The death-roll
on either side was so tremendous as to prove this contention up to the
hilt. From May 18th to September 8th, 1565--that is to say, in one hundred
and thirteen days--thirty thousand Moslems and eight thousand Christians
perished--an average of some three hundred and thirty-six persons per day.
In that blazing torrid heat the sufferings of those who survived from day
to day must have been accentuated beyond bearing by the myriads of unburied
corpses by which they lived surrounded; and that the contending forces were
not swept away by pestilence is an extraordinary marvel.
[Illustration: CARRACK IN WHICH THE KNIGHTS ARRIVED AT MALTA, 1530.]
In many, nay, in most campaigns, personal feeling enters but little into
the contest. Nationality strikes against nationality, army against army, or
navy against navy; but no burning hatred of his adversary animates the
breast of the combatant on either side; it may even be said that frequently
some pity for the vanquished is felt, when all is over, by the side which
has conquered. At Malta the element of actual personal individual hatred
was the mainspring by which the combatants on both sides were moved; each
regarded the other as an infidel, the slaying of whom was the sacrifice
most acceptable to the God they worshipped. "Infidel" was the term which
each hurled at the other; to destroy the infidel, root and branch, was the
act imposed upon those whose faith was the one only passport to a blessed
eternity, and those who fell in the strife, whether Christian or Moslem,
felt assured that for them the gates of heaven stood wide open.
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