers that start drawing up plans. Mustapha
Pasha and army commander and Pyali Pasha the Admiral confer
over maps. Their target is, of course obvious Fort Saint Elmo,
(13:34):
which is guarding the entrance to the Grand Harbor itself.
If you take Elmo, the rest of Malta will fall
like Domino's dragott arriving late with his corsairs, agrees they're
going to crack open Malta like a crab shell. They're
going to stomp the knights into the dirt well. That
(13:59):
was the plan. Meanwhile, inside the walls of Burgu and Sglia,
the Grand Master gathers his men. He looks them in
the eyes. He knows most of them will not survive.
He knows he himself might not live to see another sunrise.
(14:22):
And still he stands before them with an unshakable certainty
of a man who has already made peace with God.
It is not walls that defend the city, he tells them,
it is the men who stand upon them. And so
(14:44):
it begins the greatest siege of the sixteenth century. It
tests not just of arms, but of faith. The fate
of Malta. The fate of Europe, the fate of Christianity itself,
will be decided on these sun baked rocks by a
few thousand brave soldier refused to kneel. The guns would
(15:13):
open up on May twenty fourth, fifteen sixty five, a
deep rumble that rolled across the island like distant thunder.
The Ottoman cannons had spoken, and their message was clear,
surrender or be buried here. Fort Cenolmo, a small star
(15:36):
shaped fork jutting out onto the rocky peninsula at the
mouth of the Grand Harbor, was about to become the
most brutal, bloody, and stubbornly heroic battleground of the entire siege.
The Ottomans believed they would take it in a week.
It held for over a month. It cost them their
(15:58):
best soldiers, the greatest admiral, and some would say their
chance at victory.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Now.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Once again, numbers are not always accurate. We're going by
contemporary letters and notes, and they vary from time to time.
And inside Saint Nomo's battered walls stood one hundred and
twenty Knights of Saint John and in an additional five
hundred soldiers Spanish, Italian and Maltese militia really, for the
(16:34):
most part, ordinary men facing extraordinary odds. Every day, under
an unrelenting sun, they endured a hurricane of steel. The
Ottomans had dragged over sixty siege guns into position, pounding
Saint Omo from three sides. The air was a storm
(16:56):
of stone, splinters, dust and lying iron. The ground would
shake like an earthquake. Walls would crumble faster than they
could even be repaired. Yet still they fault every night
under cover of darkness. Wall boats feried reinforcements and supplies
across the Grand Harbor from Burgu volunteers. Because everyone knew
(17:19):
what sant Elmo had become a death sentence. These were
not men who counted their lives too dearly. These were
knights who had sworn oaths they minute. Among them was
Commander Metherne Remaguas, a Corsican knight who had already built
(17:41):
a reputation for fearless, almost reckless raids against the Ottomans,
a man so stubborn that when he asked what his
plan was if the Turk broke through the wall, he
supposedly just grinned and said, then we kill them inside
as well. Sometimes simple plans are the best plans. Now,
(18:05):
the Ottomans, they tried everything, mass bombardments, direct assaults, tunnel attacks,
scaling ladders, fire ships sent against the harbor walls, and
every time the defenders threw them back. By June, Dragon
(18:27):
himself had arrived on the scene. The living legend was here,
the man the Christian world feared, like the coming of
the third plague. He looked at the battered wreckage of
Saint Almo, barely more at this point than a pile
of stones at this point, and just sneered. This should
(18:48):
have been over weeks ago, he would proclaim. But turns
out throwing rocks at monks wasn't as easy as it looked.
Draggitt personally supervised the artillery. He adjusted the cannon placements,
he ordered new trench's doug He was determined to finish
(19:11):
the job. It would be the last siege he ever commanded.
On June eighteenth, while directing siege operations, Draggitt was st
struck in the head by a flying shard of masonry.
(19:36):
Now accounts vary. Some say it was from Ottoman friendly fire,
Others claim it was actually a lucky shot from Fort
Saint Angelo across the harbor. Either way, the Terror of
the Mediterranean was mortally wounded. He did linger for days, raging, cursing,
(20:00):
and then he died. Now, imagine being the best siege
commander on Earth, then getting bunked in the oblivion by
a chunk of limestone shut from a ford that was
supposed to be dead two weeks ago. Advanced Ottoman tactics
die to random criticals. It's actually kind of poetic in
(20:21):
a way. But even without drag it, the Ottomans would
press harder. By the twenty third, Saint Elmo was a ruin.
The walls were gone, the defenses shattered, the men inside wounded, dying, exhausted,
yet refusing to yield. They would make confession that morning
(20:47):
they received communion. They would kiss their swords in their
cross and took their places on the rubble, knowing it
would be for the last time, and the Ottomans launched
their final assault. Waves of yata sorry surged over the
(21:12):
shattered ramparts. Hand to hand combat erupted it in ruins,
pike against sword, dagger against musket, button knights, bleeding from
half a dozen wounds, still fighting two or three men
at a time every foot of ground men would die screaming.
(21:32):
It kind of unfair to call it a war. It
was a slaughter. And still the Knights made the Ottomans
pay for every inch, until finally there were no more
defenders left to fight. Fort Saint Elmo fell, the Ottoman
(21:58):
banner rose over a mountain of corpse. Not one night
escaped alive. A few severely wounded survivors were dragged away
in chains, only be tortured and summarily executed shortly thereafter.
It had taken the Ottoman Empire four full weeks and
the lives of over six thousand of their best soldiers
(22:20):
to conquer a single ruined fort defended by a few
hundred starving, bleeding men. They technically won, but it was
at a cost that would end up haunting them for
the rest of the siege, and raised by a stubborn resistance.
Mustapha Pasha ordered a gruesome message sent to the remaining
(22:41):
defenders in Burgu and Singlad. Bodies of the captured Knights
were mutilated, beheaded, and crucified on makeshift crosses and floated
across the harbor as bloody warnings to the still defiant Christians.
(23:02):
The grand Master saw sight that was presented to them,
he made his own reply. He took every Ottoman prisoner
held by the knights and he executed them. He then
had their heads stuffed into cannons and fired them back
(23:26):
into the Turkish lines. The message was received. The fall
of Saint Alma was a tragedy, but it was also
kind of a miracle of resistance, because by holding out
(23:46):
for so long, the defenders had actually ended up buying
precious time, time for the main fortifications to be strengthened,
time for hope of reinforcements from Sicily, time to sapped
the strength of the Ottoman army, And as last echoes
of cannon fire faded from the shattered ruins of Saint Elmo,
(24:09):
both sides understood something deep in their bones, the real battle.
It was just beginning.
Speaker 4 (24:44):
Whispers and stone, blood in the rays, ashes and prayer
still weird in Maine, cold with shadder the bearers all
Still we rise within.
Speaker 5 (25:03):
These broken laws, children, the fire.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
Sisters of night, bound by the oaths, cling into light
steel cracks around us.
Speaker 4 (25:53):
Yet still we call God in hope within these broken walls.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
So it has.
Speaker 5 (26:18):
All said, well, not in the war.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
You will love.
Speaker 5 (26:34):
R on, Shake, Stand Still, Rise.
Speaker 6 (26:41):
It's broken, last, Broken, and It's broken Lost.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
And Welcome back, by the way. That song will be
releasing tonight on Spotify and all other great music places,
So if you like it, seek out a cosmic bard
over on your favorite music source. We moved to Act three.
(27:49):
With Fort Saint Elmo now reduced to a ruin, the
Ottoman focus shifts entirely onto the night's last two strongholds,
quartified towns of Burgu and Sinclia, anchored by Fort Saint
Angelo and Fort Saint Michael, two narrow peninsulas jutting into
the Grand Harbor. Two desperate clusters of the fenders, one
(28:14):
last stand. The Ottomans wheel their heavy artillery forward. They
will dig their trenches, fill their firing platforms, and lay
siege lines tight again around the forts. The knights well.
(28:35):
They will dig deeper, reinforce the walls, set traps, and
prepare boiling oil and pitch. Everyone knows what's coming. No quarter,
no surrender, no mercy. One July fifteenth, the Ottomans make
(28:56):
their next big move, a too pronged assault, carefully plan
and perfectly executed, and almost brilliant. See the Turk secretly
haul hundred small boats over land to the calm side
of the harbor behind Sainclia. At dawn, they launched a surprise,
amphibious attack, aiming to hit the Knights from behind. With
(29:20):
a thousand more Ottoman soldiers attack Fort Saint Michael head
on from the landward side. It really is a classic
pincer move. Get him in front and in back, smash
them flat and open up harbor. Only one one little
(29:41):
problem with this plan. The Grandmaster dave Lette had gotten
wind of this planned because if there's one thing the
Knights are really, really really good at besides stabbing people
with pointy ends, it was spying. De Levette had ordered
(30:08):
emergency defenses built on singles sea ward side, spiked barriers,
hidden cannon batteries, sharpened stakes in the shallows. So when
the Ottoman flotilla came gliding in that morning, quiet nikki,
full of soldiers ready to spill blood, he sailed right
(30:32):
in to a kill zone. The hidden cannons of Fort
Saint Angelo opened fire, boom, boom, boom. One shot after
another ripped through the small boats like an angry god,
hurling lightning bolts. The water turned red bodies in wreckage,
(30:57):
floated where an invading army had been moments before. Four
of the one hundred Ottoman boats, only one managed to
limp back to safety, one out of the hundred. Now,
imagine rolling up with your you know, your secret navy
(31:21):
seal team and your grand surprise attack gets annihilated because
some cranky old monks figured out how to hide some
cannons behind some rocks. This really isn't just mission failed,
this is you die before the tutorial ended levels of failure.
(31:42):
But meanwhile, on land, the Ottomans launched a savage frontal
assault on Fort Saint Michael. Thousands charged forward under a
hail of musketballs, of arrows, and of course that boiling pitch.
But the outer walls crumbled, Defenders would fall and to
(32:04):
hand combat raged across the breeches. For a moment, it
seemed the Ottomans would break through, but yet once again
the Knights would rally reinforcements spent it across a floating
(32:24):
bridge from Burgu. Wounded men dragged themselves back onto the wall. Civilians,
women and children through rocks and boiling water at the attackers. Somehow,
by noon, Turks had been beaten back. It ended up
(32:48):
being a slaughter for them. The Ottoman army had suffered
another crushing defeet and the tiny island fortress smell that
still stood. But the worst was yet to come.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Through.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Late July and early August, the siege turned into a nightmare.
Constant bombardment, disease ripping through both camps, summer heat turning
Malta into a baking hellscape. The air its tank of
death and of gunpowder and of rot. You see, there
(33:38):
was no clean bandages left, no medicine, no food except
salted meat and a little bit of hope. And still
the defenders did not break. They could not break. Then
(34:03):
crazy desperate move that might have saved everything. Night Captain
Vincenzo Anastagi, commanding a small cavalry force up in Medina,
decided he had enough sitting around, so he took about
one hundred horsemen galloped straight into the lightly defended Ottoman
(34:25):
field camp had burned it to the ground. Not a
very huge army, just well a handful of mounted lunatics
that had torches r at the ready. Now that raid
(34:46):
caused chaos, panic would ripple through the Turkish lines. Rumors
began to spread that the long awaited Christian relief force
had arrived. The timing really couldn't have been any better,
because on the seventh of August Mustapha Pasha had launched
(35:07):
his greatest assault yet. Thousands began swarming Burgu and Sglia,
reaching the outer defenses, fighting in the rubble. At one
critical moment, the Ottoman standard was raised over a section
of Burgu's walls. The Knights well, the Knights were on
(35:32):
verge of total collapse. But then the Turks heard the shouts,
the fires, the chaos in their rear. They fought. They
thought an army was descending on their camp. They panicked.
(35:54):
They broke off the assault. They fled back toward their ships.
They actually abandoned the walls they had fought so hard
to climb. The Knights of Saint John held the line.
Speaker 5 (36:12):
Again.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
It wasn't pretty, it wasn't glamorous, but it was a victory,
and perhaps for the first time, the most scary thought
crept into their minds. The defenders started to believe. September
(36:43):
fifteen sixty five, the siege had dragged out on for
nearly four brutal, horrible months. The Ottoman forces one is
so proud so unstoppable, are now exhausted, half starved, racked
(37:05):
with dysentery, demoralized by defeat after defeat, and still the
Knights of Malta simply refuse to fall. But the one
thing neither side can ever win against time, Time is
(37:29):
running out for both sides. The Ottomans know it, the
Knights know it, and then help arrives. On September seventh,
(37:53):
fifteen sixty five, the long awaited Christian relief force, the
Grand So Corso, lands at Saint Bay with about eight
thousand soldiers, Spaniards, Italians, Maltese volunteers, one and all armed
to the teeth, singing hymns and carrying the banners of Christendom.
(38:17):
And they're also probably ready to punch an Ottoman or two,
just on general principle. When the word of this landing
reached the Ottoman camp, Mustapha Pasha panicked. He orders a
rapid retreat towards their ships. Stiege guns are abandoned, tense, burned,
(38:39):
wounded were left behind. The Ottomans are done. But then
he began to second guess himself. He realizes, even depleted,
his force is still outnumbered. Afresh Christian troops. Maybe, just
(39:02):
maybe he can rally his men for one last battle,
one last roll of the dice. And on September eleventh,
fifteen sixty five, Yes we know that date and month
very well, the Ottomans and the relief force decided to
(39:24):
get it on. Outside the shattered villages near the bay,
under a blazing sun, the two armies meet in open battle.
The Christian troops, fresh furious fighting for Multas survival, slam
into the weary, sick, and desperate Ottoman soldiers. Calvary charges
(39:49):
shatter Ottoman lines. Knights in full armor hack their way forward,
shouting battle cries that haven't been heard since the days
of Jerusalem. The Ottoman army breaks completely. The retreat becomes
(40:10):
a route and then a massacre. By nightfall, the survivors
are scrambling onto ships, desperate to get away from the
cursed island that devoured their strengths, their pride, and their hope.
(40:31):
Malta had held. The siege was over, but the island
is now in ruin. Fields were burned, villages, gutted, fortresses
smashed to rubble. Of the original defenders barely half survived.
(40:55):
But Malta is free, and perhaps more importantly, Europe is safe.
Grandmaster Davilette, the iron soul of Malta's defense, falls to
his knees in the ruins of Berghey, raising his hands
to the heaven and giving thanks to God, not for survival,
(41:18):
but for the honor of having stood firm. Europe erupts
in celebration. Bells were ringing from Madrid to Rome to London.
The Knights of Malta become legends, living proof that faith, courage,
and brotherhood can try, can stand triumphant against the most
(41:42):
impossible of odds. Now the cost was staggering. Over ten
thousand Ottomen were dead, thousands of more were wounded, sick,
or missing. Half of Malta's civilian population were killed or displaced,
(42:04):
and thousands of Christian soldiers were lost. Now Malta didn't
win because they were lucky. They won because how they
out bled out fault and probably even out prayed the
strongest empire on earth. In this aftermath, with aid pouring
(42:30):
in from Europe, the Nights set to rebuilding. On the
ruins of Mount the Skibius. They built a new fortified city, Vletta,
named after the man who had led them through fire
and death. And in the legend, sadly he would not
live to see his city completed, where he died in
(42:53):
fifteen sixty eight. But a spirit does remain in the
stained stone walls and narrow streets, a monument to a
faith that refused to fall, a fortress built by survivors,
a warning to all tyrants. Here we stand. The Siege
(43:22):
of Malta had ended, the Ottomans had been repelled. Christian
Europe had been saved for a time, and the echoes
of that battle still permeate and ring through history. Now,
while the guns have fallen silent, the banners have been lowered,
(43:45):
and the ships have sailed away into history, we still
know that Malta stands victorious. But even as the stones
of Burghu and Singlea cooled under the Mediterranean sun, the
deeper battle, the one that really matters, well, that never
(44:05):
truly ended, because while the armies change, the siege continues.
In fifteen sixty five, the Knights of Saint John stood
on the walls for Christianity, outnumbered, outgunned, half starved, and
(44:26):
they fought not just for themselves, but for something eternal.
They fought for their faith, for their families, for a
world where light could still have a place to shine.
Now today the cannons are, of course quieter. The swords
(44:50):
have now been traded for words, for laws, for cultural
battles waged in courtrooms and classrooms into city streets instead
of within the city walls. But if you think Christianity
still isn't under siege, you haven't been paying attention. Look around.
(45:13):
Faith is mocked, truth is twisted, morality is ridiculed. There
are still places in this world where Christians face real persecution, prison, exile,
even death. And here in lands at once rang with
church bells at every hour, the slow siege of cynicism
(45:37):
and secularism chips away at the fortress walls. They tell
you to kneel, They tell you to compromise, to make
peace with the world, no matter the cost. But the
(45:58):
lesson of Malta is clear. Do not yield when the
enemy surrounds you, When the walls are battered and every
voice tells you it's hopeless, That is when you need
to stand tall. Because what matters most, what's worth fighting for. Well,
(46:24):
it was never supposed to be easy to defend. John
de Vilette and his Knights didn't hold Manta because they
thought they could win. They held it because it was right,
because surrender meant something even worse than death. It meant
(46:48):
the loss of their soul. And today, whether you're defending
your faith in a hostile room, raising your children to
know truth in a world that lies, or simply holding
on the hope when everyone around you calls you a
fool standing on your own walls, let me tell you something.
(47:16):
A few hundred blooded knights could stand against the greatest
empire on earth, then you, armed with faith, fortified by grace,
can stand too. I want to thank everyone for joining
me tonight or once again walking into the shadows of
(47:40):
history to find the fire that still burns today.
Speaker 5 (47:52):
This has.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
Been a great episode premiere, season four, episode sixty one
of Indcrease. I thank you all for tuning in when
and however you do. I am your host j E.
Double f and I will see you next time in
two weeks, or we'll dive in the deeper into the
(48:15):
stories that shaped us, challenged us, or God knows what.
Until then, if you have the faith, hold your faith
like a sword, guard your hope like a fortress, and
never ever good night, my friends. The
M HM, streshold, omens, step, fruit passimpressive future. We are
(00:30):
not alone the time, think s S S The Crease.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Welcome back, my friends, to a brand new season of
End the Crease. I'm your host j E. Double f
and it is an absolute honor to have you here
kicking off season four. And if you're tuning in after
the one the Only Chronymics awesome show, I appreciate it.
I'm actually going to I'm not gonna say, touch on
a similar subject, but right along the same path, it seems. Now.
(02:45):
If you've been with us before, you know I try
not to bring lectures. We try to dive head first
into some of the mystery, some legends, histories, battles. We
may have our sword drawn or shield raised, and often
we'll usually have a life cold beer in our hand
while we do it. Today you're going to talk about
(03:05):
one of the most epic sieges in human history, battle
for the very future of Christian Europe hung by a thread,
a story where a handful of warrior, monks, fishermen, townspeople
all stood alone against what was then one of the
mightiest and not the mightiest empire on earth. It is
(03:26):
a story of faith, of courage, and the kind of
stubbornness that can move mountains or in this case, stop
an empire cold. So go grab your drink of choice,
your rosary if you want, and probably a sword. You're
going to fry and probably need all three for this
is the Siege of Malta. A picture the Mediterranean Sea
(03:52):
in fifteen sixty five. The sun is rising over endless
blue waters. Gulls are riding the thermals, the smell of
salt and citrus is in the air. Fishing boats are
bobbing lazily along the harbors. Somewhere out beyond the horizon
(04:14):
danger in the east, the sprawling mate of the Ottoman Empire,
the largest and most fearsome force on the planet at
the time, was flexing its muscles eager conquest. In the west,
you have Christian Europe, fractured, uncertain and trembling, and perched
(04:36):
between them a tiny speck of a rock called Malta,
but the size of a mid sized country fair, albeit
usually with more cannons and definitely usually weigh more rosaries.
Malta really wasn't much the look at rugged, rocky, wind swept.
(04:58):
It had a few scattered villages, some line livestock, a
couple fortified towns clinging to its craggy coastline. But strategically,
Malta was everything tagger pointed straight at the heart of
the Ottoman naval power in the Mediterranean. It was a
launch pad, it was a roadblock, it was a statement
(05:23):
you shall not pass. And right there holding the line
for the Knights of Saint John, the Hospitallers a warrior
monks who had spent centuries battling in the Crusades. They
weren't just professional soldiers, they were holy warriors, sworn to poverty, chastity, obedience,
(05:45):
and stabbing heretics in the face when necessary, you know.
For the Lord at the head of the order stood
Jean Patil de Vllet, nearly seventy years old, short, weathered,
(06:05):
as tough as a two dollars steak left out in
the Maltie Son. This man wasn't made in a palace.
He was made in blood, in sweat water, salt water.
Captured as a young knight, he spent a year chained
to an Ottoman galley, rowing twenty hours a day under
a task master's whip. He survived, and he never forgot.
(06:34):
When he became Grandmaster Deve that knew Malta was a target,
He knew the Ottomans weren't done, and he spent every
waking hour preparing for the storm he saw coming, long
before anyone else did. He rebuilt fortifications, He stockpile grain, water, ammunition.
(06:55):
He trained his knights in militia, not just to fight
to endure, because he understood something the world had forgotten.
Victory doesn't go to the biggest army, He goes to
the last man standing. Meanwhile, back in Constantinople, the Sultan
(07:17):
had his own ace of his sleeve. His name was Dragon,
the drawn Sword of Islam. If he mixed say Blackbeard, Hannibal,
and probably an angry grizzly bear, you'd probably get close
to this gentleman. He wasn't just a pirate, he was
a living legend. He had burned coastal cities to the ground,
captured fortresses everyone else thought impregnable, and made the Mediterranean
(07:41):
his personal playground. When Dragon said jump, the sea itself
would flinch. And now, well, now he had Malta in
his sights. This wasn't just going to be another raid.
This was going to be an extermination. Now a little
(08:07):
bit of a time out here because it's important. You
may get a little bit of a bigger picture. Like
I said, the Siege of Malta wasn't some random island scrap.
It was the front line in a global struggle between
Christianity and Islam. The Ottomans had already gobbled up Constantinople,
They steamrolled across Greece, the Balkans, most of Hungary. They
(08:29):
lead siege to Vienna once already, and they weren't done.
If Malta fell, Cecily would fall next, and after Sicily,
you'd have Italy, Spain, Granton, maybe even England itself. The
Pope knew it, The Kings of Europe knew it. Even Elizabeth,
(08:51):
the first sitting in Protestant England, admitted that if Malta went,
the whole continent could go up in flames. It really was,
that's serious. The spring of fifteen sixty five, the orders
spies in Constantinople start hearing whispers. A fleet is assembling,
(09:16):
thousands of soldiers are gathering, siege guns being loaded, and
the name on everyone's lips was Malta. Grandmaster Davillett got
word of this, and he knows this is that he
(09:36):
sends out urgent summons across Europe, come to Malta's defense.
Send men, send guns, send ships. Europe responded with a shrug.
Spain promises to send help eventually, maybe you know when
(10:00):
they get around to it. The Papal states wring their hands.
The French, Oh, the French are just too busy fighting
each other. It's like your house is on fire and
your neighbors are all standing outside arguing about who's hoose
is bigger. Malta is going to be on its own,
(10:29):
So the tiny island braces for the storm. On the
ramparts of Burgou, sing Gleis, Fort Saint Elmo, old cannons
are polished, walls are patched, and boys barely old enough
to hold a sword drill with sticks. In the town squares.
(10:49):
Priests are leading public prayers. Rosaries are clutched tight, Families
huddled together at night, listening for the distant thunder of
would be an guns. They know what's coming, and still
they're choosing to stand.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Then.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
On May eighteenth, fifteen sixty five, Maltese lookout standing atop
the limestone cliffs, spots sails on the horizon. Not just
a few ships, not even a dozen hundreds of ships,
an entire city of war afloat and bearing down on them, galleys,
(11:38):
galleyon supply ships, troop carriers, flags snapping in the Mediterranean wind,
red crescent banner shining in the sunlight. A true juggernaut.
It is said that the sea itself seemed to darken
under the mass of this fleet Ottoman invasion force. No
(12:03):
other way to put it is colossal. Contemporary reports claimed
forty thousand men, special units to the cavalry, the heavy
artillery crews, corsairs, even irregular infantry. Now, of course modern
(12:23):
historians debate these numbers, but even that twenty five to
thirty thousand is still enough to make you rethink your
life choices. On Malta side, not six thousand defenders total,
maybe maybe a little more, maybe a little less, but
all only five hundred of them are actual nights. The
(12:49):
rest other mercenaries, local militia, villagers with rusty muskets and
kitchen knives. This is real David and Goliath hours. The
Ottoman fleet drops anchor at the bay, the soldiers disembark,
(13:12):
a living tide of men, horses, cannons, siege towers, trenches, tents.
You have Ottoman engineers that start drawing up plans. Mustapha
Pasha and army commander and Pyali Pasha the Admiral confer
over maps. Their target is, of course obvious Fort Saint Elmo,
(13:34):
which is guarding the entrance to the Grand Harbor itself.
If you take Elmo, the rest of Malta will fall
like Domino's dragott arriving late with his corsairs, agrees they're
going to crack open Malta like a crab shell. They're
going to stomp the knights into the dirt well. That
(13:59):
was the plan. Meanwhile, inside the walls of Burgu and Sglia,
the Grand Master gathers his men. He looks them in
the eyes. He knows most of them will not survive.
He knows he himself might not live to see another sunrise.
(14:22):
And still he stands before them with an unshakable certainty
of a man who has already made peace with God.
It is not walls that defend the city, he tells them,
it is the men who stand upon them. And so
(14:44):
it begins the greatest siege of the sixteenth century. It
tests not just of arms, but of faith. The fate
of Malta. The fate of Europe, the fate of Christianity itself,
will be decided on these sun baked rocks by a
few thousand brave soldier refused to kneel. The guns would
(15:13):
open up on May twenty fourth, fifteen sixty five, a
deep rumble that rolled across the island like distant thunder.
The Ottoman cannons had spoken, and their message was clear,
surrender or be buried here. Fort Cenolmo, a small star
(15:36):
shaped fork jutting out onto the rocky peninsula at the
mouth of the Grand Harbor, was about to become the
most brutal, bloody, and stubbornly heroic battleground of the entire siege.
The Ottomans believed they would take it in a week.
It held for over a month. It cost them their
(15:58):
best soldiers, the greatest admiral, and some would say their
chance at victory.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Now.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Once again, numbers are not always accurate. We're going by
contemporary letters and notes, and they vary from time to time.
And inside Saint Nomo's battered walls stood one hundred and
twenty Knights of Saint John and in an additional five
hundred soldiers Spanish, Italian and Maltese militia really, for the
(16:34):
most part, ordinary men facing extraordinary odds. Every day, under
an unrelenting sun, they endured a hurricane of steel. The
Ottomans had dragged over sixty siege guns into position, pounding
Saint Omo from three sides. The air was a storm
(16:56):
of stone, splinters, dust and lying iron. The ground would
shake like an earthquake. Walls would crumble faster than they
could even be repaired. Yet still they fault every night
under cover of darkness. Wall boats feried reinforcements and supplies
across the Grand Harbor from Burgu volunteers. Because everyone knew
(17:19):
what sant Elmo had become a death sentence. These were
not men who counted their lives too dearly. These were
knights who had sworn oaths they minute. Among them was
Commander Metherne Remaguas, a Corsican knight who had already built
(17:41):
a reputation for fearless, almost reckless raids against the Ottomans,
a man so stubborn that when he asked what his
plan was if the Turk broke through the wall, he
supposedly just grinned and said, then we kill them inside
as well. Sometimes simple plans are the best plans. Now,
(18:05):
the Ottomans, they tried everything, mass bombardments, direct assaults, tunnel attacks,
scaling ladders, fire ships sent against the harbor walls, and
every time the defenders threw them back. By June, Dragon
(18:27):
himself had arrived on the scene. The living legend was here,
the man the Christian world feared, like the coming of
the third plague. He looked at the battered wreckage of
Saint Almo, barely more at this point than a pile
of stones at this point, and just sneered. This should
(18:48):
have been over weeks ago, he would proclaim. But turns
out throwing rocks at monks wasn't as easy as it looked.
Draggitt personally supervised the artillery. He adjusted the cannon placements,
he ordered new trench's doug He was determined to finish
(19:11):
the job. It would be the last siege he ever commanded.
On June eighteenth, while directing siege operations, Draggitt was st
struck in the head by a flying shard of masonry.
(19:36):
Now accounts vary. Some say it was from Ottoman friendly fire,
Others claim it was actually a lucky shot from Fort
Saint Angelo across the harbor. Either way, the Terror of
the Mediterranean was mortally wounded. He did linger for days, raging, cursing,
(20:00):
and then he died. Now, imagine being the best siege
commander on Earth, then getting bunked in the oblivion by
a chunk of limestone shut from a ford that was
supposed to be dead two weeks ago. Advanced Ottoman tactics
die to random criticals. It's actually kind of poetic in
(20:21):
a way. But even without drag it, the Ottomans would
press harder. By the twenty third, Saint Elmo was a ruin.
The walls were gone, the defenses shattered, the men inside wounded, dying, exhausted,
yet refusing to yield. They would make confession that morning
(20:47):
they received communion. They would kiss their swords in their
cross and took their places on the rubble, knowing it
would be for the last time, and the Ottomans launched
their final assault. Waves of yata sorry surged over the
(21:12):
shattered ramparts. Hand to hand combat erupted it in ruins,
pike against sword, dagger against musket, button knights, bleeding from
half a dozen wounds, still fighting two or three men
at a time every foot of ground men would die screaming.
(21:32):
It kind of unfair to call it a war. It
was a slaughter. And still the Knights made the Ottomans
pay for every inch, until finally there were no more
defenders left to fight. Fort Saint Elmo fell, the Ottoman
(21:58):
banner rose over a mountain of corpse. Not one night
escaped alive. A few severely wounded survivors were dragged away
in chains, only be tortured and summarily executed shortly thereafter.
It had taken the Ottoman Empire four full weeks and
the lives of over six thousand of their best soldiers
(22:20):
to conquer a single ruined fort defended by a few
hundred starving, bleeding men. They technically won, but it was
at a cost that would end up haunting them for
the rest of the siege, and raised by a stubborn resistance.
Mustapha Pasha ordered a gruesome message sent to the remaining
(22:41):
defenders in Burgu and Singlad. Bodies of the captured Knights
were mutilated, beheaded, and crucified on makeshift crosses and floated
across the harbor as bloody warnings to the still defiant Christians.
(23:02):
The grand Master saw sight that was presented to them,
he made his own reply. He took every Ottoman prisoner
held by the knights and he executed them. He then
had their heads stuffed into cannons and fired them back
(23:26):
into the Turkish lines. The message was received. The fall
of Saint Alma was a tragedy, but it was also
kind of a miracle of resistance, because by holding out
(23:46):
for so long, the defenders had actually ended up buying
precious time, time for the main fortifications to be strengthened,
time for hope of reinforcements from Sicily, time to sapped
the strength of the Ottoman army, And as last echoes
of cannon fire faded from the shattered ruins of Saint Elmo,
(24:09):
both sides understood something deep in their bones, the real battle.
It was just beginning.
Speaker 4 (24:44):
Whispers and stone, blood in the rays, ashes and prayer
still weird in Maine, cold with shadder the bearers all
Still we rise within.
Speaker 5 (25:03):
These broken laws, children, the fire.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
Sisters of night, bound by the oaths, cling into light
steel cracks around us.
Speaker 4 (25:53):
Yet still we call God in hope within these broken walls.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
So it has.
Speaker 5 (26:18):
All said, well, not in the war.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
You will love.
Speaker 5 (26:34):
R on, Shake, Stand Still, Rise.
Speaker 6 (26:41):
It's broken, last, Broken, and It's broken Lost.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
And Welcome back, by the way. That song will be
releasing tonight on Spotify and all other great music places,
So if you like it, seek out a cosmic bard
over on your favorite music source. We moved to Act three.
(27:49):
With Fort Saint Elmo now reduced to a ruin, the
Ottoman focus shifts entirely onto the night's last two strongholds,
quartified towns of Burgu and Sinclia, anchored by Fort Saint
Angelo and Fort Saint Michael, two narrow peninsulas jutting into
the Grand Harbor. Two desperate clusters of the fenders, one
(28:14):
last stand. The Ottomans wheel their heavy artillery forward. They
will dig their trenches, fill their firing platforms, and lay
siege lines tight again around the forts. The knights well.
(28:35):
They will dig deeper, reinforce the walls, set traps, and
prepare boiling oil and pitch. Everyone knows what's coming. No quarter,
no surrender, no mercy. One July fifteenth, the Ottomans make
(28:56):
their next big move, a too pronged assault, carefully plan
and perfectly executed, and almost brilliant. See the Turk secretly
haul hundred small boats over land to the calm side
of the harbor behind Sainclia. At dawn, they launched a surprise,
amphibious attack, aiming to hit the Knights from behind. With
(29:20):
a thousand more Ottoman soldiers attack Fort Saint Michael head
on from the landward side. It really is a classic
pincer move. Get him in front and in back, smash
them flat and open up harbor. Only one one little
(29:41):
problem with this plan. The Grandmaster dave Lette had gotten
wind of this planned because if there's one thing the
Knights are really, really really good at besides stabbing people
with pointy ends, it was spying. De Levette had ordered
(30:08):
emergency defenses built on singles sea ward side, spiked barriers,
hidden cannon batteries, sharpened stakes in the shallows. So when
the Ottoman flotilla came gliding in that morning, quiet nikki,
full of soldiers ready to spill blood, he sailed right
(30:32):
in to a kill zone. The hidden cannons of Fort
Saint Angelo opened fire, boom, boom, boom. One shot after
another ripped through the small boats like an angry god,
hurling lightning bolts. The water turned red bodies in wreckage,
(30:57):
floated where an invading army had been moments before. Four
of the one hundred Ottoman boats, only one managed to
limp back to safety, one out of the hundred. Now,
imagine rolling up with your you know, your secret navy
(31:21):
seal team and your grand surprise attack gets annihilated because
some cranky old monks figured out how to hide some
cannons behind some rocks. This really isn't just mission failed,
this is you die before the tutorial ended levels of failure.
(31:42):
But meanwhile, on land, the Ottomans launched a savage frontal
assault on Fort Saint Michael. Thousands charged forward under a
hail of musketballs, of arrows, and of course that boiling pitch.
But the outer walls crumbled, Defenders would fall and to
(32:04):
hand combat raged across the breeches. For a moment, it
seemed the Ottomans would break through, but yet once again
the Knights would rally reinforcements spent it across a floating
(32:24):
bridge from Burgu. Wounded men dragged themselves back onto the wall. Civilians,
women and children through rocks and boiling water at the attackers. Somehow,
by noon, Turks had been beaten back. It ended up
(32:48):
being a slaughter for them. The Ottoman army had suffered
another crushing defeet and the tiny island fortress smell that
still stood. But the worst was yet to come.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Through.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Late July and early August, the siege turned into a nightmare.
Constant bombardment, disease ripping through both camps, summer heat turning
Malta into a baking hellscape. The air its tank of
death and of gunpowder and of rot. You see, there
(33:38):
was no clean bandages left, no medicine, no food except
salted meat and a little bit of hope. And still
the defenders did not break. They could not break. Then
(34:03):
crazy desperate move that might have saved everything. Night Captain
Vincenzo Anastagi, commanding a small cavalry force up in Medina,
decided he had enough sitting around, so he took about
one hundred horsemen galloped straight into the lightly defended Ottoman
(34:25):
field camp had burned it to the ground. Not a
very huge army, just well a handful of mounted lunatics
that had torches r at the ready. Now that raid
(34:46):
caused chaos, panic would ripple through the Turkish lines. Rumors
began to spread that the long awaited Christian relief force
had arrived. The timing really couldn't have been any better,
because on the seventh of August Mustapha Pasha had launched
(35:07):
his greatest assault yet. Thousands began swarming Burgu and Sglia,
reaching the outer defenses, fighting in the rubble. At one
critical moment, the Ottoman standard was raised over a section
of Burgu's walls. The Knights well, the Knights were on
(35:32):
verge of total collapse. But then the Turks heard the shouts,
the fires, the chaos in their rear. They fought. They
thought an army was descending on their camp. They panicked.
(35:54):
They broke off the assault. They fled back toward their ships.
They actually abandoned the walls they had fought so hard
to climb. The Knights of Saint John held the line.
Speaker 5 (36:12):
Again.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
It wasn't pretty, it wasn't glamorous, but it was a victory,
and perhaps for the first time, the most scary thought
crept into their minds. The defenders started to believe. September
(36:43):
fifteen sixty five, the siege had dragged out on for
nearly four brutal, horrible months. The Ottoman forces one is
so proud so unstoppable, are now exhausted, half starved, racked
(37:05):
with dysentery, demoralized by defeat after defeat, and still the
Knights of Malta simply refuse to fall. But the one
thing neither side can ever win against time, Time is
(37:29):
running out for both sides. The Ottomans know it, the
Knights know it, and then help arrives. On September seventh,
(37:53):
fifteen sixty five, the long awaited Christian relief force, the
Grand So Corso, lands at Saint Bay with about eight
thousand soldiers, Spaniards, Italians, Maltese volunteers, one and all armed
to the teeth, singing hymns and carrying the banners of Christendom.
(38:17):
And they're also probably ready to punch an Ottoman or two,
just on general principle. When the word of this landing
reached the Ottoman camp, Mustapha Pasha panicked. He orders a
rapid retreat towards their ships. Stiege guns are abandoned, tense, burned,
(38:39):
wounded were left behind. The Ottomans are done. But then
he began to second guess himself. He realizes, even depleted,
his force is still outnumbered. Afresh Christian troops. Maybe, just
(39:02):
maybe he can rally his men for one last battle,
one last roll of the dice. And on September eleventh,
fifteen sixty five, Yes we know that date and month
very well, the Ottomans and the relief force decided to
(39:24):
get it on. Outside the shattered villages near the bay,
under a blazing sun, the two armies meet in open battle.
The Christian troops, fresh furious fighting for Multas survival, slam
into the weary, sick, and desperate Ottoman soldiers. Calvary charges
(39:49):
shatter Ottoman lines. Knights in full armor hack their way forward,
shouting battle cries that haven't been heard since the days
of Jerusalem. The Ottoman army breaks completely. The retreat becomes
(40:10):
a route and then a massacre. By nightfall, the survivors
are scrambling onto ships, desperate to get away from the
cursed island that devoured their strengths, their pride, and their hope.
(40:31):
Malta had held. The siege was over, but the island
is now in ruin. Fields were burned, villages, gutted, fortresses
smashed to rubble. Of the original defenders barely half survived.
(40:55):
But Malta is free, and perhaps more importantly, Europe is safe.
Grandmaster Davilette, the iron soul of Malta's defense, falls to
his knees in the ruins of Berghey, raising his hands
to the heaven and giving thanks to God, not for survival,
(41:18):
but for the honor of having stood firm. Europe erupts
in celebration. Bells were ringing from Madrid to Rome to London.
The Knights of Malta become legends, living proof that faith, courage,
and brotherhood can try, can stand triumphant against the most
(41:42):
impossible of odds. Now the cost was staggering. Over ten
thousand Ottomen were dead, thousands of more were wounded, sick,
or missing. Half of Malta's civilian population were killed or displaced,
(42:04):
and thousands of Christian soldiers were lost. Now Malta didn't
win because they were lucky. They won because how they
out bled out fault and probably even out prayed the
strongest empire on earth. In this aftermath, with aid pouring
(42:30):
in from Europe, the Nights set to rebuilding. On the
ruins of Mount the Skibius. They built a new fortified city, Vletta,
named after the man who had led them through fire
and death. And in the legend, sadly he would not
live to see his city completed, where he died in
(42:53):
fifteen sixty eight. But a spirit does remain in the
stained stone walls and narrow streets, a monument to a
faith that refused to fall, a fortress built by survivors,
a warning to all tyrants. Here we stand. The Siege
(43:22):
of Malta had ended, the Ottomans had been repelled. Christian
Europe had been saved for a time, and the echoes
of that battle still permeate and ring through history. Now,
while the guns have fallen silent, the banners have been lowered,
(43:45):
and the ships have sailed away into history, we still
know that Malta stands victorious. But even as the stones
of Burghu and Singlea cooled under the Mediterranean sun, the
deeper battle, the one that really matters, well, that never
(44:05):
truly ended, because while the armies change, the siege continues.
In fifteen sixty five, the Knights of Saint John stood
on the walls for Christianity, outnumbered, outgunned, half starved, and
(44:26):
they fought not just for themselves, but for something eternal.
They fought for their faith, for their families, for a
world where light could still have a place to shine.
Now today the cannons are, of course quieter. The swords
(44:50):
have now been traded for words, for laws, for cultural
battles waged in courtrooms and classrooms into city streets instead
of within the city walls. But if you think Christianity
still isn't under siege, you haven't been paying attention. Look around.
(45:13):
Faith is mocked, truth is twisted, morality is ridiculed. There
are still places in this world where Christians face real persecution, prison, exile,
even death. And here in lands at once rang with
church bells at every hour, the slow siege of cynicism
(45:37):
and secularism chips away at the fortress walls. They tell
you to kneel, They tell you to compromise, to make
peace with the world, no matter the cost. But the
(45:58):
lesson of Malta is clear. Do not yield when the
enemy surrounds you, When the walls are battered and every
voice tells you it's hopeless, That is when you need
to stand tall. Because what matters most, what's worth fighting for. Well,
(46:24):
it was never supposed to be easy to defend. John
de Vilette and his Knights didn't hold Manta because they
thought they could win. They held it because it was right,
because surrender meant something even worse than death. It meant
(46:48):
the loss of their soul. And today, whether you're defending
your faith in a hostile room, raising your children to
know truth in a world that lies, or simply holding
on the hope when everyone around you calls you a
fool standing on your own walls, let me tell you something.
(47:16):
A few hundred blooded knights could stand against the greatest
empire on earth, then you, armed with faith, fortified by grace,
can stand too. I want to thank everyone for joining
me tonight or once again walking into the shadows of
(47:40):
history to find the fire that still burns today.
Speaker 5 (47:52):
This has.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
Been a great episode premiere, season four, episode sixty one
of Indcrease. I thank you all for tuning in when
and however you do. I am your host j E.
Double f and I will see you next time in
two weeks, or we'll dive in the deeper into the
(48:15):
stories that shaped us, challenged us, or God knows what.
Until then, if you have the faith, hold your faith
like a sword, guard your hope like a fortress, and
never ever good night, my friends. The
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