Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

their strongholds, which, however, did not fall until the military Orders of Knights were nearly exterminated, and many thousands of the Mamlukes had bitten the dust. At the moment of crisis, while the Mohammedans were rushing to the breaches, the Knights of St. John, headed by their Grand Master, secretly left the city, and, stealing to the enemy's rear, rushed into his camp. The Sultan, however, was not taken by surprise; a host of Mamlukes met the devoted band, who at that instant received the discouraging news that the Grand Master of the Templars had fallen, together with nearly all his Knights, and that Acre was in possession of the infidels. They then turned their steps towards the sea, fighting all the way, and on the shore they found a small boat into which they threw themselves. A large vessel was not requisite-only seven Knights remained alive. This sad remnant of a numerous body fled for refuge to Cyprus, which island was in the hands of a Christian prince; and, though a handful of Templars for a short time renewed the hopeless struggle, the Holy Land was lost with the fall of Acre and the departure of the Hospitallers. Soon after their arrival at Limisso, in Cyprus, the Grand Master sent to Europe to summon a general chapter of the Order, and the absent Knights of St. John, wherever they were scattered, hastily attended to the call and embarked for the East. But the crusading mania had worn itself out-the Knights were not seconded by troops and money from Europe,-an attack on Palestine was therefore out of the question, and, after ten more years had been spent, the greatest conquest the Hospitallers could aspire to was the island of Rhodes. They gained possession of that island in 1310.

From the establishment of the Order of the Knights of St. John to their expulsion from the Holy Land, we have little worth recording in connexion with their great Priory at London. There is a register, amongst the Cotton Manuscripts in the British Museum, of the names of the Masters and Priors of the Hospital, from a very early period; and an imperfect list of the manors belonging to the Order in England has also been collected. Their possessions in the immediate neighbourhood of London appear to have been very considerable. But these documents would be uninteresting to our readers, belonging as they do only to the material things of the past, and disclosing very little of its mind. We shall therefore continue to trace the general career of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, now the Knights of Rhodes, from their first occupation of that island to its conquest by the Turks, after the heroic Knights had held possession of it for two centuries; availing ourselves of the narrative to which we have already referred.

The Knights found Rhodes in the possession of a set of Mohammedan pirates and Greek rebels, who had long set the falling government of the Eastern Emperors at defiance. The island itself was in a deplorable state, scarcely a vestige remaining of its ancient prosperity and splendour. Greeks and Turks, however, left off cutting one another's throats, and, joining arms, made such a stand against the Christians of the West, that it took the Hospitallers four years to reduce them. During this time many battles were fought; and so severe was the loss occasioned to the Latins, and so dim the prospect of final success, that the surviving crusaders and adventurers, band after band, returned to Europe, until

arms.

none were left but the troops of the Order, who were at that time laying siege to the strong capital of the island. At this juncture the Greek emperor, by an extraordinary effort, had thrown a considerable force upon the island, with the vain hope that, should he dispossess the Latins, the Greeks and Mohammedans would submit to his sway. Abandoned by their allies, and hemmed in by their enemies, who continued to increase their force, the Knights, from being besiegers, saw themselves besieged in the works they had erected for the purpose of taking the city of Rhodes. For some time they had been in want of money and provisions; but the energetic efforts of Fulk de Villaret, the Grand Master, in the mean time had been taking effect; loans contracted with the bankers of Florence, and sums supplied by the commanderies and estates of the Order in Europe, began to arrive, and, with gold in his hands, Fulk could procure food, men, and He soon found himself in a condition to make a sortie, and, issuing from his intrenchments, he fell upon his beleaguerers. The movement led to a general engagement, in which the Grand Master was victorious, though not until he had lost the bravest of his Knights. The siege was then renewed; and, finally, on the Festival of the Assumption of the Blessed Mary (15th August, 1310), the principal outworks being taken, the Knights advanced, at the head of the troops, to the assault,-succeeded in planting the Grand Master's standard on the walls, -and then Rhodes was carried with much slaughter. Shortly after these successes the Grand Master reduced the neighbouring islands of Telos, Syme, Nisyros, Cos, Calymna, and Leros, and established the authority of the Order in nearly every one of that famous group called by the ancients the "Sporades," and of which Rhodes may be considered the chief. After these conquests, which put him in possession of what might be called a little kingdom, the Grand Master returned in triumph to Rhodes, where he hoped to enjoy peace and repose; but in looking forward he had not made a proper estimate of the power and ambition of the Turkish princes of the House of Osman, who had taken a large part of the neighbouring continent of Asia Minor from the Greeks, and who, shortly after his return, fell upon him at Rhodes. The Knights were hotly besieged within the walls and towers they had so recently taken, and which, from want of time, they had not put in sufficient repair. The Osmanlis, with the vigour and fierceness that distinguished their early career, made several assaults, but the Hospitallers repelled attack after attack, and eventually forced the Turks to raise the siege and embark for the main.

Fulk de Villaret, who had other and higher talents than the merely military, applied himself assiduously to the means of reviving commerce, and restoring Rhodes and its dependencies to their ancient flourishing state. He weighed the resources of these beautiful islands, and found them great. The Grand Master very wisely made the port of Rhodes free and open to all nations. Many of the Christians who, since the loss of Palestine, had been living scattered through Greece, flocked to Rhodes, to settle there and enjoy the protection of the standard of St. John. Trade brought others who wholly or partially established themselves, and kept up a communication with the coasts of Asia Minor, Syria, Greece, and Italy; and out of this medley of knights and burgesses, foreigners and inhabitants, both of the Greek and Roman church, there arose, as Vertot

observes, a new, warlike, and commercial state, that soon became as powerful by its riches as it was formidable by the courage and valour of its sovereign Knights. The fame of these conquests and solid establishments soon spread in Europe, where they produced effects most favourable to the Knights; and, soon after, a large portion of the property of the Templars, who had been suppressed in 1312, was made over by the Pope and the European kings to the Order of St. John. This inheritance of the spoils of their old rivals and bitter enemies increased their pride even more than their wealth, which was now supplied by many streams. Next to trade with friendly orthodox powers, the most enriching employment of the Knights was in privateering or cruising against Mohammedan vessels of all kinds, and against such ships or boats of the heterodox Greeks as were by them deemed to be piratical. Their vows bound them to perpetual war against the Turks, and the clearing the seas of pirates was a seemly addition to their holy duties; only it unfortunately happened that, as they made their own admiralty court and laws, they not unfrequently seized and condemned Greek vessels which were not fair prizes. Every Knight was bound to make at least one cruise in the course of the year: these cruises, in the language of the Order, were called "caravans," a term constantly occurring in the history of the Hospitallers. On the summit of a mountain in the island of Syme Fulk de Villaret had erected a lofty tower, whence ships could be discovered at a great distance. As soon as a strange sail was signalled, which was done by lighting fires at night, and making a dense smoke if by day, the pinks and light frigates of Syme, the row-boats and galleys of Rhodes, the feluccas and swift vessels of others of the islands, were got under weigh, and escape from so many pursuers became almost impossible. This mode of life was soon found to be altogether incompatible with the vows and discipline of the Order. Enriched by prize-money, and constantly excited by adventure and rapid change of associates and scenes, the Knights commanding the squadrons lost all semblance of a monastic body. On their return from successful caravans they gamed and drank, and indulged in other debaucheries, making the "religious city" of Rhodes look very like a profane Portsmouth or Plymouth in war-time. These excesses were followed by insubordination, jealousies, and dissensions. The Knights were in this state in 1321, when the Osmanli prince Orchan endeavoured to drive them out of Rhodes and the rest of the Sporades. The best of their ships were absent on caravans; but, throwing themselves on board the galleys and merchantvessels in port, and being aided by a small Genoese squadron, the Hospitallers, instead of awaiting the attack of the Turks on land, boldly put to sea with a very inferior force, and, anticipating the enemy, thoroughly defeated him. On this, as on many other occasions, the Knights of St. John merited the name of naval heroes. In 1344 the squadrons of the Order, which now scoured, as masters, the whole of the western coast of Asia Minor, took the fort and part of the town of Smyrna from the Turks. They retained this footing on the Asiatic continent for fifty-six years, but did not extend their small territory there, which, however, was valuable as a trading mart, while it enabled them to put down the Turkish corsairs that used to infest the Gulf of Smyrna. When the Knights were dispossessed they had at least the honour of ceding to a great conqueror, for it was Tamerlane who took their Castle of Smyrna by storm in 1400. In

the period included between 1344 and 1400 the Hospitallers had performed many exploits, and entertained projects of a truly gigantic ambition. In 1347 they went into Lesser Armenia, to defend the Christian king of that country against the Mohammedans; and at one time they are supposed to have contemplated the re-establishment of the great kingdom of Armenia as an appanage to their Order. In 1355 they proposed the conquest of the Morea, and would have undertaken it but for the death of the Pope, who had gone into their views. Ten years later they aimed at sovereignty in Egypt; and with Peter I., the Christian king of Cyprus, they actually took Alexandria, which city, however, they were obliged to abandon in a few days. In 1376, when the Babylonish captivity of the Christian Church, as Petrarca called it, came to an end, and it was resolved that thenceforward the Popes should reside at Rome, and not at Avignon, the Grand Master, with the best of his galleys, had the honour of escorting Gregory XI. from the mouths of the Rhone to the mouth of the Tiber. During the same year, in conjunction with the Venetians, they took Patras, and in the year following, with the same allies, attempted the conquest of the whole of the Morea. There, however, they were very unsuccessful, and Juan Fernandez de Heredia was taken prisoner. In 1396 they joined the league of the Christian princes against Bajazet, and fought in the fatal battle of Nicopolis, where many of the Knights perished, and the Grand Master escaped with difficulty by throwing himself into a fishing-boat.

Some bold attempts to regain Palestine and maritime Syria seem to have failed through the Venetians, who played them false, and through the jealousies of the Christian powers generally. Retaining their maritime supremacy, the Knights continued to distress the Turks and Egyptians, until, at last, scarcely a vessel bearing a Mohammedan flag could put to sea without being seized and carried into Rhodes. Four times did the Mussulmans make prodigious efforts to dislodge the Knights from the Sporades, and four times were they signally defeated by the intrepidity and superior skill of the Hospitallers. In one of these expeditions the Egyptians succeeded in landing on Rhodes eighteen thousand men, who, after a siege of forty days, were forced to re-embark. This was in 1444; but a far more memorable siege was one which the Order gallantly sustained for eighty-nine days in 1492, when the conquering arms of Mohammed II. were foiled and covered with disgrace. The Turks, fleeing to their galleys with a host of wounded and dying, are said to have left nine thousand dead before the strong and well-defended walls of Rhodes. During this siege the brave Master of the Order, Pierre d'Aubusson, received no fewer than five wounds. But this was the last great achievement of the Knights during their possession of Rhodes. The Turks had become more and more formidable since their conquest of Constantinople, and in their Greek subjects, who hated the Knights with a constant hatred, they found plenty of able seamen to conduct their fleets. When Sultan Solyman IV., commonly called "The Magnificent," succeeded to the Osmanli Empire, at the end of 1520, he was a young man, vigorous and enterprising, and in the earliest days of his reign (a favourable omen in Turkish superstition) the conquest of Rhodes was determined upon, let it cost what blood it might. It was not, however, until June, 1522, that Solyman's tremendous armament appeared before Rhodes, and then indeed began a series of losses and sacrifices,

which were followed by victory, but which rendered Rhodes the dearest conquest the Turks had ever made. Before beginning the siege Solyman summoned the Knights to surrender, and historians pretend to have preserved translations of the Sultan's letter:-"The continual robberies with which you molest our faithful subjects" (we quote from Vertot), "and the insolence you offer our majesty, oblige us to require you to deliver up to us immediately the island and fortress of Rhodes. If you do this readily, we swear by the God who made heaven and earth, by the six-and-twenty thousand prophets, and by our great prophet Mohammed, that you shall have full liberty to go out of the island, and the inhabitants to remain there, without any injury: but if you do not submit immediately to our commands, you shall all be cut to pieces with our terrible sword, and the towers, walls, and bastions of Rhodes shall be made level with the grass that grows at the foot of those fortifications."

To this summons the Knights would give no reply save such as should be spoken by the mouths of their cannon."

The force of the Turks was undoubtedly great, but in Asiatic armies there are always numerous hordes that cannot be considered as soldiers, and the total of one hundred and fifty thousand men was probably exaggerated by the Christians, who set down their own force at no more than six hundred Knights, five thousand regular troops, and some companies of militia raised on the island among both Greeks and Latins. But, in the course of two centuries, the knights of St. John had rendered the town of Rhodes one of the strongest places in the world. In the words of an old writer, it was "compassed with a most strong double wall and wide and deep trenches; it had thirteen stately towers and five mighty bulwarks;" in addition to all which there were many natural advantages. When the Turks, after thirteen days of hesitation and inaction, began to fire upon the fortress, the Knights took up their positions according to their nations, or the "languages" into which they were divided by the Order. Extending from the French tower stood the French, with the lilies of France in their banners, thence to St. George's Gate lay the stout Germans, with the eagle in their ensigns,— from the Gate of St. George frowned the English,—after them came the Spaniards and the Knights of Auvergne,-then the Italians, in valour not inferior to any of the rest; and L'Isle Adam, the aged but active and heroic Grand Master, quitting his palace, took post hard by the church of St. Mary of Victory,' whence he could best succour any point that should be hard pressed by the infidels.

Nothing could be more unsuccessful than the first operations of the besiegers. The Knights destroyed their works, overturned their artillery with the cannons on the walls, and then, by sudden sorties, cut many hundred Turks to pieces in the trenches they were digging. The assailants were discouraged, the Pashas in command confused, and, but for the arrival of Sultan Solyman himself with a reinforcement, which is stated as high as fifteen thousand men, the Turks, who had suffered tremendous losses, must have retired. Even after the arrival of the Sultan, who forced his men to the deadly breach, and threw away human life without calculation or compunction, the siege proceeded very slowly, and the most determined resistance was made by the Knights at every point. The first bulwark blown up was the English, but four successive times did the brave warriors who

« AnteriorContinuar »