The Hospitallers themselves, although they did not suffer as badly as many of the others, were nevertheless involved in the defeat; a defeat which finally and forever turned the western Europeans against any further crusading adventures. As Sir Steven Runciman has commented: ‘The Crusade of Nicopolis was the largest and last of the great international Crusades. The pattern of its sorry history followed with melancholy accuracy that of the great disastrous Crusades of the past…’

There was one salient difference, however: the last of the Crusades was essentially a defensive one. Instead of being launched at the heart of the Moslem enemy in their own territories, it was designed to prevent that enemy from advancing any further into Europe. The same inadequacy in military preparation, the same dissensions between rival leaders, and the same rash impetuosity on the field led to disaster. The principal lesson that the Hospitallers learned from the campaign was that they were now on their own. There would be no more major expeditions from Europe. They learned also that, just as the sea gave them their mobility to attack the enemy, so it gave them the mobility to withdraw rather than be captured or cut down like the land-bound soldier. It confirmed what they had learned during their sea-going years in Rhodes. Except on a very few occasions—and these more in the category of seaborne raids than land campaigns—the Knights were now wedded to the sea for almost four centuries.

Despite a number of minor engagements the history of the next few years was comparatively quiet. This was largely due to the fact that the Turks were engaged in fighting the Tartars under Timur the Lame, who had also overrun much of the East and in 1392 had even captured Baghdad. The whole Moslem world was far too much preoccupied with the onslaught of the Tartars to worry about the relatively unimportant gadfly of a handful of Christians in Rhodes. The Knights were also to suffer from Timur’s conquering hordes when, in 1402, he swung north and captured Smyrna. It was the general confusion in the Moslem world that helped the Order to pull off a diplomatic coup a year later, and conclude a most successful treaty with the Egyptian Mamelukes. This gave them the right to maintain a consulate in Jerusalem as well as to open consulates at Damietta and Ramleh. Even more important than these diplomatic concessions was the fact that the Knights were to be allowed to rebuild their old hospital in Jerusalem. A clause in the agreement, designed to make the Rhodians happy, secured for them preferential trading rights in Alexandria, Beirut, Damascus, Damietta, and Tripoli. During the thirty-eight years that this truce lasted the Order and the island it administered enjoyed a prosperous period. But the fortifications were not neglected, and the galleys continued to sweep out from the Mandraccio on their caravans.

In Anatolia the main effect of Timur’s invasion was to introduce a further influx of hardy horsemen and warriors almost indistinguishable from the Turks. If Timur’s sons had not fought between one another over the succession there can be little doubt that Constantinople would have come under attack earlier than it did. During the breathing space afforded by this civil war the Byzantines managed to acquire a number of coastal cities that had formerly been theirs, while the Order of St John built a powerful fortress on the narrow peninsula that juts out from the mainland opposite the island of Cos. They now had the Cos channel securely in their grasp. The fortress called St Peter the Liberator still stands, its name corrupted into Budrum (from Bedros, Peter). It provided a refuge point for Christians fleeing from slavery throughout Anatolia, a place from which they could be ferried to the security of Rhodes.

In 1440 Pope Eugenius IV preached a new Crusade. Only the Albanian chieftain Skanderberg, the Prince of Serbia, and the Hungarians came forward to declare war on the Turks and, after a few indecisive skirmishes, they were to sign a ten-year truce with the enemy. No western European powers paid any attention to the Pope’s call; they were far too engaged in their own affairs and national rivalries. As far as the West was concerned the Crusades were over. But the Knights, in the same year that the Crusade was preached, secured a notable victory. Their treaty with the Mamelukes had broken down and a fleet of seventeen ships had been despatched from Egypt to blockade Kastellorizo, that strongpoint held by the Order on the Turkish coast due east of Rhodes. The Order’s operational fleet at this time seems to have consisted of four sailing vessels—presumably ‘round ships’ designed for carrying troops and stores—and eight galleys.