The Shield and The Sword

by Ernle Bradford

Now the owl calls the night watches in the

  Towers of Afrasiab.

  Contrary to the code of Islam he was a notorious wine-bibber, happiest perhaps when in his cups. He was also, in common with many Turks, a paederast, and among his many acquisitions after the fall of Constantinople were a number of handsome Greek youths. A strange compendium of virtues and vices, this was the man who was to look south from his new capital and plan the destruction of Rhodes and the end of the Knights Hospitaller.

  The man who was to meet this challenge as Grand Master of the Order was a Frenchman of the Langue of Auvergne, Pierre d’Aubusson. Born in 1423, he was fifty-seven at the time that Mehmet launched his attack on the island. He had first come to Rhodes as a novice at the age of twenty-one and had risen rapidly in the Order, being chosen in 1454 by Grand Master de Lastic for the delicate mission of going to Europe and securing money and armaments against the impending Turkish attack. Later, appointed to the post of Captain General, he had personally supervised the extension and modernisation of the defences. As Prior of Auvergne, and virtually head of the Order since the then Grand Master was old and ill, d’Aubusson had pressed on with the task of making the city as impregnable as he could with the funds at his disposal. A large curtain wall had been raised to protect the seaward approaches to the city, three new towers were built, the ditch on the landward side was everywhere widened and deepened, and a boom-defence was constructed to protect the somewhat vulnerable commercial harbour. D’Aubusson appears to have been a man of humour, sensitivity and intelligence: he was a very fine example of the ‘chevalier sans peur et sans reproche’.

  By 1479 it was clear to the Grand Master and the Council that they might expect the blow to fall at any moment. D’Aubusson had already declined to pay tribute to the Sultan or to refrain from molesting his shipping. The Sultan for his part was encouraged in his plans by information given him by a small group of Rhodian renegades in Constantinople that the city of Rhodes was weak and would fall easily to his arms. That same winter he sent his commander-in-chief, Misac, south through the Aegean with a number of galleys to reconnoitre the island. This reconnaissance force achieved nothing apart from burning a number of hamlets, and it was finally driven off with heavy losses. Misac Pasha retired to Marmarice on the mainland, just eighteen miles from Rhodes. Here he sat down to winter and to await the arrival of the Sultan’s fleet and army in the spring of the following year. At long last the great trial between Cross and Crescent was to be made—the first of any real consequence since the thirteenth century.

  Chapter 13

  SIEGE

  In the spring of 1480 the troops marched overland from the Hellespont and assembled under the Sultan’s standard at Marmarice. All was ready for the assault upon Rhodes, ‘that abode of the Sons of Satan’. Despite attempts by Mehmet to conceal the object of the expedition (among them the carefully promoted rumour that the army and the fleet were designed for the capture of Alexandria), Pierre d’Aubusson was far too well informed ever to be deceived. The Knights and the Rhodians all had their instructions. As many of the former as could possibly arrive in time were to report to the Convent, while the Rhodians, as soon as the armada was sighted, were to burn and destroy the land behind them and retire with their families, property, and animals, either into the fortified points around the island or into the city itself.

  The force that had been assembled against the Knights has been put at about 70,000 men. As always, when dealing with estimates made of the enemy at this or almost any period in history, allowance must be made for exaggeration. Nevertheless, it was an immense army for its time, and the fleet which transported it and escorted it—some fifty ships or more—suggests that the figures were not far from accurate. Against the might of the Turkish Empire the Knights opposed about 600 members of the Order, including servants-at-arms, and between 1,500 and 2,000 paid foreign troops and local militia. In addition, of course, there were the townsfolk themselves, nearly all of whom were capable of lending some kind of hand in the defence. There is no record of the number of slaves at that time held in the city but they too could be used under strict supervision for rebuilding defences and for other manual work.

  The siege of Rhodes was marked by the extensive use of cannon, something that had been foreshadowed by the siege of Constantinople where the cannon constructed for Mehmet by a Hungarian engineer had been largely instrumental in the city’s fall. Cannon had been used in European wars for a century, but mainly as field pieces for dispersing troops. Generally speaking they had not reached the size that could carry enough weight of ball seriously to damage city walls. The Sultan, however, with his keen interest in the sciences, had long been a believer in the efficacy of cannon for reducing cities and from early in his reign had ordered his foundries to experiment in the production of larger and more efficient weapons. At Constantinople, for instance, the largest cannon used against the walls had a barrel length of over twenty-six feet and fired a ball weighing twelve hundredweight. At Rhodes we hear of one heavy battery consisting of three ‘basilisks’, seventeen feet long, which fired cannon balls nearly seven feet in circumference. There was one drawback to these massive early cannons: the rate of fire was very slow because the barrel had to cool after each round before a fresh charge could be inserted. This gave them a rate of fire of little more than one round an hour.

  At dawn on May 23rd the fleet was sighted coming down towards Akra Milos, the most north-westerly point of the island. The ships then turned and made their way towards Marmarice where the embarkation began. The first landings were made shortly after sunset that night in the pleasant Bay of Trianda, with its shelving beach and its swiftly-running streams. The attack began next morning with a bombardment of the Tower of St Nicholas. This was the large fort, with walls twenty-four feet thick, which stood at the end of the long mole that divided the Mandraccio from the commercial port. If it could be reduced both harbours would immediately become vulnerable. Meanwhile innumerable other cannons of varying weight began to bombard the city itself, hurling their projectiles high over the walls with the object of demoralising the townsfolk, none of whom had ever before experienced the violence of modern war. D’Aubusson, however, with his usual foresight had already organised shelters in cellars throughout the city where the women and children, and the old and the sick, could take refuge.

  Strong though it was, St Nicholas began to crumble before the weight of the gunfire. D’Aubusson, realising that almost everything hinged upon its preservation from the enemy, immediately set about converting its ruins into an even stronger fortress. (Now that its profile was reduced its actual thickness was almost doubled.) He knew that if it fell not only would the harbours become untenable, but the Turks would be able to storm along the mole and attack the two city gates at its landward end. During the days and nights that followed gangs of slaves, soldiers and townspeople laboured continually to maintain the structure of the tower and at the same time convert the whole mole into a walled rampart facing the Turks across the waters of the Mandraccio.

  On May 28th the Grand Master sent off an urgent despatch to all members of the Order in Europe. He implored their help and angrily pointed out that many of the brethren had already turned a deaf ear to his previous pleas and exhortations. The situation, he said, was critical, and no member who failed to do all in his power to come to the Order’s assistance could even be excused. ‘What is more sacred than to defend the Faith?’ he concluded. ‘What is happier than to fight for Christ?’ But the fact was that in those days of poor communications and worse travel facilities Rhodes was just too far away for many members of the Order ever to reach it on short notice. Even if they were to band together and equip a ship, by the time they had done so and reached the island all would be over one way or another. There was the likelihood too that if the island was as closely invested by a large fleet as it appeared to be, then a relief force would have no chance of getting through. Surprisingly enough, only a few days later a relief vessel did get throu
gh and make its way into the commercial port. This was a Sicilian carrack, laden with grain and a number of reinforcements—very helpful to morale at this stage in the siege.

  On the same day that d’Aubusson wrote his letter to the absent brethren a very strange defector made his way over from the Turkish lines and asked to be let into the city. This was none other than Master George, the great German artillery expert, regarded as the main brains behind the siting of the cannon and the conduct of the bombardment. Like so many who served in the Turkish ranks he was a Christian by birth. As he told d’Aubusson when he was interviewed, his heart had been moved by the plight of his co-religionists and he wished to join them and give his services to the Holy Religion. D’Aubusson received him courteously enough and accepted the offer. At the same time he detailed six Knights to form a permanent bodyguard for the master-gunner, telling them never to let him out of their sight, and to watch and report on everything he said and did. D’Aubusson was no man’s fool and the defection, particularly of so important a figure in the Sultan’s camp, seemed a little too easy. Meanwhile the main weight of the bombardment continued to fall upon the Tower of St Nicholas and it was clear that before very long the Turk would come to the attack.

  The blow fell early one June morning, when specially modified Turkish triremes were seen rounding Akra Milos from their base at Trianda and heading across the misty sea for the fortress. The vessels had had their masts, spars and rigging removed, and were fitted with special fighting platforms in the bows. Manned by Sipahi troops, professionals second only to the crack Janissaries, they came onward towards their objective to the usual clamour of cymbals, drums, pipes and ululating cries with which the Turks always went into battle. The Knights and men-at-arms were waiting for them. While the advancing ships kept up a steady fire on the fort, all the guns that could be brought to bear opened fire upon them, from the fort itself and from the Post of France, that part of the city wall which faced the mole. The attackers were brave enough, hurling themselves off the bow-platforms into the sea and swarming ashore. But they were committing the unforgivable mistake of attempting a landing right in the face of a strongly fortified and strongly held position. (If the Turkish command had over-estimated the damage that their bombardment had done and had reckoned that the defence must be almost non-existent, they were to be sadly disillusioned.) Even as the first wave of Sipahis attempted to come ashore they were met by a withering fire from crossbows, arquebuses and long bows, while for those who actually managed to reach the palisades erected round the fort there waited the sizzle of Greek fire. And at the palisades themselves stood the long line of armoured men—a curtain-wall of steel—swinging above their heads those great two-handed swords that could split a man from head to crotch in a single blow. Many were drowned, others killed on the spot, and the attack was foredoomed from the start. The survivors turned, splashed back through the shoals, and made for the safety of their ships. But even here no safety existed, for the fort’s guns and small arms once again came into play. One vessel blew up, and most of the others sustained such damage that it took the carpenters and shipwrights days to put them into service again.

  But by mid-June so weighty and sustained was the general bombardment (nearly a thousand cannon balls a day, d’Aubusson calculated) that certain parts of the city walls were on the point of collapse. The worst area was to the south of the commercial port, the curtain-wall surrounding the Jews’ Quarter of the city which was held by the Langues of Auvergne and Italy. All the time the Turks were snaking forward their trenches, advancing them night after night towards the counterscarp of the great ditch that surrounded the city. On the night of June 18th a second major assault was launched against St Nicholas, this time by the cream of the Sultan’s troops, the fearsome Janissaries. The Turks had constructed a large floating pontoon on to which the Janissaries were marched, the pontoon then being towed under cover of darkness up to the threatened tower. Brave though the attempt was, and this time better thought out than the previous daylight operation, the Turks were not to find the defenders asleep at their posts. Every gun that could be brought to bear swept the crowded pontoon and the galleys and other escorts that had moved up for the kill. The night was dark no longer. Flares, bursting grenades, and liquid fire illuminated a scene reminiscent of hell. In the waters the bodies of hundreds of Janissaries testified to the firepower of the garrison and of the city. By daylight next morning all was over. Once again the fort, that all-important defence work, had held out against the arms of Islam.

  As in any city under siege there were always some who felt that it would be better to save their skins than to die in the crumbling, smoking ruins. Two such plots against the Order were exposed and the men concerned were put to death. One of the schemes involved poisoning the Grand Master himself. The renegade, a Dalmatian or Italian, who had conceived it, was torn to pieces by the townspeople on his way to the place of execution. But, despite these and other attempts to suborn the Rhodians or betray the city, d’Aubusson kept his eye all the time on the mysterious German, Master George. Like so many spies Master George finally betrayed his purpose by the fact that the information he gave the Grand Master about the Turkish dispositions or the siting of the city’s guns was always shown to be either inaccurate or ineffectual. At length d’Aubusson had had enough. The German was put to torture, admitting at last that he had been true to his Turkish masters from the very beginning. There seems little doubt, despite the inevitable mistrust which must always hang around answers elicited under torture, that Master George was guilty. He was publicly hanged and a message to the effect that their master-spy and master-gunner was dead was shot into the Turkish lines.

  By the third week of July it was quite clear to the defenders that the first great mass assault must soon fall upon the city. The wall surrounding the Jews’ Quarter was a crumbling ruin and, despite the fact that the defenders had built another wall and ditch behind it, there was little that could be done about the point just seaward of the tower of Italy where only a narrow and largely destroyed curtain-wall protected the city between it and the commercial port. On July 27th following upon not days and nights but week after week of constant bombardment (during which time the whole city of Rhodes seemed like a ship sailing over a sea of smoke and fire) the great attack was launched. In the first wave came the Bashi-Bazouks, irregulars, many of them of Christian birth. Violent, predatory, the scum of the eastern earth, they fought under the Turkish banner only for plunder. Brave though many of them undoubtedly were, they were an undisciplined crew, and their Turkish masters made sure that their enthusiasm did not wane too rapidly in the teeth of resistance. Behind them they sent a line of Turks armed with whips and maces—working on the principle that if they feared their officers more than the enemy then all would be well. The Bashi-Bazouks were expendable. Their bodies would fill the ditch and provide the stepping stone for those who came after them. And these were the Janissaries.

  Yeni-Cheri, ‘New Soldiers’, was the Turkish word for them and it was accurate enough since they were a completely novel concept. They were all Christians by birth, who had been selected on account of their physique during a five yearly inspection throughout the Turkish empire for healthy young males aged seven. Destined for the army, they were taken away from their parents, trained as strict Moslems, and instructed in the arts of war. As W. H. Prescott wrote of them: ‘Those giving the greatest promise of strength and endurance were sent to places prepared for them in Asia Minor. Here they were subjected to a severe training, to abstinence, to privations of every kind, and to the strictest discipline… Their whole life may be said to have been passed in war or in the preparation for it. Forbidden to marry, they had no families to engage their affections, which, as with the monks and the friars of Christian countries, were concentrated in their own order.’ They were the Moslem equivalent of the Knights of St John. It was often said by both sides over the centuries that if the Knights were only Moslems, or the Janissaries were only Christians
, either would be happy to fight alongside the other. Their mutual respect was founded on an equal bravery, an equal fanaticism, and an equal belief in the righteousness of their respective causes.

  Misac Pasha, the commander-in-chief, had ordered a devastating fire to be opened upon the whole area around the tower of Italy just before the main advance was made. This was not so much to destroy the walls any further—they were already in ruins—but to drive the defenders off the walkaways and send them under cover. The minute the fire ceased, the Bashi-Bazouks rolled forward like a wave and thundered over the storm-beaten rocks of the city walls. Behind them came the Janissaries. It was not long before the Grand Master saw that terrible omen of defeat, the standard of Islam, flying above the shattered tower of Italy. It burned there in the blue summer air as it had done above so many other cities from Constantinople to Baghdad.

  Although lame from an earlier arrow wound in the thigh, d’Aubusson was the first to lead the defenders into the breach. Followed by about a dozen Knights and three standard bearers he mounted one of the ladders leading to the top of the wall. It was now that the armoured man came into his own. Standing on the narrow walkaway, almost invulnerable in his armour to anything but an arquebusier’s lead bullet, the plate-armour of the fifteenth century gave a single man an advantage over dozens of opponents. Even so it was inevitable at close quarters that some thrusts should pierce through ‘the chinks in the armour’. D’Aubusson received three or four wounds before finally a Janissary ‘of gigantic structure’ hurled a spear clean through his breastplate and punctured his lung. This moment, when he was being dragged back out of the affray, might well have seemed to signal the end of Rhodes. The enemy were in the breach, the tower of Italy was in their hands, and the attackers swarmed onwards thicker and thicker, like bees driven by some strange urge in their nature to found a new colony in this remote and stony outpost. It was the very density of the onrushing enemy that proved their downfall. Once the first men were closely engaged ‘breast to breast’, those behind ‘cried forward, and those in front cried back’.