The Knights of St. John

by Augusta Theodosia Drane

D’Aubusson was carried to his palace covered with wounds, and for three days his life was despaired of. It was in his bed that he received from the hands of his knights the Moslem standard, and gave orders for a public thanksgiving to be rendered to the God of armies. During those three days the palace-doors were crowded by anxious citizens of all ranks; and it is said their joy was less when they watched the last sail of the Turkish fleet disappear below the horizon, than when the surgeon announced to the populace that the danger was past, and, as it was thought, not without tokens of a miraculous cure. So soon as he could walk, D’Aubusson proceeded to the great church of St. John to offer his own thanksgivings; and, as a perpetual monument of the deliverance of the city by the intervention of the Blessed Virgin, he ordered the erection of three churches in her honour and that of the patrons of the city. These churches were endowed for prayers and masses to be offered in perpetuity for the souls of those who had fallen in battle; and one was for the Greek rite: but the expression, “devout Catholics,” which is used by Bosio, shows us that the Greeks to whom he here alluded were in communion with the see of Rome, and not schismatics, as some later writers have supposed.

Nor was his care of the living less large and generous than for the dead. “All, down to the meanest soldier, had a share of his notice,” says Vertot; “and to comfort the poor peasants and the inhabitants of the country which had been devastated by the enemy, he distributed among them corn and provisions for their support till next harvest, and took off for several years the taxes they had hitherto paid.”

The same day that Mesih Pasha was driven from the walls of Rhodes, the Turks, under Ahmed Keduk, first set foot on the tempting shores of Italy, making a successful descent on the Apulian coast, and marched at once to invest Otranto. When grand vizier, he had, in 1475, conquered the Crimea, and signalised his victories by the perpetration of all those outrages which have given to Turkish warfare an infamous celebrity even in the annals of blood and crime. The taking of Kaffa, which belonged to the Genoese, and was a place of great wealth and importance, was marked by a deed of the blackest perfidy. The town held out but three days; on the fourth, through the machinations of one Squerciafico, it surrendered at discretion. The booty was immense; 40,000 of the inhabitants were sent to Constantinople, and 1500 young Genoese nobles were compelled to enter the corps of Janizaries. Eight days after the capture, Ahmed Keduk gave a grand banquet to the principal Armenian citizens, who, in concert with the Genoese traitor, had delivered up the town into his hands. At the end of the entertainment their host bade them adieu with all the politeness possible; but a different leave-taking awaited them outside. The door of the banqueting chamber opened on a narrow flight of steps, at the bottom of which was stationed a Turk, scimitar in hand, who, as each guest emerged, severed his head from his body. Treachery never fails to inspire contempt even in those in whose service it is practised; and the Ottoman seldom forgave such acts of baseness, although coupled, as was not unfrequently the case, with the crime of apostasy. Squerciafico himself was spared only to be reserved for a like fate at Constantinople.

Otranto speedily fell. The inhabitants defended themselves with great courage, but the town was unprepared, and it was carried by assault after only a fortnight’s resistance. Of the 22,000 who formed the population, 12,000 were slaughtered without mercy; such as it was supposed might furnish a heavy ransom were reduced to slavery; the rest were subjected to treatment, compared with which slavery and death in any form would have been a welcome boon: wives and daughters brutally outraged before their husbands’ and parents’ faces; infants torn from their mothers’ bosoms and dashed against the walls. The commandant, the archbishop, and his clergy, were singled out for the most horrible of all deaths, and sawn asunder. Need it be added, that they who revelled in cruelties so truly diabolical, spared not the altars of God, or the images of the saints, or aught that was holy and venerable? All the awful woes predicted by the Jewish prophets seemed to have come upon the world, and with such particularity and completeness, that it was difficult to see how any fuller accomplishment were possible. It was as if the mystery of iniquity were revealed, and the days of Antichrist had begun.

Despite this triumphant success on the shores of Italy, and the prospects of long-meditated conquest thus opened before him, the failure before Rhodes rankled like a poisoned arrow in the heart of Mahomet. When the news of the defeat of his armament reached the sultan, his fury was unbounded, nay, it may be said to have amounted to madness. None dared present themselves before him, and the vizier was thought to have had a fortunate escape, when he received no greater chastisement at the tyrant’s hands than disgrace and exile. After the first outburst of rage was over, Mahomet prepared for vengeance. Declaring that his troops were only invincible under his own command, he assembled a force of 300,000 men, whom he led into Asia Minor, designing from thence to fall upon Rhodes, and crush the audacious islanders to the dust. But his hours were numbered; he died at Nicomedia after a brief and sudden sickness, which is said to have been his first; in the frenzy of his rage pouring forth wild and passionate expressions to the last, and shrieking in the very agonies of his death-struggle the words, “Rhodes, Rhodes, Rhodes!” They carried his body to Constantinople, and buried it in the mosque he had founded, and the inscription he had himself dictated on his death-bed was placed over his tomb:

I INTENDED TO CONQUER RHODES AND TO
SUBDUE ITALY.

CHAPTER V.

Bajazet and Djem—Djem takes refuge at Rhodes—He proceeds to France, and thence to Italy—Exculpation of D’Aubusson—His last days and death—Conquests of Selim, and accession of Solyman the Magnificent—Fall of Belgrade—Election of L’Isle Adam, and his correspondence with the sultan—Preparations for a fresh siege—Review of the Knights—Appearance of Rhodes—Character of L’Isle Adam—Ceremony at St. John’s—Military spectacle—Arrival of the enemy’s fleet.

The repulse of the infidels from the walls of Rhodes raised the order and its grand master to even a higher reputation than they had yet enjoyed. The name of D’Aubusson and his gallant knights rang through Europe, and excited an enthusiasm of admiration; and singular incidents followed on the death of Mahomet II. which served to extend the esteem and influence of the order even among the infidels themselves.