1522: Siege of Rhodes by Vertot

Source:

“The History of the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem …”, Volume 3,

 translated from the French of M. Abbé de Vertot, 1770.  P 165.

https://books.google.ca/books?id=acINAAAAQAAJ&pg=165

That young Prince (Suleiman) had just made himself master of Belgrade.  The happy success of that siege made him expect the like against the city of Rhodes; and besides, the desire of acquiring glory by such an important conquest, he was alto induced to it by the continual complaints of his trading subjects, who were often taken by the knights; and especially by the remonstrances of the mufti, who was continually representing to him, that those Christian capers disturbed the pilgrimages to Mecca, and that he was obliged in conscience to put a stop to their cruisings.  Suleiman was very zealous for his religion, and well enough disposed to turn his arms that way; but as he was a wise prince, and never engaged in any enterprise without communicating it to his council, he laid the matter before them in order to its being debated.

Some pashas represented to him all the difficulties of it, the fortifications of the place, the valour of the knights as well as of the inhabitants, being most of them corsairs; the mighty succours that the Grand Master would infallibly draw from Christendom: that this spark might raise a great flame, and produce a league and crusade of all the sovereigns of Europe; and that his illustrious ancestors and the soldans of Egypt, having in different ages attempted this conquest, had been always baffled, and lost abundance of men without being able to carry their point.

Mustafa, on the contrary, who had married Suleiman's sister, and was a very brave general, guessing at the sultan's secret inclination, represented to him like a true courtier, that all the valour of the knights could never resist his victorious arms; that he had such a great number of troops, who were all such good soldiers, that he could cover the whole island with his numerous armies; whereas the Grand Master had only an handful of men for his defence; that they had nothing to fear from the christian princes who were actually in war, and so incensed against one another, that the emperor Charles V chose rather to suffer the taking of Belgrade, though the taking of it opened a passage into the hereditary dominions of his family, than make peace with the king of France, or draw any detachment from the armies he had in the field against that prince, to send to the succour of the king of Hungary his ally; that after all, it was a sort of dishonour to the Ottoman house, considering the high pitch of grandeur to which it was arrived, to suffer any longer in the very heart of their empire, a republic of corsairs that roved over the seas at pleasure, disturbed the commerce of Syria, Palestine and Egypt, and were daily fixing a price on the liberty of his subjects; that Rhodes, and the other isles of the order served for an asylum to fugitive slaves, malcontents and rebels; and what was most to be considered, that they could not be ignorant, that in times of peace between the several princes of Christendom, the Grand Masters were always taking that opportunity of proposing the conquest of the kingdom of Jerusalem; that in order to engage them to such an enterprise, which was what they had always most at heart, they had offered all the forces of their order, and that so long as the knights should be possessed of the port of Rhodes in the east, a port capable of receiving the christian fleets, there would always be reason to fear some crusade from the princes of the west.

Suleiman preferred this last opinion, as being most agreeable to that ambition which is inseparable from so vast a power: Pyrrhus (Peri, Pîrî Mehmed Paşa), and the other pashas, though of a different sentiment, came over with great submission to that of their sovereign: a war against the knights, and the siege of Rhodes were therefore resolved upon.  The sultan named Mustafa pasha, his favourite and brother-in-law, to be general of the land army, Curtogli to be great admiral, and Ahmed pasha, an able engineer, to have the direction of the works at the siege; and appointed Pyrrhus pasha his old governor, a man in whom he entirely confided, to go along with Mustafa, as a counsellor to that young general, whole capacity and prudence might not perhaps be equal to his courage and valour.  The sultan, after the distribution of these several employments, in order to find how the Grand Master stood effected, wrote to him by an ambassador, whom he sent on purpose to congratulate him, as it were, on his promotion to the dignity of Grand Master.  He proposed to him the keeping of peace, and maintaining a good correspondence together; but he concluded his letter by telling him that he had taken Belgrade, as if he were minded to intimidate him with the fear of meeting with the fame fate as that unhappy city had undergone.  As the style of these kind of letters gives a better idea of the character of princes, and the manners of the age they live in, than meer extracts, we have thought the reader would not be displeased to meet with that of Suleiman, and the Grand Master's answer, in this place.  Suleiman's letter was wrote in Greek, and drawn up almost in these terms.

“Sultan Suleiman, by the grace of God, king of kings, sovereign of sovereigns, most high emperor of Byzantium and Trebizond, most mighty king of Persia, Arabia, Syria and Egypt, supreme lord of Europe and Asia, prince of Mecca and Aleppo, possessor of Jerusalem, and lord of the universal sea.”

To Philip Villiers De L’Isle-Adam, Grand Master of the Isle of Rhodes, Greeting.

“I congratulate thee on thy new dignity, and thy arrival in thy dominions: I wish that thou mayst reign there happily, and with more glory than thy predecessors.  It shall be in thy power to have a share in our good will.  Enjoy then our friendship, and as our friend, be not the last to congratulate us on the conquests we have just made in Hungary, where we have reduced the important fortress of Belgrade, after having destroyed all that dare resist us with our dreadful sword.  Adieu.  From our camp the .....  and of the hegira the ….”

This letter was read in full council; and they were surprised, that While Suleiman was offering, as it were, peace with one hand, he should make an ostentation of his formidable power with the other, and that his vessels should insult those of the order, or such as failed under its banner.  The Grand Master did not neglect to answer that prince, but in such terms, as the reader will observe, that might give him to understand that they were equally disposed at Rhodes either to conclude a peace, or continue the war.

F.  Philip Villiers De L’Isle-Adam, Grand Master of Rhodes

To Suleiman, Sultan of the Turks:

Bosio.  t. 2. 1. 18. p. 627.  

“I understand very well the meaning of thy letter, which thy ambassador has brought me: thy proposals of a peace between us, are as agreeable to me as they will be displeasing to Curtogli.  That corsair, at my passage from France, did all he could to surprise me, but not succeeding in his project, and not caring to go out of these seas without having done us some damage, he entered the river Lycia, and attempted to carry off two merchant ships belonging to our ports.  He had likeways attacked a bark belonging to some Candiots, but the galleys of the Order, which I sent out of the port of Rhodes, forced him to let go his hold, and make off as fast as he could for fear of falling into our power.  Adieu ,....  from Rhodes the ….."

As the Turks were not very scrupulous with regard to the law of nations, the Grand Master did not think fit, without a pass, to send his letter by a knight whom they might probably detain.  They gave it to a Greek, a private man of the city of Rhodes.  Suleiman and his ministers found, by reading this letter, that they had to deal with a prince of a firm and intrepid character, one who was not easily terrified.  Pyrrhus pasha, an old man, as great a politician as a soldier, proposed in the council, that they should write again to the Grand Master in order to make a new overture of peace; that they should tell him that they dare not present his letter to the Grand Seignior by reason of the mean character of the bearer; but that if he would send one of his principal knights to the porte, there was room to hope that his negotiation might end in a solid peace.  The design of this minister was to draw a one of the first of the Order to Constantinople, then to seize his person, and force him by torture to give them an account of the state of the place, and the forces of the Order; which might make one doubt of the intelligence which, it is pretended, d’Amaral held with the Grand Seignior, notwithstanding its being positively asserted by contemporary historians: not but Suleiman had likeways the same advices from the Jewish physician: that perfidious wretch was continually urging him by his letters, to hasten his armament; but as traitors, in order to make themselves better listened to, always lessen the difficulties of an enterprise which they themselves propose, the Grand Seignior and his council, perhaps from the fear of a double treachery, would have been very glad, before they engaged in the siege, to know from some knight, whether the advices that they received from their spies were true, and whether there was no exaggeration in their relations.

The Grand Seignior entered into the views of his minister; and in order to endeavour, under the specious pretence of a negotiation, to get some knight sent to Constantinople, he ordered them to dispatch a new express to Rhodes in Pyrrhus's name.  The pasha wrote to the Grand Master to assure him, that the sultan was very well disposed to treat of peace in good earnest, but that out of fear of affronting the majesty of so great a prince, they did not dare to present his letter to him, because of the mean character of his agent; but that if he would send any lord of his council with another letter, and furnish him with full powers, he would readily introduce him to the porte.  He added, that the Grand Seignior, being surprised that he had no answer to his first letter, had given a second to the messenger, which he did not question but he world answer in a manner suitable to the majesty and formidable power of so great an emperor.  The express indeed had a letter from Suleiman to the Grand Master, wherein that prince, as we shall find, in order to oblige him to sue for peace, makes a great ostentation of his designs and forces.

“We have been assured, says he to him, that the letter which our highness wrote to thee, has been delivered into thy hands, and that it gave thee more astonishment than pleasure.  Be assured, that I shall not be satisfied with the conquest of Belgrade, but propose to myself another of as great importance in a little time, of which thou shalt soon have notice; thou and thy knights being scarce ever out of my memory.”

As this second letter had more the air of a challenge, or a declaration of war, than of a preliminary of peace, the Grand Master thought himself obliged to answer it in as lofty terms.

“I am not sorry, says he to him in his answer, that thou rememberest me and the knights of my Order: thou speakest to me of the conquest thou hast made in Hungary, and the design thou hast, as thou informest me, of undertaking another enterprise which thou hopest will have the same success; but consider, that of all the projects that are formed by man, none are more uncertain than those that depend upon the fortune of war.  Adieu.”

The Grand Master having thought himself obliged to answer the sultan's indirect menaces with so much resolution, wrote likeways to Pyrrhus, telling him, that if the sultan his master desired a peace with greater sincerity than appeared by his letters, he needed only send him some hostages, or else a pass sealed with the great seal of the empire, and that as soon as it was come to hand, he would send one of the most considerable knights of the Order to Constantinople to hear what proposals they would make him.  But a brigantine of the Order, commanded by a serving brother, being taken by the Turks near Rhodes, that act of hostility was taken for a declaration of war.

The Grand Master prepared for it with all the courage and precaution of an old captain, who had passed his whole life in war: he enlarged the ditch, and sunk it deeper; he repaired the fortifications, and added several new ones to the place.

To deprive the Turks of forage, they, by his orders, cut down the corn, though it was not yet ripe: some country houses, as well as churches, situated without the town, were demolished, and the materials carried into the town, for fear the enemy should make use of their ruins to raise platforms, and plant their artillery on them.  From another precaution, and in order to be well supplied with pioneers, they obliged all the peasants of the country to retire into the town, and recalled at the same time all the adventurers and privateers that were cruising against the infidels under the banner of the Order, whose protection they had, as well as free admittance and full security upon occasion in the port of Rhodes.

But it was necessary to provide for the subsistence of these people as well as for that of the knights, the citizens, and the garrison.  This was the first care of the Grand Master: he appointed three commissioners for that purpose; and to give them the greater credit in the execution of their office, he chose them out of the grand crosses.  The first was Gabriel de Pommerols, great commander and lieutenant general to the Grand Master; John Buck Turcopilier, of the language of England, was the second; and chancellor d’Amaral was named for the third.  These three noblemen visited all the magazines carefully; and though they found most of them full, yet the Grand Master, from an opinion that what on such occasions is called sufficient, does not always prove so, proposed in the council to send immediately to Naples, Sicily, and Candia for a greater quantity of wheat, wine, powder, and arms; and to endeavour likeways to get five hundred archers and bow-men from Candia--the Candiots in all ages excelling even the most warlike nations in the managing of those instruments.  The chancellor, who, as they pretend, had sold his religion to the infidels, in order to prevent the effects of the Grand Master's precautions, represented, that by news just arrived from the Christian isles of the Archipelago, they were informed that the Turkish armament was not so much designed against the isles of the Order as against that of Cyprus, and perhaps Italy itself; that, for near forty years in which he had been in the Order, he had frequently observed, that the Turks had occasioned it more expence by the jealousy that their armaments gave them, than if they had actually attacked Rhodes; that indeed the care and precautions that the Grand Master took could never be sufficiently applauded; but they might defer the execution of them for some time longer, for fear of draining the treasury of the Order in making preparations to guard against a storm that would probably fall on some other place.

The Grand Master, who was ignorant of the motives for perfidious advice, imputed it only to an injudicious spirit of parsimony; but he declared that he had letters from a faithful spy that he could depend on, whom he kept at Constantinople, and who assured him that the Grand Seignior's armament was designed only for the siege of Rhodes; that he had given orders to let no ship go out of his ports that was bound towards Rhodes; that they were labouring hard in preparing a train of large artillery, which is never used but in sieges; that the sultan had caused a great quantity of tools to be made, proper for pioneering, and that most of the troops were filing towards Lycia, where they were to embark, in order to be transported into the isle of Rhodes.  The Grand Master added, that, in an affair of such importance, it was dangerous to give way to a too timorous policy, and that it was much better to hazard some expence, than see the island covered with enemies before they had provided for its defence.

The Grand Master's advice prevailed: they got wheat from Naples and Sicily, so that there was no want of any thing during the whole course of the siege, but powder, which happened by the treachery of the chancellor, who made a false report of the quantity in the magazines.  They had also like to have wanted wine through the same perfidiousness, the chancellor having, under a pretence of thriftiness, rejected the proposals of three merchants of Rhodes, that offered to supply the city with it at a reasonable price.  But the Grand Master, whose views extended on all sides, sent a serving brother into Candia, Anthony Bosio by name, uncle to the author of the annals of the Order, with orders to provide great store of wine, and to procure leave also from the governor of the island to levy five hundred foot.  Bosio, arriving in Candia, had no difficulty in getting the wine, which he shipped off in fifteen brigantines; he was even cunning enough to engage a young Venetian gentleman, whose name was Bonaldi, and who had at that time, in the port of Rhodes, a ship freighted with wine, and bound for Constantinople, to alter his course, and carry it to Rhodes.

But the serving brother did not find it as easy a matter to levy soldiers.  The governor not only denied him leave, but, as if he dreaded Suleiman's resentment, forbid, by sound of trumpet, all persons whatsoever, under pain of corporal punishment, to list themselves with the Grand Master's agent, or quit the island.  Notwithstanding which, the dextrous Rhodian made a shift to get his recruit, and above five hundred men, disguised like merchants and seamen, got on board the brigantines, either unknown to the governor, or without his being willing to take notice of it.  This cunning negotiator did another piece of service to the Order before he set sail.  There was, at that time, in the isle of Candia, an excellent engineer, Gabriel Martinengo by name, a gentleman of Brescia, a subject of the republic, and of an ancient and illustrious family: the senate had given him a pension of twelve hundred crowns to superintend over all the fortifications of that island.  Bosio, who foresaw how useful a man of his abilities would be in a place that was besieged, proposed to him to go to Rhodes, and to share in the glory which they hoped with the knights, to acquire in the defence of it.  Martinengo, a man of true valour, and who was both a brave soldier and a great engineer, offered cheerfully to accept his invitation, provided he could procure a discharge from the governor.

Bosio parted for Rhodes with his soldiers and provisions of wine.  He arrived safe in that place; and having given the Grand Master an account of his voyage, he discoursed with him about the negotiation he had entered into with Martinengo.  The Grand Master immediately saw the advantage that a man of his abilities would be to them in the present juncture: he sent Bosio immediately back to Candia, with a letter to the governor, wherein he entreated him, in the most pressing terms, to give that officer leave to come and defend a place which served for a bulwark to the very islands of the republic.  But the governor flatly refused to grant it him, and went so far as to send for Martinengo, and give him express orders not to stir out of the island.  But that officer, not troubling himself about the consequences, put on a disguise, and, in concert with Bosio, came to the sea-side, and got on board a felucca (boat), that waited for him in a bye-creek of the isle.

The governor, having notice that the engineer had disappeared, caused a strict search to be made after him in the principal houses.  He sent to his own, where he confiscated all his effects, and, not questioning but he was embarked in some passage ship, he sent two galleys to pursue him, with orders to bring him back, dead or alive.  Martinengo and Bosio, seeing themselves pursued, took down the mast of the felucca, drew their oars into their vessel, brought it close under a rock of the island, covering it with sails made of whitish linen, almost of the same colour as the rock that the felucca lay under.  By this artifice, and perhaps by the secret orders of the governor, they escaped the galleys, which returning back into the port, they set sail, passed, in the night-time, through some Turkish vessels, which, by means of Bosio's speaking the Greek language, took the brigantine to belong to their own squadron, and arrived safe at Rhodes.  Martinengo was mighty well received by the Grand Master, who knew his birth and his talents.  The principle commanders following his example, showed him the utmost respect; every body was striving to show him how sensible they were of his merit.  Martinengo also was delighted to see himself esteemed by that noble body of knights, the best judges of valour, and which was composed of the most illustrious persons in all the states of Christendom.  From these sentiments, that savoured too much perhaps of human nature, he passed to those of a particular veneration, when he saw these knights and warriors preparing themselves like Christians and true religious for the defence of religion.  Under a soldier's habit, and with a military equipage, he admired their contempt of the world, their lively faith, and sincere disengagement from the things of this life: he was particularly edified to see most of them preparing themselves for a bloody siege, by a frequent receiving of the sacraments.

These reflections gave rise to his vocation: he saw himself exposed to the same dangers, without the same holy preparation: God touched his heart; he ran to the Grand Master's palace, threw himself at his feet, and, inflamed with zeal to sacrifice his life for the defence of the faith, entreated that prince to honour him with his cross.  The Grand Master took him up and embraced him tenderly, assuring him, that he would go immediately and propose his request to the council, and acquaint them with his pious dispositions.  The votes were unanimous in his favour; the whole Order was delighted to associate so excellent a man in it; the Grand Master gave him the habit, and administered the vows to him in a full assembly; and, to acknowledge the generosity wherewith he had abandoned his patrimony, and the great pensions he had from the republic of Venice, the Order assigned him a pension of twelve hundred crowns, till such time as he might have some commandry or priory of the like value given him.  As a farther favour to the new knight, the Grand Master made him, the next day, a grand cross, and gave him, at the same time, the general inspection over all the fortifications: and the grand marshal, who is standing general of all the troops of the Order, divided, as it were, his authority with lim: he admitted him, out of the high regard he had to his great capacity, into the command and authority which his post gave him over all the forces in the island.

'Twas by the advice and directions of Martinengo, that they repaired the walls and towers; he caused them to raise the ramparts higher: they built ravelins before the gates of the city; made casemates in the flanks of the bastions, and in the counterscarp of the ditch, mines filled with powder, to which they might set fire by the help of a train laid under ground: within the place, he caused them to build new forts, cuts, ditches, entrenchments, barricades, and all kinds of necessary defences that a person of his capacity, and who foresaw everything that might happen, could oppose against the attacks of the besiegers.

While the Order was receiving such advantages from his skill and his great talents, particularly at a time when they were going to be besieged, there happened a kind of desertion among the knights of the language of Italy.  The principal of that nation complained to the Grand Master and the council, that pope Adrian VI., who had just succeeded Leo X., disposed in an absolute manner, and contrary to their rights, of all the commandries of Italy, and thereupon asked leave to go to Rome to complain of it.  The Grand Master did not think fit in the present juncture to grant them the leave that they desired: his refusal exasperated them; and d'Amaral, who lost no opportunity of weakening the Order, insinuated to them, that they themselves ought to take a permission which he denied them; that l’Isle Adam, who was a Frenchman by birth, did not love the language of Italy; that in order to keep them low, he was not perhaps concerned at the pope's taking from them the commandries annexed to their language; that the Grand Master spread and encouraged the reports of an approaching siege, with the view only of having a pretence to dispose the more freely of the funds that were in the treasury of the Order; and that after all, it would be a dishonour to them, if, after shedding their blood so often in the defence of the Order, they should, by an odious distinction, be the only persons deprived of the recompense so justly due to their services.

The Italian knights, seduced by this perfidious advice, left Rhodes without leave, and retired into the isle of Candia (Heraklion).  The Grand Master, justly provoked at so scandalous a disobedience, ordered them to be prosecuted as rebels and deserters; and the council deprived them of the habit by an express sentence to this purpose: however just this sentence might be, the Order nevertheless lost in them a considerable number of valiant knights.  Some of their friends, better affected than the chancellor, went over to Candia with the Grand Master's private consent; and, after having dextrously entered into their complaints and resentments, they represented to them, that there was no longer any doubt to be made of the siege of Rhodes; that they would see the island immediately covered over with the Turks, and that though the motive of their journey to Rome was never so just, they yet could not prevent their enemies spreading a report that they had made it at such a juncture, with a view only of getting out of the way of those dangers to which their brethren were going to be exposed.

The certainty of the siege of Rhodes, and the fear they were under of being suspected to have withdrawn themselves from so cowardly a motive, prevailed over their resentment.  They returned to Rhodes, to throw themselves at the Grand Master's feet; and, that they might obtain pardon for their fault, they protested that they would wash it out with their blood, and with that of the infidels.  The Grand Master received them like a tender father; and after having given them a wise reproof for their disobedience, the generous old man embraced them with great tenderness, gave them the habit again, and promised them, that as soon as they should be free from the war, with which they were threatened, the whole Order should interest itself in their affair; that he would make it his own, and that as their complaints were just and reasonable, he was in hopes that the several princes of Christendom would not refuse him their good offices with the pope.

This storm being happily calmed, the Grand Master immediately dispatched knights to all the courts of Europe, who were to solicit the pope and the other princes of Christendom to send him speedy succours: but the event showed that the Order could depend on nothing but its own strength.  Most of the princes, engaged in war with one another, and minding only their private interests, neglected those of religion; and the pope himself, though a virtuous pontiff, yet as he owed his dignity to the credit and recommendation of the emperor Charles V., whose preceptor he had been, he dare not dispose of the troops and money of the holy see without his privity and consent.

Brother James de Bourbon, commander of Oisemont, and natural son to Lewis de Bourbon, elected bishop of Liege, a prince of the house of France, tells us, in his relation of the siege of Rhodes, that upon the request made in the Grand Master's name, by the chevalier d'Ansoyville, to the king of France, this religious prince, who had a great affection for the Order, gave him a power to fit out all the vessels that he should find in the ports of Provence, and carry them to Rhodes.  But the commanders in that province, fearing to be attacked by the emperor, delayed executing his orders; so that he was forced to go back to court to solicit for new ones that might be more particular; and these voyages took up so much time, that winter came on, and the proper season for putting to sea was over.

‘Twas probably from the same misfortune, that a strong carrack, which the chevalier Hyserant, of the language of Auvergne, had fitted out at Genoa, and freighted with ammunition and provisions, ran aground near Monega: though they suspected, at that time, that the winds and the sea had not so much contributed to that accident, as the policy of the Genoese, who were afraid of incurring the resentment of the Turks.  Nor is it less difficult to discover the motive of the inactivity of Fabricio Pignatelli, prior of Barletta, of Charles Quesvalle, of Lully de St. Stephen, and John Baptist Carassa, bailiff of Naples, who having, by the Grand Master's directions, purchased, with the Order's money, a great quantity of ammunition and provisions, never sent any of it to the succour of Rhodes.

The Grand Master, being in no certainty of these remote succours, placed all his confidence in the protection of Heaven, and in the valour of his knights.  Like a man of war and a great captain, he neglected no precaution necessary to prevent being surprised by the infidels.  One of the first of his many cares, so worthy of his zeal and courage, was a general review of all the knights and regular troops; which amounted in all to about six hundred knights, and four thousand five hundred soldiers; and, with this handful of men, he undertook to defend the place against the inundations of those formidable armies that Suleiman brought into the field in all his enterprises.  The townsmen, indeed, of Rhodes took up arms, and some companies were formed out of them: they also recalled the Rhodian privateers that were out at sea; these were posted in the town, and were charged with the defence of the port.  The country peasants were designed to serve as pioneers; but they could not afterwards make any use at all of the common people of the town, who were insensible to any passion but that of fear, and could never be brought to look danger in the face.  The Grand Master gave brother Didier Tholon, of St. Jaille, bailiff of Monosque, the direction of the artillery, and the chevaliers de Nuëres and Britto were entrusted with the carrying on of the works under the orders of the bailiff' de Martinengo.  The slaves of Rhodes, and such as belonged to the private persons, were employed in hollowing the ditches, and in the fortifications which they added to the bastion of Auvergne; they repaired the mills; they built new ovens; the port was shut up with a double chain, one before its mouth, the other within it, from the tower of St. Nicholas to the tower of the mills; and, to prevent the infidels from seizing on the mole, as they had attempted in the former siege, and advancing by means of that bank as far as the gate of St. Catharine, they sunk, at the entrance of the bay, where the Tunny fishery was, several ships loaded with stones: the walls were, at the same time, lined with artillery; they carried arms, grenades, fire-pots, and large stones upon the ramparts and bastions; there never had been seen a greater diligence, or a more complete order.

The knights and the Greek gentlemen, the townsmen as well as officers, the soldier and mariner, the very priests and monks, each of these employed himself readily and without confusion upon whatever was prescribed him.  The Grand Master was present in all places, he alone inspected the carrying on of these several works; his presence and capacity advanced them still more than the many hands employed about them; and few princes and governors ever gave such manifest proofs in a besieged place of so perfect an understanding of the art of war, joined to a calm valour, incapable of being discomposed either by the greatness or the variety of the dangers with which he was afterwards surrounded.

But for the better understanding of the importance and usefulness of the precautions which he took, though we have in the former book taken some notice of the situation of this place, it may nevertheless perhaps be proper to give a fuller account of it, and take notice likeways of the additional fortifications that had been made since the last siege.

The city of Rhodes, as we have already observed, is situated by the sea side, on an hill which terminates with a gentle descent into a plain, thereby making the circumvallation of it easy.  'Tis divided into the high and low town; the Grand Master's palace was in the high town, and served as a castle and a citadel to it at the same time.  All the knights were lodged near the Grand Master's palace in the same quarter; and all the secular and married persons, as well as townsmen as artificers, dwelt in the lower town.  The place on the side towards the country seems to be of a round figure, but when seen from the sea represents a perfect crescent.  There are two ports belonging to it; the larger is square and spacious, but not very safe when certain winds blow.  At the entrance of this port, on the right, stands the tower of St. Nicholas, a monument of the liberality of Philip the good duke of Burgundy.  This tower, well provided with artillery, was joined to a bastion that lay behind it, and had a curtain which ran up to the walls of the town, and made one of the sides of the port.  On the other side, over against this tower, stood an old castle, to which the knights gave the name of the castle St. Angelo.  This castle and the tower, which were somewhat more than an hundred yards distant from one another, were built upon the two rocks, upon which it is pretended that the feet of the great brazen Colossus stood in former times, and which was of so prodigious a bulk, that the greatest vessels, as we are told, might pass with all their sails spread between its legs.  The bastion, adjoining to the tower of St. Nicholas, was by the sea side, provided with nine great pieces of cannon, which commanded the entry of the port so entirely, that no ship could enter in on any side.  The little port, or port of the galleys, was covered towards the sea with a narrow neck of rock, that ran out from the firm land, and had a castle upon it, called by the knights the castle of St. Elme or St. Erme.  This port is more secure than large, and may hold several galleys; but the mouth of it is so narrow, that there cannot above one enter at a time.  They shut it up every evening with a chain that was fastened to a little tower at the farther end of a mole which runs about twenty-five or thirty paces out into the sea; the other end of the chain was fastened to a piece of rock that jutted out from the land seven or eight paces from the castle.  Near the port of the galleys stood the arsenal where they used to be built, and over against the bastion which is between the two ports, there is a large tower with a ditch, and three great pieces of cannon, which defended the entrance of this last port.  Above the prince's palace, and the inns of the languages, were a great number of churches, among which that of St. John, the patron of the Order, was remarkable for the greatness of the edifice, and the height and fine workmanship of its steeple.  All these noble buildings, together with the fortifications both ancient and modern, made Rhodes one of the finest cities of the East.  It was surrounded by a double, others say with a triple enclosure of walls, fortified with thirteen large towers, built after the antique fashion, five of which lay within a sort of ravelin and bastion, which the historians of the time call bulwarks; and these bulwarks were covered by barbacans or fausse-brayes, and other advanced works.  The ditch was large and deep; the counterscarp well faced and palisado'd: all that lay open in the parts adjacent to the place, was exposed to an infinite number of batteries, composed of cannon of different bores, according to the nearness or distance of the places in view.  Rhodes seemed to defy an attack on all sides; and from the glacis to the body of the place, there was nothing but fortifications heaped one upon another, and batteries that suffered no approaches to be made without danger and loss of men.

We have said upon the credit of the historians of that age, that there were five bulwarks or bastions.  The Grand Master committed the defence of them to five old knights that had given signal proofs of their capacity and courage on many occasions.  The chevalier du Mesnil had the care of defending the bastion of Auvergne; brother Francis de Carrieres was posted in that of Spain; Nicholas Hussey was to command in that of England; Berenger de Lioncel in that of Provence e; and Andelot Gentili undertook to defend the bastion of Italy.  The Grand Master distributed at the same time the best part of his troops upon the ramparts, and divided them according to their quarters.  Brother Raimond de Ricard, the oldest commander of the language of Provence, was at the head of a brigade to take care of a post that bore the same name.  Raimond Roger of the language of Auvergne was pitched upon for the quarter of his language; Joachim de St. Aubin with the French knights was to defend the wall from the Franque tower, as far as the gate of St. Ambrose, and from that gate as far as that of St. George.  The Germans were posted under the conduct of the commander Valdners: William Ouazon commanded in the quarter of the English; George Emar in that of Italy; John de Barbaron and Ernard Sollier were to defend the posts of Castile and Arragon, where the ditches were neither broad nor deep enough.  The quarter called St. Mary de la Victoire was still weaker; the Grand Master undertook the defence of it himself, quitted his palace, and lodged at the foot of the wall with some knights that he had reserved to fight under his own command and near his person.

Besides this distribution, the Grand Master chose likeways four lords, all of them grand crosses, to whom they gave the title of Adjutant Captains or Generals, who, with the companies under their command, were a sort of corps de reserve, and were to march to such places as were most pressed.  The first of these captains was d'Amaral, whose fidelity they did not as yet suspect.  His business was to sustain those that defended the posts of Auvergne and Germany; brother John Buck, Turcopolier of the Order, and a knight of the language of England, was appointed for the quarter of Spain and England; brother Peter de Cluys, grand prior of France, was to sustain those of his own nation, and the posts of Castile and Portugal; and brother Gregory de Morgut, grand prior of Navarre, was assigned to march to the succour of the posts of Provence and Italy.  The Grand Master added to these four lords brother Gabriel de Pommerols, his lieutenant general, who, without having any settled post and quarter, was to go to all places where there should be need; and the Grand Master at the head of his guards, commanded by the chevalier de Bonneval, of the language of Auvergne, reserved the same function to himself.

We have already observed, that before the first siege they carried into the city a statue of the holy Virgin, which was revered in a church dedicated to her, and built upon Mont-Philerme.  They took the same precaution before this second siege, and all the clergy and people went in procession to the church to take it, and brought it into the city, whereof she was considered as the protectress, and deposited it in the church of St. Mark.

The tower of St. Nicholas being looked upon as the most important post, and as the key of Rhodes, the Grand Master entrusted the defence of it to brother Guyot de Castelane, of the language of Provence-an old knight who had distinguished himself by a great number of brave actions.  Twenty knights and three hundred foot entered into the fortress under his command; they gave six hundred men to the knights Claude de St. Prix and John Boniface, both Frenchmen, and to Lopez d'Aiala and Hugh Capon, Spaniards, to patrol round the city night and day in their turn, and to maintain good order in it, with power to judge and condemn malefactors to death, reserving, however, a liberty of appealing to the Grand Master.  This prince, fearing that the four grand crosses, whom he had chose for adjutant captains, would not, during the course of the siege, be sufficient to carry relief to all places that should be attacked, added four others to them, viz., Anastasius de sainte Camelle, Guyot Dazas, French knights, Marin Fursan and Raimond Marquet, Spaniards, and gave each of them a company of a hundred and fifty men.

The grand marshal, according to the rights of his office, gave the great standard of the Order to Anthony de Grolee, of the province of Dauphine, a knight of distinguished valour, and well worthy of so honourable a trust.  The chevalier de Tinteville, a relation of the Grand Master's, was appointed to carry the standard of the holy crucifix, and the chevalier Henri de Mauselle, one of the officers of the Grand Master's household, carried his particular standard.

While the Grand Master was employed in assigning the knights their several employments, and the quarters which they were to defend, they saw that the Turks were in the night making signals of fire upon that part of the coast of Lycia that lies opposite to the isle of Rhodes.

The Grand Master, that he might not neglect any thing, ordered a French knight, whose name was Mennetou, to take his pink and go with a Rhodian named Juxi, who spoke the Turkish language, to find out the meaning of those fires.  The French knight pursuant to his orders put to sea, and coming pretty near the coast, he perceived several Turkish soldiers, disguised like merchants, standing by the side of a fountain.  Jaxi asked them the reason of their signals, and enquired at the same time for a Turkish merchant of his acquaintance, who had formerly traded at Rhodes.  They answered him, that that merchant was not far off, that he was coming thither, and that he might see him if he would come ashore.  The Rhodian excused himself, unless they would send an hostage to his commander; the Turks agreed to it, the exchange was made; but as soon as Jaxi was ashore, these perfidious wretches, contrary to the law of nations, bound him, hurried him away in all haste to Constantinople, and delivered him to Pyrrhus pasha, the author and director of this piece of treachery.  Mennetou thought to take his revenge on the Turkish hostage, but when he came back to Rhodes, they found that he was only a sorry peasant, whom they had dressed in a silk vest, and from whom the Grand Master and council could get no manner of information.

In the mean time Pyrrhus, having the Rhodian in his power, endeavoured to get an account from him of the state of the city of Rhodes; and not being able to gain upon him by civilities and hopes of great reward, he put him to such violent torture for several days together, that the Greek, no longer able to bear it, answered to the interrogatories that were put to him, and died soon after.  Pyrrhus acquainted the Grand Seignior with the Rhodian's deposition, and assured his master, that there were not above five or six thousand men in arms at Rhodes.  Suleiman resolved immediately to begin the siege; but as it was a rule with him never to begin any war without a previous declaration of it, he sent one by an express who went into Lycia, and according to custom made the usual signals with fires, as had been done by those who carried off Jaxi.

The Grand Master, who did not know of his death, fancied immediately that the Turks had sent him back.  The knight Boniface d'Aluys went by his orders with a galley to receive him.  When he arrived near the coast, he saw some Turks on horseback, who without saying any thing of Jaxi, told him they were come with letters from the Grand Seignior to the Grand Master, and that if they would wait a little while, they would go fetch them, inviting at the same time the Trucheman or interpreter of the galley to come ashore to receive them.  But the chevalier d'Aluys, fearing another trick like that which was played the chevalier de Mennetou, would not suffer him to go.  Being likeways apprehensive of another ambuscade, and of there being some vessels in a readiness to surprise and seize on his galley, he told them, that he was going away that very moment, and that if they had any letters to send to the Grand Master, they might deliver them to him.  The Turks, seeing him ready to sail off, tied the packet of letters to a stone, and threw it on ship-board.  He carried the packet to the Grand Master; it was opened in full council: they found in it a letter of Suleiman in the form of a declaration of war, directed to the Grand Master, to the knights in general, and to the citizens and inhabitants of Rhodes.  This letter of defiance was drawn up pretty near in these terms.

“The continual robberies with which you infest our faithful subjects, and the insult you offer to our Imperial majesty, oblige us to require you to deliver up to us immediately the island and fortress of Rhodes.    If you do it readily, we swear, by the God who made heaven and earth, by the six and twenty thousand prophets, and the four musaphi that fell from heaven, and by our great prophet Mahomet, that you shall have free liberty to go out of the island, and the inhabitants to stay there, without the least injury being done to you: but if you do not submit immediately to our orders, you shall be all cut to pieces with our terrible sword, and the towers, bastions, and walls of Rhodes  shall be laid level with the grass that grows at the foot of all those fortifications.”

This letter was no great surprise to the council; and they resolved, that if the Grand Seignior should attack the island, to answer him only with their cannon.  But before the enemy appeared, and that they were obliged to enter upon action, the Grand Master ordered them to prepare themselves for it by fasting and prayer: he himself first set them the example of it, and the moments which he could spare from the toils of government, he spent in devotion before the altar.  Fontanus, a contemporary historian, and eye-witness of what passed at the siege, in the relation which he has left us of it, observes, that the knights and citizens of Rhodes had as much confidence in his prayers as in his valour; and it was a common saying among them, that under so pious a prince, heaven would interpose for the preservation of his dominions.

As the isle of Rhodes was inhabited by two different nations, each of them had their own metropolitan, both in the nomination of the Grand Master.  Leonard Balestein then enjoyed that dignity with regard to the Latins, and a caloyer or monk of St. Basil, called Clement, was archbishop of the Greeks.  These two prelates lived in a perfect harmony, and made it their whole business to maintain peace between their diocesans.  The Latin archbishop was a very fine speaker; he was one of the most eloquent preachers of his age.  However, as the Turks always treated their Greek subjects more favourably than the Latins, the Grand Master was not without apprehensions that the Greek inhabitants of the isles of the Order might possibly be seduced by this distinction in their favour, and, therefore, engaged the two metropolitans in their sermons to exhort their diocesans to fight courageously against the enemies of the faith.

Both the prelates acquitted themselves in this point with zeal, and succeeded in it without difficulty.  The fidelity of the Rhodians to the Order was not to be shaken: not only from the inviolable attachment which they discovered for the true religion, but, likeways, because the knights had always governed with great justice and moderation—the surest bond in nature between a sovereign and his subjects.

In the mean time the Turkish fleet set sail; thirty galleys advanced before it.  The commander, as he passed along the coasts of the isle of Lango or Coos, landed some troops to ravage it: but these plunderers were so vigorously charged upon their landing by Prejan de Bidoux, great prior of St. Giles, governor of the island, that they were forced to re-embark with some loss.  This commander being informed, by the prisoners that he took, that those galleys, and the main body of the fleet which followed them, was steering directly for Rhodes, sent, after they were gone by, to ask the Grand Master leave to come to him and serve the Order in the siege.  The Grand Master, who knew his capacity and long experience in war, was equally affected with his zeal and courage.  He readily sent him the orders that he asked; and the brave knight, upon the receipt of them, went on board a brigantine, and, in the night time, got into the port of Rhodes without being discovered by the Turks that lay off it at sea.  The Grand Master embraced him tenderly, commended him highly, and, not to leave his talents, and particularly his vigilance unemployed, he gave him the commission of visiting the several posts of the place, and of commanding at all the batteries jointly with the bailiff of Monosque.

They likeways brought over at the same time, from the other isles of the Order, and particularly from Nizzaro, the greatest part of its inhabitants, a brave set of men, used to cruise at sea, and combat against the infidels.  The Grand Master took this resolution, because the only thing they had to do in this war was to save the capital; and if the Order could but maintain its ground there, the other islands would be either preserved, or, at least, be more easily recovered.

When these inhabitants were landed, they put them with provisions into the castles of Lindo, Feracle, and the other fortresses of the island: some gallant knights: some gallant knights were likewise put into those places to command them; their orders were, that, if they should be besieged, they should hold out as long as possible, to gain time, and put off the siege of the capital; and if the infidels did not attack them, to go often out on parties, and try to surprise the stragglers from the main army.

The Turkish fleet, after making the coast of Lycia, appeared at last within sight of Rhodes, and stopped in shallow water about eight miles or three leagues from the city: but not finding a good bottom, and the place being likewise, at that season, exposed to the westerly winds, Curtogli weighed anchor, set sail, and went to land on the other side, on a lee-shore, where there was good anchorage, at a place called Parambolin (Lindo?), six miles from the city.  There afterwards came thither, from the ports of Syria, Palestine and Egypt, a great number of vessels, laden with troops and ammunition: so that when the Turks had collected all their forces, they counted no less than four hundred sail in their fleet; and the land army consisted of a hundred and forty thousand men, without reckoning sixty thousand pioneers, which Suleiman had drawn out of the frontiers of Hungary, and the mountains of Servia, Bosnia and Wallachia, where most of them had been bred to digging under ground, and working in mines.

The grand master, on the approach of the enemy, quitted his palace, and posted himself near the church of St. Marie de la Victoire, to be the more within reach of succouring the posts that should be attacked. During the first thirteen days the Infidels made no motion, at all; only their galleys, flat bottomed vessels, and barks, were continually transporting their troops from the ports of Fischo and Macry into the isle of Rhodes, and in landing the heavy artillery, provisions and ammunition. When all was landed, they held a council of war about the different operations of the army.  Some officers were of opinion, that they should begin with attacking the castle of Lindo, and the other fortresses of the island, which the knights had built to hinder the making of descents; and they represented, that the troops which were in those places might surprise and intercept their convoys, and cut to pieces any parties that might straggle abroad for forage; but Peri (Pîrî ) or Pyrrhus pasha, the son of a renegado Epirot, was against this sentiment, and represented, that they should lose no time, which was too precious to be thrown away, in reducing these little places; that they ought to advance directly to the capital, the taking of which would make all those castles fall of course; and, with regard to the parties which might disturb their convoys and foragers, they might easily secure themselves from any apprehensions of that nature, by sending such strong escorts, that the Christians dare not attack them.

The general declared himself for this latter opinion: Rhodes was invested; they began to open the trenches out of the reach of cannon-shot, and when they were nearer the town, the infidels raised a battery, which was immediately dismounted by the artillery of the place. Nothing could appear in the plain but it was immediately battered, and felt the fury of the cannon; and the knights making frequent sallies, killed a great number of the enemy, cleared the trenches, and filled up their first works.  The Turks began them again, and raised new batteries; but notwithstanding their being covered with sheds, gabions and shoulder-works, the knights, with their continual fire, ruined all their works, and destroyed such as managed the artillery of the infidels.  The sword made great havoc of what the cannon spared: every day there was some skirmish or other, and no sallies were made, but all the Turks in the trenches were cut to pieces.

The Turkish soldiers, who were used to make prognostics from the first skirmishes, presaged no good to themselves with regard to the success of the siege: the Janissaries, and even their very officers, found the valour of the knights so much superior to the great character that had been given them of it, that they complained of being led to the slaughter.  Besides, from the prudent precautions of the Grand Master, the island was a kind of desert; no inhabitants, no provisions nor forage, neither could the soldiers straggle abroad in quest of any, but they were presently surprised by parties that sallied out of the castles of the island; and these parties, who were always lying in one ambuscade or other, killed all that fell into their hands.  A war so toilsome and bloody, the extraordinary fortifications of Rhodes, the continual fire of the artillery, the frequent sallies, the scarcity of provisions, which they were forced to be very careful of, because they could get none but from beyond sea, the little, or rather no hopes of booty, and yet less of recompense, in the absence of their sovereign, their small confidence in a young general that had been brought up in the pleasures of the seraglio, all this contributed to the distaste, and even the murmurings of the officers as well as the soldiers.  A spirit of mutiny, under a general that had not credit enough with them, soon succeeded to these murmurs; and if an attack was to be made, or a sally to be repulsed, the troops could not be brought to advance but with reluctance, and like men who did not believe they could vanquish, or help being vanquished.  In fine, the fear of danger made obedience languish, and all respect for command was lost.

Peri Pasha, to whom Suleiman had given particular orders to send him an exact account of every thing that passed at the siege, thought himself obliged to let him know the discouragement and despondency of his army: and he observed in his letter, that nothing but his presence could root out the seeds of rebellion, and reanimate the courage of his soldiers.  The pashas that were left about the sultan, and composed his council, were against his committing himself to the hazards of the sea; but the prince, jealous of his glory, and having the example of his father Selim, and the sultans his ancestors before his eyes: and being likewise persuaded, that the single presence of a sovereign surmounts the greatest difficulties, resolved to put himself at the head of his army, and accordingly set out for Lycia with a body of 15,000 men.

While this prince was on his march, a Turkish woman, who was slave to a townsman of Rhodes, either from a zeal for her false religion, or in hopes of receiving her liberty, formed alone an enterprise that a hundred thousand Turks could not bring about.  As the Knights and the Infidels were fighting every day, she, in order to make a diversion that might facilitate the attacks of the Turks, resolved to set fire to the principal places of the city; but as it was impossible for her to execute this project alone, she communicated it to some other slaves of her own country and religion.  These, influenced by the same motives, and by her persuasion, entered into the plot.  The woman found a way to give the Turkish generals notice of her design; and, in concert with them, she fixed the conspirators a day for this conflagration, and the quarter wherein they were to light it.  These measures were so well taken, that Rhodes must have fallen by the enterprise of this woman, had not one of the slaves accidentally dropped a word that discovered the secret of the conspiracy.  They were immediately seized, and all of them, when put to the rack, owned their plot; the woman was the only person that did not submit to the force of pain, but endured the most violent tortures, without making the least confession.  But her accomplices being confronted with her, and maintaining that she was the only person that engaged them in this conspiracy, the judges ordered her to be hanged.  They quartered all the other conspirators, and their limbs were fixed up in several places of the city, in order to intimidate the rest of the slaves, and all that might afterwards be tempted to form a like enterprise.

The Sultan, in the meantime, passing through Caria and Lycia, arrived at Portofischo.  His vessels came there to take him on board with the troops that served for his escort; and he came into the isle of Rhodes to his camp, where he was received with the salvos of artillery, and the sound of drums, trumpets and other warlike instruments.  His presence put a stop to the murmurs of the soldiery, and made them dread a chastisement.  He declared that the only design of his coming was to punish a rebellious army, and decimate or put to death, every tenth soldier, calling them cowards at the same time: but Peri pasha, who had a great influence over him, represented to him that the Janissaries, and even the bravest of that body of troops, were the very men that appeared most mutinous; that he could not punish them without discouraging the rest, and that therefore, in a siege of such difficulty and importance, it were better to overlook their fault, or else to make them sensible of it by such reproaches as should inspire them with their wonted bravery.

This prince, after having concerted with his minister what behaviour he should put on with regard to his troops, ordered them to appear before him without their arms, and caused them to be surrounded by the 15,000 men that he had brought with him to the siege.  They had erected a high and magnificent throne for him.  The Prince, armed with majesty, ascended it with a fierce and stately air, and sat there for some time without once opening his lips, casting dreadful looks on every side, which the trembling soldier considered as the forerunners of death.  At last, breaking this dismal silence, he says: 

“Was I to have addressed myself to soldiers, I would have allowed you to appear before me with your arms; but since I am forced to direct my discourse to wretched slaves, weaker and more faint-hearted than women, and who cannot stand the bare shout of their enemies, it is not fitting that cowards should dishonour our arms, and the characteristics of valour.  I would gladly know, if, whether upon landing in this island, you flattered yourselves that the knights would prove greater cowards than yourselves, and in a dread of your arms should bring you their own, and come in a servile manner to offer their hands and feet to the irons with which you should be pleased to place them.  In order to undeceive and cure you of such a ridiculous mistake, know, that in the person of these knights, we are to fight with the flower of the Christian world, with brave men, trained up from their infancy in the profession of arms; we are to fight with cruel and fierce lions, greedy of the blood of Mussulmen, and who will not quit their haunt but to a superior force.  It is their courage which has excited our own.  I imagined that in attacking them I should meet with an enterprise and dangers that were worthy of my valour.  And is it from you, base and effeminate soldiers, that I am to expect a conquest; you that are flying from the enemy before you have looked him in the face, and would have deserted, had it not been for the sea that encompasses you?  But, before such a disgrace shall happen to me, I am resolved to exercise such exemplary justice on the cowards, that the severity of their punishment shall keep such in their duty as might be tempted to imitate them.”

Scarce had the Sultan ended these words, when, upon a signal given to the armed soldiers that surrounded the others, they drew their swords, as if they were going to massacre their comrades.  Those wretches, at the sight of the drawn swords, whose points were turned against them, fell upon their knees, and cried aloud to the Sultan for mercy.  Then Peri, and the other generals, in concert with the prince, drew near his throne with the most profound reverence, and besought him, in the most submissive expressions, to pardon those soldiers, who, as Peri said, had behaved manfully on other occasions, but who in this had been unhappily misled by an evil genius and a panic terror.  The pasha added, that they were ready to wash out their faults with their blood, and his head should answer to his highness for their hearty sorrow and repentance.  Though Solyman's design was only to reclaim his troops, and bring them back to their duty, yet in order to keep up before them to the character of an incensed prince, and engage the soldiers to blot out the remembrance of their cowardice by some daring action of extraordinary valour, “I suspend”, says he to Peri, “at your request, the punishment of the guilty; but let them go seek their pardon in the bastions and upon the bulwarks of our enemies.”  With these words he dismissed the assembly.

This Prince's discourse, so seasonably mixed with severity and clemency, inspired the troops with their wonted boldness and ancient valour.  The officers especially, to wipe off the ill opinion the Sultan had entertained of their courage, demanded eagerly to be placed in the most dangerous posts.  Those very persons, who, before Suleiman's arrival, had blamed this enterprise, found it then easy and glorious; one would not have taken them for the same men; they were all on fire to signalize their courage, and, to speak properly, it is only from this day that we are to date the commencement of the siege.

The soldiers and pioneers carried on the trenches without intermission. They worked at them in the day time as well as in the night, and they were relieved in their turns by various detachments of troops that succeeded one another.  The Grand Master seeing them sustained by strong brigades, did not think fit to continue his sallies, in which the loss of one single knight was of greater consequence to him than fifty soldiers to Suleiman; so that the infidels having nothing to fear but the fire of the place, laboured with so much vigour, that they carried on their works as far as the counterscarp; and in order to make their lines the stronger, they faced them on the outside with beams of timber and planks tied together.  They next augmented their batteries; from which they, for several days together, fired continually upon the city.  The Turks flattered themselves that they should ruin the fortifications in a little time, but had notice sent them by the Jew who served them as a spy in Rhodes, that their cannon had scarce so much as grazed upon the battlements of the wall, whether the batteries were ill placed or the cannon were not well pointed.  He added, that the knights, from the top of St. John's steeple, saw everything that passed in their camp, and the parts adjacent; and that if the Christians should happen to plant some piece of artillery on the top of that steeple, they might either kill the sultan as he was visiting the works, or such as carried his orders.  These advices determined the besiegers to change the situation of their batteries; they pointed one among the rest against St. John's steeple, which was demolished by the first cannon-shot that they fired.

These barbarians finding Rhodes covered and buried, as it were, under its fortifications, resolved to raise two cavaliers that should be higher than those works, and command the city and bulwarks.  The soldiers and pioneers, by the general's orders, fetched earth and stones for several days together, which they placed between the posts of Spain and Auvergue, over against the bastion of Italy.  As these two places lay open and exposed to the cannon of the place, it would be impossible to express what a prodigious number of Turkish soldiers and pioneers perished in this work; but Mustafa, in order to advance it, made no scruple of throwing away the lives of those poor wretches; the work at last appeared like two little hills, which were ten or twelve foot higher than the wall, and commanded it absolutely.

The general and the other pashas then made a distribution of the several attacks. Mustafa took upon himself that of the bulwark of England; Peri that of the post of Italy; Ahmed pasha, a great engineer, undertook the attack of the bastions of Spain and Ăuvergne; but as they seemed to be defended by a numerous artillery, and a great number of knights, the sultan would have this last pasha sustained by the Aga of the Janissaries.  The begler-bei of Anatolia commanded in the trenches opposite to the post of Provence, and the begler-bei of Romania was to attack the tower of St. Nicholas; all these generals caused a continual fire to be made.

The post of Germany was the first attacked: the Turks planted several batteries against the wall: they did not think it could long resist the violence of the cannon, because it had no platform of earth: but the Grand Master repaired thither immediately himself, and caused it to be supported on the inside by earth, beams of timber, and fascines: and as the artillery, which was placed on the gate of his palace in a place of great height, looked over and commanded the batteries of the infidels, the Christian cannoneers demolished them, and broke to pieces their gabions, sheds and parapets.  The only remedy was to make new ones, which, however, did not last longer than the first; the cannon of the town did sure execution, and beat down all it was levelled at, whereas that of the infidels, on the contrary, being ill managed, und pointed against a place of such height, and always keeping the same line and point of elevation, passed above the wall and shot at random: we may suppose that their gunners were as yet wholly ignorant of the method of lowering their cannon, and making it bear downwards, and against the foot of the wall.

The pasha, discouraged at the little service his batteries had performed, removed and planted them against the tower of St. Nicholas. We have observed in the former book, and during the mastership of the Grand Master d'Aubusson, the ill success of the attacks of the pasha Paleologus; nor was that of the begler-bei of Romania more successful. The pasha battered the tower with twelve great brass guns, but had the mortification to see his cannon dismounted, and his batteries ruined by those of the tower.  To prevent this effect, that was owing to the skill of the Christian gunners, he resolved to fire only by night, and buried his cannon and gabions in the sand all the day time: as soon as night came, they planted them again on the platform; and above five hundred cannon shot striking on the part of the wall that looked towards the west, it was shaken down into the ditch.

The pasha was in high delight at the effect of his nightly battery, and fed himself with vain hopes of carrying that work at the first assault: but he was strangely surprised to see a new wall appear behind the ruins of the first, strengthened with a rampart and parapet, and lined with artillery to keep off all approaches to it. He was now forced to take a resolution of beginning anew to batter this second wall.

Suleiman being advertised of it, sent to reconnoitre it: they gave him an account, that this tower was the strongest part of the place, not only by its situation on a rock, which was proof against the sap, and could have no mine cut in it, but likeways by the different works added to it since the last siege; and that under the reign of Mahomet II. his grandfather, the pasha Paleologus had been obliged to give over this attack. These considerations determined the sultan to remove his batteries to another place. Mustafa, by his orders, directed his attack against the principal bastions of the place; a prodigious train of artillery battered them night and day for a month together. The chevalier de Barbaran, who commanded at that of Spain, was killed by a cannon ball. succeeded in his command by the chevalier John d’Omedes, afterwards Grand Master, of the language of Arragon, who, in defending that post, lost an eye a few days after by a musket ball.  The Turks battered all these bastions at the same time; that of England was greatly damaged.  A new wall which they had made there, was entirely ruined by the cannon of the infidels, but the old one stood firm against all the fury of the artillery: the Grand Master ran thither; and finding the Turks obstinately bent upon that attack, he lodged himself at the foot of the wall, and for fear of an assault, caused a reinforcement of fifty knights to enter into the bastion.

That of Italy was in a still worse condition: seventeen pieces of cannon firing on it day and night, had almost demolished the whole wall. The Grand Master, by Martinengo's advice, in order to get time to make cuts and entrenchments behind the breach, before the infidels could mount to the assault, ordered two hundred men to sally out under the command of a serving brother, called Bartholomew, and Benedict Scaramose, an engineer who had been brought up under Martinengo: they threw themselves into the trenches sword in hand, surprised the Turks, killed or put to flight all that they met, and, before they made their retreat, filled up a great many yards of the trenches.  The Turks did not fail, as that expert engineer had foreseen, to hasten to drive them back: but as they were forced to pass by a place that lay open and exposed, the artillery of the place, which they had pointed on that side, killed a great number of them, and by the help of a continual fire, the Christians who had made the sally got back into the city without any considerable loss.

While this skirmish lasted, part of the knights were busy in digging ditches and making cross-cuts and entrenchments to hinder the enemy from making a lodgement upon the breach, While others of them, with musket shot, killed all that dare advance near it.  The cannon of the place played upon, and reached such as were at a greater distance, and nothing appeared but was struck down immediately.  Most of the batteries of the infidels were ruined; their gabions and sheds were beat to pieces, and their shoulder works could not save those that were employed about the artillery from being taken off by that of the town.

A Renegado, Suleiman's general of the ordinance, a man well skilled in his profession, had both his legs carried off by a cannon shot, which also killed five men with the splinters of the planks that it broke to pieces. The Turks, without being disheartened, repaired their batteries, kept firing continually, and they had so great a number of cannon, and such a great quantity of powder, that they often demolished in a hour's time, what the Christians could hardly repair in several days. The knights began even to want powder already.  D'Amaral, one of the commissioners appointed before the siege to visit the magazines, had, in order to favour the Turks, and disable the knights from continuing their defence, made a false report to the council, and declared that he had found more powder in the place than would serve to sustain the siege, even though it should last a whole year. But they were not long before they found to the contrary: the powder they had was diminished so considerably, that they would soon have had none left, had it not been the Grand Master's having made provision of salt-petre, who set all the horses of his stable to work, to beat it small by help of the mills that were in the place: the bailiff de Manosque, and the chevalier Parisot were appointed to superintend over this affair.  However, as they had not so much salt-petre as they would have occasion for, the the officers of the artillery were obliged to fire less frequently, to husband their powder, and reserve it for the assaults which they foresaw the Turks would make on the place, whenever the breaches should be made larger.

This misfortune, owing, as it is pretended, to the treachery of the Portuguese knight, was attended by another, occasioned by some young knights, While the Turks were giving a false alarm to the post of Auvergne.  The Guards were bringing from work a company of slaves, about a hundred and twenty in number, who were ordinarily employed in digging the ground, or in drawing stones and beams to make entrenchments.  These young knights, meeting them, struck some of them for diversion's sake, just as a body of old knights were passing by, and who were marching in haste to the post of Auvergne upon the signals made on occasion of the false alarm that was given by the Turks.  They, seeing it, immediately imagined that those slaves, from an impatient desire of liberty, were risen, and that the young knights attacked them in earnest.  Possessed with this notion, they fell upon those poor wretches, sword in hand, and cut them to pieces: by this unhappy mistake killing a company of innocent men, and depriving themselves of the assistance they received from these slaves, who would have served to supply the places of the Christian pioneers, who fell daily in great numbers, either by the enemy's cannon, or by musket shot fired out of fusees of a large bore, that carried as far as the breaches, and into the very city.

The Turkish general, discovering that these peasants, without minding how they exposed their lives, were by Martinengo's directions making barricades, cuts, and entrenchments along the breaches, had chosen out of his army a good number of fowlers that were excellent marksmen.  He had placed them upon eminences that were nearest the place, and upon cavaliers that commanded it, from whence they fetched down with their harquebusses all that appeared upon the ramparts.  Martinengo, seeing his workmen killed without his being able to secure them from the enemy's fire, made them, by way of a counterbattery, plant some small field-pieces on the roofs of the highest houses.  These, on their side, killed abundance of the fowlers, but the killing or disabling ten of those workmen did not make the Order amends for the death of one Christian soldier or pioneer: the town, being reduced to a small number of defendants, could not lose one of them without drawing nearer its ruin: and the Grand Master, in order to protract it, had no resource, but either in a speedy succour, or by prolonging the siege, and holding out till the coming of winter and bad weather, when he imagined the Turkish fleet would not be able to keep the sea.

The war had hitherto been carried on between the besiegers and the besieged, by firing at one another: and though that of the Turks, by reason of the multitude of their cannon, and the great quantity of their powder, was vastly superior, yet they were not masters of one inch of ground in the bastions and advanced works of the place.  The barricades and entrenchments served instead of the walls that were beaten down: there was no carrying these new works but by an assault; and in order to make it, it was necessary to try the descent of the ditch, or fill it up.  Suleiman, who had a prodigious number of pioneers in his army, made various detachments of them, some to throw earth and stones into the ditch; but the knights by help of their casemates, carried off by night what they had thrown in by day: other pioneers were employed in digging mines in five different places, in each of which they were carried on towards the bastion over against it.  Some of them were countermined by the vigilance of Martinengo, to whom we are indebted for the invention of discovering the place where they were carrying on, by drums and skins hard braced and stretched.

The Turks had worked with so much skill, that the several branches of these mines had all a communication with one another; and all of them, in order to do the greater execution, centered at last in one place.  Martinengo discovered one in the middle of the ditch of Provence, that began at St. John's church.  De la Fountaine, an engineer, had it broke open immediately, drove the miners out of it with grenades, and threw in barrels of powder, which burnt and smothered the Turks that were in those subterraneous passages.  But, whatever pains he took, he could not prevent the infidels from springing two mines, one after another, under the bastion of England, the force of which was so violent, that they blew up twelve yards of the wall, and the ruins of it filled up the ditch.

The breach appeared so large and so easy to mount, that several battalions of the infidels that waited the success of the mine, ran immediately to the assault with great shouts, and sabre in hand.  They got in a moment to the top of the bastion, and planted seven ensigns upon it, and would have made themselves masters of it, had they not met a cross cut or entrenchment behind it that stopped them.  The knights, recovering from the confusion that the terrible noise of the mine had thrown them into, ran to the bastion and charged the Turks with musket-shot, grenades and stones.  The Grand Master was at the very time that the mine sprung in a church not far off, where he was before the altar imploring from heaven the succour which the princes of the earth refused him.  He judged by the dreadful crash he heard, that the noise which the mine made would be soon followed with an assault; he rose up immediately, and it happened to be at that very instant when the priests of the church were beginning divine service, and were chanting this preliminary prayer, Deus in adjutorium meum intende, O God, make haste to deliver me.  “I accept the omen, cried the pious Grand Master;” and turning about to some old knights that were with him: “Let us go, my brethren, says he to them; to change the sacrifice of our praises into that of our lives, and die, if it must be so, for the defence of our holy law."

He advances immediately with his half-pike in his hand, mounts upon the bastion, comes up to the Turks, breaks, overturns, and kills all that dares oppose him; he pulls down the enemy's ensigns, and recovers the bastion with an irresistible impetuosity.  General Mustafa, who saw from the trenches the consternation and flight of his soldiers, sallies out of them sabre in hand, kills the first of the fugitives that he meets, and shows the rest, that they would find less safety near their general, than they would upon the breach.  He advances on boldly himself'; his reproaches, and the shame of deserving them, make the run-a-ways rally about him; the engagement begins afresh; the dispute grows bloody; fire and sword are equally employed on both sides; they kill one another both at a distance and near with musketshot and the sword; they grapple with one another, and the strongest or the most dextrous dispatches his enemy with a stroke of his poinard.  The Turks, lying exposed to musket-shot, stoves, grenades, and fire-pots, at length abandon the breach, and turn their backs; in vain does their general strive by threats and promises to bring them back to the charge; they all break and take to their heels; but in their flight find a death they were afraid of meeting in the action; and they made such a continual fire of the artillery from different parts of the town, upon the foot of the breach, that they pretend the Turkis lost on this occasion three thousand men, and their sanjaks or governors of places.

The Order lost by this great advantage the great master of the artillery, the chevalier d'Argillemont, captain or general of the galleys, the chevalier de Mauselle, who carried the Grand Master's standard, and several other knights that were killed in fighting valiantly.

Scarce a day passed but was signalized by some new attack.  Every general officer, to please the Grand Seignior, endeavoured, at the expense of the soldiers' lives, to push on the works committed to his care.  Peri pasha, an old captain, notwithstanding his advanced age, distinguished himself by continual enterprises; he was posted against the bastion of Italy, and never gave the besieged a moment's repose either day or night.  The hopes he had of carrying that work, made him plant a good body of infantry so as to be concealed behind a cavalier which they had raised on the ditch side, and on the thirteenth of September, at day break, when the besieged, quite spent with fatigue and continual watching, were overtaken with sleep, he ordered his troops to make the assault; they first dispatched the sentinels, passed the breach, and were ready to seize their entrenchments, when the Italians, amazed to see the enemy so near them, rushed with fury upon the infidels, who opposed them with as much courage and resolution.

The fight was maintained by the valour of both for a long time.  The pasha stood exposed by the ditch side, from whence he sent them continually new reinforcements; but While he was exhorting them to merit the recompense which the Grand Seignior promised to such as should distinguish themselves by their bravery, the governor of the isle of Negrepont, a young lord of singular valour, and Suleiman's favorite, was killed by his side, with a ball shot from a musket.  Peri, either fearing that the Grand Seignior would impute his favourite's death to him, or else desiring to revenge it, redoubled his efforts.  The Grand Master, whose valour and love for his Order multiplied him, as we may say, on this occasion, ran to the succour with a particular body of knights that adhered to his person:  “Let us go, says he to those about him, and repulse the Turks; we should not be afraid of men whom we daily throw into a panic fear.” At the same time, he charges the infidels with his half-pike in his hand.  The knights of the language of Italy, under his eye, and in imitation of so great an example, perform the most glorious actions; they all expose themselves to the greatest dangers.  A good number of them were killed on this occasion; and we must do them this justice, that next to the Grand Master, the saving of Rhodes was that day owing to their courage and intrepidity.

Peri, judiciously concluding that it would be in vain for him to persist in an attack which the Grand Master himself defended, contented himself with keeping on the fight; and drawing his body of foot from behind the cavalier that served to cover them, he put himself at their head, and went to attack a new bastion, built in the Grand Master Caretto's time, imagining it not to be so well provided with defendants, and that he should be able to surprise it.  His troops advanced to the assault with great resolution, but were repulsed with equal vigour by the chevalier d'Andelot, who commanded at that work.  The citizens and inhabitants ran to his succour; the Turks were soon overwhelmed with showers of grenades, stones, bitumen, and boiling oil; and the artillery, planted upon the flanks of the adjoining bastions, scouring the ditch, made an horrible slaughter of them.  Peri, after losing abundance of men in these two attacks, was forced against his will to sound a retreat.

The Janissaries, disheartened at so many unsuccessful attacks, murmured aloud against an enterprise, wherein one or other of their bravest comrades daily lost their lives.  The vizier Mustafa, fearing lest these complaints should reach the cars of Suleiman, and that that prince, like most of his predecessors, should make him responsible for the ill success, resolved to make a new assault on the bastion of England, and either carry the place, tho' he lost never so many soldiers, or die himself at the foot of the entrenchments.  He communicated his design to Ahmed pasha, who was encamped, and commanded in the quarter opposite to the posts of Spain and Auvergne.  These two generals agreed, that While the vizier attacked the English bastion, Ahmed, in order to divide the forces of the besieged, should spring his mines, and mount over the ruins they would make upon the breaches, and make a lodgement there.  This enterprise was put in execution on the 17th of September.  Mustafa sallied out of the trenches at the head of five battalions; the troops, sustained by his presence, climbed up the rubbish and ruins of the wall, mounted boldly to the assault, got upon the breach, and in spite of all the fire of the besieged, made their way as far as the entrenchments, and planted some ensigns upon them.

But they did not keep this first advantage long.  A swarm of English knights, led on by a commander of that nation, whose name was John Buck, sallied out from behind the entrenchments, and being sustained by Prejan, grand prior of St.Giles, and the commander, Christopher Valdner, of the language of Germany, made so furious a charge, that the infidels were forced to give back.  They retired in good order, however, and still fighting.  Mustafa, a much braver soldier than an able general, led on himself a re-inforcement to their succour; the engagement begins again with equal fury; the Turkish general throws himself into the midst of the knights, kills some of them with his own hand, and had he been as well followed by his soldiers, Rhodes would have been in great danger.  But the artillery of the place, the little pieces especially, that played upon the breach, and a great number of musketeers that galled them from behind the entrenchments, made so terrible a fire, that the infidels, no longer regarding the menaces of Mustafa, abandoned the breach, and dragged him along with them in their flight.  How glorious soever this success might be to the Order, nevertheless the knights paid very dear for it; they lost on this occasion the commanders Buck and Valdner, several English and German knights, and the greatest part of their principal officers.

Ahmed pasha was as unfortunate as general Mustafa in his attack: he sprung his mines as bad been agreed between them; but that which was under the post of Auvergne took vent and did no execution.  The mine which played under the post of Spain, threw down about four yards of an advanced work, which served for a sort of fore-wall.  The Turks advanced immediately to seize it, but met a body of Spanish knights upon the ruins of it, that made head against them, and kept them from approaching; they fought for some time at a distance with musket-shot, but as the Turks advanced in close and good order to break through the besieged, the chevalier de Mesnil, captain of the bulwark or bastion of Auvergne, and the chevalier de Grimereaux, made the artillery of their posts play so a-propos and continually upon the thickest of the battalions of the Janissaries, that those troops, though brave in their persons, and the very flower of the army, could stand the fury of it no longer, but dispersed of themselves, and made the best of their way to the trenches.

Suleiman lost that day three thousand men, and the Order, besides the chieftains abovementioned, had likeways several knights killed on these two occasions; and among the rest Philip de Arcillan, of Spanish extraction, whose great valour justly merited him the honour of having his name recorded.  Prejan de Bidoux, grand prior of St. Giles, who made all the posts that were attacked his own, was shot through the neck with a musket-ball, but was happily cured of his wound.

[September 20] About this time they discovered the treason of the Jewish physician, who, by order of Selim I., had formerly settled at Rhodes, where he served as a spy to the Turks.  They caught him shooting an arrow with a letter tied to it into their camp; upon which he was immediately seized, and being on such strong presumptions put to the torture, he owned that he had given the infidels continual advice of the weak parts of the place, and of every thing that passed in it; and that when he was seized, it was the fifth letter that he had conveyed to them in the same way.  His judges condemned him to be quartered, and it is pretended, that he died a Christian.  His confession of Christianity was very much suspected: but if he made it only to save his life it stood him no stead, for he suffered the punishment he had so justly deserved.

Suleiman in the mean time, enraged at the little progress of his arms, held a great council of war, to which he summoned his principal officers.  Various opinions were proposed in it.  Mustafa, who, before the siege, out of pure complaisance, had represented the enterprise as easy, now dreading his passion and resentment, proposed the giving a general assault, and attacking the town in four different places at the same time.  “One would imagine, says he, that we were making war in concert with our enemies, and that from a romantic point of generosity we would not fight them but upon equal terms.  We never attack but one post at a time; and as the knights draw all their forces thither, we need not think it strange to find a set of brave men, the very flower of Christendom, maintain their ground against our soldiers.  But if the whole army was to surround the place, and that detachments were to be drawn out to assault all the places where there are breaches, and also new supplies sent continually to reinforce those that should make the attack, the Rhodians would be obliged to divide their forces, and could never be able to stand before us.”

The Grand Seignior approved of this advice: the assault was fixed for the 24th of September; and Suleiman, to inspire new ardor into his soldiers, gave out, that he would give them the plundering of Rhodes, provided they could take it sword in hand.  The Turks, before they gave this assault, made a continual fire with their cannon; and in order to enlarge the breaches, battered the bastions of England and Spain, the post of Provence, and the platform of Italy for two days together.  The evening before the assault, the Grand Master suspected, by the motions he perceived in the enemy's camp, that they were going to attack him: He gave out his orders, and the knights, following his example, redoubled their care; but though they had just reason to fear, that the enemy would take their advantage of opening to themselves a passage through the ruins of those strong holds that had been battered down in the vast circuit of the walls, they yet were forced to regulate their measures by the few troops they had left, and to distribute the old commanders and principal officers into such posts as the violence of the attacks, the wideness of the breaches, and the defect in the fortifications exposed to the greatest dangers.

The Grand Master, taking up his weapons, visited all the quarters to see the disposition of his troops, and exhort them to a noble defence; and addressing himself to the knights whom he found in their respective posts: “I should offer violence to your courage, said he to them, should I pretend to invigorate it by an harangue; and it would be throwing away time, to tell you, what your valour has so often inspired into you on the like occasions.  Consider only, my dear brethren, that we are going to fight for our Order, and for the defence of our religion, and that a glorious victory must be the reward of our valour, or else Rhodes, the strongest rampart of “ Christendom, must serve us for a grave.” 

Whenever he met any of the townsmen and inhabitants, “Think, said he to them, that besides the defence of the faith, you have taken up arms for your country, for your wives, your maidens, and your children; fight gallantly, my friends, in order to rescue them from the infamy that the barbarians threaten them with: their liberty and your own, your blood, your honour, and your fortunes are all in your hands, and depend upon your bravery.”

These few words, pronounced with an heroic ardor, had such an effect on all, that the townsmen as well as the knights, and the Greeks no less than the Latins, made public protestations, that nothing but death should make them abandon their posts; and embracing one another in a most tender and affectionate manner, their eyes streaming with tears, they bid as it were a last adieu to each other, resolutely bent either to conquer or die.

The Turks at day break made a furious fire from all their batteries, especially against the posts which they designed to attack, not only in order to widen the breaches, but also to be less exposed to view, as they marched through the smoke of the artillery.  They mounted boldly to the assault in four different places: they had never discovered so much resolution ever since the beginning of the siege, especially the Janissaries, who fought under the young sultan's eye.

That prince, in order to animate them by his presence, had placed himself on a rising ground near adjoining, where a scaffold was erected for him, whence he, as from an amphitheatre, was able to distinguish and judge of the valour of those brave fellows, without any danger to himself.  The cannon of the place begins to play: this is succeeded by showers of arrows and musket-shot.  The knights in all quarters show their intrepidity, and the soldiers their obedience and courage; some of them burn the assailants with boiling oil and fire-works, While others roll stones of a vast size upon them, or pierce them through with their pikes.  The English bastion was the place where there was the greatest bloodshed: it was the weakest part of the place, the warmest attacked, and withal the best defended.  The Grand Master runs thither himself: his presence on the one side inspires the knights with fresh ardor; hope of booty on the other encourages the Turkish soldier.  Never did the infidels discover so much eagerness in battle; they mount upon the ruins of the wall through a storm of bullets, javelins, and stones: nothing stops them, and several of them leaped like so many desperadoes from the machines which they had brought near the walls upon the ramparts, where they were soon cut to pieces.  The knights throw the Turks from the top of the breach headlong into the ditch: they overturn the ladders, and the cannon of the place makes so terrible a slaughter, that the Turks give way, retire back, and are ready to give over the assault.  But the general's lieutenant, who commanded at that attack, an officer highly respected among the soldiers for his rare valour, rallies, and leads them on to the attack; he himself mounts first upon the breach and plants an ensign on it.  Happily for the besieged, a cannon ball, fired from the post of Spain, carries him off, and throws him in the ditch.  One would have thought, that his death would naturally have cooled the ardor of his soldiers: but thirst of revenge inspired them that instant with a contrary sentiment, and filled their hearts with a sort of rage and fury; they rush on headlong into danger, pleased to die themselves, provided they could kill a Christian.  But all their impetuosity could not make the knights retire one single step.  The priests, the religious, the old men, and the very children resolve to have their share of the danger, and repulse the enemy with stones, boiling oil, and combustible matter.

Neither did the women yield in assiduity to the pioneers, nor was their bravery inferior to that of the soldiers: several lost their lives in defending their husbands and children.  Historians make mention of a Greek woman of exquisite beauty, that was mistress to an officer who had a command in that bastion, and had just been killed.  Upon which, distracted at the death of her lover, and resolving not to survive him, after kissing the two children she had by him, and making the sign of the cross on their foreheads, “'Tis better for you, my dear children, says she to them, with tears in her eyes, to die by my hands than by those of our merciless enemies, or to be reserved for infamous pleasures, more odious than death itself.”  Then, inspired with fury, she takes up a knife, cuts their throats, throws their bodies into the fire, puts on the officer's clothes that were still dyed with his blood, snatches up his sabre, runs to the breach, kills the first Turk she meets, wounds several others, and dies fighting with a bravery equal to the most courageous officer, or the most resolute soldier.

The engagement was carried on with equal fury and obstinacy at the other attacks.  The greatest danger was at the post of Spain.  The aga of the Janissaries, who commanded on that side, led on his soldiers to the assault: the artillery of the place killed a great number of them before they could get to the foot of the breach.  Such of the Turks as are able to cross the ditch, go to undermine the wall, and are frequently buried under its ruins, While others of them make use of ladders to mount up: some of them heap the dead bodies of their comrades on one another, get to the top of the wall in spite of all the opposition of the besieged, and penetrate as far as the entrenchments, on which, it is said, they planted no less than thirty ensigns.  Unhappily for the knights, such of them as bad the guard of the bastion of Spain had like to have been surprised by not standing on their guard.  The Turks having showed no signs of any design to attack them, those knights, reproaching themselves for being idle in their post, and seeing the bastion of Italy hard pressed by the Turks, ran to their succour, and left only a few sentinels upon the bastion of Spain.  These soldiers, likeways, contrary to all the rules of war, quitted their post to help the gunners in transporting some pieces of cannon which they had a mind to point against the post that the aga of the Janissaries was attacking.  Some Turks that lay concealed behind a heap of ruins, seeing the bastion abandoned, mount without being discovered, get to the top of the work, make themselves masters of it, cut the gunners to pieces, pull down the ensigns of the Order, and plant those of Suleiman in their stead; and, proclaiming victory, invite their comrades to join them: upon which the aga sent immediately a detachment of his Janissaries to that place.

The Grand Master, having notice of this surprise, runs thither in an instant, makes them point the artillery of the bastion of Auvergne against a breach which the enemy's cannon had made in that of Spain, keeps the Turks from approaching it; and from another battery which laced the bastion, he makes them fire upon those that were in possession of it, and who were endeavouring to make a lodgement there.  On another side, the commander of Bourbon, by his orders, at the head of a troop of brave soldiers, enters by the casement into the bastion, mounts up to the top upon the platform sword in hand, in order to drive out the infidels, where he finds part of them killed by the cannon; he cuts the rest in pieces, again sets up the ensigns of the Order, pulls down those of the Turks, and turns the artillery of the bastion upon such as were mounting up a breach that had been made in that part of the wall which was called the post of Spain.  The aga maintained his ground in that place in spite of the gallant resistance of the knights.  The Grand Master comes back thither at the head of his guards, and throws himself into the midst of the infidels, with an ardour which made his knights tremble as much as his enemies, but from a different motive.  The engagement begins again with fresh fury, the soldiers, as yet unhurt, the wounded and the dying all blended together, after a combat of six hours, want rather strength than courage to continue it.  

The Grand Master, fearing that his men, who were quite spent with such a long resistance, should at last be borne down by the multitude of their enemies, drew a reinforcement of two hundred men, with some knights at their head, out of the tower of St. Nicholas.  These troops, who were fresh, and had suffered no fatigue, soon changed the face of the engagement: the Janissaries began to give back, and finding themselves pressed by these brave soldiers, abandon the breach and fly to recover their trenches.  Suleiman, to cover the shame of their flight, and save the honour of his troops, ordered a retreat to be sounded, after having left upon the breach, and at the foot of the wall, upwards of fifteen thousand men, and several captains of great reputation, that lost their lives in these different attacks.

The Rhodians sustained as considerable a loss as they did in proportion: and besides the soldiers and inhabitants, they had a great number of knights killed in these assaults, among which were the chevalier du Fresnoi, commander of Romagna, the commander of St. Camelle of the language of Provence, Oliver de Tressac of the language of Auvergne, and brother Peter Philips, the Grand Master's receiver.  The chevalier John le Roux, surnamed Parnides, had his hand, with which he had slain seven Turks, carried off that day by a cannon ball; there were few knights but what were wounded, and there scarce remained sufficient enough unhurt to continue the service.

The sultan, furious at the ill success of this enterprise, fell upon his general Mustafa, who out of complaisance had advised him to it, and gave orders for his being shot to death with arrows; a sad recompense for all his services, but such an one as slaves and servile courtiers are frequently exposed to under the government of the infidels.  The army was drawn up in battle array in order to be spectators of the death of their general, and the unhappy man was already tied to the fatal stake, when Peri pasha, provoked at the punishment they were going to inflict on his friend, made them defer the execution, as he was persuaded that Suleiman, when the heat of his passion was over, would not be concerned that they had prevented such a stain to his glory.  As he had educated that young prince from his infancy, and had still a great ascendant over him, he went and threw himself at his feet, and begged him to pardon Mustafa.  But he found by his own experience that lions are not to be tamed: Suleiman, still in the first transports of his wrath, jealous of his authority, and enraged to see there was a man in his empire daring enough to suspend the execution of his orders, condemned him at the same time to undergo the same punishment.  The other pashas were in a terrible consternation, and threw themselves all at his feet to mollify him; when the sultan coming to himself, was moved at their tears: he pardoned Mustafa and Peri, but would never see Mustafa more, and sent him afterwards at a distance from court under pretence of another employment.

This prince, despairing to carry the place, seemed resolved to raise the siege; and it is said, that whole companies and the heavy baggage began to file off towards the sea in order to re-embark; when an Albanian soldier, getting out of the town, came into the Turkish camp, and assured them that most of the knights were either killed or wounded at the assault, and that those who were left were not able to sustain another.  They pretend, that this deserter's report was confirmed by a letter from d'Amaral, who told the Grand Seignior that the besieged were reduced to the last extremity.

These several advices determined him to continue the siege; and in order to show his troops and the besieged that he was resolved to pass the winter before the place, he ordered an house to be built on mont Philerme for himself to lodge in; giving, at the same time, the command of the army to Ahmed pasha, an able engineer, who changed the method of carrying on the siege.  He resolved to be as sparing as possible of his soldiers' blood; and before he led them to an assault, to prepare for it by new cannonadings, and particularly by sapping and mining, and other subterraneous works, in which he was particularly skilled.

This new general made his first efforts against the bastion of Spain, the ditch whereof was narrower, and not so deep as in other places: and in order to facilitate the descent of it, his artillery played for several days together so furiously upon that work, that he ruined all the defences of it; there was nothing left but the barbacane or fausse-braye, which lay so low, that the cannon could not hurt it.  The Turkish general resolved to run his trenches as far as this work, which covered the foot of the wall; but these trenches being seen from the bastion of Auvergne, the cannon of the knights played upon them.  The Turks, in order to shelter themselves from it, raised a thick wall before the trenches; but they could not bring these several works to perfection without the loss of an infinite number of soldiers and pioneers: no one could show himself but he was immediately exposed to the fire of the artillery, and a shower of musket shot; and the knights at the same time were continually throwing grenades and fire-pots into their works.  The Turkish general, to guard against them, raised along the curtain a gallery with planks, which he covered with raw hides, which the fire would not take hold of.  Under shelter of this new work he undermined the wall, While other companies of pioneers and miners were continually at work to penetrate under the bastions of the place, and run mines through that place.

These mines having thrown down a great many yards of the wall of the post of Spain, the barbarians advanced to the assault; but coming up to the breach, they found themselves stopped by new entrenchments, lined with artillery, the continual fire whereof, after killing a great many of their bravest officers, and a prodigious number of soldiers, forced the rest to run back to their trenches for shelter.

The bailiff Martinengo, who was always in action, had, in order to hinder the infidels from coming to reconnoitre the works he was making within the place, made them cut loop-holes for the cannon in the wall of the counterscarp on the side of the town, from whence the knights killed with musket ball all that dare advance near it.  The Turks, after his example, did the like on their side, and a continual fire was kept on both sides.  Unhappily a random shot from the trenches struck Martinengo in the eye, just as he was looking through one of those loopholes to examine the enemy's works; he fell upon receiving the shot, and they thought him mortally wounded.  The Order could not have had a greater loss at such a juncture; for he was in a manner the only person that directed all operations, and determined the time and places where the knights should exert their valour.

The Grand Master, upon the news of his wound, ran immediately to the place, and caused him to be carried into his own palace: by his care he was afterwards cured of his wound, the knights and all the people offering up their prayers for his recovery.  The Grand Master filled up his post in his absence, and undertook himself to defend the bastion of Spain.  The chevalier de Cluys, grand prior of France, the commander of St. Jaille, bailiff of Manosque, the bailiff of the Morea, and the oldest knights of the Order staid about the Grand Master's person, in order to share with him in the perils and glory of this defence.  Actions of extraordinary valour were performed on both sides; there were new engagements every day.  It would appear very surprising that so small a number of Christians, who had nothing to cover them but some barricades and weak entrenchments, should be able to hold out so long against such a prodigious number of assailants, if this handful of men had not been composed of old knights, whose valour had been experienced on a thousand other occasions, and who on this were unanimously resolved to sacrifice their lives for the defence of their religion.  Men are very strong and very formidable when they are not afraid of death.

Historians, speaking of their zeal and courage, use but one sort of eulogium for all these noble soldiers of Jesus Christ.  Not but there were among these warriors different talents, and more or less capacity in the arts of war; and we should justly deserve to be censured, if we did not do justice to the memory of the Grand Master, who, for four and thirty days that the bailiff de Martinengo's wound and illness lasted, never stirred from the entrenchment made on the Spanish bastion, nor ever took any rest either day or night excepting only for some moments on a mattress, which they laid for him at the foot of the entrenchment; officiating sometimes in the quality of a soldier, and sometimes in that of pioneer, but always in that of general, if we except that ardor which made him fight like a young knight, and rush into perils with less precaution than became a sovereign.

The example of the Grand Master, who was so very careless of his own life, made the knights, left in the principal posts of the place, expose daily their own, sometimes in defending the breaches and entrenchments, and often in engagements under ground, when they were to countermine and meet with the enemy's miners; there scarce passed a day without an engagement in some place or other.  Besides the bastion of Spain, which was almost entirely ruined, the Turks directed their principal attacks against the posts of England, Provence, and Italy.  The prodigious number of troops, of which their army consisted, easily supplied them with men for all these attacks: the walls were quite demolished in several places, and the breaches were so large, that the Turks could mount in formed battalions to the assault of the bastion of England.  The knights that had undertaken the defence of it, lined the ramparts sword in hand, and with their bodies made a new parapet for its defence.  They were seconded by the artillery of the city, which played from several places upon the foot of the breach.  The Turks, without being daunted at the number of their slain, rush on with fury to attack the knights, come up with them, grapple with them, and, by their multitudes as much as by their courage, force them to give back.  Those noble defendants saw themselves on the point of being overwhelmed by the crowd of their enemies, when the chevalier de Morgut, grand prior of Navarre, and one of the adjutant captains, as they were then called, ran with his company to their succour, restored the battle, forced the infidels in their turn to retire, and with new efforts obliged them at last, after the loss of above six hundred men, to sound a retreat, and give over the attack.

But if the Order had such brave defenders in the person of her knights, she likewise nourished in her bosom, and even among her principal chiefs, a traitor, who omitted nothing to forward the loss of Rhodes, and the ruin of the whole Order.  The reader may easily perceive that I mean the chancellor d'Amaral.  The commander de Bourbon, in his account of the siege of Rhodes, relates this tragical event as follows.  

[October 30] D’Amaral, says this author, ever tormented with rage, and without being moved at seeing the blood of his brethren shed every day, still kept on his criminal intelligence with the Turks.  One of his valets de chambre, Blaise Diez by name, in whom he entirely confided, used to come with a bow in his hand at unseasonable hours to the post of Auvergne, whence, whenever he fancied himself not to be perceived, he shot an arrow with a letter fixed to it into the enemy's camp.  His frequent resort to the same place, especially in a besieged city, immediately gave some suspicion, but as they had not seen him shoot any of his letters, and, besides, that he belonged to a person of great authority, such as had observed his stolen visits thither dare not mention it at first, for fear of drawing upon themselves the resentment of a powerful and revengeful man.  There was only one knight, who, stifling all considerations, and seeing the servant return often to the same place, gave private notice thereof to the Grand Master, who immediately gave orders for the seizing of this servant: he was afterwards examined by the judges of the castellany, who, not being satisfied with his equivocal answers to their interrogatories, ordered him to be put to the torture.  He owned, upon the very first twitches of it, that he had, by his master's command, thrown down several letters into the Turkish camp, to point out to them the weakest places of the city.  He added, that he had likeways acquainted them, that the Order had lost the greatest part of its knights in the last assault; and, besides, that the city was in want of wine, powder, ammunition, and provisions; but that though the Grand Master was reduced to extremity, the Grand Seignior ought not yet to flatter himself with the thought of being master of the place any other way than by force of arms.  

This deposition was laid before the council, who gave orders for seizing the chancellor, whom they carried to the tower of St. Nicholas.  Two commanders, grand crosses, repaired thither with the magistrates of the city, to examine and try him: they read to him the deposition of his servant, who was afterwards confronted with him, and maintained in his face, that it was by his orders only that he frequently had gone to the bastion of Auvergne, and had thrown letters from thence into the camp of the infidels.  This deposition was confirmed by that of a Greek priest, chaplain to the Order, who declared before the judges, that passing one day by the fausse-braye of the bastion of Auvergne, in order to observe the enemy's works, he found the chancellor in a bye-corner with this very servant, who had a cross bow, with a quarrel or square arrow in his hand, to which he perceived there was a paper tied; that the chancellor, who was then looking through a loop-hole for the cannon, returning back, seemed surprised to see him so near him, and demanded of him roughly, and in an angry manner, what he wanted; and that finding his presence in that place was disagreeable to him, he had made off as fast as possible.

Diez agreed to the Greek priest's deposition in all its circumstances.  This servant, who might perhaps flatter himself with the hopes of escaping punishment by accusing his master, added farther, that the chancellor was the person that had persuaded the Grand Seignior to invade the island, by the advices he sent him of the condition of the place, and dispatching the slave before mentioned to Constantinople, the whole negotiation passing through his hands.  They put the chancellor at the same time in mind, that on the day of the Grand Master's election, he could not help saying, that he would be the last Grand Master of Rhodes.  D'Amaral, no ways confused, being confronted a second time with his servant and the Greek priest, affirmed that Diez was a villain and an impostor, whose deposition, he said, was nothing else but the effect of the resentment he had entertained on account of punishments that his ill conduct had occasioned him.  He flatly denied all the facts advanced by the Greek priest, with an intrepidity that ought only to attend on innocence; they were forced, in fine, to have recourse to the rack; but before they put him to it, the judges, who were his brother knights, in order to save him from the torture of it, as also to get from him an account of his accomplices, conjured him, in the most pressing terms, to encourage them to save his life by an ingenuous confession of his faults; but the chancellor rejected their offices with indignation, and demanded of them haughtily, if they thought him base enough, after having served the Order for above forty years, to dishonour himself at the end of his life by the confession of a crime that he was incapable of committing.  He bore the torture with the same intrepidity; and owned only, that at the time of the Grand Master's election, at a time when the Turks were threatening Rhodes with a siege, having no great opinion, as he said, of the courage and abilities of l'IsleAdam, he had dropped a word or two, and said, that he would perhaps be the last Grand Master of Rhodes; when turning towards his judges, he asked them, if a word that emulation and rivalship for the same dignity had extorted from him, deserved to have the great chancellor of the Order put into the hands of executioners.  But the judges being persuaded of his criminal correspondence with the Turks, were not dazzled by his protestations: nobody took his recriminations against Diez for proofs of his innocence: the master and servant were both condemned to death.  The chancellor was sentenced to be beheaded, and Diez to be hanged; their bodies were afterwards quartered, and exposed to the view of the Turks upon the principal bastions of the place.  The valet was executed first: he was born a Jew, but had been converted, and declared at his execution that he died a good Christian.  Before d'Amaral was put to death, an assembly was held in the great church of St. John, in which the bailiff de Manosque presided.  The criminal was brought thither; they read him his sentence, which ordered him to be degraded, and stripped of the habit of the Order; which was done with all the ceremonies prescribed by the statutes.  They delivered him over afterwards to the secular arm, who carried him to prison, and the next day he was carried in a chair to the public place where he was to be executed.  He looked upon all the preparatives to his execution, and the approaches of death, with a resolution worthy of a better cause; but his refusing in that extremity to recommend himself to the protection of the blessed Virgin, whose image the priest that assisted him presented to him, gave them no advantageous opinion of his piety.  Fontanus, a contemporary historian, and an eye-witness of what passed, speaking of the very different deaths of two grand crosses, who were appointed in the beginning of the siege, in joint commission with d’Amaral, to visit and take care of the ammunition and provisions, and who were both killed in assaults, adds, with regard to the chancellor whom he speaks of, but does not name: “God, says this author, had reserved the last of the three for a shameful death, which he richly deserved.”  However, the services he had done the Order for so many years, his intrepidity under the most exquisite torments of the rack, the ancient and valuable fidelity of the Portuguese gentry to their sovereigns, of which there are so many illustrious examples in history, all this might serve to balance the deposition of a servant; and perhaps the chancellor would not have been treated so very rigorously, if, when the public safety is at stake, bare suspicion were not, as we may say, a crime that state policy seldom pardons.

But be that as it will: to resume the relation of this famous siege, Suleiman, tired out with its continuance, and the little success of his miners, ordered Ahmed to begin his batteries again, and dispose his soldiers for a general assault.  The eyes of all the universe were then fixed upon Rhodes.  The Turks flattered themselves with hopes of carrying it by storm; and the knights, who were reduced to a small number, and were rather hid and buried than fortified in the little ground that was left them, waited with impatience for the succours which the Christian princes had so long fed them with the vain hopes of sending them, in order to raise the siege.  But the emperor Charles V, and Francis I, king of France, were so obstinately animated against one another, that they dare not send away their troops or divide them: and the other European princes, most of which were engaged on the side of one of those two princes, and were afraid lest their own territories should be invaded, kept their forces about them for fear of a surprise.  The pope himself, Adrian VI by name, a pious and, indeed, learned pontiff, but of no great capacity, and entirely devoted to the emperor, being pressed by Cardinal Julian de Medicis, an old knight of the Order, to send his galleys to Rhodes with a body of infantry which then lay about Rome, the new pontiff excused himself from so doing, under pretence that, as he was not skilled in the arts of government, he could not send away his troops While all Italy was up in arms; though it is very probable that he dare not dispose of them without the privity and consent of the emperor, his benefactor: and that out of complaisance to that prince, instead of sending them to Rhodes, he ordered them to march into the Milanese and Lombardy, where they were employed against the French.

Thus were the Grand Master and his knights, after putting their whole confidence in God, left without any hopes of succour but what they could draw from the Order itself: they were, besides, so unfortunate as not to receive a considerable convoy which the French knights sent in two ships from the port of Marseilles.  One of these ships, after a storm of several days, was cast away and lost off Monaco, and the other losing her masts in the same storm, was stranded on the coast of Sardinia, and disabled from putting to sea.  Nor were the English less unfortunate.  Sir Thomas de Newport, embarking with several knights of that nation, and a good quantity of provisions as well as money on board, was caught in the same storm, which drove him upon a desert country, where he stranded.  The chevalier Aulamo, of the language of Arragon, and prior of St. Martin, was in hopes of getting into the port of Rhodes.  But he was met in the Archipelago by some Turkish galleys, and after a long engagement, got out of their hands with great difficulty.  The Grand Master, though abandoned as we may say by all human succour, did not yet abandon himself or despond.  This great man discovered in so sad an extremity the same courage which had carried him so often upon the breach, and into the midst of his enemies.  By his orders the knights that resided in the adjoining isles that depended on Rhodes, and in the castle of St. Peter, quitted them, in order to preserve the capital of the Order, and transported thither, on board some light barks and little brigantines, all the soldiers, arms, and provisions they were masters of.  The Grand Master, in the extremity to which he was reduced, took this step, in hopes of one day recovering those islands, if he could but maintain his ground in Rhodes.  But as they had drawn the like succours from these several places before, this last, the only hope the knights had left, betrayed their weakness more than it augmented their forces.  The Grand Master dispatched at the same time the chevalier Farfan of the language of England, into Candia, to endeavour to get provisions from thence; and sent another knight called des Reaux to Naples, to hasten the succours, which were retarded by the rigour of the season; but all his endeavours were fruitless; and one would have thought that the winds and the sea had conspired the loss of the isle of Rhodes, and of this armament, the last supply that the besieged had any hopes of.

The Turks, to whom some deserters had represented these succours as much stronger and nearer at hand than they were in reality, used their endeavours to prevent them.  Ahmed, who, under Suleiman's orders, had the whole direction of the siege, planted a battery of seventeen cannon again the bastion of Italy, and completed the ruin of all the fortifications.  He afterwards ran his trenches to the foot of the wall; and to secure his men from being galled by the artillery of the place, he covered these new works with thick planks and great beams of timber.  His pioneers pierced afterwards through the wall, and ran their mines as far as the entrenchments, and then digging away the earth that supported them, they made them sink, so that the knights were forced to retire farther within the town: and the Grand Master, who never stirred from the attacks, seeing the infidels masters of the best part of the platform of the bastion, was forced to demolish the church of St. Pantaleon, and the chapel of Notre Dame de la Victoire, to hinder the Turks from making lodgements there, and he employed the materials of those two churches in making new barricades and entrenchments, to hinder the enemy from penetrating farther into the place.

The Turkish general had the same success at the bastion of England.  After his artillery had played upon it for several days, and that he had demolished the walls and ruined the fortifications, several knights proposed to abandon it, but that they should first fill the mines that were under it with powder, in order to blow up the infidels that should throw themselves into it.  But it was remonstrated in the council of war, held on this subject, that in the extremity to which they were reduced, the saving of the place depended entirely on prolonging the siege, so as to allow time for the succours they expected to arrive; and that, therefore, there was not a foot of ground, but what was to be disputed with the enemy as long as possible.  This last opinion prevailed; and though the bastion was entirely ruined by mines, and the fire of the artillery, nevertheless the chevalier Bin de Malicome offered himself generously to defend it; and, in spite of the continual attacks of the Turks, he maintained it with great glory to the very end of the siege.

The Turks did not allow any more rest to the knights that defended the posts of Italy and Spain.  They attacked the first on the 22nd of November.  They, as has been already observed, had seized on the best part of the platform of Italy; the knights had scarce a third of it left; and both of them were buried, as it were, in subterraneous works, and divided only by planks and beams from one another.  The Turks, seeing themselves in possession of the greatest part of this platform, undertook to drive the knights entirely out of it.  A battalion of the infidels on the side next the sea mounted to the assault, While another body attacked their entrenchments, sword in hand.  But they met with the same valour and resistance in all places; and though the knights had lost abundance of men in these bloody attacks, they yet repulsed the infidels, and obliged them to retire.

'Twas, however, only to return a few days afterwards in much greater numbers.  The attack was preceded by a mine, which they sprung under the bastion of Spain.  It made a great panel of the wall fall down; and, in order to hinder the knights from making new entrenchments behind this breach, a battery of their largest cannon played for a whole night and day without intermission upon this place.  The Turks, upon the thirtieth of November, returned at day break to the assault, While Peri pasha at the same time attacked the Italian platform again.  But the main effort of the infidels was made against the bastion of Spain; the Turks, in great numbers, and sustained by the bravest troops of their army, advanced boldly up to the breach, notwithstanding all the fire of the artillery, and small shot of the besieged; their great numbers prevailed over all the courage of the Rhodians, and they penetrated as far as the entrenchments, which the bailiff Martinengo had made before he was wounded; but at the sound of the bells, which proclaimed the danger that the city was in, the Grand Master, the prior of St. Giles, the bailiff Martinengo, who was not yet quite cured of his wound, ran from different places, with the greatest part of the knights and inhabitants; none of them observing any order but what his courage and perhaps his despair dictated; and all of them, regardless how they exposed their lives, rushed with a kind of fury upon the Turks.  The infidels did not show less courage; they grappled with one another with equal advantage, and without being able to discover what the success of this terrible engagement would be.  Happily for Rhodes there fell a prodigious rain; floods of water fell from the skies, and washed away the earth that served as a shoulder work to the trenches of the infidels.  This laying them open to the artillery of the post of Auvergne, it played furiously, and killed a great number of them; and the other batteries, which they had placed upon the mills of Cosquin, and the musketeers of the knights firing continually upon the breach, and in the midst of the enemy that was lodged there, made so horrible a slaughter of them, that such as could escape the fury of the cannon ran as fast as possible to their camp and trenches, notwithstanding all the menaces of their officers.

The Turks were not more successful in their attack of the platform of Italy: Peri pasha, who commanded at it, after losing his bravest men, and hearing of the ill success of the attack on the Spanish bastion, seeing likeways his troops almost drowned with rain, ordered the retreat to be sounded.  Such was the success of a day, which would have been the last for the liberty of Rhodes, had not the Grand Master and his knights preserved it by neglecting their own preservation, and bravely exposing their lives without the least reserve.

Suleiman could not see his troops coming back in disorder, and in a downright flight, without falling into a passion: he had been almost six months with 200,000 men before the place, without being able to take it: the vexation he felt, and his apprehensions that the Christian princes might at last unite their forces in order to oblige him to raise the siege, made him shut himself up some days in his tent, without suffering any of his captains to come near him.  No one dare offer to come into his presence: no body but Peri pasha his old governor, who had a particular privilege to enter, dare venture to speak to him.  That subtle minister, in order to bring him to a better temper, represented to him that the troops were lodged upon the principal bastions; that he was in possession of part of the place; that another assault would carry it: that they had indeed to deal with a set of desperate men, who would suffer themselves to be all killed to a man rather than surrender; but that the knights were reduced to a small number; that the inhabitants, who were most of them Greeks, had not the same courage, nor indeed the same interest to be obstinate in the defence of the place, and that he was persuaded they would not reject a composition which offered them security for their lives and fortunes; the sultan approved this advice, and ordered him to put it in execution.

Peri ordered several letters in the Grand Seignior's name to be thrown into the place, exhorting the inhabitants to submit to his empire, and threatening them at the same with the most cruel treatment, themselves, their wives and their children, if they should be taken by storm.  The pasha afterwards employed a Genoese that happened to be in Suleiman's camp, who advancing near the bastion of Auvergne, desired leave to speak.  This Genoese, whose name was Hieronymo Monilio, affecting a feigned compassion, said, that as he was a Christian, he could not bear to see the approaching loss and massacre of so many Christians his brethren, who would be overwhelmed with the formidable power of Suleiman; that their fortifications were destroyed, their entrenchments ruined, and the enemy already lodged within the place; that they ought in prudence to prevent the dismal consequences of a town's being carried by storm, and that it would not perhaps be impossible to obtain a sure and even an honourable composition from Suleiman.  The commander of the bastion, by the Grand Master's order, answered him, that the knights of St. John never treated with the infidels but sword in hand; and for fear lest his artful discourse should make any impression upon the minds of the inhabitants, he ordered him to retire.  This cunning agent of the pasha, far from being discouraged, returned two days afterwards to the same place, under pretence of having letters to deliver to a Genoese that was in the place.  But the commandant ordering him to retire, he declared that he brought a packet from Suleiman to the Grand Master: this was a new pretext for entering into a negotiation; but the Grand Master eluded it, by refusing to receive it, from the apprehensions he was under, that the bare appearances of a treaty would enervate the courage of the soldiers and inhabitants; and in order to oblige this negotiator to go off, they fired some musket shot at him.  

An Albanian deserter from the city, who had entered afterwards into Suleiman's service, was the next to act his part, and after the usual signals, desired admittance into the place, in order to present the Grand Master with a letter which he was to deliver to him from the sultan; but he was not better received than the Genoese.  The Grand Master, for fear of discouraging his troops, refused to give him audience, and declared to him, that they would for the future, without any regard to signals of parley, or the character of envoys, fire upon all that should offer to come near the place.

Nevertheless the frequent arrival of these agents, and the Grand Seignior's letters, which the pasha had taken care to throw into the city, did not fail to produce the desired effect.  The greatest part of the inhabitants being of the Greek religion begin to hold private meetings between themselves; the most mutinous, or rather the most timorous and cowardly, represented, that most of them had lost their relations and friends in the many assaults that had been given; that they themselves were on the brink of ruin; that the enemy was intrenched within the place, and that at the very first attack they should see themselves overwhelmed with the formidable multitude of the infidels; that they had for a long time been resolved to sacrifice their own lives, but could not see the dishonour and slavery of their wives and children without the most piercing affliction; that they might prevent such a terrible calamity by surrendering upon good terms; and after all, that whatever the knights might allege, the example of so many Christian states, that lived peaceably under the dominion of the Turks, was a plain proof that they might do the same, and that they, by paying a small tribute, might also save both their religion and their fortunes.

Such discourses as these, repeated at different meetings, determined the most considerable of the inhabitants to apply to their Metropolitan (bishop): they begged him to take pity on his people, and to represent to the Grand Master, that if he did not immediately treat with the Grand Seignior, they must necessarily be the first victims of the fury of the victorious soldiers, and that he himself would see the churches profaned, the precious relics of the saints trampled under foot, and the women and virgins exposed to the brutality of the infidels.  The prelate entered into these just considerations, and laid the remonstrances and request of his people before the Grand Master.  The Grand Master at first rejected the propositions of the Metropolitan with a noble disdain, and declared to him, that himself and his knights had, when they shut up themselves in Rhodes, resolved to be buried upon the breach, and in the last entrenchments of the place, and that he hoped the inhabitants would follow their example, and show the same courage.

But the Metropolitan found them in a very different disposition.  Fear on the one side, and a desire of peace on the other, had got an ascendant over them: new deputies were sent back the day following, and applied directly to the Grand Master: they declared to him, that unless he took some care to preserve the inhabitants, they themselves could not help taking the most proper measures to secure the lives and honour of their wives and children.

The Grand Master, justly fearing that despair might occasion a fatal division that would hasten the loss of the place, referred them to the council.  While they were deliberating about this important matter, three merchants knocked at the door of the council-house: they were let in, and presented a petition signed by the principal inhabitants, in which they besought the Order to make some provision for the safety of their wives and children; insinuating at the end of the petition, that if they should have no regard thereto, they should think themselves obliged by all laws, both divine and human, not to abandon them to the fury and brutality of the infidels.  The Grand Master, before any answer was given them, ordered the knights that commanded at the several posts to be called in, in order to learn from them a true and exact account of the state and forces of the place.  He addressed himself particularly to the grand prior of St. Giles, and the bailiff Martinengo, who had a few days before taken arms again, and resumed the defence of the place.  These two great men, who had so many times exposed their lives on the most dangerous occasions, declared one after the other, that they thought themselves obliged, both in conscience and honour, to represent to the assembly, that the place was not any longer tenable; that the Turks had advanced their works above forty paces forwards, and above thirty cross-wise into the city; that they were fortified there in such a manner, that they could no longer feed themselves with the hopes of driving them out, or that they themselves could retire farther back, in order to make new entrenchments; that all the pioneers and the best of the soldiers were killed; that they themselves could not be ignorant how many knights the Order had lost; that the town was equally in want of ammunition and provisions, and that without a speedy and powerful succour, they could see no resource, and had even reason to fear, that at the first attack the Christians would be bore down by the formidable power and vast numbers of the infidels.

All the council, upon the report of two captains so brave in their persons, and so greatly skilled in the arts of war, were of opinion, that they should enter into a treaty with Suleiman.  The Grand Master was the only person that differed from them in that respect, who, without abating any thing of his usual constancy and magnanimity, represented to them that, in the whole course of so many ages, as the Order had been making war upon the infidels, the knights had in the most perilous occasions always preferred an holy and glorious death before a frail and precarious life; that he was ready to set them an example, and begged of them, before they took so grievous a step, to reflect once more more upon it in the most serious manner.

The principal persons of the council replied, that if their own particular lives were concerned in the case, they would all follow his example and freely die by his side; that they were ready to sacrifice their lives; that they had devoted them to God when they took the habit; but that the safety of the inhabitants was the business in question: that if the infidels should carry the place by storm, and enter it sword in hand, they would force the women and children, and all weak persons to renounce the faith; that they would make the most of the inhabitants either slaves or renegadoes; and that the churches, and particularly the relics, which had so long been the object of their veneration at Rhodes, would be profaned by the infidels, and be made the subject of their contempt and raillery (mockery).  The Grand Master yielded at length to these pious considerations, and they resolved at the first overtures of peace that the sultan should make, to give an answer, and enter upon a negotiation.

The Grand Seignior, uneasy at the thoughts of succours, a report of which the knights had taken care to spread abroad, and unable either to take the place, or on the other hand to raise the siege consistent with his honour, endeavoured by new propositions to shake the resolution and constancy of the knights: they planted, by his orders, a flag on the top of the church of St. Mary, and in a quarter called the Lymonitres.

The Grand Master thereupon ordered another to be fixed upon a mill that was at the gate of Cosquin.  Upon this signal two Turks, who by their dress seemed to be considerable officers, came out of the trenches, and advanced towards the gate; they were met there by the prior of St. Giles and the bailiff Martinengo, to whom they delivered only a letter from Suleiman to the Grand Master, without speaking a word.  The letter contained a summons to surrender the place, with advantageous offers, provided they should deliver it up immediately, and threats of putting all to the sword if they delayed it any longer.  The common council of the Order and the great council were for hearing the conditions which the sultan offered: they agreed to give hostages on both sides.  The Order sent as deputies to Suleiman, Sir Anthony Grolée, called Passim, and Robert Perrucey, judge of Rhodes, who both spoke the vulgar Greek with facility.  

The Turks on their side sent into Rhodes a nephew of the general Ahmed's, and one of Suleiman's interpreters in whom that prince put an entire confidence.  The chevalier de Grolée and his brother deputy were admitted to an audience of the Grand Seignior, who told them, that he was disposed to let them go quietly out of the island and the East, provided they would immediately surrender up to him Rhodes, fort St. Peter, Lango, and the other little islands of the Order; but that if, from a resolution of making a rash defence, they should be obstinate in attempting to hold out any longer against his formidable power, he would destroy all before him with fire and sword.  The two deputies desired to return into the place to communicate his intentions to the Grand Master and the council; but the Turks sent back Perrucey only, with orders to bring a decisive answer immediately; and general Ahmed kept the chevalier de Grolée in his tent, whom he treated very honourably, and owned to him at table in the heat of the entertainment, that the sultan his master had lost at that siege 44,000 men that had fallen by the arms of the knights, besides almost as considerable a number that had died of sickness and cold since the beginning of the winter.

During these preliminaries of the negotiation, a company of young fellows, who were some of the most inconsiderable of the townsmen, and who had not been consulted in the petition which the principal inhabitants had presented to the Grand Master, ran in a tumultuous manner to the palace, to complain that they were treating with the enemy without their consent, and that would be delivering them up to a perfidious nation, that gloried in breaking their faith with Christians, and that they all chose to die with their weapons in their hands, rather than be cut to pieces after the capitulation, as the inhabitants of Belgrade had been.  The Grand Master, who was used to the bravadoes and vanity of the Greeks, answered them with great moderation, that prudence did not allow him to publish the motives of the negotiation, for fear the Grand Seignior should be informed of the ill condition of the place, and break it, and his troops make another assault, which he was afraid they wanted forces sufficient to sustain; but that he was exceedingly pleased to find then so well disposed to defend their country; that they should see him always at their head, and ready to shed the last drop of his blood for the preservation of the place: he desired them only to remember to bring thither, on the first occasion that might offer itself, the same courage, and all the resolution that they boasted of in their discourse, and in the presence of their sovereign.

As no great account was made of the idle talk of a troop of braggadocios, the Grand Master and the council being informed by one of their deputies of the sultan's disposition, thought fit to dispatch two other ambassadors to him, and chose for that employment don Raimond Marquet, and don Lopes Cepas, both Spaniards, who, in the audience they had of the Grand Seignior, demanded of him a truce for three days, in order to regulate the capitulation, and adjust the several interests of the inhabitants, who were partly Latins and partly Greeks.

But that prince, being always uneasy at the reports spread in his army of an approaching succour, rejected the proposition of a truce; and, in order to determine the Grand Master to treat immediately, he commanded his officers to begin firing again, and prepare everything for a general assault.  He sent back, at the same time, one of the new envoys, but kept the other, with a design, no doubt, of resuming the negotiation if he did not succeed immediately in the attack.

The batteries began to fire on both sides, but not so furiously on that of the knights, who reserved the little powder left them for the assaults they were unavoidably to stand.  The Grand Master, seeing the attack begin again, sent for the inhabitants who had spoke to him with so much ostentation of their courage; he told them that now was the time of their giving him proofs of it: and an order was issued out in his name, and published with sound of trumpet, to all the citizens to repair immediately to the advanced posts, with a strict injunction not to quit them either day or night under pain of death.  The townsmen obeyed this order for some days; but a certain young man, terrified at the danger to which he was exposed from the enemy's artillery, stealing home in the night, the Grand Master sent to take him, and the council of war condemned him to be hanged, as an example to the rest, and in order to keep up discipline.

Though all the fortifications of Rhodes were ruined, and that the city was in a manner no more than an heap of stones and rubbish, yet the knights still kept their ground in the barbacan or fausse-braye of the bastion of Spain, where the Grand Master himself lodged, in order to take the better care of its defence; the Turks attacked it on the 17th of December.

The engagement was very bloody and obstinate; they fought almost the whole day on both sides with equal animosity; the Grand Master, and the few knights he had left, ran, as we may say, to meet their wounds, and, rather than survive the loss of the place, went in quest of death, that seemed to fly from them.  In fine, they exerted themselves so nobly, that, after making a terrible slaughter of the enemy, they forced them to retire.  But the infidels, animated by the reproaches of the sultan, returned the next day to the assault, and came on in such vast numbers, that the knights, bore down by their multitude, were forced to abandon the work, and threw themselves into the city to defend it to the utmost extremity, and bury themselves in its ruins.

The townsmen, terrified at the approaching danger, abandoned their posts, and retired one after another.  The Grand Master and his knights were forced to make alone the ordinary guard of the place, and if those noble soldiers of Jesus Christ had not kept upon the breach, it would have been surprised, and carried by assault.  In fine, all the inhabitants came in a body to beseech the Grand Master to resume the negotiation, and entreated him to give them leave to send, along with his ambassadors to the camp, two deputies of their own, to take care of their interests in the capitulation: the Grand Master consented to it: the body of the townsmen named Peter Singlifico and Nicholas Vergati, when the chevalier de Grolée, who had renewed the negotiation with general Ahmed, conducted them to the camp, and desired him to present them to the Grand Seignior.  But before they were admitted to his audience, the Grand Master, in some hopes, though they were very uncertain, of a succour, and with design to spin out the negotiation, had directed him to show Ahmed an old treaty which sultan Bajazet had made with the Grand Master d'Aubusson; in which he lays his curse upon any of his successors that should break the peace he had concluded with the knights of St. John.  The Grand Master gave this instrument to his ambassador, that he might feel if Suleiman, who was a zealous observer of his law, could be prevailed with, in consideration of a considerable sum of money, to raise the siege.  But Ahmed, as soon as he cast his eyes on the paper, tore it to pieces, trod it under his feet, and drove the ambassador and deputies of the people from his presence: in fine, having no succour to hope for, nor forces enough to defend the city, the Grand Master sent the ambassador and deputies to the camp, who, after making their compliments to the Grand Seignior, set themselves with Ahmed to draw up the capitulation, the principal articles whereof contained, that the churches should not be profaned, nor the inhabitants obliged to deliver up their children to be made Janissaries; that they should be allowed the free exercise of the Christian religion; that the people should be exempt from taxes for five years; that all who would go out of the island should have leave to do so; that if the Grand Master and the knights should not have vessels enough to transport them to Candia, they should be furnished with them by the Turks; that they should be allowed twelve days' time, reckoning from that of signing the treaty, to put their effects on board; that they might carry away the relics of the saints, the consecrated vessels of the church of St. John, the ornaments, their moveables, their records, and writings, and all the cannon that they used to employ on board their galleys: that all the forts of the isle of Rhodes, and the other isles belonging to the Order, and that of the castle of St. Peter should be delivered up to the Turks; that, in order to facilitate the execution of this treaty, the Turkish army should remove to some miles distance; that, While it lay at that distance, the sultan should send four thousand Janissaries, under the command of their aga, to take possession of the place; and that the Grand Master, as a security of his word, should give twenty-five knights in hostage, among which were to be two grand crosses, with twenty-five of the principal burgesses of the town.  This treaty being signed by the ambassador and deputies one one side, and by general Ahmed in the sultan's name, and ratified by the Grand Master, and the lords of the council, the hostages agreed on repaired to the camp, and the aga of the Janissaries entered, at the same time, into the town with a company of his soldiers, and took possession of it.

While they were employed on both sides in executing the treaty, they saw a numerous fleet off at sea, standing in for the island full sail, and with a favourable wind.  The Turks, who were always uneasy on account of the succours that the Christians had so long expected, made no question but they were ships of the princes of the West coming to raise the siege.  They immediately run to arms.  Suleiman and his generals were in great pain; but the fleet drawing near the coast, they discovered the crescent in their flags; and, after the troops on board the fleet were landed, they found that they came from the frontiers of Persia, and that Suleiman, seeing his soldiers disheartened by so many unsuccessful attacks, had, in hopes that fresh troops might behave themselves with more ardor in the assaults, sent orders to Ferhad pasha to bring them with the utmost diligence he could.  It is to be presumed, that, if these fresh troops had landed sooner, the knights would not have made so honourable a composition with the sultan; but as they had begun to execute the capitulation, Suleiman would not make any advantage of this succour, nor fail in the performance of his word.

Two days after the treaty was signed, general Ahmed had a conference with the Grand Master in the ditch of the post of Spain; and after several discourses had passed between them in relation to the attack and defence of Rhodes, he told him, that the Grand Seignior was desirous to see him, and insinuated to him, that he ought not to think of going away without taking leave of his conqueror, for fear he should provoke his anger.  The Grand Master being apprehensive that he would be incensed at the long resistance he had made to all his power, as well as on account of the prodigious number of soldiers which that prince had lost at the siege, was not very willing to deliver himself up into his hands; but as, on the other side, he was afraid of furnishing him, by a refusal, with a pretence, which perhaps he wished to find, of not keeping his word, this great man, who had, during the siege, exposed himself to the greatest dangers, got over all considerations, and resolved to sacrifice himself once more for the safety of his brethren.  He came early the next morning into the quarters to the entrance of the sultan's tent.  The Turks, out of pride, and a barbarous kind of grandeur, suffered him to wait there almost all the whole day, without offering him to eat or drink, exposed to a severe cold, to snow and hail which fell in abundance.  When the evening was drawing on, he was called in, and clothing him and the knights that attended him with magnificent vests, they introduced him to an audience of the sultan.  That prince was struck with the majesty that appeared in all the air and over the whole person of the Grand Master, and told him by his interpreter, by way of consolation, “That the conquest or loss of empires were the ordinary sports of fortune.”  He added, in order to engage so great a captain in his service, that he had just seen by a woful experience the little stress that was to be laid on the amity and alliance of the Christian princes, who had so scandalously abandoned him; and that if he was willing to embrace his law, there was no post or dignity in the whole extent of his empire but he was ready to gratify him with.  The Grand Master, who was as zealous a Christian as he was a great captain, after thanking him for the good will he expressed towards him, replied, that he should be very unworthy of his favours, if he were capable of accepting them; that so great a prince as he would be dishonoured by the services of a traitor and a renegado; and that all he requested of Suleiman was, that he would be pleased to order his officers not to give him any disturbance in his going off and embarkation.  Suleiman signified to him, that he might go on with it quietly; that his word was inviolable; and as a token of friendship, though perhaps out of ostentation of his grandeur, he gave him his hand to kiss.

In breach, however, of the treaty, and the positive promises of the Grand Seignior, five days after the capitulation was signed, some Janissaries, under pretence of visiting their comrades, who with their aga had taken possession of the place, dispersed themselves over it, plundered the first houses they came to, near the gate of Cosquin, broke into the churches, which they profaned, and ransacked the very tombs of the Grand Masters, where their avarice made them fancy they should find treasure: from thence they ran, like so many furies, to the infirmary, that celebrated monument of the charity of the knights, drove out the sick, and carried off the plate, in which they were served, and would have carried their violence still farther, if, upon the Grand Master's complaints, general Ahmed, who knew the Grand Seignior's intention, had not sent word to the aga, that his head should answer for the plunder and extravagance of his soldiers.  Indeed the Grand Seignior, who was fond of glory, and jealous of his reputation, was desirous that the knights, when they retired into the various states of Christendom, should, with the news of the conquest of Rhodes, carry likeways with them the reputation of his clemency and his inviolable observance of his word: and this perhaps might be the motive that engaged him, when he visited his new conquest, to enter into the Grand Master's palace.

This Prince received him with all the marks of respect due to so potent a monarch.  Suleiman in this visit, so very extraordinary in a Grand Seignior, accosted him in an affable manner, exhorted him to bear courageously this change of fortune, and signified to him, by Ahmed, who attended him, that he might take his own time to embark his effects, and that if the time stipulated was not sufficient, he would readily prolong it.  He retired upon this, after repeating his assurances to the Grand Master of an inviolable fidelity in the execution of the capitulation; and turning towards his general as he went out of the palace, “I can't help being concerned, says he to him,” that I force this Christian, at his age, to go out of his house.”

The Grand Master was obliged to quit it even before the term agreed on was expired; for being informed, that the sultan was preparing to set out in two days for Constantinople, he did not think it proper to stay in the island, exposed to the mercy of the officers that were to command there, who might perhaps, in the Grand Seignior's absence, value themselves on giving such explications to the treaty as suited their hatred and animosity against the knights.  So that not thinking it safe to stay any longer among barbarians that were not over scrupulous with regard to the law of nations, he ordered the knights, and such as would follow the fortune of the Order, to carry immediately their most valuable effects on board the vessels of the Order.

This dismal embarkation was made in the night, with a precipitation and disorder that can hardly be described.  Nothing could be more moving, than to see the poor citizens loaded with their goods, and followed by their families, abandoning their country.  There was heard on all sides a confused noise of children crying, of women bemoaning themselves, of men cursing their ill fortune, and of seamen calling out after them all.  The Grand Master alone wisely dissembled his grief; the sentiments of his heart were not betrayed by his looks; and in this confusion he gave his orders with the same tranquillity, as if he had been only to send away a squadron of the Order to cruise.

The Grand Master, besides the knights, put on board above four thousand inhabitants of the island, men, women and children, who not caring to stay under the dominion of the infidels, resolved to follow the fortune of the Order, and abandon their country.

Prince Amurath, son to the unfortunate Zizim (Cem), would gladly have followed the Grand Master, and had agreed with him to come on board with all his family; but Suleiman resolving to get him into his power, caused him to be watched so narrowly, that in spite of all the disguises he put on, he could never get near the fleet, but was forced to hide himself in the ruins of some houses which the Turkish cannon had demolished.  The Grand Master, not being able to save him, took leave of the Grand Seignior, and was the last man that went on board his vessel.  The first day of January, A.D. 1523, all the fleet, after his example, made ready for sailing; and the few knights that survived this long and bloody siege were reduced to the dismal necessity of quitting the isle of Rhodes, and the places and other islands that depended on the Order, and in which the knights of St. John of Jerusalem had maintained themselves with so much glory for near two hundred and twenty years.