From an account of the Great Siege of Malta from the
Malta Heritage Site.
On the day before the fall of Fort St. Elmo the remaining 100
defenders, without ammunition, their leaders dead and themselves half
dead from exhaustion and their own wounds prepared themselves for the
final battle.
As the hours passed and no relief came,
the survivors in Fort St Elmo realized that no help was going to come to
them. With this bitter recognition, they resigned themselves to their
fate and they started to comfort each other through these agonizing
moments. They were determined to die in the service of Jesus Christ and
although they were half dead from fatigue, they never rested but worked
to improve their defences.
This was surely a dreadful time for our
men and to make things worse, the enemy spent the whole night bombarding
them, sounding the alarm and skirmishing. Clearly, they did so in order
to break down the defenders so that by morning, they would be
completely worn out.
As their end seemed to get closer by the
hour, the last defenders of Fort St Elmo confessed to each other and
implored Our Lord to have mercy on their souls for the sake of the blood
that He had shed for their redemption.
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