Omens and portents were everywhere and—just as in ancient, classical warfare—the hands of the gods were seen as spread in involvement over scenes of carnage and battle. Somehow, the banners of d’Aubusson’s standard bearers, shining bright against the sky above the smoke and turmoil of the struggle, were interpreted by the Moslems as the figures of strange Christian divinities come down to protect those who believed in them. (It must be remembered that almost all were illiterate and that, because of the requirements of their religion, all images were foreign and indeed incomprehensible to the Moslem mind.) A sudden wave of panic overtook the foremost Bashi-Bazouks. They turned to flee along the narrow, spilling wall from these strange men encased in metal—behind whom shone colourful and curious images that twisted and lifted in the wind of battle. The banner of St John the Baptist, the Banner of the Holy Virgin, and the Cross of the Order of St John became converted in the eyes of their opponents into terrifying djinns, devils from the abyss.

That is one explanation of the sudden flight of the leading Turks, who had gained a seemingly impregnable position on the ramparts—with all the city of Rhodes laid out before them. There are others. The Christian version was that a cross of gold appeared in the sky accompanied by the figures of the Virgin Herself, and by St John clad in goat skins and followed by a dazzling band of heavenly warriors. The more simple and prosaic explanation is that it was the very mass of the Turkish soldiers all piled together in so narrow a space that caused their ruin. When the leading Bashi-Bazouks met the small group that opposed them they turned in undisciplined fear, to be cut down by the officers and Janissaries behind them. As men spilled off the crumbling parapet, causing others to fall in their own ruin, no one knew what had caused the original panic. No one could make themselves heard above the din, smoke and confusion of battle, to restore order and to secure the advantage that they had won. In any case, in such encounters the advantage nearly always lies with the defenders. It is they who see ruin staring them in the face and they who, aware that only desolation and death await them, fight with the fury of the hopeless.

Unbelievably, so it seemed, the tide of battle turned. It was now the Turks who fled helter-skelter before the advancing tide of Knights and men-at-arms. Meanwhile the sharpshooters in the city below picked them off as they fled, silhouetted above the ruined walls of the Langue of Italy. ‘We cut them down like swine’ reads one account. Flying in panic confusion the Turks were chased back as far as their main camp at the foot of Mount St Stephen to the west of the city. Here the ultimate disgrace befell them: the Sultan’s standard, the Banner of the Grande Turke, was captured by the victorious Christians.

Estimates of the number of Turks slaughtered on this day vary from 3,500 to 5,000. The figures are probably exaggerated, but there is no doubt that the Turkish losses were severe, quite sufficient to make them lose heart in the whole campaign. Among those who fell were 300 Janissaries, who had stormed into the Jews’ Quarter and were cut off and killed to a man when the rest of their forces turned and fled. Caoursin in his description of the siege, which was printed in Venice in the same year, describes how the city was heaped with Turkish corpses, and how the defenders had to burn them to prevent a plague breaking out. The defenders’ losses were comparatively small, although one chronicler says that ten Knights were killed in the battle in the Jews’ Quarter alone. Whatever the true figures, the fact remains that the general engagement on July 27th marked the end of the Turkish attempt to destroy Rhodes. Within ten days their army had struck camp and was assembling on the beach at Trianda, that pleasant anchorage where they had landed in expectation of a quick campaign and easy plunder just three months before. Even now Misac Pasha did not give the order to embark, and the army remained in Rhodes for a further eleven days. No doubt he feared the Sultan’s anger: unsuccessful generals and unsuccessful politicians were not retired with honours at the Sublime Porte but had their heads divorced from their shoulders. In the event he was lucky and, upon his return, although threatened with execution, the Sultan relented and exiled him to Gallipoli.

Grand Master d’Aubusson, although his life was at first despaired of, recovered from his wounds. He was fortunate, as were the other Knights and all those who fought for the Order in this and other sieges, that the Order possessed the finest physicians and medical equipment in Europe. With a knowledge of hygiene, proper sanitation, and pure drinking water, the Order and its defenders always had the advantage over an enemy encamped under canvas, in insanitary conditions, and with only the most elementary medical care. Then, as in later centuries, an army in the field almost invariably suffered more losses from sickness and disease than from battle.

Rhodes and the Order of St John had survived, but the toll was a terribly heavy one.