The Knights of St. John

by Augusta Theodosia Drane

This change began to be felt immediately after the separation of the northern nations from the unity of the Church, and the circumstance was not unobserved by the great infidel power of the East. The enormous progress of that power was almost coeval with the period of the Reformation; and the distractions and divisions among the Christians that followed that event were so many gains to the Turks, who pushed their victorious arms further and further, till the dreaded Crescent,—which the long struggle of the crusades and of the heroic ages of Christendom had kept at bay,—was displayed under the very walls of Marseilles and the port of Rome by the corsair-fleets which roved at large over the waters of the Mediterranean, and scarcely found an enemy to oppose them in their course. The republic of Venice, indeed, was still master of many of the island-fortresses of the Levant and the Archipelago; but as the power of that state was now gradually declining, the eyes of her foe were fastened with a bolder ambition upon the dominions which she seemed helpless to defend. The rich and beautiful island of Cyprus in particular excited the cupidity of Selim II.,[50] who had succeeded his father, Solyman the Magnificent, in the empire of the East; and the report of a sudden disaster which befell the republic in the explosion and destruction of her arsenal, encouraged him to seize the occasion of breaking, in the face of solemn treaties, a peace which had remained undisturbed between the two states for nearly thirty years.

When the hostile intentions of the Turkish sultan became known, the republic was little prepared to recommence the desperate struggle. Her utmost efforts were spent in the equipment of a fleet which, when assembled, was found wholly inadequate to meet the enemy; and in her distress, crippled as she was by the loss of her vast magazines, and drained of all resources, she implored the assistance of the Roman Pontiff, and, through him, of the other powers of Christendom. Pius V. then filled the chair of St. Peter; and his sagacious eye had long foreseen the danger; nor had he spared any efforts to provide the necessary defences. But the times were against him. A famine was ravaging the fair fields of Italy; the government of France was too busy with the Huguenots to have time or strength to bestow on a quarrel with the Turks; and as to England—to use the expression of a writer of the time—its ruler was Elizabeth, “a greater enemy to Rome than the Turks themselves.” Nevertheless, in spite of all discouragements, the zeal of the Roman Pontiff was manifested by an extraordinary activity. Every court of Europe was visited by his ambassadors, who vainly tried to rouse the spirit of the Christian princes against a foe whose conquests were as rapid as they were blood-stained. One after another they excused themselves on the plea of domestic troubles and exhausted treasuries and in the month of May 1570, when Pius had fondly hoped to have seen his noble appeals as nobly responded to by the universal voice of Christendom, he found himself supported by the king of Spain alone out of all the potentates of Europe.

Meanwhile the fall of Cyprus, attended by barbarities which rivalled in cruelty and atrocity the torments inflicted on the early Christian martyrs, signalised the opening of the war, and gave to the Turkish arms the prestige of the first success. A slight notice of that terrible event may give our readers some idea of the sort of adversary by whom Christendom was at this time threatened.

Already the sultan had ordered the seizure of all merchant vessels that chanced to be at anchor within the ports of the Turkish empire, and the closing of all the avenues by which relief could be afforded to the doomed island; and yet in Venice itself counsels were still divided: the doge was just dead, and the senate was occupied with the nomination of his successor. To the last no vigorous measures were taken by the republic to throw a sufficient force into Cyprus, and the commanders of the allied Venetian and Spanish fleets strove in vain to convey the necessary succours. Sickness and famine made fearful ravages among the troops, and many thousands perished. The ships which had on board Count Jerome Martinengo and 3000 men were overtaken by a tremendous storm; an epidemic broke out which carried off more than a third of the number, and among them their renowned commander himself; and they who, from the shores of the island had long watched for the reinforcements, of which they stood in such desperate need, saw at length but a few shattered vessels come into harbour, bearing with them the dead body of the man on whose bravery and skill they had rested all their hopes of deliverance. To add to the general consternation, Nicholas Dandolo, who had but just taken on himself the office of governor, was one in whose capacity and judgment neither soldiers nor people felt they could place any reliance. Lala Mustapha, a renegade already infamous for his foul and treacherous practices, was the commander of the Ottoman forces, numbering, as some historians have computed, 80,000 men; to oppose which vast armament the Christians could not muster more than 500 or 600 horse, a small body of local militia, and 2000 foot-soldiers fit for active service.

The city of Nicosia, the first object of attack, was taken by storm, on the 9th of September 1570, after an heroic resistance of seven weeks, during which the inhabitants had again and again repulsed the assaults of the Turks with a valour which struck such terror into the besiegers, that more than once they all but abandoned their attempts on the town. The ammunition had failed, the fortifications were demolished, most of the distinguished leaders had been slain; the devoted bishop, who had given up all he possessed for the support of the soldiery and people, had himself fallen in a mêlée; the Count de Rochas, who ranked next in command to the governor, was killed in defending one of the ruined bastions, and the Turks, after grossly outraging his body, thrust it into a mortar and launched it into the town. Dandolo retreated into his palace as soon as the enemy penetrated into the town, and the wretched inhabitants were given up as a prey to their infuriated assailants. In vain they threw themselves on their knees before their vanquishers; they were massacred without pity: for seven hours the horrible carnage proceeded. The palace still held out. The pasha offered the garrison their lives on condition of their laying down their arms: they did so, and every soul was put to the sword. The Bishop of Baffo, who, in the estimation of his countrymen, was as capable of commanding an army as of governing a diocese, was butchered among the rest. The unhappy Dandolo, after suffering frightful tortures at the hands of the infidels, was decapitated, and his head sent to the governor of Cerino, the third principal town of the island, as a token of what he might himself expect if he did not instantly surrender the place. The atrocities committed by the Turks defy description. Mustapha, it is related, ordered the children and old men, and all whom it was not worth the victor’s while to preserve, to be piled one upon another in the great square of the town and burnt alive; at the same time, to show his hatred of the Christian name, he directed numerous carcases of swine,—for which the followers of Mahomet entertain a religious abhorrence,—to be heaped upon his victims, and consumed together with them. For three days the town was given up to pillage, and every barbarity which an infernal malice could suggest was perpetrated upon its despairing population. Women threw themselves from the house-tops to escape from their pursuers; mothers slew their daughters with their own hands rather than that they should fall into the power of the brutal foe. More than 20,000 human beings were slaughtered on the day of the assault: in the first paroxysm of their rage the infidels spared neither sex nor age; 2000 alone were reserved for a slavery more terrible than death. One fearful act of vengeance marked the close of this memorable siege. The Turks had collected in a single galleon the most beautiful youths and maidens of the place, together with the most precious portion of the booty, with the intention of conveying them as presents to the sultan, his eldest son, and the grand vizier. One of the captives, a lady of noble family, knowing but too well the wretched fate that awaited herself and her companions, set fire to the powder-magazine, and blew the vessel high into the air. Two others loaded with the spoils of the town were involved in its destruction; great numbers of the enemy perished, and among them many Christians of distinction, and the flower of the youth of either sex.

Mustapha now led his troops, flushed with victory and outnumbering by thousands their Christian opponents, under the walls of Famagosta. For eleven months the brave Bragadino, with a scanty garrison and a few thousands of armed citizens, withstood the Moslem hosts.[51] In vain had they sought relief from Spain and their own republic. The Spanish admiral weakly held aloof; the Venetians succeeded only in throwing a handful of men into the place. The besieged fought with all the strength of despair: women not only laboured in supplying arms and ammunition to the soldiers, but combated by their side upon the walls, throwing down stones and boiling-water on the assailants, or precipitating themselves with deadly effect into the masses of the foe, and causing many a Moslem warrior to bite the dust. The bishop of the place, a Dominican by profession, contributed not a little in re-animating the spirits of the garrison, whose ranks were being every day rapidly thinned by famine and the sword: his exhortations, say the chroniclers, elicited prodigies of valour. In the very heat of the assault he might be seen for hours upon the ramparts, surrounded by his clergy, holding aloft the crucifix, and calling on the people to resist unto death fighting for the faith.[52] All in vain: on the 1st of August 1571, the walls were nearly levelled to the ground; the defences consisted only of bags of earth and bales of cotton; the Italian and Greek auxiliaries, whose prowess had done such execution on the Turks, were all annihilated; there were left but seven barrels of powder, and of food there was none remaining; the combatants, emaciated by want and incessant toil, could scarcely hold their weapons in their hands. Further resistance was impossible, and Bragadino, yielding at length to the piteous entreaties of the townspeople, consented to sue for terms. But as the intrepid governor bade the white flag be unfurled, he exclaimed, “Officers and men, I call Heaven to witness that it is not I who surrender this town to the infidels, but the senate of Venice, who, by abandoning us to our fate, have given us up into the hands of these barbarians.” A capitulation was concluded, by which the inhabitants were to remain in possession of their goods, and to have the free exercise of their religion; all who chose might quit the town, and sell or carry off their effects; the garrison were to march out with their arms and with all the honours of war, and to be transported in Turkish vessels to Crete.

The terms were ratified; and on the morning of the 15th August, the Feast of the Assumption, Bragadino, according to agreement, proceeded with two of his officers and a small escort to the tent of the Turkish general to deliver up into his own hands the keys of the town. But no sooner had he entered the pavilion than he and his attendants were treacherously seized on some frivolous pretence; new conditions were imposed; and on the governor’s remonstrating against the injustice of such proceedings, Mustapha ordered his companions to be beheaded on the spot before his eyes. Bragadino himself he condemned to a like fate: three times he compelled the noble Venetian to bow his head to receive the murderer’s stroke, and as often,—as though he would make his victim drink the bitter cup of torment drop by drop,—arrested by a sign the executioner’s arm. The tyrant had another and a more terrible death in store for one who had so long defied his most furious efforts; and he contented himself for the present with ordering his captive’s nose and ears to be cut off in his presence; which done, he had him loaded with chains, and cast, bleeding as he was, into a dungeon, tauntingly bidding him call now upon his Christ, for it was time that He should help him. Three hundred Christians who were in the camp were butchered in cold blood; the rest of the garrison and the unhappy townspeople, who were already on board the Turkish transports, were reduced to slavery; while the hostages sent into the Turkish quarters before the treaty was formally signed, among whom was Henry Martinengo, nephew of the count, were subjected to barbarous mutilation. The fortifications were now ordered to be rebuilt; and the Turk compelled his noble prisoner to carry loads of earth upon his shoulders for the repair of the walls, and to kiss his feet each time he passed before him; and not yet satisfied with the indignities he heaped upon him, he had him hoisted up aloft on the yard-arm of a vessel in the harbour, where he kept him exposed for hours to the gaze and scoff of the infidels, and then suddenly plunged him into the sea. At last, after trampling him under foot, he doomed him to be flayed alive in the public square. The indomitable commander, who united in himself the resolute courage of a chivalrous soldier with the supernatural patience of a Christian martyr, amidst his untold agonies betrayed not a sign of pain, uttered not a murmur or a complaint against his torturers, but, as they stripped the skin from his quivering flesh, calmly prayed and recited aloud from time to time verses from the Miserere and other Psalms. When the Christians in the crowd heard him breathe the words, Domine, in manus tuas commendo spiritum meum,[53] they thought he was rendering up his life to God; but there followed in tender accents,—as if to show Whose sufferings in that hour of agony were most present to his thoughts, and Whose meek and loving spirit then filled his inflexible and dauntless soul,—Pater, dimitte illis; non enim sciunt quid faciunt;[54] and with this prayer for mercy on his tormentors the brave soldier of Christ passed to receive the martyr’s palm. But Turkish malice was not even yet exhausted. Mustapha caused the brave man’s body to be cut into four quarters, and each to be attached to the muzzle of the largest guns. His skin was stuffed with straw, and, together with a representation of our Divine Lord in His adorable Passion, paraded through the camp and through the town fastened on the back of a cow. Finally, he despatched both figures as trophies to the Sultan his master, with the head of Bragadino and those of the two murdered commanders. At Constantinople the skin of the heroic martyr was hung up as a spectacle for the Christian galley-slaves.[55]

After the fall of Famagosta further resistance was impossible; indeed (to their everlasting shame be it written) the Greek population of the island sided actively with the invaders, and, in their obstinate blindness, not knowing what they did, delivered themselves up to the degrading domination of the Turks. Every where the most frightful scenes were enacted: the Mussulman soldiery broke into the wine-cellars, and, maddened with drink, indulged in orgies too revolting for description. By the command of the renegade Mustapha the tombs of the dead were opened, and their contents scattered to the winds; the images and pictures of the saints were demolished; the churches defiled with abominations so loathsome that the pen of the historian refuses to record them. Friday the 17th of August, the day on which the noble Bragadino suffered, was set apart for the deliberate perpetration of horrors which rivalled in foulness and atrocity the infamous mysteries of Venus, and the bloody rites at which pagans offered sacrifices of human victims to the devils whom they worshipped. A few days after, Lala Mustapha made his triumphal entry into Constantinople with the spoils of a conquest which had cost him 50,000 men.

During the dreadful scenes which accompanied the fall of Cyprus, there were not wanting many who displayed a spirit worthy of the best days of Christendom. F. Angelo Calepius, a member of the Dominican order, has left an interesting and valuable narrative of the taking of Nicosia, of which place he was a native. He himself played a distinguished part in its defence; for during the seven weeks of siege which preceded the entrance of the Turks, he was unwearied in his efforts to rouse the inhabitants to an heroic resistance in the cause of liberty and faith. In spite of the continual fire of the enemy, Calepius was to be seen every where, attending to the wounded and dying, and encouraging the harassed and disheartened combatants. When at length the place surrendered, and was abandoned for three days to pillage and slaughter, the zeal and devotion of this excellent man displayed itself under the very swords of the infidels. The streets were flowing with blood; yet wherever the danger was greatest and the heaps of dead and dying lay the thickest, Father Angelo might be seen, regardless of the ferocious soldiery who surrounded him, administering the consolations of religion to their victims, and endeavouring to comfort them in that dreadful hour by the power of his words and of his very presence.