In order to ensure the cohesion of the imperial building, to dispute the aims of France on Italy, to block progress of the Ottoman fleet towards the West and to protect the Spanish and Italian possessions from being destroyed, the mastery of the Western Mediterranean Sea was indispensable to Charles-Quint. That is why he offered Malta to the Chevaliers-Hospitaliers, ousted from Rhodes in 1522, so as to enable them make of it a defense wall for the Spanish in the Mediterranean Sea against Turkish threat (1530). Their naval actions and the resistance of the island at the time of the Big Seat of 1565 demonstrated the legitimacy of this policy. Malta, having become the Boulevard of the Christendom, the Order found new legitimacy there, which enabled a justification of its existence by cultivating the myth of crusades, its wealth and the privileges until the very last days of the Old Regime.