Had it not been for the general deterioration of relations between the Turks and the Mamelukes of Egypt there can be little doubt that Bajazet, despite all the assurances of good wishes and friendship that had passed between himself and the Order, would soon have come to the attack. But the breathing-space afforded first by the ‘affaire de Djem’, and then by open warfare between the Sultan and Egypt, gave d’Aubusson a chance to improve the defences of his island, and to build new galleys for the Order’s fleet. In the last year of his reign the Order, in company with a papal squadron, had a notable success over the Turks near the island of Chios, capturing a number of large and richly laden vessels. Shortly afterwards, on their sweep back to the south, they ran into a Turkish squadron off Samos, all of whom surrendered to the Standard of the Holy Religion. Laden with years and with honours, Pierre d’Aubusson died aged eighty in June 1503. One of the most remarkable of all Grand Masters he had successfully repulsed the massive invasion sent by Sultan Mehmet II. He had also restored the Order’s finances as well as the fortifications of Rhodes, while by diplomatic negotiations (whether Machiavellian or not) he had secured a much-needed breathing space for his island kingdom,
Chapter 15
BY ORDER OF THE SULTAN
The years following upon the death of Grand Master d’Aubusson and his succession by Emeric d’Amboise of the Langue of France were marked by the same steady progress in the Order’s fortunes. In 1503, when the Turks sent a force of sixteen galleys to Rhodes and put ashore raiding parties, their galleys were brought to action by the small fleet of the Knights, and despite the difference in numbers, the Turks were soundly trounced, eight of their ships being sunk and two captured. The only damage to the Order was caused by the explosion of a powder keg which blew the bows off one of the galleys, killing eight Knights and a number of sailors in the forward position on the rambades. Other actions over the years confirmed that the navy of the Order was immeasurably the superior of the Turkish, both in seamanship and in firepower.
The flagship of the Holy Religion, a carrack of about 2,000 tons, proved that it was not only in her galleys that the Order was more efficient. Coming up with a large Egyptian ship off Candia in Crete the carrack successfully engaged the Egyptian and captured her intact. She was the richest single prize that had so far fallen to the Order, being laden with treasure and valuable merchandise, as well as having among her passengers a number of distinguished Mamelukes whose ransom value was almost as great as her contents. Successes such as these, when reported throughout Europe, naturally increased the esteem in which the Knights were held by the European powers and, coming upon their triumphant defence of Rhodes in 1480, promoted the feeling that the Knights were invincible. This led in due course to a dangerous disregard of the Order’s true situation: a Christian outpost in the heart of the ever-growing Turkish empire, and an outpost moreover which was outflanked by the Turkish occupation of the Greek mainland.
A remarkable victory at sea in 1510 was taken as even further proof that the Order was quite capable of looking after itself. The action took place off Laiazzo on the Turkish mainland just north of Cyprus, where the Sultan Bajazet and the Mameluke Sultan Qansuh al-Guri had pooled their resources and were combining to build a large fleet in the Red Sea designed to drive out the Portuguese who had infiltrated into the Indian Ocean and were seriously disrupting the Moslem spice trade from the East Indies. Laiazzo’s importance was that it was the main port for the great timber areas that lay behind it in Asia Minor, and it was here that the wood for the new fleet was being seasoned and stored. Upon a report reaching Rhodes that a large convoy was on its way from Egypt to Laiazzo, under the command of the Mameluke Sultan’s nephew, the Order’s fleet was immediately sent to sea with orders to intercept. The sailing vessels were under the command of a Frenchman subsequently to become one of the Order’s greatest Grand Masters, Philippe Villiers de L’Isle Adam, and the oared galleys under a Portuguese, Andrea d’Amaral.
The great problem in the Mediterranean, in the days when fleets were composed of two such completely different types of vessel, was that while one part was efficient under canvas (provided that the wind came from abaft the beam) the other was only really efficient in calm or light weather conditions. On this occasion when the fleet came up to Laiazzo, where the Mameluke ships were at anchor in the harbour, the weather was light—ideal for galleys to slip in like wolves among the sheep-like merchantmen, but dangerous for the wind-dependent ‘round ships’ which might well get becalmed and end up being blown to pieces by the shore batteries. L’Isle Adam accordingly was in favour of staying outside and enticing the Mamelukes into open water, while d’Amaral was all for using the speed and mobility of his galleys to get in among the prey. Fortunately for the Order the wise restraint of L’Isle Adam prevailed over the impetuosity of the ‘destroyer captain’ d’Amaral, and the fleet was dangled like an enticing bait off the harbour mouth. The Egyptians, trusting as had the Turks on previous occasions to the fact that they far outnumbered their opponents, were rash enough to come out from the security of their defended haven and engage. Once again the seamanship and tactics of the Knights and their Rhodian sailors proved superior to that of the Moslems. It was the old conflict between quality and quantity and, as the Knights had learned long ago, it is axiomatic at sea that it is quality which prevails. (On land, on the other hand, the Turks as they so often showed achieved their victories by sheer weight of manpower, the ‘steamroller principle’ which was to make them master of so many towns and countries.) In the battle that followed, the Order captured fifteen ships, eleven of them large sailing vessels—the pride of the Egyptian fleet. The standard of the Order waved triumphantly over the ruin of the Turkish-Egyptian armada, while the raiding parties which they put ashore drove the garrison inland. They then set fire to the immense piles of timber that had been destined for a Red Sea fleet that would now never take the water. So great a triumph, and one of such importance to a Europe that had grown to rely on the Portuguese supply of spices rather than—as in the past—having to buy it from Moslem traders, raised the Knights’ prestige to a point where it seemed that the Cross of St John was indeed protected by heavenly powers. This reputation for invincibility was in the end to prove of fatal consequence to the Order. In another matter, the dispute between L’Isle Adam and d’Amaral (in which the former had been shown to have been tactically correct), lay the seeds of discord that would one day have a sinister impact upon the Order’s future.
In 1520 the Ottoman Sultan Selim the Grim, who had succeeded Bajazet, and who had vastly enlarged his empire by annexing Egypt, died just as he was assembling an army designed to destroy the ‘Christian nest of vipers’. He was succeeded by his only son, Suleiman, destined to become the greatest ruler in Turkish history; to be revered by his own people as ‘The Lawgiver’, for his reformation and codification of Turkish law, and to be feared and at the same time honoured throughout Europe as Suleiman ‘The Magnificent’. He was twenty-six when he ascended the throne, his birth having coincided with the opening year of the tenth century of Moslem chronology (Anno Hegirae 900). He initiated a period which has been described as ‘the most glorious in the history of Islam’. In his day Turkey attained the summit of her political and military power, for Suleiman was a brilliant statesman as well as an excellent general. A poet in his own right, he was no simple Turkish warlord but—like Mehmet II—a man of culture and intelligence. This was the man, ‘Allah’s deputy on Earth, Lord of the Lords of this World, Possessor of Mens’ Necks, King of Believers and Unbelievers, King of Kings, Emperor of the East and West’, who looked south from his palace above the Golden Horn and decided that, before all else, the Standard of the Holy Religion should be removed from his seas.
In 1521, one year after Suleiman ascended the throne, Philippe Villiers de L’Isle Adam became Grand Master of the Order. He succeeded an able Italian Grand Master, Fabrizio del Carretto, Who had spent most of the years in which he was head of the Order in renewing t
he defences of Rhodes and in preparing for that second siege which was clearly inevitable. He had employed one of the most able military engineers of the time, a fellow Italian, to bring the fortifications of Rhodes into line with the conditions now obtaining in a warfare that was dominated by the use of cannon and of mining. The old days of high curtain-walls were long gone and battlements now had to be massive. Huge angled towers provided covering fire along the exposed sections of the walls through gun ports that were splayed so as to give the guns a wide angle of fire. The city of Rhodes that L’Isle Adam inherited was as strong as any fortified place on earth.
His election to the office came about while he was away in France, and it was unfortunate that among the contenders for the post was the Portuguese d’Amaral who had disputed L’Isle Adam’s decision at Laiazzo. D’Amaral held the post of Chancellor and was somewhat over-confident that he was destined to be the next Grand Master. The election of L’Isle Adam undoubtedly came as a blow to d’Amaral, a man who was noted for his pride. L’Isle Adam, the new Grand Master, was fifty-seven, an aristocrat to his fingertips, an experienced seaman, a devout Christian and—as he was later to prove—a diplomat who never lost his nerve even when everything seemed lost. His family was one of the noblest in France; among his relatives was the premier Duke and Constable of France, Anne de Montmorency. Curiously enough, and a portent of which much was to be made in later years, during his voyage back to, Rhodes the great carrack in which he was travelling was struck by lightning in the Malta Channel. A number of his ship’s company were killed, and L’Isle Adam’s sword is said to have been reduced to ashes. As it was unlikely that he would have been wearing his sword at sea during a storm, and not in conflict with any enemy—one may perhaps read into this story the reflections of a later historian determined to introduce the name of Malta into the annals of L’Isle Adam. Malta—it was to prove an historic connection…
Hardly had the Grand Master taken over the reins of office than he received the first intimation of Sultan Suleiman’s intentions. A letter from Constantinople, signed by the Sultan himself, informed him of the latter’s conquests during the year 1521. It was what was known as ‘A Letter of Victory’, and could certainly only be construed by L’Isle Adam as a definite threat directed at his kingdom. After referring to his capture of Belgrade, Suleiman went on to say that he had taken ‘many other fine and well-fortified cities, killing most of the inhabitants, and reducing the rest to slavery’. Snidely the Sultan asked him as ‘a most cherished friend to rejoice with me over my triumphs,’ The Grand Master replied in terms which were certainly more direct than diplomatic, that he had ‘fully understood the meaning of your letter’, and went on to boast of his own success over a notorious Moslem pirate, Cortoglu, who had attempted to capture him (almost certainly on Suleiman’s orders) during his voyage from France to Rhodes, L’Isle Adam was not the victim of any illusions. As he showed in another letter to Francis I of France he knew full well that the Sultan had Rhodes next on the list of Christian cities destined to fall to his all-conquering sword.
In the summer of the following year, 1522, the Grand Master received the message that he had been anticipating ever since he had taken over his office: ‘…I order you to surrender your island to me at once… What is more, I give you permission to leave it in safety with your most valued goods.’ Suleiman also offered him the chance of remaining in Rhodes—even without homage or tribute—provided that the Order was prepared to accept the overall sovereignty of the Sublime Porte, L’Isle Adam did not even deign to answer.
So, after forty-two years, the point had yet again been reached where the Order of St John had been declared persona non grata in the Aegean world—a world that had now become an appendage of the Ottoman Empire. There was Little hope of any reinforcements from a Europe where almost all the powers were locked in conflict with one another, while in England Henry VIII was already casting his eyes on the rich properties of the Order. It is an interesting sidelight upon the structure of the Order of St John that, while France and Spain were at war with one another, and Italy was being devastated in the process, the Knights from the Langues of these various countries could work together in unity. There were some dissensions of course, but amid the fierce nationalistic rivalries of the sixteenth century the Knights still managed to preserve the international ideals that had once sent all the nations of western Europe in company together against the Moslem enemy.
Throughout 1521, as the Sultan’s plans were being implemented for the great assault designed for the following year, the espionage systems of both sides were in full operation. It was not too difficult for the Knights to obtain their information, for the whole of Asia Minor, Turkey-in-Europe, and the Levant were clearly being geared for war. It was less easy for the Sultan, but he too had his successes. He even managed to get one of his spies, a Jewish doctor converted to Christianity, working in the Hospital itself. The preparations for defence could hardly be concealed. Ditches were being widened, the new bastion of Auvergne was being completed, and the harbour was full of ships coming and going with stores, supplies and armaments. So, as the new year drew on into the spring, the Order girded its loins. It waited to receive the wind of the Sultan’s sword.
Chapter 16
THE END OF A DREAM
By June 1522 Sultan Suleiman was ready. A large part of his fleet was gathered in Constantinople (700 ships according to one account), while his armies were already on the march through Asia Minor. Marmarice was once again destined to be the main base for the embarkation of the troops. Soon those outriders of the Knights’ defensive system, the Dodecanese islands with their fortified watchtowers and their fast escorts, were beginning to bring in reports. One advance force made an attempt on the island of Cos and received a severe rebuff, but nothing could stem the march of the main force that was on its way with the Sultan and his brother-in-law Mustapha Pasha, On June 26th the advance force of the Turkish fleet, about thirty in all, were sighted cruising past Rhodes. Some way behind them, scattered out of sight over the blue Aegean, the main body came inexorably on, to the sound of tambours and the shrill piping of bosun’s whistles and the crack of the overseers’ whips. The chief of staff of the navy was the corsair Cortoglu, the very man who had tried to take L’Isle Adam on his passage from France to Rhodes. Meanwhile another fleet was on its way from Syria.
The total number of men that the Sultan assembled for his attack on Rhodes was estimated at about 200,000, but (as in the figures given for the previous siege) allowance must be made for natural exaggeration. In any case it was an immense force to send against an island so small. The Knights, for their part, had probably no more than 1,500 trained mercenary and Rhodian troops, commanded by some 500 Knights and servants-at-arms. They had of course all the able-bodied people of Rhodes to assist them. The odds against them seemed wildly disproportionate, but they were balanced by those bastions and ditches, scarps and counterscarps, angled towers and massive walls. It was reckoned that the Order had enough stores, provisions and munitions to hold out in Rhodes for a year. If they could endure until the winter it might well be that the cold and the rain would cause sickness and disease among the Sultan’s troops, and the Aegean gales wreak havoc among his ships.
The Sultan had brought an immense variety and weight of cannon and, even more formidable perhaps, thousands of trained miners. If Rhodes did not fall to his guns it might well fall to the sappers working under its walls.
The main force began to come ashore in Kalitheas Bay, below Mount Phileremos and a little to the south of the city. On July 28th the Sultan himself landed, accompanied by a picked battalion of Janissaries. The thunder of the salutes, the cries and shouting, and the noise of the Janissaries’ band told the garrison and all the citizens of Rhodes that the real siege was about to begin. Prior to this there had been a number of minor encounters, and a heavy but somewhat ineffectual bombardment of the posts of England, Provence and Aragon. The Turks now settled around the city, spanning it fro
m one side to the other like the Crescent of Islam. More cannon were brought up, vast bombards capable of firing balls nine feet in circumference, double cannon, mortars, and a wide assortment of smaller pieces. Under cover of a devastating bombardment the Turks began to throw up a great earthwork facing the tower of Aragon, the purpose being to drag cannon on to the top from which they could fire into the city itself. The tower of St Nicholas at the end of the mole had borne the brunt of the attack during the earlier siege. It again came under heavy fire, but it had been completely reconstructed and was now practically impregnable. Throughout the whole of August, while besieged and besiegers alike sweltered under the sun, the artillery duels kept up, thousands of cannon balls being expended by the Turks in their determination to crush those frowning walls above which waved the Standard of St John.
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