argess of money on the
soldiers.[1383]

On his way, the viceroy had discovered the Ottoman fleet formed in
compact order, and standing under press of sail towards the east. He was
too far inferior in strength to care to intercept its course;[1384] and
the squadron reached in safety the port of Constantinople. Solyman had
already received despatches preparing him for the return of the fleet,
and the failure of the expedition. It threw him into one of those
paroxysms of ungovernable passion to which the old sultan seems to have
been somewhat addicted in the latter years of his life. With impotent
fury, he stamped on the letters, it is said, and, protesting that there
were none of his officers whom he could trust, he swore to lead an
expedition against Malta the coming year, and put every man in the
island to the sword.[1385] He had the magnanimity, however, not to wreak
his vengeance on the unfortunate commanders. The less to attract public
notice, he caused the fleet bearing the shattered remains of the army to
come into port in the night-time; thus affording a contrast sufficiently
striking to the spectacle presented by the brilliant armament which a
few months before had sailed from the Golden Horn amidst the joyous
acclamations of the multitude.

The arms of Solyman the Second, during his long and glorious reign, met
with no reverse so humiliating as his failure in the siege of Malta. To
say nothing of the cost of the maritime preparations, the waste of life
was prodigious, amounting to more than thirty thousand men, Moors
included, and comprehending the very best troops in the empire. This was
a loss of nearly three fourths of the original force of the besieging
army,--an almost incredible amount, showing that pestilence had been as
actively at work as the sword of the enemy.[1386]

Yet the loss in this siege fell most grievously on the Christians. Full
two hundred knights, twenty-five hundred soldiers, and more than seven
thousand inhabitants,--men, women, and children, are said to have
perished.[1387] The defences of the island were razed to the ground. The
towns were in ruins; the villages burnt; the green harvests cut down
before they had time to ripen. The fiery track of war was over every
part of Malta. Well might the simple inhabitants rue the hour when the
Knights of St. John first set foot upon their shores. The military
stores were exhausted, the granaries empty; the treasury was at the
lowest ebb. The m