The Monks of War

by Desmond Seward

  O worthy Petro, king of Cypre, also

  That Alisaundre wan by heigh maistrye . . .

  The glory was tarnished by massacre: 20,000 men, women and children died in the sack.

  Unfortunately the crusaders, gorged with plunder, exhausted from rape, refused to march on Cairo, and Pierre, heartbroken, was forced to evacuate hard-won Alexandria. A tyrannical disposition and a vigorous private life had made him many enemies at home, including the queen (although Pierre spread her nightdress over his bed every night he spent away from her!). One evening in 1369, as the king lay asleep with his favourite mistress, some dissident noblemen burst in and killed him. Then the kingdom's Turcopolier castrated the royal corpse; the Lusignan vitality died with Pierre.

  An old comrade suffered a worse fate. European kings had begun to employ Hospitaller priors as ministers, and in 1380 Robert Hales, the hero of Alexandria and Prior of England, became Richard II's treasurer. Alas, 'Hob the Robber's' poll tax provoked the Peasants' Revolt. After burning Clerkenwell the mob prised Fra' Robert and the Archbishop of Canterbury out of the Tower, hacked off their heads, which were then stuck on poles, and nailed the archbishop's mitre to his skull.

  Juan Fernández de Heredia became Master in 1374. Born in 1310, this penniless scion of a great Aragonese family entered religion after being widowed twice. Hitherto his career had been a scramble for power – and money to leave to the children adopted by his brother. Ingratiating himself with successive popes, he became captain of the papal guard. He fought at Crécy in 1346 – questionable conduct for the Pontiff's envoy, even if he saved the French king's life – and was regarded with deep disapproval by many brethren. However, in the papal court at Avignon friends bought him promotion and ultimately the Mastership. As soon as he was Master, he leased Achaia for five years, paying its pretender 4,000 ducats. After leaving Rome in 1377, he helped the Venetians storm Patras, where he was first over the wall and personally beheaded its emir in single combat, an extraordinary feat for a man of sixty-seven. He then retook Lepanto, on the other side of the Gulf of Corinth, recently captured by Albanian tribesmen, but was ambushed by them and sold to the Turks, to spend a year in captivity. When Navarrese mercenaries invaded Achaia shortly afterward, he decided to evacuate the Order's troops.

  Juan's later years were troubled by the papal schism, with Urban VI reigning at Avignon, 'Clement VII', the anti-pope, at Rome. The Master, with the French and Spanish kings, supported the latter, and Urban therefore nominated an anti-Master, Fra' Ricardo Carracciolo, Prior of Capua. Some brethren turned pirate, like Fra' Guillaume de Talebart who, in 1391, boarded two Aragonese merchant ships off the Sardinian coast and seized a valuable cargo of coral.14 However, the convent remained loyal to Heredia, who had become a much-loved superior, until his death at Avignon in 1396.

  As a keen humanist Heredia commissioned the first translation of Plutarch into a vernacular language – Aragonese – as well as part of Thucydides' Peloponnesian War, Marco Polo's Travels and some oriental works.15 Indeed the Hospitallers did include intellectuals, such as Jean Hesdin, dean of the theological faculty of Paris, an enthusiastic classicist and the spokesman for the French party during the controversy over the papal return to Rome, who was attacked by Petrarch.16 Several brethren were masters of canon law, a necessary qualification for dealing with the Roman bureaucracy.

  Brother knights were called, of course, to be Men of God – 'that with this rule of life we may merit the reward of eternal life'. Every day these tough seamen recited the Little Office, the Office of the Dead or 150 'Pater Nosters'. Their habit remained the black tunic and cloak, and though it is unlikely that knights joined in singing the full Roman Office like Spanish freyles caballeros, on great feasts they attended Canonical Hours at the conventual church, where non-military brethren acted as canons, the Master presiding from an abbatial throne. Even on caravans the sea-knights chanted their 'Pater Nosters', led by the ship's chaplain, while the galley was halted to say the 'Angelus', and slaves rested thankfully on their oars. It was not enough for Hospitallers to substitute 'the defence of the Holy Catholic faith against the infidels and the enemies of the Christian religion' in place of 'the defence of the Holy Land'; there must be a double profession. The Church had hallowed secular knighthood with a ritual in which sword, belt and spurs acquired a quasi-sacramental quality. The Hospitallers made this ceremony a preface to the old, nonmilitary rite of profession when the candidate received the habit, to stress the dual vocation. Those who found the life difficult faced Draconian penances. A brother guilty of negligence or calumny could incur the septaine; one week's confinement to the auberge, where he ate bread from the floor – fighting off the dogs – and drank water, while every twenty-four hours he was scourged 'with thongs' before the High Altar of the conventual church. Graver offences, gambling and dining in low taverns, earned forty days of the same treatment – the quarantaine. 'The crime of fornication', concubinage, duelling or simony were punished by incarceration in the convent's prison and flogging. All brethren had to confess to the Order's priests of whom there were two grades, chaplains at Rhodes under their conventual prior and priests-of-obedience in Europe – an inferior class who did not have to furnish proofs of nobility and rarely obtained commanderies. The brotherhood's real spiritual superior was the Reverend Grand Master, 'servus pauperum Christi et custos Hospitalis Hierusalemis'.

  Often the crew of an Egyptian carrack, becalmed off some exquisite Aegean island, would wake at sunrise to see beneath the violet sky a galley darting out from a silent cove. The noise in itself was terrifying: huge oars beating the water in a rhythmic stroke sounded by shrill whistle-blasts or banging on a gong. There was a jarring crash when the prow's iron beak buried itself in ship's timbers and then, through the smoke, along the ram or over a boarding bridge, swarmed the steel-clad brethren.

  All knights were anxious to complete the caravans necessary for promotion. A voyage lasted several months, and they lived in acute discomfort, fitting themselves into the machinery of an instrument built for speed and fighting. Brethren and their patrons slept huddled together under a tent on the stern platform, and their provisions were restricted to oil-soaked biscuit and watered wine. The real horror was the stench of rowers, and brothers sometimes plugged their noses. These poorly fed oarsmen, criminals or Saracen prisoners, were chained to their benches, lashed by overseers and only when in port were sheltered by a sailcloth awning. Yet shipmasters saw to a bare minimum of health, as starved or scurvy-ridden rowers could not produce an adequate rate of knots. Ships now mounted guns – breech-loading lombards, unreliable and dangerous but effective enough at short range. The Order's sea-going hierarchy consisted of the General of the Galleys on permanent duty with the battle squadron and the patrons or ships' captains, who were frequently bailiffs. A fixed complement of brethren manned the guardship which patrolled outside Rhodes night and day.

  The whole of the Latin East was failing, even Cyprus. After the coronation banquet of 1372, several Genoese were killed in a brawl, whereupon the republic invaded the island. Eventually a bitter peace was concluded, with Genoa retaining Famagusta. Jacques I, released from imprisonment in an iron cage, isolated the port with a ring of fortifications, but the monarchy was ruinously weakened despite his coronation as King of Armenia in 1393, for the last Haiot strongholds had been overrun by the Mamelukes. The Turks were swallowing Greece; Adrianople became their capital in 1366. The kingdom of Bosnia, the empire of the Serbs and the tsardoms of the Bulgars were soon conquered. In 1394 Bayezid proclaimed himself 'Sultan of Rum' (Rome). His army was invincible, its key troops being spahis (bowmen equipped with steel helmet, mail shirt, shield, lance and yataghan) who were supported by similarly armed feudal troops under beys. Tactics were still the arrow storm and lightning charge.

  The pope succeeded in launching the greatest expedition since the days of St Louis. Philippe de Mézières, once Pierre I's chancellor, had wandered all over Europe for nearly half a century preaching Holy W
ar. The Balkans could be reached without a dangerous sea voyage while at hand there were powerful allies, Hungary–Croatia and Wallachia. Jean de Nevers brought 10,000 Burgundians and Frenchmen, the Earl of Hunting-don. 1,000 English. From Germany came 6,000 men, and there were also Czechs, Poles, Spaniards and Italians. All met at Buda in July 1396, where King Sigismund of Hungary had assembled 60,000 Magyars and Transylvanians with 10,000 Vlachs under their Prince, Mircea the Old. Most of the western contingents were gens d'armes in grotesque hounskull helmets with 'pig face' visors and jupons (short cloth tunics worn over mail shirts). However, the majority of eastern Europeans were light cavalry or spearmen. By September, besides whoring and drinking bad wine, they had invested the Bulgarian city of Nicopolis and spent a fortnight trying to starve its Osmanli garrison into surrender. They were joined by the Venetian, Genoese and Hospitaller contingents, the latter under Master Philibert de Naillac, whose galleys had sailed up the Danube from the Black Sea.

  On 25 September 1396 Bayezid Yilderim ('Lightning') appeared with an equally large army, 100,000 men, including a force of Christian Serbs under their despot, Stefan Lazarović. The sultan's first line of battle was light auxiliaries – akinjis (horse) and azebs (foot) in front of rows of pointed stakes. These sheltered his real infantry of archers and axemen. Behind them, completely hidden by a range of low hills, were the spahis and feudal cavalry. The French chivalry hurled themselves at the Turks' light troops. After killing at least 10,000, they dismounted to pull out the stakes and get at the bowmen, who fled up the hill. The knights pursued on foot, climbing the steep incline in their heavy armour. Suddenly '40,000' spahis galloped over the crest, charging down on the sweating men-at-arms still toiling up towards them. It was a massacre, and even the unwounded rolled down the hill to lie prostrate at the bottom. Sigismund and his Magyars, with the Germans and the brethren, rode forward to meet the Turks, though their Romanian allies had fled. They slew 15,000 infidels and for a moment it seemed Bayezid might be defeated, but then the Serbs came to his rescue with a ferocious charge. Sigismund and Philibert escaped in boats down the Danube, while archers galloping along the bank shot at them until they were picked up by a Venetian galley. Most Hungarians, however, died beside their German comrades and many brethren fell with them. Next day, apart from 300 great nobles rich enough to pay extortionate ransoms, the captured knighthood was slaughtered 'from morning till Vespers'. Nicopolis was the Latin East's death sentence.17

  Bayezid then besieged Constantinople for seven years, but the Hospitallers were needed elsewhere; in 1400 they bought Mistra and Acrocorinth from the despot of the Morea, who had fled to Rhodes. Mistra refused to admit the brethren, as the Turks had now withdrawn from the Peloponnese, but Acrocorinth, which was more exposed, welcomed them. However, after four years the Master sold these Greek possessions to the empire. Bayezid had indeed intensified his siege of Constantinople in 1402, uttering threats of massacre and extermination, but was himself overwhelmed the same year by Tamberlane at Chibukabad.

  Tamberlane invested Smyrna on 2 December 1402. The first day a white flag flew over the Khan's tent, signifying that if the city surrendered the lives of all would be spared; the second day the flag was red, promising mercy for the common people but not their rulers; the third day it was black – no man, woman or child would be spared. The besiegers numbered tens of thousands and had brought every conceivable siege-engine. The captain of Smyrna, Fra' Iñigo d'Alfara,18 his 200 brethren and their few mercenaries had to man the ramparts under a sky black with missiles, while sappers tunnelled ceaselessly beneath their feet. Even so, a contemporary Persian historian wrote that the Tartars, victors from Delhi to the Don, thought that they fought 'like a band of enraged devils'. After a fortnight a Hospitaller fleet was sighted but the besiegers redoubled their efforts and breached the city walls. The remnants of the garrison cut their way through to the jetties and swam out to the galleys. In the ensuing orgy of extermination the triumphant horde fired the heads of fallen brethren at the Christian ships.

  Smyrna had protected Black Sea shipping, and a few years later, therefore, Fra' Philibert occupied the Turkish castle of Bodrun on a mainland peninsula opposite Rhodes, building a great stronghold, Fort St Pierre, with seven lines of fortification and a secure harbour.19 He was an unusually able Master who reunited the brethren, even though the papal schism continued. Probably his worst problems were financial, as receipts from European commanderies dwindled alarmingly. He travelled to many western capitals on fund-raising expeditions, visiting London in 1410. The brethren increased their commercial activities, investing in Italian enterprises or trading direct with Alexandria and Damietta. But even if they negotiated treaties with Egypt, their caravans continued to sweep the Levantine seas.

  Fortunately for Rhodes, Cairo regarded Cyprus as its chief enemy. The island was weakened by recurrent outbreaks of plague, by swarms of locusts and by the declining authority of an impoverished monarchy. Yet King Janus saw himself as another Pierre. Frequent raids were made on the Egyptian coast and Moslem merchantmen attacked without mercy, for Janus would not restrain his privateers. In Pierre's day the Mamelukes had been crippled by a shortage of ship's timber, but now they possessed the Cilician forests. In 1426 Sultan Barsbei dispatched an armada of 180 galleys, carrying cavalry and Turcoman regulars, which landed in late June. The king, woefully incompetent, was surrounded and routed at Khirokitia;20 his horse was killed under him and he proved too fat for any remounts available. The Mamelukes then burnt Nicosia to the ground and laid the whole kingdom to waste. In Cairo the wretched Janus was paraded through the streets on a donkey, his bare feet shackled beneath its belly save when jeering guards made him dismount to kiss the ground. After a year the king 'who never smiled again' was released on payment of the enormous ransom of 200,000 ducats, to which the Order contributed 30,000.21

  Henceforth Cypriot kings were the sultan's vassals and almost overnight an aggressive crusader state had changed into a harmless trading base. Royal authority all but disappeared and the estates of both king and magnates never recovered. Indeed, the Order of St John, the largest landowner in the country, found its houses nearly bankrupt: in 1428 Grand Commander Hermann von Ow leased Kolossi to two brethren for seven years at a nominal rent of four ducats on condition they put the commandery on its feet – the normal income was 12,000 ducats.22 In 1440 the Order reached an agreement with Cairo whereby Cyprus would not be involved in any future hostilities. The brethren could expect little help from the shattered kingdom's scanty forces and could certainly not afford to defend it, while both sides were anxious to safeguard their mercantile interests. Now Rhodes was the sole heir of crusader Jerusalem.

  14

  THE THREE SIEGES

  The convent's growing peril heightened its brethren's sense of dedication. Significantly Hospitallers began to use the term 'our holy Religion' more often when referring to their Order, and the official adoption of the style 'Grand Master' by Fra' Antonio Fluvian, elected in 1421, reflects renewed purpose as much as worldly grandeur. Rhodes was the new kingdom of Jerusalem, where warriors guarded a consecrated citadel under the patronage of the Holy Virgin of Philermo. But they no longer had rivals to fight at their side.

  The Templars had gone and St Lazarus was disappearing. In England there was no mention of Locko after 1351, though its revenues continued to be enjoyed by Burton Lazars, and Chosely had gone by 1458. In 1450 the pope granted the petition of Master William Sutton that no further confirmation was needed once Burton Lazars had elected its superior. Scotland stayed loyal to Boigny a little longer, though in France too preceptories were degenerating into sinecures. The Leper Knights of Outremer would have had difficulty in recognizing their incumbents as brethren.1

  Rhodes was always ready for an attack. The guardship patrolled the coast ceaselessly, there was a tall watchtower on Simi, and not only were Hospitaller consuls active in Egypt but Rhodian merchants knew every rumour circulating in Cairo or Alexandria. Fortunately the brethren's
seamanship often enabled them to outsail and outfight far larger forces. This was dramatically evident in 1440 when Sultan Jakmak of Egypt, increasingly incensed by the pirate monks' depredations, sent a fleet against them. After destroying the villages on Kastelorizon his eighteen galleys, 'extremely well furnished with soldiers, oarsmen, cannon and ammunition', went on to attack the convent itself. As soon as they were sighted, the marshal of the Order, Fra' Louis de Saint Sebastien, led out his entire battle-squadron, eight galleys and four armed cargo vessels, firing his guns and playing martial music. So unnerved were the Egyptians by this unexpectedly aggressive reception that they ran close in to the shore, lying alongside each other and turning their poops seaward. Here they held off the brethren with a barrage of cannon-shot and Greek fire until nightfall. They then hurriedly set sail – apparently bound for Turkey. But Fra' Louis learnt from a captured Mameluke that their real destination was Lango. Sailing hard throughout the night, he managed to intercept them. Again the horrified Egyptians refused battle, taking refuge in an uninhabited harbour 'which the Turks call Carathoa'. They thought themselves safe enough in its sandy shallows, for the Hospitaller carracks drew too much water to follow. Swiftly Fra' Louis transferred the latter's men-at-arms aboard his galleys and then went into the attack. A 'great and bloody battle' ensued, in which the Mamelukes lost 700 men against 60 Rhodian casualties. Only nightfall and a rising sea saved them from annihilation.

  The wasps' nest was never disturbed with impunity. In the summer of 1444 an Egyptian armada landed 18,000 men, who devastated the island before investing the city and its convent. Luckily, small reinforcements had just arrived from Burgundy and Catalonia. After six weeks the Mameluke guns breached the massive curtain-walls and the Grand Master, Jean Bonpars de Lastic, realized that a general assault was imminent. Before dawn on 24 August he assembled his troops silently in the darkness, outside the ramparts, with knights and pikemen in the centre, arbalestiers on the wings. In those days brethren fought on foot in brigandines (leather coats sewn with metal studs) and steel hats or sallets while, as seamen, their favourite weapon seems to have been the boarding pike. Among Englishmen present was the Turcopolier, Fra' Hugh Middleton. At first light the charge was sounded, whereupon, with trumpets braying, kettledrums and cymbals clashing, the formidable little army smashed its way into the sleeping Mameluke camp, roaring the old battle cry 'St Jean, St Jean'. It was over quickly: the enemy bolted to their ships, though not before hundreds had been cut down by exulting brethren, who captured the entire siege-train. Jakmak was so disheartened that he made peace in 1446.2