The Knights at Limisso—Commencement of their naval power—Suppression of the Templars—Enterprise of the Hospitallers against Rhodes—Its final success—The island and its dependencies—First hostilities with the Turks—Deposition of Villaret—Complaints against the Order—Division into languages—The Pope charges the Knights with the defence of Smyrna.
The Knights at Limisso—Commencement of their naval power—Suppression of the Templars—Enterprise of the Hospitallers against Rhodes—Its final success—The island and its dependencies—First hostilities with the Turks—Deposition of Villaret—Complaints against the Order—Division into languages—The Pope charges the Knights with the defence of Smyrna.
The little handful of knights whom we left covered with wounds in their single galley, directed their course towards Cyprus, which was looked on in those days as a resting-place on the road between Europe and Syria, and had been conquered years before, and granted to Guy de Lusignan by Richard Cœur de Lion in the beginning of his short crusade. The island was still held, together with the title of king of Jerusalem, by one of the descendants of De Lusignan, and seemed a fitting place of refuge for the soldiers of the Cross. We have said that there were but six who found their way alive out of Acre, of whom the grand master was one; but their numbers were soon increased, for knights flocked in from every country in answer to the circular which had been sent before the siege began; and Villiers soon found himself surrounded by a numerous and well-appointed body of his order. King Henry had granted the town of Limisso to him and the Templars as their temporary place of residence; and here a chapter of the Hospitallers was held to consider what best was to be done in the emergency. Never since the first day of their foundation had such an assembly been seen; for scarcely a man had remained in Europe, but all had hastened when the summons reached them, and had met in Cyprus on their road to Acre, though too late to proceed further on their way. The first act of Villiers was to submit himself to the judgment of thechapter, for the fact of his leaving Acre alive; and then a resolute vote was passed, in spite of all their losses, never to abandon the cause for which their order had been first created, just two centuries before; but to sacrifice their lives for the Holy Land whenever and however they might be called; and for this purpose, to fortify Limisso as they should best be able, as being nearer to the shores of Syria than any other residence which it was then in their power to choose.
The spirit of the order must still have been very fresh and vigorous; for though Limisso was old and half in ruins from the continual attacks of the Saracen pirates, and there were neither fortifications, nor even accommodation sufficient for the knights, yet their first care was directed to preparing some establishment for the reception of the poor and of the pilgrims. The Xenodochia of Jerusalem and of Acre could not indeed be thought of; but still the order might not exist without its hospital. The next step was one whose future results they themselves perhaps scarcely contemplated: it was the refitting of the galley which had brought them from Acre, and which they determined to keep in repair to assist them against the pirates; at the same time they also resolved by degrees to build other vessels, that the pilgrims who still found their way to the holy places, in spite of the presence of the infidels, might be protected on their journey by sea, since they could have their escort on land no longer.
This was the origin of their celebrated navy, which afterwards contributed more than any other single power to defend the coasts of Europe, and restrain the Moslems within their own shores. It was from the corsairs of Barbary and Egypt that the Christians suffered so much during the three centuries that followed; for not only was every vessel that plied on the Mediterranean subject to their attacks, but the towns and villages on the coasts of France and Italy were constantly ravaged, and their inhabitants carried into captivity; nor as yet had there arisen any maritime power bold and warlike enoughto protect the highway of the sea. Very soon there appeared in all the chief ports of Europe little vessels of various sizes and construction, armed and manned by the soldiers of the Cross, collecting pilgrims and escorting them on their way to the Syrian shores, and guarding them, a few months later, on their return. The corsairs, accustomed to make an easy prey of the pilgrims, were not long in attacking these new galleys; but they found a different resistance from what they had expected; and few years passed without the Hospitallers bringing some of the captured vessels of the Saracens into the ports of Cyprus; so that their little fleet gradually grew considerable, and the flag of St. John soon came to be feared and respected in every sea. And here we can scarcely avoid observing, on the one hand, an example of that wonderful spirit of adaptation to be found in all the elder religious orders of the Church, which enabled them to take new shapes and assume new duties, according as the purposes for which they were originally instituted changed and shifted with the age; and, on the other hand, the wonders of God’s providence, which is ever bringing good out of evil, and turning what men call the disasters and failures of the Church to her greater glory. The Hospitallers, whilst fixed within the boundaries of Palestine, were able, indeed, to discharge a great work of charity, but one whose limits were necessarily prescribed; the very defeat, however, which drove them out of Syria, and seemed even to threaten their extinction, became the means of opening to them a new sphere of action, in which they may be said to have become the protectors of all Christendom. The numbers they rescued from captivity, or saved from falling into a bondage often worse than death, are beyond calculation; and if the crusades, though failing in their primary object, yet kept the Moslems at bay during two centuries, and thus saved Europe from that inundation of infidelity which overwhelmed the eastern nations, the maritime power of the Knights of St. John contributedin no small degree to the same end, when the old crusading enthusiasm had faded and died away.
As may be imagined, it was not with indifference that Melec Seraf, the conqueror of Acre, watched the resurrection to new life of an order he had thought to destroy. Its new enterprises and repeated successes against the commanders of his galleys stung him most sensibly; and he prepared a powerful flotilla to be despatched against Limisso, for the purpose of exterminating the insolent Hospitallers and razing their citadel to the ground. God, however, watched over His own cause. A civil war broke out in the sultan’s own dominions; he himself fell in the first engagement; and his successor had too much on his hands to be in a condition to pursue a distant expedition: thus the knights were saved from an attack against which they possessed scarcely any defences, and their naval power, instead of being crushed in its infancy, had time to strengthen and increase.
The residence of the order at Limisso lasted for about eighteen years; during which period the temporary success of the Tartars, under their great khan, Gazan, seemed at one time to give hopes of a re-establishment of the Christian power in Palestine. Gazan, though not a Christian himself, was always solicitous for the alliance of the Christian sovereigns. He had Christians from the Asiatic provinces among his troops, and to please them is said to have even placed the cross upon his banners. The better to pursue his hostilities against the Saracens, he entered into a league with the kings of Armenia and Cyprus, and the orders of the Hospitallers and Templars; and at the head of their united forces made himself master of Syria. Once more did the Christian knights find themselves within the walls of the Holy City; and whilst gazing on the ruins of their old home, or on the grassy mounds which were all that remained to show the fate of their brethren of Nicopolis, they doubtless thought the day was come for the Cross once more to triumph, and that they shouldbehold the hospital of Jerusalem rise from its ashes in all its ancient splendour. But Gazan was recalled to his own dominions; and the forces of the Christians were too weak to hold the country they had conquered. The ambassadors of the khan were seen indeed at the court of Rome; and had Bonifice VIII., who then filled the papal see, been able to unite the European powers in a fresh crusade, it is probable that a greater advantage might have been obtained than had ever yet attended their arms,—for the Saracens had lost the prestige of success; but the pontiff was engaged in a quarrel with the most powerful of those princes who would naturally have lent their aid to such an enterprise, and whilst France was governed by Philip le Bel no undertaking preached by Boniface could look for support from that nation. The whole plan, therefore, fell to the ground; and the Hospitallers, whose continuance in Cyprus gave rise to many jealousies on the part of the sovereigns of the island, began to see the necessity of abandoning their hopes of returning to Palestine, and of looking out for some other settlement in the neighbourhood of its shores, where their independence might be undisputed.
There were many plans afloat at this time for the union of the two great military orders under one head; plans which, originating with Clement V., the successor of Boniface, may perhaps have been intended as a means of avoiding the more violent measures for the suppression of the Templars forced on him later by the French king. Molay was then grand master of the Templars, and William de Villaret of the Hospitallers: both were summoned to France, where the pontiff then resided, under pretext of conferring on the practicability of a new crusade; but Molay alone obeyed; Villaret excused his delay by alleging the urgent necessity which lay on him to provide for the settlement of his order. He had already fixed on the island of Rhodes as the place most adapted for his purpose: it was but a short distance from Palestine, provided with an excellent port, andcapable of being strongly fortified; whilst the circumstances of its existing government seemed to justify the attempt at conquest. It was nominally subject to the Greeks; but in the decay of their empire the lords of Gualla had assumed the real sovereignty of the island; and, the better to protect their independence against the court of Constantinople, had introduced a population of Turks and Saracens, whose lawless piracies they connived at and encouraged. The ports of Rhodes offered a sure refuge for the vessels of the corsairs when pursued by the galleys of the Hospitallers, or of other Christian powers; and the island had come to have a bad reputation, as little else than a nest of robbers. Villaret, therefore, felt little doubt that his plan for erecting Rhodes into a sovereignty for his order would meet with no opposition from the European princes on the ground of justice: so, after reconnoitering the island, and coming to the conclusion that the enterprise was beyond his strength without the assistance of a larger force than he then possessed, he prepared to set out for Europe, both in obedience to the pontifical summons, and also for the purpose of collecting the requisite reinforcements. But he died before putting his proposed voyage into execution; and the Knights immediately elected in his room his brother Fulk de Villaret, as being fully possessed of his most secret designs, and the best capable of bringing them to a successful termination.
Fulk therefore hastened to France early in the spring of 1307, to lay the plan before the Pope and the French king; Molay had already preceded him, and was at Poitiers (then the residence of the papal court) at the very time of his visit. The storm had not yet broken over the head of the Templars, and the designs against them were kept a close secret; yet it is probable that there were even then sufficient tokens of ill-will and approaching disgrace to impress the grand master of the Hospitallers with the belief, that France was just then no safe quarters for the representative of either of themilitary orders. Nevertheless, it would seem that Clement at least entered favourably into his views; and though the real object of the enterprise was kept a secret, yet the proposal for a fresh expedition against the infidels, when publicly proclaimed, was received with such enthusiasm, that Villaret soon found himself furnished with men and money sufficient for his purpose. The money was principally contributed by the women of Genoa, who sold their jewels to supply the means of this new crusade, as it was termed; the troops were chiefly from Germany; and thus provided, he hastened to return to Cyprus, where he arrived in the August of the same year. Two months later Molay was arrested, and that terrible tragedy was enacted which ranks the suppression of the Templars among the great crimes of history. Its relation forms no part of our subject; for whilst every fresh investigation serves only to add new evidence of the innocence of the accused, and to increase the infamy of their enemies, there has never been an attempt to involve the Hospitallers in the charges brought against them. Yet it can scarcely be doubted that they too were included in the original design of the French king; and that, had Villaret withdrawn his knights to Europe, and, like Molay, put himself within the power of his enemies, the fate of both orders would have been alike. But Providence ordered it otherwise; and at the very time when the Templars were being tortured and massacred in France, the brilliant fame acquired by the Hospitallers in Rhodes placed them in a position of safety beyond the grasp of Philip.
Villaret’s movements were conducted with the greatest secrecy; he remained at Cyprus only long enough to take on board his vessels those of the knights who still remained in the island, and then directed his course towards the coast of Asia Minor. Even they, as well as the rest of the troops, were persuaded that the expedition was about to be directed against Syria, and the real object was suspected by none. Anchoring inthe port of Myra, the grand master despatched a secret embassy to the Greek emperor Andronicus to solicit the formal investiture of Rhodes, under condition of rendering him military service against the infidels. A compliance with this request would have been every way advantageous to the emperor’s interest; but the old jealousy of the Latins was too strong, and he rejected the proposal with disdain. His reply, however, made little difference in the course of events; without waiting for the return of his ambassador, Villaret publicly announced his real design; and taking the Rhodians by surprise, he disembarked his troops and military stores with scarcely a show of resistance. In spite of this first success, however, he found himself encompassed by many difficulties: the corsairs assembled in great numbers from theneighbouring islandsat the first intelligence of the Christians landing; and a desultory war began, which lasted for four years with various success. The inhabitants, assisted by a body of troops despatched by the Greek emperor, threw themselves into the city of Rhodes, whose strength of position enabled them to hold out against repeated assaults. On the other hand, the German and French volunteers gradually dropped away, and left the knights unsupported; so that their numbers were considerably reduced, and they, in their turn, were obliged to stand on the defensive. But for the capacity and unwearied exertions of their grand master, they might have found themselves in a critical position; but whilst he succeeded in raising fresh levies in Europe, he found means also to inspire his followers with an enthusiasm which never failed them, in spite of every reverse.
No details have been left by contemporary historians of the final struggle; we know only that it was most bloody; and that before the banner of the order was planted on the walls of Rhodes, many of the bravest among the knights were cut to pieces. Villaret, however, found himself in the end master of the city and of the whole island; and such of the Saracens as escapedalive, took to their vessels, and were the first to spread the news of their defeat along the coasts and among the islands of the Archipelago. The universal joy and admiration excited throughout Europe by the intelligence of the event, was a testimony of the benefit which all felt would accrue to the Christian cause by the establishment of an independent sovereignty in those seas, which had hitherto been entirely at the command of the infidels; and the title of “Knights of Rhodes” was not so much assumed by the order as accorded to them by the unanimous voice of all nations.
The first act of the grand master, after the surrender of the capital, and the submission of the Christian inhabitants to their new sovereigns, was to order the restoration of the city fortifications, that they might be put in a thorough state of defence; after which he proceeded to visit the surrounding group of islets, which readily acknowledged his authority. The territories now subject to the order included, besides the larger island of Rhodes, nine others, some scarcely more than fortified rocks, yet serving as outposts of defence, and all of them inhabited. Others were richly wooded and productive, and were granted on a kind of feudal tenure to certain of the knights who had most distinguished themselves in the late war; of these the most considerable was Cos, or Lango, which afterwards, under the rule of its new masters, rose to an important position among the islands of the Archipelago.
In the midst of these surrounding islets, not twenty miles distant from the Asiatic coast, lay Rhodes—a fairy island on a fairy ocean; and the soft southern breeze, as it swept over her fields, carried far over the waters the scent of those roses which bloomed through all the year, and from which she derived her name. The very rocks were garlanded with them; beds of flowering myrrh perfumed the air; and tufts of laurel-roses adorned the margins of the rivulets with their gaudy blossoms. It is scarcely strange that Rhodes should in old times have been the school of art; for men caught, asit were naturally, the painter’s inspiration amidst scenes of such enchanting loveliness. She was made, indeed, to be a home of peace; her skies were ever cloudless and untroubled; her woods stood thick with fruit-trees, and the velvet of her sloping lawns sparkled with a thousand flowers. Her beauty was neither stern nor grand,—it was entirely pastoral; and if you wandered inland round her entire circuit, which was scarcely thirty miles, one verdant landscape every where met your eye, woods and gardens breaking the sameness of those lovely pastures; while all round, between the hills and through the foliage of the trees, you caught the blue line of the sea, whose music, as it murmured on the shore, was never absent from your ears. In old times, as we have said, Rhodes had had her celebrity; she had taught eloquence to Rome, and had claimed the empire of the seas; but all her greatness had vanished under Greek misrule and the barbarism of her Saracen masters; and when the knights took possession of their new territory, they found nothing left of ancient Rhodes but her beauty and her name. There were, however, great resources, and these, under their hands, were not long in developing. The forests furnished wood, and the island of Syma skilful carpenters for ship-building; and these latter had the art of constructing galleys so light and swift that no vessel on the eastern seas could match them with either sail or oar. So on the summit of a high mountain in Syma a watch-tower was built, and the inhabitants bound themselves to keep a look-out over the ocean, and send the first news to Rhodes by their swiftest galley of the approach of hostile fleets; and by their skill the navy of the order rapidly increased in magnitude and excellence. Then there was Lero, with her quarries of rich marble, which supplied a commerce of herself; and Nisara, whose ships were known in every city on the southern coasts, and whose inhabitants had retained something of their old fame as artists, and encouraged by a free and generous government, soon filled their towns with palaces that viedwith those of Genoa;—with rich columns, and statues, and marble fountains, all brought together in a lavish profusion, and bespeaking the noble tastes of her merchant lords. There were plenty of ports and harbours on these island coasts, and a population of maritime habits, accustomed to live on the sea, or well-nigh in it; in short, every thing contributed to point out naval and commercial enterprise as the road to the future greatness of Rhodes.
The first enemy who threatened the safety of the knights in their new home was one of whom they were hereafter to hear more. The Tartar Othman was beginning to lay the foundation of the Turkish empire, and had established himself in Bithynia and other Asiatic provinces, which he had conquered from the Greeks. It was to him that the Saracens of Rhodes fled for refuge after being finally driven out of the island; and he very willingly undertook their cause, and despatched a considerable force, which besieged the knights in their city before they had time to restore the walls or raise fresh fortifications in place of those they had destroyed. Nevertheless, in spite of their defenceless position, Othman received his first defeat; and, obliged to retire with considerable loss, he contented himself with plundering the neighbouring islands, from whence he kept up a desultory warfare which lasted for some time longer. In 1315, however, the knights were enabled, with the assistance, as it is said, of Amadeus of Savoy, to expel their Turkish neighbours, and commence the work of rebuilding and fortifying. So soon as this was completed, Villaret bent all his endeavours to the restoration of commerce: the port of Rhodes was thrown open to all nations, and many of the Latin Christians who had been driven from the Holy Land, and were scattered about in various parts of Greece, hastened to enrol themselves under the banner of St. John, which protected all alike—Greek and Latin, mercantile or military; and out of these various elements the new state rapidly rose to opulence and renown.
Its opulence was perhaps a doubtful good, to some at least among the knights, who after their long hardships and sufferings were tempted to make their restoration to better fortunes the excuse for a life of ease and indulgence. The relaxation was far from universal; and from the description left us of the general state of their dominions, it is evident that a wise and enlightened policy directed their government, and that the abuses, such as they were, were confined to a minority. But unhappily the grand master himself was of the number; hero and man of genius as he had proved himself to be, after winning the applause of all Europe and a name among the great men of the time, he was not strong enough to withstand his own success, and his luxury and neglect of duty soon raised the voice of the order against him. His irregularities must have been great, for rarely is a successful chief unpopular among his followers; yet the discontent even spread into revolt, and the majority of the knights, after solemnly deposing Villaret from his authority, chose Maurice de Pagnac in his room,—a man of stern and austere character, and a zealous advocate of discipline. The matter ended in the interference of the Pope, John XXII., who summoned the rival grand masters to Avignon, where Villaret was obliged to retire on a rich commandery of the order; and Pagnac soon after dying, Helion de Villeneuve was elected on the recommendation, or nomination, of the Pontiff. On his return to Rhodes from Montpellier, where he had convened a general chapter for the reform of abuses, matters began to mend; laws were passed obliging the residence of all the principal officers of the order at the seat of government; all the islands were strongly fortified, and such a spirit infused into the little commonwealth, that many built and maintained war-galleys for defence against the infidels at their own expense, in addition to those kept up by the government; and, in spite of the vast expenses rendered necessary by the circumstances of the time, the chief glory of Rhodes and her knightly sovereignslay in the happiness of those who lived beneath their rule. They were still worthy of their ancient title, “Servants of the poor of Christ;” “for,” says Vertot, “there was not a poor man in all the territories of the order:” there were employment and support for all; and for the sick there was the large and magnificent hospital, where soul as well as body was cared for, and where the grand master’s example of charity animated and kept alive the fervour of primitive discipline in the hearts of his knights.
Yet the Hospitallers had their enemies; those who had plundered and destroyed one order, and given it up to centuries of defamation, would willingly have done the same by its survivor. It was said of them that they never gave alms;—scarcely an accusation, had it even been true, if indeed they kept their subjects from the need of alms-giving; but false, unless we leave out of sight the hospital and its vast system of charity daily dispensed in grand and lavish profusion. And that they did not spare themselves in their exertions to meet the expenses of that system, is evident from the law made about that time limiting the table of the knights to a single dish. The Hospitallers had been nominally declared heirs to the unfortunate Templars; yet, save the odium attaching to the suspicion of possessing enormous wealth, they gained little by the decree; for in almost every country, with the exception of England, the property of the suppressed order found its way into the royal coffers.
Villeneuve, and the grand masters who succeeded him, were unsparing in their efforts to maintain the primitive and religious character of the order; and though, doubtless, there were abuses to reform, yet if we read the repeated remonstrances addressed to them from the Pontiffs, the accusations do not come to much. “There is a general feeling,” writes Clement V., “that you do not make a very good use of your money; it is said you keep fine horses, are superbly dressed, keen dogs and birds of prey, and neglect the defence ofChristendom.” It must be allowed that these charges are somewhat vague. The real crime of the Hospitallers in the eyes of those who incessantly endeavoured to poison the minds of the Pontiffs against them, was their supposed wealth, which their accusers longed to sequestrate, and which, though greatly exaggerated, was made the pretence for throwing on them the chief burden of the Turkish war. During its long continuance they bore a part which should at least have acquitted them from the charge of slothfulness in the cause of Christendom. A new league having been formed against the infidels between the Pope, the king of Cyprus, the republic of Venice, and the Order of St. John, it was Biandra prior of Lombardy who led their forces in the attack on Smyrna, which he carried, sword in hand, at the head of his knights. Later, when the league was falling to pieces, it was revived by the grand master Deodato de Gozon. This Deodato was a very hero of romance—a second St. George, were we to credit the popular story of his combat with the dragon.[4]In his own day he deserved to receive the title of the “Magnanimous.” Immediately on his election he sailed in quest of the Turkish fleet, which he found at the little isle of Embro, near the mouth of the Dardanelles. Falling on it by surprise, he gained a brilliant victory, and captured 118 of the enemy’s vessels; and on returning from this exploit, he found the ambassadors of the king of Armenia awaiting him at Rhodes, to implore his assistance against the Egyptian Saracens. The king was a Greek schismatic; and at a time when the jealousies between Greek and Latin were at their height, many might have hesitated to risk the success of such an enterprise. Not so, however, with Deodato the Magnanimous: “frill of zeal,” says Vertot, “and animated with the true spirit of his institute, he would not abandon the Christians to the fury of the barbarians.” So a powerful force was despatched to Armenia; nor did it return till the last of the Saracen invaders was driven from the country.
And yet at the very time of these achievements, whilst the treasury of the order was being exhausted by its disinterested exertions, and its blood was flowing freely on every coast of the Archipelago, the old murmurs were being repeated, and representations were constantly made at the papal court that the knights were idling away their time in their luxurious palaces, employed in the amassing of vast treasures, and the enjoyment of a life of ease. Nor was this all: not a post or embassy from Europe but brought them a fresh budget of advice. Rhodes was unfit for the residence of the order; they ought to be somewhere on the mainland; they should be in the Morea, which the Turks were threatening to overrun; and above all, why did they not return to the Holy Land? This last suggestion was seriously propounded in an embassy despatched from Rome, at whose head appeared one of their own brethren, Heredia, grand prior of Castile,—a man of consummate abilities, but who, for the gratification of his boundless ambition, had separated himself from the interests of the order, and had succeeded in gaining extraordinary influence in the councils of the Pontiff, Innocent VI. This continual interference from authorities in Europe, to whom the real state of affairs was wholly unknown, caused the grand masters much embarrassment, which was increased by the internal dissensions which rose out of the new division of the order into languages. This division had gradually been adopted for the convenience it afforded in several ways, but was only formally acknowledged in the grand chapter held under Helion de Villeneuve in 1322. Each language then had its inn, as it was called, where the knights met for meals in common, and to debate in their own tongue. But the evil effects of this arrangement were soon felt in the growth of national jealousies, and the unity of the order was severely injured by it. To it may be attributed the failure and disappointment of many a noble plan: as when the heroic Raymund Beranger, grand master of the order in 1365, after abold and successful enterprise against Alexandria, which he took by surprise, entirely destroying the piratical fleet of the Saracens, addressed letters to all the powers of Christendom to implore their assistance against the threatened invasion of his island by the sultan of Babylon, and appealed at the same time to the order in every country of Europe to pay up the arrears owing from the different commanderies and priories, and unite together to avert so imminent a danger. Not only were the letters disregarded, but the jealousies between the languages of Provence and Italy reached such a height that Beranger, worn out with sorrow and disappointment, was only prevented from resigning in disgust by the authority of Gregory XI., who finally took the adjustment of the whole question into his own hands.
On the death of Beranger, in 1374, Robert de Juillac, grand prior of France, was chosen as his successor. He was at his priory at the time of his election, and setting out for Rhodes, he presented himself at Avignon on his road, to offer homage to the Pope. The devotion of the grand masters to the Holy See through all their difficulties is very striking; and on no occasion did they offer a more noble example of religious obedience than on the present. Smyrna was still in the hands of the Christians; its Venetian governor was half-merchant, half-soldier; and complaints were addressed to the papal court on the part of the archbishop and inhabitants, that, in consequence of his devotion to his commercial engagements and frequent voyages to Italy, the place was left without defence, and almost without a garrison. Gregory decided on committing the care of the city to the Hospitallers; and when Juillac appeared at Avignon, the first intelligence that reached his ears was that, in addition to every other difficulty and embarrassment, the defence of Smyrna was to be given into his hands. In vain he represented that Smyrna was a forlorn hope, isolated in the midst of the Turkish dominions, and too far fromItaly to receive any succours from thence in case of siege. “The situation of the city,” replied the Pontiff, “in the heart of the infidel’s own country, is the very cause of my intrusting it to your order; for the Turks will not advance farther so long as they have so considerable an enemy at home; and I therefore charge you under pain of excommunication, to despatch the necessary garrison immediately on your return to Rhodes.” When this injunction was communicated to the council of the order assembled in the island on the arrival of the grand master, there was but one feeling as to the nature of the commission intrusted to them. “All were very well aware,” says Vertot, “that it was to send the knights to certain death; nevertheless they took the part of obedience, and many of them even generously offered themselves for a service whose dangers and glory were equally certain. For it was not to be supposed that the Turks, whose power daily increased, would long leave the knights in peaceable possession of a place which was in the very centre of their dominions.” For twenty-seven years, therefore, did the Hospitallers succeed in holding Smyrna triumphantly against the Turks; and its noble defence is said to have delayed the fall of Constantinople, and possibly to have saved the rest of Christendom by drawing away the attack of the infidels from other quarters. The event, therefore, amply vindicated the sagacity of Pope Gregory, yet not the less does it elevate the obedience of the knights to the dignity of a sacrifice.