Military and religious life in the Middle Ages and at the period of the Renaissance

by P. L. Jacob

Fac-similes of Woodcuts by Jost Amman, in a work entitled “Cleri totius Romanæ ecclesiæ ... habitus:” 4to., Frankfort, 1585.

The regulations of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem not only imposed upon the brethren the triple vow of chastity, poverty, and obedience; they enjoined upon them, besides the duties of hospitality, the exercise of arms, in order that they might defend the kingdom of Jerusalem against the attacks of the unbelievers. The opportunity was soon afforded them of putting aside their purely charitable character, and of becoming men of war (Fig. 139).

Fig. 139.—Fortress of the Knights Hospitallers, in Syria, taken from the Kurds by the Franks about the year 1125, and rebuilt in 1202. A representation of it as restored.—Engraving from “Monuments of the Architecture of the Crusaders in Syria,” by M. G. Rey.

Driven out of Jerusalem by the victorious Saladin, who retook that city on the 19th of October, 1191, the Hospitallers were the last to leave the Holy Land, and transferred their hospital to Margat, after ransoming from the Saracens more than a thousand captive Crusaders; they remained there until the end of the siege of Acre by the Christians, in which they took an active and glorious share, and they then established themselves in the reconquered city and took the name of Knights of St. John of Acre. Again driven from their new residence by the infidels, the Hospitallers asked the King of Cyprus to allow them to settle in his dominion, and to re-establish the central house of their order in the town of Limisso, at which they arrived in small knots, as fast as they were able to escape from the cruisers of the Mussulman fleet. As they, disembarked, exhausted with war’s fatigues, covered with wounds, and unable to console themselves for having survived the loss of Palestine, they presented a really touching spectacle.

The grand master of the knights of St. John of Acre, Jean de Villiers, assembled a chapter general in Cyprus to deliberate upon the best policy to adopt after the last disasters of the crusade, and to take measures to prevent the complete extinction of the order, which had been decimated in the war against the infidels. The Hospitallers of all nations answered the appeal of Jean de Villiers. Never had a meeting been so numerously attended since the foundation of the order; the knights present, carried away by the eloquent appeal of their grand master, swore that they would shed their last blood to recover possession of the Holy Sepulchre.

In spite of the wise measures recommended by Jean de Villiers, the Hospitallers were no longer in safety at Limisso. They had to defend themselves from two equally formidable enemies; from the Saracens, who were ceaselessly threatening their naval and military organization, and from the King of Cyprus, who seemed to desire the ruin of the order, upon which he had just imposed a heavy tax. Indeed, Villaret, the new grand master, proposed to his brothers in arms that they should retire to the island of Rhodes, entrench themselves there, and wait until a more propitious moment should arrive for their return to Palestine. Unfortunately the forces of the order of St. John were not sufficient for such a daring enterprise, and the grand master invited the Western Christians to undertake a new crusade, keeping the real motive of the expedition a secret. The Crusaders assembled in great numbers at the port of Brindisi, in Italy, and the grand master, selecting the noblest and the best equipped, set sail for Rhodes. There he successfully disembarked his little army, with provisions and warlike materials, and laid siege to the capital, which was well fortified and thronged with defenders. After an investment of four years the town was taken by assault; the other strongholds met with a similar fate, and the whole island passed under the sway of the Hospitallers in 1310. But for more than two centuries they had to defend it against the constant attacks of the infidels.

Under the leadership of Joubert or Jacques de Milly, the grand prior of Auvergne, the Knights of Rhodes (the Hospitallers had assumed this name in memory of a victory that so redounded to the fame of the Order of St. John) inflicted a first repulse upon the Ottomans in 1455. All danger, however, was not banished. A rupture seemed imminent with the Sultan of Egypt, quite as formidable an adversary as Mahomet II., the Sultan of Constantinople; and the knights were also obliged to bestir themselves against the Venetians, who had effected a landing on the island, and had been guilty of greater cruelty and violence than the Saracens and the Turks. Raymond Zacosta, the successor of Jacques de Milly in the grand mastership, took advantage of an interval of truce to build a new fort intended to defend the town and port of Rhodes. This impregnable fortress, constructed upon a rocky promontory, received the name of St. Nicholas, from a chapel dedicated to that saint standing within its walls (Fig. 140).

As, in spite of the truce, the Turkish corsairs made continual descents upon the island, the grand master dispatched his galleys to the Ottoman shores, and inflicted a series of reprisals. These so aroused the anger of Mahomet II., that he swore to drive the knights of Rhodes right out of the island. With this purpose he organized an expedition, and entrusted its command to Misach Paleologus, a Greek renegade of the imperial household, who had been appointed grand vizier by the sultan, and who was continually urging his master to take possession of Rhodes.

A hundred and sixty vessels of war and an army of a hundred thousand men arrived off Rhodes on the 23rd of May, 1480. The Turkish fleet endeavoured, under cover of the fire of their artillery, to effect the disembarcation of their troops, while the knights of the order, supported by the guns of the town and its forts, waded up to their waists in the sea and attacked the Ottoman boats sword in hand.