Malta, 1565: Last Battle of the Crusades (Osprey Military Campaign)

click here for more details, find new or used items	Tim Pickles Our price £13.99 New from £6.04 Used from £7.27 Pages: 96 (Paperback) Editor: David Chandler ISBN: 1855326035 Pub: Osprey Publishing Pub date: 1998-01-15 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 291433

Reader Reviews:

Last Battle of the Crusades (0/0 people found this helpful)

I am Maltese and well steeped in the history of the Malta 1565 Great Siege.
I must say that the author did a good job in his relating with the heroic deeds of the besieged. One must also remain aware of the actual fighting skills of the Maltese in the routing of the infidels indeed never for a moment did the besieged falter in their Faith while being attacked by the fierce islamic hordes renowned for their ruthless and cruel ways when conducting war.
This Great Siege also was a prelude for the Turkish final defeat in the naval battle of Lepanto.

Fantastic good read (8/8 people found this helpful)

This is the best book of the Osprey series .I bought this book on arrival to Malta and I can say that I have read it more than 4 times .I used it as a guide when I went to Valletta and I suggest reading this book before visiting the siege museum.

Written by Tim Pickles, it describes the siege for Malta by the Ottomans in 1565 ,in which the defenders endured incredible hardship and had to fight against overwhelming numbers of Turks.
Is very easy to read and will satisfy the general public and amateur historian rather as it does not have much in-depth information.

The illustrations and the maps are very good and give an excellent idea of the situation and movement of the forces during the siege.

The chapters covering the assault on the forts are excellent and found it very difficult to put the book down.

5 stars

I love reading history, I really enjoyed this book (0/0 people found this helpful)

And heres the tickler both the current reviews on this book are accurate and fair, depending on where you are coming from. Yes I believe that there are better written accounts of the 1565 Battle for Malta, but I also agree with the reviewer who rated the book highly, as I personally found the story very intresting, at times gripping when the relief force for the christian knights was delayed and delayed again....Call me a layman if you wish, but for the size of the book I was not expecting the most analitical historical post-mortem....But I enjoyed it.!

Quite good as introduction (1/2 people found this helpful)

I rather disagree with the previous review. I liked this book, although it was the first one I ever read on this siege, so I really couldn't compare. Of course I can understand that when you are a scholar on the topic, you can find this book a little bit superficial - but Osprey Campaigns are short by principle and they never pretend to be other thing that a general introduction to more serious studies. And this one is quite good, with quite honest illustrations.

A total waste of money (21/26 people found this helpful)

The siege of Malta is a seminal event in European History, much of which would have been significantly different if the Knights had not held out against the odds. As such the 1565 Siege has attracted more than its fair share of studies both Academic and General. This title from Osprey seems to be a distillation and synopsis of a particularly popular modern history of the Siege. No use has been made of the small number of contemporary accounts... There is therefore no new interpretation of events and the details present in other studies is severly lacking. Overall, therefore the text has nothing to commend it.

The illustrations are almost all from much later works and as such do not illustrate the dress, the weaponry or the tactics of the mid sixteenth century. A cynic might comment that they were chosen because they were were cheap to reproduce and not becuase they illuminate the text. (An illustration of Napoleon's Imperial Guard Mamelukes is really going too far).

Overall this is a book best avoided, there are a number of better books on the Siege readily, available both for text and for illustrations.

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