He had first come to Rhodes as a novice at the age of twenty-one and had risen rapidly in the Order, being chosen in 1454 by Grand Master de Lastic for the delicate mission of going to Europe and securing money and armaments against the impending Turkish attack. Later, appointed to the post of Captain General, he had personally supervised the extension and modernisation of the defences. As Prior of Auvergne, and virtually head of the Order since the then Grand Master was old and ill, d’Aubusson had pressed on with the task of making the city as impregnable as he could with the funds at his disposal. A large curtain wall had been raised to protect the seaward approaches to the city, three new towers were built, the ditch on the landward side was everywhere widened and deepened, and a boom-defence was constructed to protect the somewhat vulnerable commercial harbour. D’Aubusson appears to have been a man of humour, sensitivity and intelligence: he was a very fine example of the ‘chevalier sans peur et sans reproche’.

By 1479 it was clear to the Grand Master and the Council that they might expect the blow to fall at any moment. D’Aubusson had already declined to pay tribute to the Sultan or to refrain from molesting his shipping. The Sultan for his part was encouraged in his plans by information given him by a small group of Rhodian renegades in Constantinople that the city of Rhodes was weak and would fall easily to his arms. That same winter he sent his commander-in-chief, Misac, south through the Aegean with a number of galleys to reconnoitre the island. This reconnaissance force achieved nothing apart from burning a number of hamlets, and it was finally driven off with heavy losses. Misac Pasha retired to Marmarice on the mainland, just eighteen miles from Rhodes. Here he sat down to winter and to await the arrival of the Sultan’s fleet and army in the spring of the following year. At long last the great trial between Cross and Crescent was to be made—the first of any real consequence since the thirteenth century.

 

 

 

Chapter 13

SIEGE

 

In the spring of 1480 the troops marched overland from the Hellespont and assembled under the Sultan’s standard at Marmarice. All was ready for the assault upon Rhodes, ‘that abode of the Sons of Satan’. Despite attempts by Mehmet to conceal the object of the expedition (among them the carefully promoted rumour that the army and the fleet were designed for the capture of Alexandria), Pierre d’Aubusson was far too well informed ever to be deceived. The Knights and the Rhodians all had their instructions. As many of the former as could possibly arrive in time were to report to the Convent, while the Rhodians, as soon as the armada was sighted, were to burn and destroy the land behind them and retire with their families, property, and animals, either into the fortified points around the island or into the city itself.

The force that had been assembled against the Knights has been put at about 70,000 men. As always, when dealing with estimates made of the enemy at this or almost any period in history, allowance must be made for exaggeration. Nevertheless, it was an immense army for its time, and the fleet which transported it and escorted it—some fifty ships or more—suggests that the figures were not far from accurate. Against the might of the Turkish Empire the Knights opposed about 600 members of the Order, including servants-at-arms, and between 1,500 and 2,000 paid foreign troops and local militia. In addition, of course, there were the townsfolk themselves, nearly all of whom were capable of lending some kind of hand in the defence. There is no record of the number of slaves at that time held in the city but they too could be used under strict supervision for rebuilding defences and for other manual work.

The siege of Rhodes was marked by the extensive use of cannon, something that had been foreshadowed by the siege of Constantinople where the cannon constructed for Mehmet by a Hungarian engineer had been largely instrumental in the city’s fall. Cannon had been used in European wars for a century, but mainly as field pieces for dispersing troops. Generally speaking they had not reached the size that could carry enough weight of ball seriously to damage city walls. The Sultan, however, with his keen interest in the sciences, had long been a believer in the efficacy of cannon for reducing cities and from early in his reign had ordered his foundries to experiment in the production of larger and more efficient weapons. At Constantinople, for instance, the largest cannon used against the walls had a barrel length of over twenty-six feet and fired a ball weighing twelve hundredweight. At Rhodes we hear of one heavy battery consisting of three ‘basilisks’, seventeen feet long, which fired cannon balls nearly seven feet in circumference. There was one drawback to these massive early cannons: the rate of fire was very slow because the barrel had to cool after each round before a fresh charge could be inserted. This gave them a rate of fire of little more than one round an hour.

At dawn on May 23rd the fleet was sighted coming down towards Akra Milos, the most north-westerly point of the island. The ships then turned and made their way towards Marmarice where the embarkation began. The first landings were made shortly after sunset that night in the pleasant Bay of Trianda, with its shelving beach and its swiftly-running streams.