Page:A History of the Knights of Malta, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.djvu/267

CHAPTER X.

1476—1480.

Description of Rhodes—The three renegades—Arrival of the Turkish army at Rhodes—First attack on Fort St. Nicholas—Its failure—Breach opened in the Jews’ quarter—Attempted assassination of the Grand- Master—Second attack on St. Nicholas and its failure—Second advance on the Jews’ quarter—Execution of Maître Georges—Last assault of the Turks and its repulse—Close of the siege, and embarkation of the Ottoman army.

The city of Rhodes, at the time of the accession of Peter D’Aubusson, was a very different place from what it had been when first torn from the hands of the infidel in the beginning of the fourteenth century. At that period all the grandeur of former ages had been lost, and the half-ruined town presented every appearance of squalor and poverty. Now all this was changed. From the moment when Fulk do Villaret first established his convent there, the knights of St. John had lavished their treasures partly in the construction of works of defence as perfect as the engineering science of those days could devise, and partly in the architectural decoration of their town, replete as it was with natural beauties. The splendid buildings which still exist testify to its grandeur and magnificence in the days of the Order of St. John, and to the enormous expenditure which had been lavished on its defences.

It was situated on the sea-shore at the north-eastern extremity of the island, and embraced within its circuit the two harbours known as the inner and the outer port, the latter sometimes called the port of the galleys. The outer port was formed by a long strip of land running in a direction nearly due north, and jutting out into the sea so as to enclose between it and the shore line an anchorage, very commodious and