In vain he pleaded with the crusaders to preserve Alexandria and put it into a state of defence so that they could hold it against the Moslem army that was certain to come against them. But by now the gates themselves had been set on fire and the whole city—once the most gracious in the Mediterranean—resembled a charnel house, illuminated by the fires of its destruction and suffocating under a rolling pall of smoke. As at Constantinople, once the crusaders laid their hands upon the fabulous treasures of the city—looting Christian churches along with mosques, private houses, as well as the great storehouses of the docks—they forgot all about the object of their mission. From the moment that the crusaders swept into Alexandria the Crusade itself was over. Before very long all the ships were down to their gunwales with loot—and not only with treasure. Some five thousand captives, Christians, Jews and Moslems, were taken away into slavery—a slavery they had not known in Egyptian Alexandria.

Although it is impossible to assign any personal blame to the Order for the atrocity that was the capture of Alexandria it cannot entirely be exculpated. (After all, members of the Order had also taken part in the rape of Constantinople.) On the other hand, the Knights were probably no more to blame than King Peter for the outrageous indiscipline and inhuman behaviour of the conquering army. They, like he, stood to gain far more by turning Alexandria into a Christian fortress from which they could have prosecuted the war, with the ultimate intention of regaining the Holy Land. It was not to be. When the overladen fleet was reunited in Cyprus any attempts to hold the army together and to make preparations for a proper long-term campaign in the following year were frustrated. The crusaders were eager to return to their homes in Europe and display their new-found wealth.

The direct result of the capture and sack of Alexandria was the rekindling of Moslem hatred of Christians. It not only failed in its main purpose, but it provoked a response (as had the capture of Jerusalem) that was ultimately to rebound upon the victors. Sixty years later, still mindful of what had been done at Alexandria, the Moslems would invade and devastate Cyprus, sparing the Christians no more than they themselves had been spared. The fall of the last important Latin kingdom in the Eastern Mediterranean may be traced almost directly to the desire for revenge inspired by the Alexandrian massacre.

The destruction of the city, while almost certainly regretted by King Peter and the Hospitallers, came as an equal blow to Venice—though for very different reasons. The Venetians had envisaged that in acquiring it they would immensely increase their trade with the East and that, with Alexandria under Latin control, their proud City of the Waters would become even richer. Their hopes were dashed. The only people who had any cause to rejoice were the Genoese, who had carefully taken little part in the expedition. They could rejoice in the discomfiture of their great rival, as well as in the fact that their absence from the scene gave them some tolerable credit in the Moslem world. A further outcome of the campaign of 1365 was that for some years the supply of eastern luxury goods and spices to Europe practically dried up. Except for the plunder that went back to Europe from Alexandria—and no doubt also to the island of Rhodes—no real benefit accrued from this Crusade which the Pope and King Peter had so hopefully seen as the beginning of a new era in the East. All in the end, Christians and Moslems alike, were the losers.

 

 

 

Chapter 11

THE WIND AND THE SEA AND THE SHIPS

 

The Aegean Sea was the battlefield where the Knights of St John were to engage the enemy for nearly two centuries. They became as familiar with it as their predecessors had been with the desert land of Syria or the mountainous peaks of the Lebanon. Battered by storms in winter the Knights knew it then only from their viewpoint on the battlemented walls of Rhodes, for the sailing season came to an abrupt end in November and sometimes a month or so beforehand. Like the ancients they brought their galleys ashore over winter for refitting and repairing, or else had them securely moored in the sheltered waters of the Mandraccio. April or May saw the galleys ready once more to creep out in search of enemy merchantmen, or to dash like aquatic insects on their oared legs at a signal from Piskopi that traffic was passing through the strait.

The sea that became part and parcel of their life, the Sea of the Kingdom as it had been called by the Greeks, was more densely studded with islands than any other area in the Mediterranean. It was this which had enabled men millennia before to develop the art of navigation, encouraged as they had been when making a departure by nearly always having another island in sight. It was also the only part of the Mediterranean that was blessed with regular winds which blew throughout the sea-going months of summer. In July and August the Etesian winds (called from the Greek etos, a year, because they were regular annually) blew from between north-west and north-east strong and steady, declining slightly at nightfall but picking up again shortly after sunrise and reaching their maximum in the early afternoon. It was then that the rowers at the galley benches could take their ease, while the Rhodian seamen hoisted the high-shouldered lateen sails and the galley plunged forward at top speed. Because this was the season of fair weather, Bel Tempo, the Etesians were also called Beltemp (later corrupted to Meltem, as they are still known).