for above forty years, to dishonor himself, at the end of his life, by the confession of a crime that he was incapable of committing. He bore the torture, with the same intrepidity; and owned only, that, at the time of the Grand-master's election, at a time when the Turks were threatening Rhodes with a siege, having no great opinion, as he said, of the courage and abilities of l'Isle-Adam, he had dropped a word or two, and said, that he would perhaps be the last Grand-master of Rhodes; when, turning towards his judges, he asked them, if a word, that emulation and a rivalship for the same dignity had extorted from him, deserved to have the great Chancellor of the Order put into the hands of executioners. But the judges, being persuaded of his criminal correspondence with the Turks, were not dazzled by his protestations. Nobody took his recriminations against Diez for proofs of his innocence: the master and servant were both condemned to death. The Chancellor was sentenced to be beheaded, and Diez to be hanged. Their bodies were afterwards quartered, and exposed to the view of the Turks, upon the principal bastions of the place. The valet was executed first. He was born a Jew, but had been converted, and declared, at his execution, that he died a good Christian. Before d'Amaral was put to death, an assembly was held in the great church of St. John, in which the Bailiff de Manosque presided. The criminal was brought thither; they read to him his sentence, which ordered him to be degraded, and stripped of the habit of the Order; which was done, with all the ceremonies prescribed by the statutes. They delivered him over, afterwards, to the secular arm, who carried him to prison, and, the next day, he was carried in a chair to the public place, where he was to be executed. He looked upon all the preparatives to his execution, and the approaches of death, with a resolution worthy of a better cause; but his refusing, in that extremity, to recommend himself to the protection of the Blessed Virgin, whose image, the priest, that assisted him, presented to him, gave them no advantageous opinion of his piety. Fontanus, a contemporary historian, and an eyewitness

of what passed, speaking of the very different deaths of two grand-crosses, who were appointed, in the beginning of the siege, in joint commission with d'Amaral, to visit and take care of the ammunition and provisions, and who were both killed in assaults, adds, with regard to the Chancellor, of whom he speaks, but does not name," God had reserved the last of the three for a shameful death, which he richly deserved." However, the services he had done the Order, for so many years, his intrepidity under the most exquisite torments of the rack, the ancient and valuable fidelity of the Portuguese gentry to their sovereigns, of which there are so many illustrious examples in history,-all this, might serve to balance the deposition of a servant. And perhaps the Chancellor would not have been treated so very rigorously, if, when the public safe. ty is at stake, bare suspicion were not, as we may say, a crime that state policy seldom pardons.

But be that as it will. To resume the relation of this famous siege Soliman, tired out with its continuance, and the little success of his miners, ordered Achmet to begin his batteries again, and dispose his soldiers for a general assault. The eyes of all the universe were then fixed upon Rhodes. The Turks flattered themselves, with hopes of carrying it, by storm; and the Knights, who were reduced to a small number, and were rather hid and buried, than fortified, in the little ground that was left them, waited, with impatience, for the succors which the Christian princes had so long fed them with the vain hopes of sending them, in order to raise the siege. But the Emperor Charles the Fifth, and Francis the First, king of France, were so obstinately animated against one another, that they durst not send away their troops, or divide them; and the other European princes, most of which were engaged on the side of one of those two princes, and were afraid lest their own territories should be invaded, kept their forces about them, for fear of a surprise. The Pope himself, Adrian the Sixth, by name, a pious, and indeed learned, pontiff, but of no great capacity, and entirely devoted to the Emperor, being press ed by Cardinal Julian de Medecis, an old Knight of the

Order, to send his galleys to Rhodes, with a body of in fantry which then lay about Rome, the new Pontiff excused himself from so doing, under pretence, that, as he was not skilled in the arts of government, he could not send away his troops, while all Italy was in arms: though it is very probable, that he durst not dispose of them, without the privity and consent of the Emperor, his benefactor; and that, out of complaisance to that Prince, instead of sending them to Rhodes, he ordered them to march into. the Milanese territory and Lombardy, where they were employed against the French.

One of

Thus were the Grand-master and his Knights, after putting their whole confidence in God, left without any hopes of succor, but what they could draw from the Order itself. They were, besides, so unfortunate, as not to receive a considerable convoy, which the French Knights sent, in two ships, from the port of Marseilles. these ships, after a storm of several days, was cast away, and lost off Monaco; and the other, losing her masts in the same storm, was stranded on the coast of Sardinia, and disabled from putting to sea. Nor were the English less unfortunate. Sir Thomas de Newport, embarking with several Knights of that nation, and a good quantity of provisions, as well as money, on board, was caught in the same storm, which drove him upon a desert country, where he was stranded. The Chevalier Aulamo, of the Language of Aragon, and Prior of St. Martin, was in hopes of getting into the port of Rhodes. But he was met, in the Archipelago, by some Turkish galleys, and, after a long engagement, got out of their hands with great difficulty.

By

The Grand-master, though abandoned, as we may say, by all human succor, did not yet abandon himself, nor despond. This great man discovered, in so sad an extremity, the same courage which had carried him so often upon the breach, and into the midst of his enemies. his orders, the Knights that resided in the adjoining isles that depended on Rhodes, and in the castle of St. Peter, quitted them, in order to preserve the capital of the Order, and transported thither, on board some light barks

and little brigantines, all the soldiers, arms, and provisions, they were masters of. The Grand-master, in the extremity to which he was reduced, took this step, in hopes of one day recovering those islands, if he could but maintain his ground in Rhodes. But, as they had drawn the like succors from these several places, before, this last, the only hopes the Knights had left, betrayed their weakness more than it augmented their forces. The Grand-master despatched, at the same time, the Chevalier Farfan, of the Language of England, into Candia, to endeavor to get provisions there; and sent another Knight, called Des Reaux, to Naples, to hasten the succors, which were retarded by the rigor of the season. But all his endeavors were fruitless; and one would have thought, that the winds and the sea had conspired, for the loss of the isle of Rhodes, and of this armament,-the last supply of which the besieged had any hopes.

The Turks, to whom some deserters had represented these succors as much stronger and nearer at hand than they were, in reality, used their endeavors to prevent them. Achmet, who, under Soliman's orders, had the whole direction of the siege, planted a battery of seventeen cannon against the bastion of Italy, and completed the ruin of all the fortifications. He afterwards ran his

trenches to the foot of the wall; and, to secure his men from being galled by the artillery of the place, he covered these new works with thick planks and great beams of timber. His pioneers afterwards pierced through the wall, and ran their mines as far as the intrenchments; and then, digging away the earth that supported them, they made them sink, so that the Knights were forced to retire further within the town and the Grand-master, who never stirred from the attacks, seeing the Infidels masters of the best part of the platform of the bastion, was forced to demolish the church of St. Pantaleon, and the chapel of Notre Dame de la Victoire,* to hinder the Turks from making lodgements there; and he employed the materials of those two churches, in making new

*Our Lady of the Victory.

barricadoes and intrenchments, to hinder the enemy from penetrating further into the place.

The Turkish General had the same success, at the bastion of England. After his artillery had played upon it, for several days, and had demolished the walls and ruined the fortifications, several Knights proposed to abandon it, first filling the mines, that were under it, with powder, in order to blow up the Infidels, who should throw themselves into it. But it was remonstrated, in the council of war, held on this subject, that, in the extremity to which they were reduced, the saving of the place depended entirely on prolonging the siege, so as to allow time for the succors, they expected, to arrive; and that therefore there was not a foot of ground, but what was to be disputed with the enemy, as long as possible. This last opinion prevailed; and, though the bastion was entirely ruined, by mines and the fire of the artillery, nevertheless, the Chevalier Binde Malicome offered himself, generously, to defend it; and, in spite of the continual attacks of the Turks, he maintained it, with great glory, to the very end of the siege.

The Turks did not allow any more rest to the Knights who defended the posts of Italy and Spain. They attacked the first, on the twenty-second of November. They had seized, as has been already observed, on the best part of the platform of Italy; the Knights had scarcely a third of it left; and both of them were buried, as it were, in subterraneous works, and divided only by planks and beams from one another. The Turks, seeing themselves in possession of the greater part of this platform, undertook to drive the Knights entirely out of it. A battalion of the Infidels, on the side next the sea, mounted to the assault, while another body attacked their intrenchments, sword in hand. But they met with the same valor and resistance, in all places; and, though the Knights had lost abundance of men, in these bloody attacks, they yet repulsed the Infidels, and obliged them to retire.

It was, however, only to return, a few days afterwards, in much greater numbers. The attack was preceded by a mine, which they sprung under the bastion of Spain.