Part 15 (2/2)
Naturally elated, he returned to Rhodes, where he became on the instant the popular hero; for who could say or do enough for the man who had slain the serpent. He was conducted in triumph to the palace of the Grand Master by his fellow knights, but here a remarkably unpleasant surprise was in store for him. Very austerely did Helion de Villeneuve regard the triumphant warrior, and stern and uncompromising was the voice in which he asked him how he had dared to contravene the express order of his Grand Master by going forth to combat with the serpent? Calling a Council immediately the implacable de Villeneuve, in spite of all entreaties, deprived Gozon de Dieu-Donne of the habit of a knight. ”What,” said this just and severe disciplinarian, ”is the death of this monster, what indeed do the deaths of the islanders matter, compared with the maintenance of the discipline of this Order of which I am the unworthy chief?”
But Helion de Villeneuve was of too wise and kindly a nature to make his decree absolute, and having thus vindicated his authority he shortly afterwards released Gozon and made him happy by his praises and more material benefits.
The Abbe de Vertot tells us that the learned Bochart argues that the Phoenicians gave to this island the name of Gefirath-Rod (from whence the name ”Rhodes”), or the Isle of the Serpents, and that when the Romans were at war with the Carthaginians Attilius Regulus slew a monster in the island of Rhodes the skin of which measured one hundred feet. Thevenot, in his Travels published in 1637, states that he saw the head of Gozon's serpent still attached to one of the gates of the town of Rhodes, and that it was as large as the head of a horse.
Upon the death of Helion de Villeneuve in 1346, a Chapter of the Order was held as usual to elect his successor. When it came to the turn of the Commander Gozon de Dieu-Donne to speak, he said:
”In entering this conclave I made a solemn vow not to propose any knight whom I did not consider to be most worthy of this exalted office, and animated by the best intentions for the glory and well-being of the Order. After considering carefully the state of the Christian world, of the wars which we are perpetually obliged to wage against the infidel, the firmness and vigour necessary for the maintenance of discipline, I declare that I find no person so capable of governing our 'Religion' as myself.”
He then proceeded to speak in a purely impersonal tone of the magnificent services which he had rendered, not forgetting the famous episode of the serpent, and drew their attention to the fact that the late Grand Master had const.i.tuted him, Gozon, his princ.i.p.al lieutenant. He ended: ”You have already tried my government, you know well that which you may hope to expect. I believe that in all justice I shall receive your suffrages.”
Naturally the a.s.semblage was stupefied at hearing a man thus recommend himself; on reflection, however, they decided that he had spoken no less than the truth, and Gozon de Dieu-Donne, ”the hero of the serpent,” became twenty-sixth Grand Master of the Order. He died in 1353, when he was succeeded by Pierre de Cornillan, and upon his tomb were graven these words:
”Cy Gist le Vainqueur du Dragon.”
In the years 1480 and 1485 under the Grand Master Pierre D'Aubusson, Rhodes withstood two great sieges from the Turks. The first of these is described at length by the knight Merri Dupuis ”temoin oculaire” who sets down: ”Je, Mary Dupuis gros et rude de sens et de entendement je veuille parler et desscrire au plus bref que je pourray et au plus pres de la verite selon que je pen voir a lueil.” The description of that of 1485 is written by another eye-witness, the Commandeur de Bourbon, to whom ”ma semble bon et condecent a raison declairer premierement les causes qui out incite mon poure et pet.i.t entendement a faire cest pet.i.t oeuvre.”
But we have no s.p.a.ce to follow these gallant Knights, and it must suffice to say that on both occasions, after incredible exertions and terrible slaughter on both sides, the attacks of the Turks were eventually repulsed.
It was reserved for Soliman the Magnificent to finally vanquish the Knights and to expel them from Rhodes; from July 1522 until January 1523 the Knights under the heroic Villiers de L'Isle Adam maintained an all unequal struggle against the vast hosts of the Crescent, which were perpetually reinforced. At last, on January 1st, 1523, the Knights, by virtue of a treaty with Soliman, which was honourably observed on both sides, evacuated the island in which they had been established for nearly two hundred and twenty years.
By favour of Charles V. the Knights on October 26th, 1530, took charge of the islands of Malta and Gozo, and established themselves therein; still under the Grand Masters.h.i.+p of L'Isle Adam, whose sword and helmet are still religiously kept in a small church in Vittoriosa, just at the back of the Admiral Superintendent's house in the present dockyard.
The knights fortified the islands and there abode, until in 1565 the Ottoman returned once more to the attack.
It may be said that heroism is a relative term, that it has many uses and applications all equally truthful. On the side of mere physical courage almost every man who took part in that memorable siege of Malta in the year 1565 may have been said to have earned the t.i.tle of hero. No man's foot went back; no man's courage quailed; no man's face blanched when called upon to face perils so appalling that they meant an almost inevitable and speedy death; this was true or Christian and Moslem alike. The death-roll on either side was so tremendous as to prove this contention up to the hilt. From May 18th to September 8th, 1565--that is to say, in one hundred and thirteen days--thirty thousand Moslems and eight thousand Christians perished--an average of some three hundred and thirty-six persons per day.
In that blazing torrid heat the sufferings of those who survived from day to day must have been accentuated beyond bearing by the myriads of unburied corpses by which they lived surrounded; and that the contending forces were not swept away by pestilence is an extraordinary marvel.
[Ill.u.s.tration: CARRACK IN WHICH THE KNIGHTS ARRIVED AT MALTA, 1530.]
In many, nay, in most campaigns, personal feeling enters but little into the contest. Nationality strikes against nationality, army against army, or navy against navy; but no burning hatred of his adversary animates the breast of the combatant on either side; it may even be said that frequently some pity for the vanquished is felt, when all is over, by the side which has conquered. At Malta the element of actual personal individual hatred was the mainspring by which the combatants on both sides were moved; each regarded the other as an infidel, the slaying of whom was the sacrifice most acceptable to the G.o.d they wors.h.i.+pped. ”Infidel” was the term which each hurled at the other; to destroy the infidel, root and branch, was the act imposed upon those whose faith was the one only pa.s.sport to a blessed eternity, and those who fell in the strife, whether Christian or Moslem, felt a.s.sured that for them the gates of heaven stood wide open. Great as were those others who perished, faithful to the death as were those n.o.ble knights who died to a man in the culminating agony of St. Elmo, adroit, resourceful, master of himself and others as was the famous Dragut, there is one name and one alone that s.h.i.+nes like a beacon light upon a hill-top when we think of the siege of Malta. Jean Parisot de la Valette, whose name is enshrined for ever in that n.o.ble city which crowns Mount Scebera.s.s at the present day, was the forty-eighth Grand Master of the n.o.ble Order of the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem the charter for which, contained in the original Bull of Pope Paschal II., dated 1113 (in which the Holy Father took the Order under his special protection), may be seen to this day in the armoury of the palace at Valetta. At the time when the supreme honour was conferred upon him, in the year 1557, he had pa.s.sed through every grade of the Order: as soldier, captain, general, Counsellor, Grand Cross: in all of them displaying a valour, a piety, a self-abnegation beyond all praise, A man of somewhat austere manner, he exacted from others that which he gave himself--a whole-hearted devotion to the Order to which he had consecrated his life. Fearing no man in the Council Chamber, even as he feared no foe in the field, he ever spoke his mind in defence of that which he deemed to be right. Proud, with the dignity becoming a man of his ancient lineage, he merged all personal haughtiness in the zeal he felt in upholding the rights and privileges of that splendid confederation of knights of the best blood in Europe over which he had been called upon to preside at the mature age of sixty-three. There is no instance in history of any man more absolutely single-minded than La Valette; that in which he believed he cherished with an ardour almost incredible in these days, and that the sword of the Lord had been confided into his hand for the utter extermination and extirpation of the Moslem heresy was the leading feature in his creed. That he had been advanced to a dignity but little less than royal in achieving the Grand Masters.h.i.+p was but as dust in the balance to him compared with the opportunities which it gave him to harry his life-long foes; and he who had known so well how to obey throughout all his youth and manhood was now to prove, in the most emphatic manner, that he had learned how to command. In all those terrible hundred and thirteen days during which the siege lasted there was none to be compared to him. As occasion occurred this man's soul rose higher and ever higher; beseeching, imploring, commanding, by sheer force of example did he point out the way to the weaker spirits by whom he was surrounded.
To speak of weaker spirits in connection with the siege of Malta seems almost an insult; these gallant knights and soldiers were only so in comparison with their leader. Twice during the siege of St, Elmo did the garrison send to La Valette and represent that the place was no longer tenable; but Garcia de Toledo, Viceroy of Sicily for Philip of Spain, was writing specious letters instead of sending reinforcements, and every moment gained was of importance. Coldly did La Valette remind the Knights of their vows to the Order, and when renewed a.s.surances came that it was only a matter of a few hours before they should be overwhelmed he replied that others could be found to take their places, that he, as Grand Master, would come in person to show them how to die. A pa.s.sion of remorse overcame these n.o.ble gentlemen, who, thus nerved by the indomitable spirit of their chief, died to the last man in the tumbled ruins of that charnel-house which had once been a fortress.
La Valette was ready to die; there was no man in all that garrison so ready. With pike and sword this veteran of seventy-one years of age was ever at the post of the greatest danger, repelling the a.s.saults of Janissaries and corsairs, fighting with the spirit of the youngest among the Knights in the breaches rent in the walls of Il Borgo. In vain did his comrades try to prevent him from this perpetual exposure; in vain did they point out that the value of his life outnumbered that of an army. He was very gentle with these remonstrances, but quite firm. There were plenty as good as he to take his place should he fall, he insisted; till that time came it was his duty to inspire all by his example, to show to the simplest soldier that he was cared for by his Grand Master.
As things went from bad to worse, when Il Borgo became in little better case than had St. Elmo before it, La Valette never hesitated, never looked back, never ceased to hope that the sluggard Garcia de Toledo might send relief; and, if he did not, then would they all perish with arms in their hands, as had their brethren across that narrow strip of water who had held St. Elmo to the last man. What man or woman can read without something of a lump coming in their throat of those n.o.ble words of the Grand Master in the last few days of the siege when all had utterly abandoned hope?
Grimed, emaciated, covered with sweat and blood and dust, did La Valette move from post to post exhorting and encouraging his soldiers. So few had the gallant company of the Knights become that command was necessarily delegated to the under-officers; yet who among them did not find fresh courage and renewed strength when that great n.o.ble, the head of the Order, stood by their sides and spoke thus to them as man to man?--
”My brothers, we are all servants of Jesus Christ; and I feel a.s.sured that if I and all these in command should fall you will still fight on for the honour of the Order and the love of our Holy Church.”
We have to think of what it all meant, we have dimly to try and realise the burden which was laid upon this man, before we come to a right conception, not only of what he endured but the terrible sacrifices he was called upon to make. Here was no man of iron l.u.s.ting for blood and greedy of conquest for the sake of the vain applause of men; but one full of human love and affection for those among whom he had lived all the days of his life. Upon him was laid the charge of upholding the honour of the Order, the majesty of the G.o.d whom he served. To this end he doomed to certain death those brethren of his in St. Elmo, his own familiar friends, reminding them that it was their duty so to die, while his heart was breaking with the agony of this terrible decision, which no weaker man could have given. When his beloved nephew was slain, together with another gallant youth, he smiled sadly and said that they had only travelled the road which they all had to tread in a few days; that he grieved as much for the one as for the other.
In speaking of this man, it may truly be said that there is no character in history more elevated; there is none which shows us the picture of a more perfect, gentle, and valiant knight.
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