On the night of June 22nd the defenders of St. Elmo, having now lost all hope of being supported, made ready for death.  Into them La Valette had breathed his own heroic spirit, and none among them counselled or dreamed of surrender.  The Order to which they had given their allegiance now demanded of them the last sacrifice which it was in their power to make, and this was offered in the manner most fitting to its tenets.  These exhausted, war-worn, battle-scarred warriors repaired to the chapel, where they confessed, and made ready by partaking together of the sacrament, “and, having thus surrendered their souls to God, each retired to his post to die on the bed of honour with arms in his hand.”  Those among the Knights who were too severely wounded or too ill to stand caused chairs to be carried to the breach in which they seated themselves and awaited the assault.  For four hours did these indomitable men withstand the might of a host innumerable:  at the conclusion of this period there remained alive but sixty of the garrison.  Mustafa ceased the assault for a few moments only to replace the storming party by fresh troops, and then the end came.  Almost the last to fall were the Chevalier Lamirande and the veteran Bailli of Negropont, and when the crescent banner was planted on the walls there remained alive not one of those defenders who had held the fort.  Several of Dragut’s officers ran to his tent and announced the taking of St. Elmo.  The great captain was in his last extremity and unable to speak, “He, however, manifested his joy by several signs, and, raising his eyes to heaven as if in thankfulness for its mercies, immediately expired:  a captain of rare valour and even abundantly more humane than are ordinarily these corsairs.”

The Basha Piali, on entering the fort and observing with what miserable resources it had so long been held exclaimed, as he looked across the harbour to Il Borgo: 

“What will not the parent do to us, when so small a son has cost us the lives of our bravest soldiers?”

There is no record of what that cruel savage, Mustafa, said on this occasion; his deeds, however, spoke eloquently.  He caused the bodies of the Knights to be decapitated and nailed to wooden crosses, while across their corpses were slashed a cross in derision of the religion of his foes.  The bodies were then cast into the harbour, and were washed up at the foot of Il Borgo.  Instantly the Grand Master ordered the decapitation of all the Turkish prisoners, and their heads were fired from cannon into the camp of Mustafa.

With the remainder of the siege, which was yet to last till September 18th, we have no concern in this book.  It is only necessary to say that the men of Il Borgo were worthy to stand in the same category with the defenders of St. Elmo, which is equivalent to stating that in them also was discovered the last limit of heroism.  The Grand Master survived the siege, his monument is the noble city of “Valetta”