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Hello, in 1565, Sultan Solomon the Magnificent, the Ottoman leader, sent a great fleet west

to Laceeage to Malta and capture it for his empire.

Victory would mean control of trade across the Mediterranean and the base for attacks on Spain, Italy and even Rome.

It would also mean the elimination of Malta's defenders, the Knights of Spitala, whose raids on his shipping had long been a thorn in his side.

News of a great siege of Malta spread fear throughout Europe.

Though that turned to a relation, when after four months of horrific fighting, the Ottomans withdrew.

The Knights of Spitala had shown that Solomon's forces could be contained and their own order was reinvigorated.

When we discuss the siege of Malta, 1565, Helen Nicholson, professor of medieval history at Cardiff University,

German McCulloch, professor of the history of the Church at the University of Oxford, and Kate Fleet, director of the Skeletus Centre for Ottoman Studies and Fellow of New and Roman College, Cambridge.

Kate Fleet, how had the Ottomans come to such prominence in the Mediterranean?

Well, of course, when the Ottomans started off, they hit the sea pretty early.

But after 1453, that gave them control of the straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, and at that point,

Mehmet II started moving his navy out westwards.

And the reason for that advance was partly strategic, because by now the Ottomans had a lot of Mediterranean coastline, all of modern Turkey, round the corner with Greece and up into the Adriatic.

So part of it was strategic, part also was a desire to control trade routes and also to conquer areas that had economically important.

So Mehmet II had this drive and certainly desired to move westwards across the Mediterranean.

He defeated the Venetians and took over various territory, from including Negroponte, where one of the Ottoman sources says that the fighting between Muslims, it was so close that Muslims and Infotools were hair to hair and beard to beard.

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