infidèles; devant laquelle ville et cité du couste de terre et comme au meillieu des deux bandes de la marine y a une petite montaigne plate, laquelle montaigne est nommée et appellée la montaigne Saint Estienne. Et tout autour de ladicte ville et cité de Rhodes a le plus beau lieu du monde pour mettre et pour poser siège. Car tout autour de ladicte ville y a beaucoup de jardins et tout plein de petites maisons églises et chapelles de Grecs, vieilles murailles tant de pierres et petis roches où l'on se peut mettre à couvert contre ceulx de la ville, en telle manière que se toute l'artillerie du monde estoit dedans la ville, elle ne saroit faire nul mal à ceulx qui sont dehors s'ils ne se approuchent près de la ville."

Such was Rhodes in 1480-a rose of roses, well worth the plucking. More than a century and a half earlier, the Hospitallers had spent four years in conquering the island; and since that time they have lavished all their treasures, all their skill, and all their aristocratic taste, drawn from the richest countries of Europe, in perfecting its strength and beauty. Those who have seen what the Knights of St. John effected in less than three centuries on the barren rock of Malta, now proudly called by its indigenous patriots the "fior del mondo," will be able to imagine what an exquisite gem of the sea they created in Rhodes.

stoning, hanging, and as many other varieties of capital punishment as the early Christian martyrs. In Caoursin's own exhaustive words-" multi trucidati: palo suffixi: furcis suspensi sagittis affecti: lapidibusque cæsi: calamis perustis suffossi: gladiis objecti: membratim discerpti: perierunt.'

Amurath was succeeded by Mahomet in 1451; Constantinople taken in 1453; so that from whichever date we assume the "curriculum" of twenty-four years to run, we must suppose the great struggle to have been meditated upon by one side, and prepared for by the other, for three years at least, if not five. The varied course of experiments in practical surgery on which Caoursin dwells with such unction took place chiefly between the years 1454 and 1467. Constantinople had not fallen six months before Mahomet demanded a yearly tribute from the Order, and ravaged their coasts on receiving a refusal. Except for two years, when he had signed a truce with them, in order to devote his whole power to the attack on Trebizond, there was a constant interchange of desultory hostilities. There was also from time to time an equally desultory interchange of negotiations; for he was politic enough to wish sincerely to keep the peace with his neighbors till his own time, and upon his own terms. As long as he was obliged to employ his chief strength against the Venetians, it was of the utmost convenience to him to keep the Rhodian wasps'nest in good humor, both in respect of Cyprus and the more western possessions of the sovereign Republic. He was always ready to negotiate through his Greek agents ("greculi," Caoursin calls them, in opposition to the Cræci, or Greek citizens of Rhodes) a peace upon equal terms, provided only the Order would consent to pay him a trifle by way of tribute-"dummodo quidpiam tributi titulo concederetur." The chivAs the strength of the Grand Turk grew alrous Hospitallers had indeed at earlier daily, (says Caoursin) did his arrogance periods of their history not held it incompatigrow also. And whereas in the course of ble with their knightly profession to pay twenty-four years he had brought many of something in the nature of a toll for the right the neighboring nations under his own yoke, of way to the Holy Sepulchre; but this was he was thereby puffed up and took it hardly, no precedent for the present demand, which that the city of Rhodes and the domain of was summarily refused as often as made. the Knights of Jerusalem, bordering on his As it suited their master's plan to wait, the own so closely, should yet be free and inde-"greculi" did not take umbrage at "trifling pendent of his empire. And, moreover, at divers times he had sent four several expeditions to invade their territories and besiege their fortified places, but had reaped therefrom nothing but peril, loss, and shame. His soldiers had suffered fire and sword,

Caoursin, the Vice-Chancellor, writing in the full pride of success, and possessed with an exemplary faith in the indestructability of the tenure by which the Order of St. John then held this favored island, chastises, in words which are barely represented by the following paraphrase, the presumptuous and unwarrantable insolence of the Turk in at tempting to eject them. It should be remembered that he wrote at a time when the Turkish empire was divided against itself by the quarrel between Mahomet's two sons, Bajazet and Zizim, if indeed Prince Zizim was not already a fugitive, living at Rhodes under the protection of the Order.

modifications." The offensive expression of tribute is struck out from the note of the Sultan's ambassador. Mahomet will conclude peace if presents and homage are promised in its place :-"si tacitâ tributi conditione orator Hierosolimorum cum munusculis tri

Rhodes, and carried away an accurate and scientific plan of the fortifications as they were at that time. He was a clever fellow, "vir vafro subtilique ingenio," says Caoursin; "fort excellant homme en fait dartillerie," says Mary Dupuis; and a tall fellow of his hands-"ung homme grant, bien formé de tous ses membres et de belle stature, beau langagier, de grant entretenement, et homme fort malicieux à la veoir et oyr parler." For his various useful qualities he was well known to the Sultan himself; and, as may be imagined, was in high favor. Men who, like Mahomet the Second, are destined to conquer two empires, twelve kingdoms, and three hundred cities within thirty years, must needs have a keen eye for such merits as those of Master George.

bunal suum adeat." This concession is re- | fused by the Order with equal peremptoriness; much, no doubt, to the personal gratification of Caoursin, if he was public orator at the time. He would not have relished going on a tribute-bearing errand to the Court of the Grand Seignior. The last of these negotiations appears to have been about the year 1476; and on its failure, says our Vice-Chancellor, the rage of Mahomet was beyond bounds-" rabidus hostis odium contra Rhodios inexorabile concepit." There was a feeling on both sides that the struggle must come; it was only a question of time. There were to be found at Constantinople many renegades more or less acquainted with the city of Rhodes, and ready enough to give or sell their information to the Grand Turk and his officers. Among those whose If the Grand Turk had his spies and ininfamy is immortalized by the indignant formants, the Knights had theirs in like Christian historians, was one Antonio Meli- manner. They probably kept pace with all gala (milk and honey), a ruined spendthrift that was growing into form at Constantinoof Rhodes, who hoped to retrieve his for- ple as accurately as he did with the statistics tunes by conveying to Constantinople a plan of Rhodes; and they girded themselves up of the fortifications of his native town, and with silent energy to meet the Ottomite preentered into an intrigue with a certain "Bas-paration whenever it should make for their sia greculus" of the ex-imperial family of the Palæologi, now in the Sultan's service. Meligala reaped no great harvest either of good or evil from his baseness, as he died before the expedition actually took place. Another of these convenient traitors was a "greculus" of Euboea, Demetrius Sophiano by name, who had deserted to the Turkish faith and fortunes on the capture of that island by Mahomet. His religion and himself were adscripti gleba, and went with the land. These men represented the conquest of Rhodes as a simple and easy matter. The fortifications, they said, were old and crumbling; the defenders so few in number as to be unequal to manning the walls; the city badly victualled and ill-provided in all respects; and if once invested, there was no hope of either succor or reinforcements being conveyed to the garrison, except from a long and almost impossible distance. Tempted by these alleged facilities, Palæologus Basha eagerly intrigued for, and thought himself fortunate to obtain, the command of the expedition against Rhodes.

The man on whom the Basha built the most absolute trust, and who promised to be most useful to him in more ways than one, was one George Trapant, otherwise called Master George, a German by birth, an engineer by profession, and by profession a renegade also, with a family at Constantinople. Twenty years earlier he had visited

island. The warning of Proximus ardet Ucalegon had been repeated too often and too loudly in the fate of Constantinople, Trebizond, the Negropont, and Greece, to allow any excuse for negligence, or any flattering hope that the struggle would be less than desperate. And if ever the Order had a Head equal to such a situation, it possessed one now, in Peter D'Aubusson, the thirtyninth Grand Master.

The family of D'Aubusson, a noble house of Auvergne, had not been unknown to French history since the ninth century, during which the first Viscount of the name was created. Some of its representatives were remarkable as zealous Crusaders, others as magnificent patrons of the gentle Troubadours; some destroyed monasteries, others rebuilt and newly endowed them. One of them was the object of the Church's wrath even after his death; for being unfortunately killed in the act of pillaging ecclesiastical property, he died ipso facto excommunicated: insomuch that a lenient abbot, who gave him Christian burial within his monastery, was reprimanded in due form by the Bishop of Limoges, his indignant superior. Peter D'Aubusson himself had rendered his Order important services both in a civil and a military capacity, and achieved an European reputation, long before he was called to the supreme authority. We hear of him in 1856 as ambassador from the Order to the Court

lar, where, after ingloriously spilling a hogshead of wine ("et le vin perdu," says, with simple regret, the genial soldier of Auvergne), it half buried itself in the ground.

"en criant, et en invocant leur Mahon," beating cymbals and ghitterns, yelling all at once, and firing cannons and bombards-"qu'il sembloit que le ciel deust venir abas:" so that it was a wonderful and a fearful thing to hear them come on. They attacked with fury both the breach and the mole, besides attempting to scale the seaward face of the tower; but they were received with equal fury by the defenders, foremost among whom was the Grand Master in person. Hand to hand, and foot to food, stood the Cross and the Crescent upon the site of the Pagan

by: heavy ordnance and smaller artillery raining upon both alike in the mêlée; battleaxe meeting cimeter, lances splintering, arrows snapping; stones crashing down upon breaking ladders; hostile gallies entangling their tackle and oars; fire-ships flaring, and sheets flopping in the wind; bloody corpses floating; wounded men swimming or sinking: till at last the Crescent gave way, and, not without a loss of 700, "les mauldis Turcs et Infideles sen alerent et retournerent pour ceste fois tout camus et esbahis." Dupuis' words, implying the absolute disgust and bewilderment of the besiegers at their first ex

All this time the bombardment of St. Nicholas was steadily carried on. For fifteen days the three great cannons near the Church of St. Anthony played upon it across the water; not indeed as rapidly as modern artillery, but with sure effect, if slow. The cumulative Caoursin describes, with an appropriate volume of eloquence, the process of attack. "Arcem aggreditur, quatit, oppugnat, jactuque trecentorum lapidum speri-image, the day of whose worship had gone corum diruit." Seven shots a day (if jactus refer, as it should, to the number of balls shot at the target, and not only to those which hit it) seem to have been the full allowance of discharges practicable with the artillery of the period. At the end of this time the western or landward face of the tower was all in ruins, and the masonry lying in a confused heap at its base; while the eastern or seaward face bore no marks of the bombardment. The post appeared scarcely tenable; but such was its importance, as commanding the harbor, that the Grand Master was resolved to defend it to the last. He threw into the tower a strong reinforce-perience of the desperate nature of the resistment of picked men, cast up defences along the mole of stone, timber, barrels of earth, with small batteries at convenient points, and covered as well as might be the approach to the mole itself. In the small harbor westward of the mole he sank beams stuffed with spikenails, to prevent the enemy from wading across where the water was shallow, and moored alongside the tower a large number of boats laden with combustibles, to set fire to any ships that might attempt to land a storming party from the deeper sea. The garrison of the little fort kept a good guard both day and night, as they had need, in anxious and unremitting expectation of the assault; or, as their public orator expresses it," Fiunt vigilia, postulaturque hostium

ance which would be offered to them, are perhaps less elegant than descriptive.

It

After repelling this attack, the Grand Master rede in triumphant procession to render thanks to Our Blessed Lady of Mount Philerme, whose miraculous image had been brought for safety within the walls before the siege, and was enshrined for the nonce within a little Greek chapel near the Castle. would seem that the rights and duties of the Greek and Latin Churches were not the subjects of such strict definition, or such jealous separation, in the fifteenth century, as they have been since; if the graven image of the Virgin (the Palladium of Rhodes) was placed by D'Aubusson (already the pillar of the Catholic Faith in the East, and subsequently invasio." a cardinal of the Church of Rome, within a They had not long to wait for the accept-"petite eglise des Grecs," and received by ance of their challenge. As the morning them with due observance and gratitude. star rose upon the 9th of June, and the breeze from the west rose gently with it, a large squadron of ships, gallies, and smaller vessels weighed from under St. Stephen's Hill, rounded the extreme northern headland and the point (saburra promontorium) where the vessels of the port of Rhodes took in or discharged ballast, and made straight for the tower on the mole. On coming within a certain distance, they set up a horrible noise,

The Basha, greatly disappointed at the failure of this attack on St. Nicholas, battered the fortifications from all sides, with the view of harassing the besieged by drawing their attention to all points at once, and discovering the weakest and most assailable part of the walls.

The bastions of Auvergne, on which his chief batteries had hitherto been playing, proved so thick and so sound, that the balls, either rebounded from the surface,