Jean Parisot de Valette | |
|---|---|
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| Grand Master of the Order of Saint John | |
| In office 21 August 1557 – 21 August 1568 | |
| Monarch | Philip II of Spain |
| Preceded by | Claude de la Sengle |
| Succeeded by | Pierre de Monte |
| Governor of Tripoli | |
| In office 1546–1549 | |
| Appointed by | Juan de Homedes y Coscon |
| Preceded by | Cristofano de Solís Farfan |
| Succeeded by | Pedro Nuñez de Herrera |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 4 February 1495 |
| Died | 21 August 1568 (1568-08-22) (aged 73) |
| Resting place | St. John's Co-Cathedral (originally buried at theChurch of Our Lady of Victories) |
| Domestic partner(s) | Catherine Grecque and other mistresses |
| Children | Barthélemy de Valette Isabella Guasconi possibly other illegitimate children |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance |  Order of Saint John |
| Years of service | 1514–1568 |
| Rank | Captain General of the Galleys(1554–1557) Grand Master(1557–1568) |
| Battles/wars | Siege of Rhodes Great Siege of Malta |
Fra'Jean "Parisot"de (la)Valette[a] (French pronunciation:[ʒɑ̃paʁizod(ə)(la)valɛt];c. 4 February 1495 – 21 August 1568) was aFrench nobleman and 49thGrand Master of theOrder of Malta, from 21 August 1557 to his death in 1568. As aKnight Hospitaller, joining the order in theLangue de Provence, he fought with distinction against theTurks atRhodes. As Grand Master, Valette became the Order's hero and most illustrious leader, commanding the resistance against the Ottomans at theGreat Siege of Malta in 1565, sometimes regarded as one of the greatest sieges of all time.[1]
The foundation stone ofValletta was laid by Grandmaster La Valette in 1566. He did not live to see Valletta completed, as he died in 1568 and was succeeded by GrandmasterPierre de Monte.
He was born into thenoble La Valette family inQuercy, South-western France, which had been an important family in France for many generations, various members having participated in theCrusades. Jean Parisot's grandfather, Bernard de La Valette, was a Knight and King's Orderly, and his father Guillot was aChevalier de France. Jean Parisot was a distant cousin (through their mutual ancestor Almaric, Seigneur de Parisot) ofJean Louis de Nogaret de La Valette, first Duke ofÉpernon.[2]
Although his birth year is usually given as 1494, both chroniclers of theGreat Siege of Malta,Francisco Balbi di Correggio and Hipolito Sans, say he was 67 at the time, thereby implying that he was born in 1498. In his history of the Order of St. John, the 18th-century historian Abbe Vertot (whose history is largely based on - but often contradicted - the earlier one ofGiacomo Bosio) indicates that La Valette was indeed the same age as bothSuleiman I andKızılahmedli Mustafa Pasha (the commander of the Ottoman land forces), which would mean that he was actually 70 years old at the time of the siege.
La Valette joined the Order when he was 20 years old in around 1514, and he never returned to France or his family estates from that day on.[2] He was present during the GreatSiege of Rhodes in 1522, and accompanied Grand MasterPhilippe Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, after the Order's expulsion fromRhodes by the Ottoman Turks under SultanSuleiman the Magnificent.[3]
After the loss of Rhodes, the Order wasgranted the Maltese Islands and Tripoli by EmperorCharles V. In 1538 he was imprisoned in theGozo prison for four months after attacking a man.[4] In 1541 La Valette was involved in a naval battle against Abd-ur-Rahman Kust Aly, in which he was wounded and his galley, theSan Giovanni, was captured. La Valette was taken as a galley slave for a year byBarbary pirates under the command ofTurgut Reis but was later freed during an exchange of prisoners.[5] In 1546 La Valette becameGovernor of Tripoli, where he tried to restore order within the vulnerable city.[6]
In 1554 he was elected Captain General of the Order'sgalleys. This was a great honour to theLangue of Provence, as throughout most of the Order's history, the position of Grand Admiral was usually held by a Knight Grand Cross of the Italian Langue. In that capacity, he won a name that stood conspicuous in that age of great sea captains, and was held in the same regard as the ChevalierMathurin Romegas – one of the greatest Christian maritime commanders of the age. In fact both sides had extremely talented sailors. If La Valette, Romegas andJuan de Austria could be considered the best commanders that the Christian forces could bring to the sea, the forces of Islam were able to call on the equally outstanding maritime and leadership skills of admirals such asBarbarossa andDragut. La Valette was described by Abbe de Branthome as being a "very handsome man, speaking several languages fluently including Italian, Spanish, Greek, Arabic and Turkish."[7]
In 1557, upon the death of Grand MasterClaude de la Sengle, the Knights, mindful of the attack that was sure to come, elected La Valette to be Grand Master. In 1560 he formed an alliance with the Habsburg Empire to reconquer Tripoli, but the expedition resulted in a Christian defeat at theBattle of Djerba. Despite this the Order's galleys were able to rescue several other Christian vessels, and later on in his reign, La Valette greatly strengthened the Order's navy.[2]
He organised the defence of Malta, fought during the siege, and successfully repulsed the Turks at theGreat Siege of Malta in 1565. During the siege the vastly outnumbered Christians held out for over 3 months against an Ottoman force containing no less than 30,000 soldiers, including theJanissaries, as well as the Sultan's fleet of some 193 ships. The battle saw the fall ofFort St. Elmo after about a month of fierce fighting, but the Order managed to hold out inBirgu andSenglea until a relief force arrived. Ottoman specialist engineers had originally assessed the fortification of Saint Elmo, from local informants and conducting reconnoitring missions, saying it would fall in three days.
Knight Commander Le Sande, who had sailed from Sicily with reinforcements, ordered a general charge from the Maltese hills toward the end of the siege. They attacked the Ottoman forces until the Ottoman forces retreated to the sea, and at that point the sea had completely changed colour to red (from the sheer volume of blood lost). It was at that point the Ottoman forces boarded their ships, directed their course back to Constantinople. Whilst shaping course back to Constantinople they momentarily contemplated counterattacking. However, they had lost too many men, supplies, and the morale at that point to launch any substantial counterattack.
During the first days after the siege a Maltese soldier sitting around a campfire at night began to frame the words of a song which would later become famous in the Mediterranean:
Malta of gold, Malta of silver, Malta of precious metal,
We shall never take you.
No, not even if you were as soft as a gourd,
Not even if you were only protected by an onion skin!
And from her ramparts a voice replied:
I am she who has decimated the galleys of the Turk -
And all the warriors of Constantinople and Galatia!
As a result of the Order's victory La Valette gained much prestige inEurope, but he declined the offer of acardinal's hat in order to maintain independence from the papacy. This has been attributed to his sense of modesty and his humility as a warrior monk.
After the great siege, he commissioned the construction of the new city ofValletta in 1566, laying the first stone with his own hands. This took place on the slopes ofMount Sciberras, where the flower of the Turkish army had died whilst trying to storm Fort Saint Elmo, which the Turks thought would fall within three or four days, but which, due to the bravery of the defenders, held out for 30 days.
The city named after its founder - Humilissima Civitas Vallettae - became known as the most aristocratic and exclusive fortress in Europe - a city most often referred to as "Superbissima" - the "Most Proud". Valletta remains the Maltese capital to this day.
La Valette suffered a stroke while praying in a chapel and died soon after on 21 August 1568, exactly eleven years after he became Grandmaster. La Valette never saw the completed city of Valletta. His tomb (in the form of a sarcophagus) can be found in the Crypt of the Conventual Church of the Order (nowSt. John's Co-Cathedral), situated within the walls of Valletta.[7] The inscription on his tomb, which was composed by his Latin Secretary, SirOliver Starkey, the last Knight of the EnglishLangue at the time of the Great Siege, states in Latin:
Here lies La Valette.
Worthy of eternal honour,
He who was once the scourge of Africa and Asia,
And the shield of Europe,
Whence he expelled the barbarians by his Holy Arms,
Is the first to be buried in this beloved city,
Whose founder he was.
La Valette has been referred to as one who never broke his vows, but it has been claimed that he had a mistress while in Rhodes called Catherine nicknamedGreque (Greek), and that he had an illegitimate son from her who was called Barthélemy de La Valette. Documentary evidence has been found by Bonello that proves Barthélemy was legitimatized in 1568 by a decree of KingCharles IX of France.[8]
Claims have also been put forth that La Valette had at least another child, Isabella Guasconi, after a presumed affair with the wife of a Rhodiot nobleman of Florentine descent. Isabella later married a Florentine gentleman Stefano Buonaccorsi, but he murdered her on 31 July 1568, sometime after their marriage. After the murder, Buonaccorsi escaped the islands with Isabella's wealth and was never heard from again.[9]
La Valette is well known for being the Grandmaster who won the Great Siege and founded Valletta. A street in the town ofNaxxar as well as the flagship ofVirtu FerriesMV Jean de La Valette are both named after him. La Valette was also featured on Maltesestamps, coins, banknotes and telecards a number of times.
In 2012, a square was inaugurated in Valletta named Pjazza Jean de La Valette which also features a statue of the Grandmaster. The statue is 2.5m high and was cast in bronze by the local sculptor Joseph Chetcuti. In the statue, La Valette is shown in armour and holding Valletta's plan in one hand and a sword in the other.[10][11]
For many years, the widely accepted version of the Grandmaster's surname wasde La Valette. However, during the unveiling of the statue at Pjazza Jean de Valette in November 2012, judge and historianGiovanni Bonello stated that the Grandmaster always signed his name asde Valette without theLa. A week later, Désireé von la Valette Saint Georges, a descendant of the Grandmaster, stated that the family name wasde la Valette notde Valette and since then, a dispute has started as to what his name actually was.[12]
Members of the various branches of the Valette family actually used both versions at the time, but the Grandmaster himself never used theLa.[13][14] In fact, all 138 coins and 19 medals minted by the Order during de Valette's reign show the namesde Valette,de Valetta or justValette. Bonello additionally stated that theLa possibly originated since the city of Valletta was commonly calledLa Valletta, so people started including theLa and sometimes the doublel in the Grandmaster's name.[15]
When de Vallette was around 45 years old and already in Malta, Francis I, seeing the wide linguistic disparity in the use of various Romance and Germanic languages in France, enacted theOrdinance of Villers-Cotterêts which prescribed the use of standard French, mostly as spoken in northern France and in the Paris area where thelangues d'oui prevailed.[citation needed]
The namede Valette is now used in Malta, although many still refer to him asde La Valette due to the collective memory.[16] The Order's successor, theSovereign Military Order of Malta, call the GrandmasterFra' Jean de La Vallette-Parisot.[17]
Due to his key role in holding Malta during the siege of 1565, de Valette has appeared as a main and supporting character in several works of literature:
Notes
| Preceded by | Governor of Tripoli 1546–1549 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller 1557–1568 | Succeeded by |
