Della historia di Malta, et successo della guerra seguita tra quei religiosissimi cauallieri, et il potentissimo gran turcho sulthan Solimano

No place [Venice]: no printer [Niccolò Bevilacqua], no date, 1566. ONE OF NUMEROUS EARLY EDITIONS. Hardcover. Fine. Bound in modern vellum. A very good copy with light marginal soiling and a little bit of mild marginal foxing, verso of final leaf a little dusty. With woodcut arms of the Knights of Malta on the title page. The dedication to Cardinal Ippolito d'Este is dated December 1565. There are several other undated editions without imprint, as well as further undated editions with the title "Trattato del successo della potentissima armata del Gran Turcho Ottoman Solimano". For the printing of this edition, see D.E. Rhodes, Silent Printers. Anonymous printing at Venice in the sixteenth century, p. 104. One of the earliest and most complete narratives on the siege of Malta in 1565. It was quickly appropriated by other authors for their own accounts. Led by Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Turks tried unsuccessfully to wrest control of the island from the Knights of St John of Jerusalem. The knights had taken up residence on Malta after they had been forced by Suleiman to leave Rhodes in 1530. The success of the knights in repelling the Turks is one of the most important events in the decades-long contest between the Turks and the Christian powers for control of the Mediterranean. The work closes with a list of those who lost their lives in the battle ("Cavalieri morti nell' assedio di Malta").

The Great Siege of Malta is one of the most famous military encounters of the 16th century and marked a signal victory of the Christian European forces over the Ottoman Turks.

On 18 May 1565 the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (d. 1566) launched an armada of over 30,000 men to besiege the island of Malta, which was protected and governed by the Knights Hospitallers of St. John. The Knights of Malta, a force of only 14,000 men -many of them untrained-, successfully defended the island and its civilian population against the Turkish invaders, who departed on 11 September. Yet the losses were high on both sides. Historians estimate the Turkish dead at 10,000. The Knights last about a third of their number and the island lost a third of the civilian inhabitants.

The valiant efforts of the Knights inspired widespread celebration and the written accounts of the victory influenced a shift in the European view of the Ottoman Empire as an inexorable threat to Christian Europe. Although Ottoman successes against European fleets continued, the European nations united to defeat the Turks at Lepanto in 1571. The Ottoman failure to take Malta was a crucial one, for had the Turks succeeded, they would have established a strategic base for launching strikes more deeply into the western Mediterranean.