The election was not as simple as it sounds, for there was also separate voting in the Langues, the Chaplains and Serving Brothers being entitled to the vote. The final result, after three different stages of voting, produced a grand total of sixteen electors who cast their votes for the next Grand Master. In addition one Knight was elected to give the casting vote should the sixteen reach an equal division in their votes. It is evidence of the intensive lobbying that must have gone on that the seventeenth vote was quite often called into play. What is not surprising, in view of the preponderance of French in the Order, is that during the Rhodian years nearly seventy-five per cent of the Grand Masters were French.

What must never be forgotten is that although later in Rhodes, and later still in Malta, the Order became more relaxed in its ways it was still pre-eminently a religious Order and as strict in its disciplines as any community of monks. In the thirteenth century, as Riley-Smith points out, ‘The brethren retired to bed after complines, rising for matins. They slept clothed in woollen or linen garments and must be silent in the dormitory.’ In fact, it seems from quite an early date that they did not all sleep in a common dormitory. Certainly by the time that they had erected their elaborate buildings in Rhodes, with separate auberges or hostels belonging to each Langue, it will probably have been only the novices who shared a common dormitory. The Knights kept all the Feasts of the Church, as well as a number of others specifically related to the Order. A conventual Mass of St John the Baptist was held once a week, and the deaths of all brothers were commemorated on the appropriate anniversary each year. The brothers were bound to abstain and fast at all the ordained times, although those who were engaged on caravans or other campaigns were allowed to eat meat, eggs and cheese—except on Fridays or during Lent. On the other hand on ordinary days it is clear that they ate quite well—and in view of the requirements put upon them it is hard to see how they could have managed otherwise. Meat, fish, eggs, cheese, bread and wine provided the staple diet, although the rules of the Order specifically stated that they should only be provided with bread and water. This meant that there was always an easy punishment available to discipline a member, who for his part could hardly complain since that was all the rule said that he should get to eat in any case. At a later date it becomes clear that the austerity of their life became considerably relaxed; but in these early years in Rhodes, constrained as they also were by financial problems, it is likely that the Knights and the other brethren came nearer to the original rules than they had done for a long time past.

The first necessity on taking up their residence in Rhodes was to improve the fortifications. These, though adequate for the capital of a small island, could hardly be considered strong enough for the home of the Order, for it was almost inevitable that in due course their activities at sea would provoke a Moslem reprisal. As the defences stood they were adequate for the old type siege where catapults, trebuchets and mangonels battered the walls, while sappers did their best to undermine them. What was to change the whole balance of power in the fourteenth century was the arrival of gunpowder upon the scene. (A manuscript at Oxford dated 1325 shows an illustration of a gun.) Once the gun was produced in any quantity the old type of fortification had to be completely remodelled. For the moment, however, the Knights were untroubled by that distant thunder on the horizon, and contented themselves with merely improving and strengthening the existing Byzantine fortifications. These were on the old principle of high, fairly thin curtain walls, the gateways guarded by towers, and with sentry-ways running along the tops of the walls between one tower and another. Machicolations, projecting structures through which boiling water, oil, or rocks could be dropped on attackers, completed the pattern of a fortified city in those days when the long bow and the crossbow were the principal hand weapons for besieged and besiegers alike.

Despite the disciplines of their vocation and the duties of their profession the Knights were not entirely engaged with the problems of re-architecting their new city and of preparing their ships for future action against their enemies. They must soon have discovered for themselves the extraordinary beauty of their island home. Not even the most dedicated ascetic could have failed to appreciate that in Rhodes they had acquired a kingdom which was a microcosm of the whole Greek Mediterranean. Behind the city the land rolled away to the south in rich folds of farm lands, sprinkled with white Byzantine chapels and swaying with fruit trees. In the valleys the grape vines rustled. Beyond all this rose up the island’s spine, limestone hills purple when the sun set over the long wind-curled acres of the Aegean. At dawn, when the light began to tremble over the Asia of their enemies, the Carian mountains marched out threateningly as if to remind them of the almost limitless power of the Turk. The air was scented with pines and thyme, arbutus, myrtle, and the innumerable other herbs that covered the hillsides. Valleys like Petaloudes echoed with the chuckle of water—the most wonderful of all sounds in hot lands—while the butterflies rose in confetti-like clouds among the rocks.

 

 

 

Chapter 10

DEATH TO DRAGONS

 

Two years after the Knights had occupied Rhodes a battle took place which was quite unconnected with the Moslem enemy.