{"product_id":"the-great-siege-of-malta","title":"The Great Siege of Malta","description":"\u003cp\u003eEven as the great siege began it was understood by both sides to be an epic – a potentially decisive encounter between an uneasy assortment of soldiers, native Maltese, adventurers and Knights Hospitaller on a strategically crucial but near waterless island and a vast, seemingly all-powerful Ottoman armada. With three quarters of the Mediterranean’s coasts already in the hands of the Sultan and his allies, all eyes were now on Malta.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis superb new account of the siege emphasizes the crucial importance of the siege while at the same time putting it in a far wider context. While since mistakenly recast as a climactic battle between the West and the East, it was also much more interesting and nuanced than that – both sides had many other interests and priorities beyond Malta. Süleyman the Magnificent had conquered and subsumed regions from Hungary to the Persian Gulf; Philip II was building an empire in America and Asia.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDrawing on a wide range of eyewitness stories, Marcus Bull gives a vivid sense of the period’s technologies, values and assumptions. It was a grim world built on the labor of many thousands of disposable galley-slaves, shockingly brutal forms of warfare and religious absolutism. But it was also a world filled with the most extraordinary new discoveries and ideas. Both these worlds come together in the siege and in this book.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Penguin","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52851416432962,"sku":"9780141997759","price":35.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0975\/7822\/1890\/files\/the-great-siege-of-malta.jpg?v=1781793081","url":"https:\/\/greatkiwibook.store\/products\/the-great-siege-of-malta","provider":"The Great Kiwi Bookstore Kaiapoi","version":"1.0","type":"link"}