Their former enemy, the Soldan of Egypt, made a descent on the island in 1440, and in 1444 besieged the place in form; but he was beaten off, after forty-two days’ ceaseless fighting, with great slaughter.

“Soldier and sailor too” were the bold Knights of Saint John; for them no toil was too arduous, no danger too great.  In heat and cold, in storm and tempest, they plied their trade of war, their holy crusade to extirpate the infidel from off the face of the waters.  They looked for no material reward, and riches and honours they contemptuously rejected.  Strong in their marvellous faith that on their shoulders rested the propagation of Christianity in these latter days, they swept the seas with a calm assumption of victory which caused it to be half assured before the fight began.  And when the battle was joined, where could be found such paladins as these men who claimed it as an inalienable right to head the hurricane rush of the boarders from the decks of their galleys, to be ever the leaders when the forlorn hope should mount the breach?  Life for the knights of this order was looked at literally with a single purpose—­the advancement of Christianity and the downfall of that pestilent heresy which proclaimed that Mahomet was the prophet of God.  Against all who bowed the knee in the mosques of the false prophet their lives were vowed, and it is but the barest justice to them to record that on the altar of this their faith these were ungrudgingly poured forth.

Naturally reprisals were the order of the day.  Equally fanatical was he who held to the Moslem faith; in consequence many were the attempts to stamp out, once and for all, the prime enemies of the Ottoman Empire.  In 1480 a Turkish fleet of one hundred and forty ships issued from the Dardanelles, an army awaited it on the coast of Caramania which was rapidly embarked, and on May 23rd the fleet anchored a few miles from the town of Rhodes.  Here, then, was a trial of strength in which the Hospitallers delighted.  After repeated attacks in detail, on July 28th a grand assault was made which the Turks considered would be absolutely decisive:  it was decisive, but not in the fashion which they anticipated.

The standard of the Janissaries already floated on the first curtain of the rampart when Pierre D’Aubusson rallied the knights for one last desperate effort.  “Shall it be said in days to come that ‘the Religion’ recoiled before a horde of Moslem savages; that the banner of Saint John was soiled by their infamous touch?  But this is no time for talk.  Ye have swords, Messires; use them!”