Chapter VI: Part 6

On the day fixed for the combat, the two adversaries, accompanied by their seconds and by a priest, appeared in the lists mounted and armed at all points, their weapons in their hands, their swords and daggers girded on. They knelt down opposite to one another with their hands clasped, each in his turn solemnly swearing upon the cross and upon Holy Writ (Fig. 127) that he alone was in the right, and that his antagonist was false and disloyal; and he added, moreover, that he carried no charm or talisman about his person. A herald-at-arms then gave public notice at each of the four corners of the lists to the spectators of the combat to remain perfectly passive, to make no movement, and to utter no cry that could either encourage or annoy the combatants, under pain of losing a limb, or even life itself. The seconds then withdrew, and the camp-marshal, after seeing that both antagonists were fairly placed, and had their proper share of the wind and the sun, called out three times, “_Laissez-les aller!_” and the fight began (Fig. 128).

The judicial duel never commenced before noon, and was only allowed to last till the stars appeared in the sky. If the defendant held out till then he was considered to have gained his cause. The knight who was beaten, whether killed or merely wounded, was dragged off the ground by his feet, the fastenings of his cuirass were cut, his armour was thrown piece by piece into the lists, and his steed and his weapons were divided between the marshal and the judges of the duel. Indeed sometimes, as, for instance, in Normandy and in Scandinavia, according to ancient usage, the vanquished champion was hung or burnt alive, according to the nature of the crime; while if he had fought as the champion of another person, that person was usually put to death with him.

The Church, although she allowed a priest to be present in the lists, never even granted a tacit approval to these judicial duels; she excommunicated the successful duellist, and refused the rites of burial to his victim; nor was she alone in condemning this barbarous custom; the lay authorities did all in their power, but without very much success, to restrict the number of these sanguinary appeals. St. Louis, in a celebrated decree of 1260, substituted trial by evidence in place of the judicial duel, but he found himself only able to enforce this reform within the area of his own dominions, and imperfectly even there, for long after his reign it is on record that the Parliament of Paris ordered certain criminal cases to be decided by personal combat.

When at last, in the fifteenth century, the custom of the judicial duel fell into disuse, the nobility still retained and practised single combat (Fig. 129). A personal affront, often an extremely slight one, a quarrel, a slight to be avenged, were enough to bring two rivals or two enemies to blows. This combative custom, which made a man’s strength and personal skill the guardians of his honour, was sustained and encouraged by the spirit of chivalry and by that of German feudalism. Sometimes, however, the practice was considered justifiable on other grounds. History, for instance, has honourably recorded the “Battle of the Thirty,” which took place in 1351, between thirty knights of Brittany, under the Sire de Beaumanoir, and thirty English knights; and another equally bloody struggle of the same kind between Bayard and ten other French knights, and eleven Spaniards, before the walls of Tranni. The national honour alone was the motive of these two celebrated duels; but they were only the exceptions to the rule. It almost seems as if the nobility, in their efforts to cling to the shadow and the memory of the rapidly-expiring traditions of chivalry, became more inveterate in their adherence to the cruel system of duelling. In the sixteenth century, under the last monarchs of the house of Valois, the Place Royale and the Pré aux Clercs were often watered with the blood of the best families of France. In vain did Henry IV. and Louis XIII. issue the most stringent edicts against this barbarous custom; in vain did the decree, called the decree of Blois, render nugatory all letters of pardon granted to duellists, “even if they were signed by the king himself.” In spite of everything, the nobles, upon whose privileges the monarchy daily made fresh encroachments, had recourse to duelling as if to assert their connection with a chivalric and adventurous past, and the most trivial, ridiculous, and shameful motives served as pretexts for a renewal of the sanguinary struggles, which had been originally inspired by a generous courage and a loyal sympathy with justice.

But we must go back to the time of the zenith of the Middle Ages to see its tournaments, its tilts, and its passages of arms. In the halcyon period of chivalry, its sham fights, its courteous tournaments, and its warlike exhibitions, occasioned many an accident, and brought about many a fatal result. History mentions a tournament in Germany where sixty persons perished in a struggle waged with weapons deprived of edge and point. No question of mere gallantry, no point of honour, was involved in the oldest tournaments on record (the tournament was first alluded to in the chronicles of the reign of Charles the Bald); no pomp of drapery, no brilliancy of banner, adorned them then. No princesses, no noble ladies, showed themselves in all their pride of beauty and of dress around those ancient lists. The tournament (in old French _tournoiement_) of those days was merely a violent athletic pastime, in which the iron men of that period measured their strength one against the other with sword strokes, with lance thrusts, and with mace blows. But as the customs of chivalry gradually softened the manners of the nobility, so the primitive coarseness and roughness of these trials of strength became modified and regulated. Tradition declares that the tournament properly so called was first inaugurated in Brittany in the tenth century by Geoffrey, the Sire de Preuilli.

As a rule, tournaments were proclaimed, that is to say published, _à cor et à cri_ (Figs. 130 and 131), either when a promotion of knights, or a royal marriage, or a solemn entry of a sovereign into a town took place; and the character of these chivalrous festivals changed according to the time and place at and in which they occurred. The arms used on these occasions varied in a similar manner. In France, the tournament lance was made of the lightest and straightest wood, either fir, aspen, or sycamore, pointed with steel, and with a pennant floating from the end; whilst in Germany and in Scotland they were made of the heaviest and toughest wood, with a long iron pear-shaped point. The tournament must not be confounded with the _tilt_ or _joust_ (from the Latin _juxta_), which was a single hand-to-hand combat, nor with the _passage of arms_, in which several combatants, both on foot and on horseback, were engaged, and imitated the attack and defence of some military position, some pass, or some narrow mountainous defile. Tilts usually formed part of a tournament, and marked its close; but there were also more complicated tilts, open to all comers, which lasted for several days, and were termed _joutes plénières_. As the ladies were the life and soul of these tilts, the knights always terminated the proceedings by a special passage of arms which was termed the _lance des dames_; they were always ready to pay this homage to the charms of the fair sex, and frequently fought for them with sword, axe, and dagger.

The preparations for a tournament afforded an animated and interesting picture. The lists, which at first were of a round shape like the amphitheatres of antiquity, were later constructed in a square, and later still in an oblong form; they were gilded, painted with emblems and heraldic devices, and ornamented with rich hangings and historical tapestries. While the lists were being prepared, the knights who were to take part in the tournament, as well as those who were to be only its spectators, had their armorial banners hung up from the windows of the houses in which they were putting up, and affixed their coats of arms to the outer walls of the neighbouring castles, monasteries, and cloisters. When this was done, the nobles and the ladies went round and inspected them (Fig. 132); a herald or a pursuivant-at-arms named their owners, and if a lady recognised any knight against whom she had any ground of complaint, she touched his banner or his shield, in order to bring him under the notice of the camp judges, and if, after an inquiry, he was found guilty, he was forbidden to appear in the tournament.

Coats of arms, which were striking characteristics of chivalry, and which were adopted by the nobility as one of its most striking attributes, had no doubt a contemporaneous origin with the institution whose emblem it became. It is supposed to have been in the eleventh century, at the time of the First Crusade, that the necessity of distinguishing between the multitude of nobles and knights who flocked to the Holy Land led to the invention of the different heraldic colours and devices. Each Crusader chose and kept his own particular emblem; these emblems became the external marks of nobility, and were to be seen everywhere--on the war tents, on the banners, on the liveries, on the clothes, and on every object belonging to a noble family. Hence the language of heraldry, that figurative and hieroglyphic jargon, incomprehensible to everybody at that period except to professional heralds-at-arms.

On the eve of the tournament the youthful esquires practised among themselves in the lists with less weighty and less dangerous weapons than those wielded by the knights. These preludes, which were often graced by the presence of the ladies, were termed _éprouves_ (trials), _vêpres du tournoi_ (tournament vespers), or _escremie_ (fencing bouts). The esquires who distinguished themselves the most in these trials were frequently immediately admitted to the rank of knighthood, and allowed to take part in the ensuing feats. Like the Olympic games of Greece, tournaments, which were real popular solemnities, excited the ambition and quickened the pulses of all. Stands, usually roofed and closed in, were erected at the ends of the lists to afford shelter to persons of distinction in the event of bad weather. These stands, sometimes built tower-shape, were divided into boxes, and more or less magnificently decorated with tapestry, hangings, pennants, shields of arms, and banners. Kings, queens, princes, dames, damoiselles, and the older knights, the natural judges of the combats in which they could no longer take a personal share, stationed themselves there. The camp marshals and the seconds or counsellors of the knights, whose duty it was to enforce the laws of Christian chivalry, and to give their advice and assistance to all who might require it, had also their respective posts. The kings-at-arms, the heralds, and pursuivants-at-arms, stood within the arena or just without it, and were expected to narrowly observe the combatants, and to draw up a faithful and minute report of the different incidents of the combat, without forgetting a single blow. Every now and then they lifted up their voices to encourage the younger knights who were making their first appearance in the lists: “Recollect whose son you are! be worthy of your ancestry!” they cried, in loud tones. Besides these, varlets and sergeants, who were specially entrusted with the duty of keeping order, of picking up and replacing broken weapons, and of raising unhorsed knights, were posted everywhere in and about the lists; while musicians on separate stands held themselves ready to celebrate with noisy flourishes every great feat of arms and every fortunate and brilliant stroke. The sound of their clarions announced the entry of the knights into the lists, stepping with slow and solemn cadence, magnificently armed and equipped, and followed by their esquires on horseback. Sometimes the ladies were the first to enter the lists, leading in by golden or silver chains the knights, their slaves, whom they only set at liberty when the signal was given for the combat to commence. The ladies almost always bestowed a _favour_ on their favourite knight or servitor, generally a scarf, a veil, a head-dress, a mantle, a bracelet, or even a plain bow of ribbon, which had formed part of their own dress. This was termed an _enseigne_ or _nobloy_ (distinguishing mark), and was placed on a knight’s shield, lance, or helmet, so that his lady might be able to recognise him in the _mêlée_, particularly when his weapons were broken, or when he had lost some essential portion of his armour. While the combat lasted the heralds uttered loud cries of encouragement, and the musicians sounded loud flourishes, at each decisive blow of lance or sword; and between each tilt the nobles and the ladies distributed a quantity of small coins amongst the crowd, who received it with loud and joyous cries of _largesse!_ and _noël!_

The combat being over, and the victor being declared according to the reports of the heralds and pursuivants, the prize was given away with all proper solemnity by the elder knights and sometimes by the ladies (Fig. 134). The latter conducted the conqueror with great pomp and triumph to the splendid banquet which followed the tournament. The place of honour occupied by the successful knight, the resplendent clothes in which he was dressed, the kiss that he had the privilege of giving to the most beautiful ladies, the poems and the songs in which his prowess was celebrated, were the last items in this knightly pageant, which was generally accompanied by bloodshed, and frequently by the death of some of its actors. As we have already stated, the usages of the tournament often varied; nothing, for example, could be more unlike the warlike sports of Germany in the thirteenth century, as related in the “Niebelungen,” nothing could be more unlike those sanguinary and ferocious struggles, than the Provençal and Sicilian tournaments of the fifteenth century, described in such glowing language by good King René in the magnificent manuscript which he spent his leisure in illuminating with miniatures. This poet-king, refined in manners, generous in disposition, and cultivated in his tastes, attempted, under the influence of the romantic and religious charm which, still pervaded the chivalric sports of this epoch, to perpetuate with pen and pencil, in prose and in verse, the memory of a magnificent festival over which he presided, and which may be considered an unsurpassed example of the ceremonies of the time. All who take an interest in the subject should read this curious manuscript, which describes among other things the famous struggle between the Duke of Brittany and the Duke of Bourbon. In this may be found related to its smallest details the whole ceremony of a grand tournament, its forms, its progress, and its incidents; in it appear careful comments upon every trifle that increased the brilliancy or added to the effect of this courtly festival, as well as everything that threw a light upon the spirit in which it was carried out, or the usages that regulated every detail, from the armour of the knights to the smallest incidents of the ceremonial. In its pages illustrations reproduce with exact truthfulness the helmets of the knights with barred vizors and leathern shields, their maces, their swords, and their _hourts_, intended to protect the croup and the hind legs of their chargers (Fig. 136). Its text, written with great care and in an elegant hand, records the rules to be observed, in accordance with knighthood’s truest spirit, at the different stages of the combat and the tournament, and minutely describes all their preliminaries and accessories, the giving and the accepting of a challenge, the mutual exchange of gages, the presentation of warrants of nobility by the kings-at-arms, the distribution of the coats-of-arms or insignia of the two parties to the strife, the entry of the nobles, and the bestowal of the prizes upon the conquerors by the queen of the tournament.

King René’s book is a document all the more valuable to an historian of the customs of chivalry, in that it was written at an epoch when they still existed in all their splendour; although signs of their decadence had already showed themselves. That punctilious sovereign, Philippe le Bel, with his court of lawyers and usurers, had already dealt chivalry a crushing blow by the regulations be drew up for the better government of single combats and gages of battle. Between his reign and that of Charles VII. this decadence became more marked. Commerce had made much progress, the wealth of the middle classes had much increased, and the monarchy had acquired a preponderating influence, to the detriment both of feudalism and chivalry, which began simultaneously to decline; the reign of Louis XI., a reign of espionage and of cunning, was fatal to them--thenceforward their little remaining prestige rapidly waned and soon entirely expired. François I. made several fruitless attempts to rekindle the dying embers of chivalry, and, at a later period, Henri IV. and Louis XIV. vainly essayed, with many brilliant pageantries and passages of arms, to quicken once more the phantom of the noble institution which came into existence with the Middle Ages, and with them passed away.

MILITARY ORDERS.

Pierre Gérard founds the Order of St. John of
Jerusalem.--History of that Order.--The Siege of
Rhodes.--History of the Order of the Knights Templars.--Order of
the Knights of Calatrava.--Order of the Teuton Knights.--Order
of the Knights of the Golden Fleece.--Order of St. Maurice and
St. Lazarus.--Orders of the Star, of the Cosse de Geneste, of
the Ship, of St. Michael, and of the Holy Ghost.

One of our great modern historians remarks:--“The association of the Church and chivalry, of war and religion, culminated in the foundation of an institution hitherto entirely unknown, and owing its origin principally to the Crusades, namely, the institution of religious military orders....

“In nothing does chivalry show itself more worthy of admiration than in its religious military aspect; in that phase it accepted the sacrifice of all the affections, it abandoned the renown of the soldier and the repose of the cloister, and it exposed its votary to the hardships of both, by devoting him in turn to the perils of the battle-field, and to the labours attendant upon the succouring of the distressed. Other knights courted adventure for the sake of their honour and the lady of their love; these incurred it in order to help the unfortunate and to assist the poor. The Grand Master of the Knights Hospitallers was proud of the title of _Guardian of the Redeemer’s poor_; he of the order of St. Lazarus was of necessity always a leper; while the knight-companions termed the poor ‘our masters.’ Such were the admirable effects of religion, which, at a period when the sword decided every question, knew how to chasten the failings of valour, and make it forget the pride that generally accompanies it.”

As early as the middle of the eleventh century some merchants of Amalfi had obtained from the Caliph of Egypt permission to build a hospital at Jerusalem, which they dedicated to St. John, and in which were received and sheltered the poor pilgrims who visited the Holy Land. Godefroy de Bouillon and his successors encouraged this charitable institution, and bestowed upon it several large donations. Pierre Gérard, a native of the Island of Martigues, in Provence, proposed to the brothers who managed the hospital to renounce the world, to don a regular dress, and to form an uncloistered monastic order under the name of the _Hospitallers_. Pope Pascal II. appointed Gérard director of the new institution, which he formally authorised, took the Hospitallers under his protection, and granted them many privileges.

Fig. 138.--Knight of the Order of Rhodes.

Fac-similes of Woodcuts by Jost Amman, in a work entitled “Cleri
totius Romanæ ecclesiæ ... habitus:” 4to., Frankfort, 1585.]

The regulations of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem not only imposed upon the brethren the triple vow of chastity, poverty, and obedience; they enjoined upon them, besides the duties of hospitality, the exercise of arms, in order that they might defend the kingdom of Jerusalem against the attacks of the unbelievers. The opportunity was soon afforded them of putting aside their purely charitable character, and of becoming men of war (Fig. 139).

Driven out of Jerusalem by the victorious Saladin, who retook that city on the 19th of October, 1191, the Hospitallers were the last to leave the Holy Land, and transferred their hospital to Margat, after ransoming from the Saracens more than a thousand captive Crusaders; they remained there until the end of the siege of Acre by the Christians, in which they took an active and glorious share, and they then established themselves in the reconquered city and took the name of Knights of St. John of Acre. Again driven from their new residence by the infidels, the Hospitallers asked the King of Cyprus to allow them to settle in his dominion, and to re-establish the central house of their order in the town of Limisso, at which they arrived in small knots, as fast as they were able to escape from the cruisers of the Mussulman fleet. As they, disembarked, exhausted with war’s fatigues, covered with wounds, and unable to console themselves for having survived the loss of Palestine, they presented a really touching spectacle.

The grand master of the knights of St. John of Acre, Jean de Villiers, assembled a chapter general in Cyprus to deliberate upon the best policy to adopt after the last disasters of the crusade, and to take measures to prevent the complete extinction of the order, which had been decimated in the war against the infidels. The Hospitallers of all nations answered the appeal of Jean de Villiers. Never had a meeting been so numerously attended since the foundation of the order; the knights present, carried away by the eloquent appeal of their grand master, swore that they would shed their last blood to recover possession of the Holy Sepulchre.

In spite of the wise measures recommended by Jean de Villiers, the Hospitallers were no longer in safety at Limisso. They had to defend themselves from two equally formidable enemies; from the Saracens, who were ceaselessly threatening their naval and military organization, and from the King of Cyprus, who seemed to desire the ruin of the order, upon which he had just imposed a heavy tax. Indeed, Villaret, the new grand master, proposed to his brothers in arms that they should retire to the island of Rhodes, entrench themselves there, and wait until a more propitious moment should arrive for their return to Palestine. Unfortunately the forces of the order of St. John were not sufficient for such a daring enterprise, and the grand master invited the Western Christians to undertake a new crusade, keeping the real motive of the expedition a secret. The Crusaders assembled in great numbers at the port of Brindisi, in Italy, and the grand master, selecting the noblest and the best equipped, set sail for Rhodes. There he successfully disembarked his little army, with provisions and warlike materials, and laid siege to the capital, which was well fortified and thronged with defenders. After an investment of four years the town was taken by assault; the other strongholds met with a similar fate, and the whole island passed under the sway of the Hospitallers in 1310. But for more than two centuries they had to defend it against the constant attacks of the infidels.

Under the leadership of Joubert or Jacques de Milly, the grand prior of Auvergne, the Knights of Rhodes (the Hospitallers had assumed this name in memory of a victory that so redounded to the fame of the Order of St. John) inflicted a first repulse upon the Ottomans in 1455. All danger, however, was not banished. A rupture seemed imminent with the Sultan of Egypt, quite as formidable an adversary as Mahomet II., the Sultan of Constantinople; and the knights were also obliged to bestir themselves against the Venetians, who had effected a landing on the island, and had been guilty of greater cruelty and violence than the Saracens and the Turks. Raymond Zacosta, the successor of Jacques de Milly in the grand mastership, took advantage of an interval of truce to build a new fort intended to defend the town and port of Rhodes. This impregnable fortress, constructed upon a rocky promontory, received the name of St. Nicholas, from a chapel dedicated to that saint standing within its walls (Fig. 140).

As, in spite of the truce, the Turkish corsairs made continual descents upon the island, the grand master dispatched his galleys to the Ottoman shores, and inflicted a series of reprisals. These so aroused the anger of Mahomet II., that he swore to drive the knights of Rhodes right out of the island. With this purpose he organized an expedition, and entrusted its command to Misach Paleologus, a Greek renegade of the imperial household, who had been appointed grand vizier by the sultan, and who was continually urging his master to take possession of Rhodes.

A hundred and sixty vessels of war and an army of a hundred thousand men arrived off Rhodes on the 23rd of May, 1480. The Turkish fleet endeavoured, under cover of the fire of their artillery, to effect the disembarcation of their troops, while the knights of the order, supported by the guns of the town and its forts, waded up to their waists in the sea and attacked the Ottoman boats sword in hand.

The infidels at last succeeded in making good their landing, and entrenched themselves on Mount St. Stephen. After the knights had been vainly summoned to surrender, a German engineer who had accompanied Paleologus, and who was the superintendent of the siege operations, advised the latter to concentrate his attack on the tower of St. Nicholas, the capture of which would be certain to make him master of the place. After more than three hundred discharges of cannon a breach was effected, and the Turks rushed to the assault. Pierre d’Aubusson, grand prior of Auvergne, recently elected grand master, stood aloft in the breach and set an example of the highest courage to his knights: “Here,” said he, “is the only post of honour worthy of your grand master.”

Exasperated by such an energetic resistance, the vizier determined to rid himself by foul means of Pierre d’Aubusson; but an engineer who had undertaken the treacherous commission was detected, and torn in pieces by the inhabitants of Rhodes on his way to the scaffold.

Misach Paleologus proposed to hold a conference to discuss terms of capitulation. To this the grand master gave his consent, his real object being to gain time to construct new defences in place of those the enemy had destroyed; and the interview, between one of the principal officers of the Turkish army and the castellan of Rhodes, took place at the edge of the moat. The vizier’s envoy urged that in the extremity to which the town was reduced, with its walls levelled, its towers shattered, and its ditches filled up, it would be perfectly possible to take it by assault in a couple of hours; and that it behoved the knights companions to prevent, by an honourable capitulation, a general massacre of the inhabitants. D’Aubusson, concealed hard by, overheard these specious proposals: in pursuance of his orders the castellan made answer to the Ottoman officer that his spies had misinformed him; that, behind the moat, defences had been constructed, the capture of which would cost many lives; that the town was defended by Christians all animated with the same spirit and perfectly resigned to sacrifice their lives for their religion; and that the order would entertain no proposal inimical to its honour or to the interests of its faith.

The haughty vizier, irritated by this noble reply, swore to put every knight to the sword; he even ordered a large number of stakes to be sharpened on which to impale the inhabitants, and, under cover of a still hotter fire from his guns, gave the signal for the assault.

The Turks succeeded for a moment in planting their standard on the ramparts, but they were soon beaten off by the defenders, led by their grand master in person: five times wounded, and covered with blood, Pierre d’Aubusson refused to leave the scene of the struggle, which he animated by his example. His lofty heroism infused new energy into his knights, who rushed on the Turks with the courage of despair and put them completely to the rout. But victory as it was, it was not sufficiently definitive or decisive to secure to the order the tranquil possession of the island, and leave them for the future free from Turkish aggression. Ever since the death of Mahomet II., they had had in their power a precious hostage, Zizim, a brother of Sultan Bajazet, and his most formidable competitor for the throne (Figs. 141 and 142).

Fig. 142.--Zizim, who had been kept a prisoner at Rhodes, to
which he had fled after his defeat, and had afterwards been
transferred to Rome, is handed over to Charles VIII., King of
France.

“Description of the Siege of the Island of Rhodes,” by G.
Caoursin (Ulm, 1496: Gothic folio).--Library of M. Ambr.
Firmin-Didot.]

In 1522, Sultan Soliman II., surnamed the Magnificent, discovered amidst his father’s archives an exact account of the island of Rhodes, and resolved to attack it. He put forward, as a pretext, a desire to punish the knights of the order for the losses they were daily inflicting on the Turkish navy, and the hope of paralyzing their efforts in favour of the Holy Land. The treachery of André Amaral, the chancellor of the order and the grand prior of Castile, who wished to revenge himself on his brother knights for having preferred to himself as their grand master, Philippe de Villiers de l’Ile-Adam, made Soliman aware of the scanty material resources of the island, and persuaded him to undertake the fatal siege, in which treachery and deceit were his most powerful allies. In vain did he collect a fleet of four hundred sail, an army of one hundred and forty thousand men and sixty thousand pioneers; in vain he swept the ramparts with the fire of his guns, in vain he dug ditch after ditch, mine upon mine, and endeavoured to wear out the besieged by his harassing and ceaseless attacks. His want of success would have certainly exhausted his patience, and he would probably have raised the siege had not the traitor Amaral revealed to him the weak condition of both the town and its garrison. At last, however, on the 30th of November, the Turks made what was supposed to be their final effort. They penetrated as far as the inner defences, and the struggle was a terrible one. Roused by the tocsin, the grand master, the knights, and the inhabitants poured on to the ramparts and threw themselves on the enemy, who had already deemed themselves successful, and forced them to retreat.

Grieved and discouraged by this final check, Soliman proposed a capitulation. He threw letters into the town exhorting the inhabitants to yield, and threatening them with the utmost severities if they persisted in a useless resistance. At first Villiers de l’Ile-Adam made answer that he only treated with infidels sword in hand; but he had to give way to the urgent remonstrances of the principal inhabitants, who showed a determination to take at all hazards measures to ensure the honour and the lives of their wives and their children. The sultan having hung out a white flag, the grand master did the same, and demanded a truce of three days to draw up the capitulation. But Soliman, fearing lest assistance might arrive in the interval, rejected this proposal, and ordered a fresh assault. The knights of Rhodes, reduced to a mere handful, and having only the barbican of the Spanish bastion left to protect them, obliged the enemy once more to retire. On the morrow, however, another attack of the Turks drove the defenders of the bastion back into the town, and the terror-stricken inhabitants implored the grand master to resume negotiations. Achmet, Soliman’s minister, who knew how impatiently his master desired the end of the war, obtained at last the surrender of Rhodes on terms so honourable and so advantageous to its defenders, that they spoke volumes for the esteem with which the conquered had inspired their conquerors. The knights, to the number of four thousand, abandoned the island under the guidance of their grand master, Villiers; after touching at Candia and Sicily, they finally settled at Malta, which was ceded to them by Charles V., and which became the definitive residence of the order. This was in 1530.

Thirty-five years later, at the end of Soliman II.’s reign, the Turks once more attacked the order under the pretext of avenging the capture of a galliot laden with costly merchandise, the property of the sultana; and Mustapha, Pasha of Buda, a brave officer, the general of the Ottoman army, landed on the island on the 18th of May, 1565. After a few skirmishes the Turks made a fierce attack on Fort St. Elmo, and captured it in spite of the brave defence of the Knights of Malta (the new title of the members of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem)--a defence which lasted twenty-four days, and cost the lives of four thousand of the assailants, amongst them that of the famous pirate Dragut, the vice-sultan of Tripoli. The fort of St. Michael, and the suburb of that name, were reduced to ashes by the fire of the enemy; and it was only the invincible courage of the grand master, Jean de la Valette, and of a small number of his knights, all to the last man prepared to die for their faith--even after more than two thousand of them had already perished--that still enabled Malta to hold out.

Fortunately, Don Garcias de Toledo, the viceroy of Sicily, came with sixty galleys to their assistance. During the four months of the siege the Turkish forces fired seventy-eight thousand rounds of artillery, and lost fifteen thousand soldiers and eight thousand sailors.

The knights of the order had on their side to deplore the loss of more than three thousand of their brethren. Their grand master decreed that annually, on the eve of the festival of Our Lady of September, prayers should be offered up in all the churches of the order, thanking God for the providential succours which had delivered the besieged, and that on the preceding day a commemorative service should be celebrated in honour of those who had fallen in defence of the faith.

Henceforward neither the town nor the island, which remained the head quarters of the order, was again disturbed by the Turks, and Jean de la Valette built a new city in Malta, which was called Valetta, after him.

The members of the Order of Malta were divided into three classes: the knights, the chaplains, and the serving brothers. The first comprised those whose noble birth and previous rank in other armies marked them out for military service. The second consisted of priests, and ecclesiastics who performed all the ordinary religious duties, and who acted as almoners in time of war. The last were neither nobles nor ecclesiastics; and all that was necessary to admit an individual to this class, was for him to prove that he was born of respectable parents, who had never exercised any handicraft. The serving brothers were distinguished at a later period by a coat-of-arms of a different colour to that of the knights. The aspirants were termed _douats_ or _demi-croix_. The Order of St. John of Jerusalem had merely a nominal existence in the statutes of the Order of Malta, although the knights of the latter, on their reception into the order, were still termed “servants of the sick and needy.” For a long time there existed in Spain, Lady Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, who devoted themselves to hospital work and deeds of charity (Fig. 145). Every country in Europe furnished its quota to the Order of Malta, which had entirely replaced that of St. John, and was divided into eight different tongues or nations, each under the direction of a grand prior, viz., Provence, Auvergne, France, Italy, Aragon, Germany, Castile, and England. These national grand priors were termed _piliers_, or _monastic bailiffs_. Each nation was subdivided into a number of lesser commands, to hold one of which was equivalent to holding an ecclesiastical benefice, and which were subordinate to their grand prior alone.

The regular dress of the order consisted, in each nation, of a black robe, with a pointed cape of the same colour; on the left sleeve of each robe was a cross of white linen having eight points, typical of the eight beatitudes they were always supposed to possess, and which, according to a MS. preserved in the library of the Arsenal, were:--1, spiritual contentment; 2, a life free from malice; 3, repentance for sins; 4, meekness under suffering; 5, a love of justice; 6, a merciful disposition; 7, sincerity and frankness of heart; and 8, a capability of enduring persecution. At a later period the regulations became less austere, and permitted the knights to wear an octagonal golden cross inlaid with white enamel, and suspended from the breast with black ribbon.

A candidate for the robe of St. John of Jerusalem was obliged to present himself at the high altar, clad in a long gown without girdle, in order to denote that he was free from all other vows, and with a taper in his hand. The knight assessor then handed him a gilt sword, saying, “In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” to remind him that henceforth it would be his duty to devote his life to the defence of religion. A girdle was then fastened round his waist, to signify that he was bound for the future by the vows of the order. The professing knight then brandished the sword round his head, in token of defiance of the unbelievers, and returned it to its scabbard, first passing it under his arm as if to wipe it, as a symbol that he intended to preserve it free from stain. The knight who received his vows then placed his hand on his shoulder, exhorted him to succour the poor of Jesus Christ, to undertake works of charity, and to devote himself to the welfare of the faith. The new knight having promised to observe these exhortations, golden spurs were placed on his heels as emblems that he was bound to fly wherever honour called him, and to trample under his feet the riches of this world. His taper was then lighted and he continued to hold it during the celebration of a mass, and while a preacher passed in review the rules which should bind, and the duties which should sway a true knight. He was then asked if he was in debt, if he was married or betrothed, if he already belonged to any other religious order, and, finally, if he really and sincerely desired to belong to the Order of St. John. If he answered these questions in a satisfactory manner, he was admitted into the brotherhood, and led up to the high altar. There he pronounced the oath upon the missal, and was declared formally invested with the privileges granted to the order by the pontificate. He was told that henceforward he must daily recite fifty paters, fifty aves, the service of the Virgin, the burial service, and several prayers for the repose of the souls of departed knights companions. Whilst he was donning the dress of the order he was further instructed in his duties. As he put his arms through his sleeves he was reminded of the obedience he owed to his superiors; as the white cross was being adjusted next his heart, he was told that he must be always ready to shed his blood for Christ, who by his own death had redeemed mankind. All the insignia of the Order of Malta were symbols. The pointed black mantle with its peaked cape, worn only on occasions of solemn ceremony, was typical of the robe of camel’s hair worn by John the Baptist, the patron of the order. The cords which fastened the mantle about the neck, and fell over the shoulder, were significant of the passion our Saviour suffered with such calmness and resignation. In time of battle the members of the order wore a red doublet embroidered with the eight-pointed cross.

About twenty years after the first establishment of the Hospitallers, Hugues de Payens, and Geoffrey de Saint-Aldemar, having crossed the seas with nine other nobles, all of French birth, obtained from the patriarch Guarimond, and from Baldwin II., King of Jerusalem, permission to form an association, the objects of which were to act in concert with the Hospitallers against the infidels, to protect pilgrims, and to defend Solomon’s Temple. Baldwin granted them a dwelling within the Temple walls, a circumstance which gave them the name of _Templars_, or _Knights of the Temple_. At first they led a simple and regular life, contenting themselves with the humble title of _poor soldiers of Jesus Christ_. Their charity and their devotion obtained for them the sympathy of the kings of Jerusalem and the Eastern Christians, who made them frequent and considerable donations.

In the first nine years of their existence, from 1118 to 1127, the Templars admitted no strangers into their ranks; but their number having nevertheless considerably increased, they soon preferred a request to the Holy See to ratify the institution of their order. At the Council of Troyes, in 1228, Hugues de Payens, accompanied with five of his companions, presented the letters that the brotherhood had received from the pope and the patriarch of Jerusalem, together with the certificate of the founding of their order. Cardinal Matthew, Bishop of Alba, who presided over the council as the pope’s legate, granted them an authentic confirmation of their order, and a special code was drawn up for them under the guidance of St. Bernard.

The Templars were bound to go to mass three times a week, and to communicate thrice a year; they wore a white robe symbolical of purity, to which Pope Eugenius III. added a red cross, to remind them of their oath to be always ready to shed their blood in defence of the Christian religion. Their rules were of great austerity; they prescribed perpetual exile, and war for the holy places to the death. The knights were to accept every combat, however outnumbered they might be, to ask no quarter, and to give no ransom. However irksome might prove the observance of these regulations, they were not allowed to escape them by entering the ranks of a less austere order.

Fac-similes of Woodcuts by Jost Amman, in his work entitled
“Cleri totius Romanæ ecclesiæ ... habitus;” 4to., Frankfort,
1585.]

The unbelievers dreaded no enemy so much as these poor soldiers of Christ, of whom it was said that they possessed the gentleness of the lamb and the patience of the hermit, united to the courage of the hero and the strength of the lion. Their standard, termed _Beaucéant_, was half black and half white, and inscribed with these words: _Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam_.[12]

According to the rules of St. Bernard, the Order of the Temple was composed of _milites_, or knights commanders, of serving brothers, called _armigeri_, or men bearing arms, and of _clientes_, or clients, whose duty it was to attend to domestic matters. Their oaths were similar to those of St. John of Jerusalem. They swore to live in chastity, poverty, and obedience. Some of their number obtained permission to marry, but on condition of their no longer wearing the white dress, and of their bequeathing a portion of their property to the order. The distinctive mark of the Templars was, according to some, a broad red patriarchal cross; according to others, a red Maltese cross embroidered with gold. As they all made public profession of extreme poverty, they were forbidden to use valuable articles of furniture, or gold or silver utensils; to wear velvet trappings in the field, helmets with armorial bearings, silken sashes, or other superfluous articles of clothing; and they were only permitted to wear an under doublet of white wool.

The Order of the Temple had only been established fifty years when its knights held at Jerusalem its first general chapter, attended by three hundred gentlemen, and as many serving brothers, most of whom were French. The chapter elected a grand master, Gérard de Rederfort, and in so doing freed themselves from the jurisdiction of the patriarch of Jerusalem. The new grand master transferred the seat of the order to St. Jean d’Acre, and manifested the prowess of his knights on several occasions against the troops of Saladin, who attempted shortly afterwards to capture the town, but who was obliged to abandon the task.

The resources of the Knights Templars increased, in a very short space, in such a remarkable manner, by donations and legacies, that some historians declare that the revenue of the order amounted to four and a half millions sterling; others merely observe that the Templars possessed enormous wealth in Christendom, one item being nine thousand houses. In 1129 they already had several establishments in the Low Countries; six years later the King of Navarre and of Aragon, Alphonso I., bequeathed his states to the order; but it was with great difficulty that the knights obtained possession of even a few of his towns. At that time, however, they possessed seventeen strongholds in the kingdom of Valencia. In their quarters in London were deposited most of the treasures of the English crown, and King Philip Augustus, on the eve of his departure for the Holy Land, entrusted them with the care of his jewels and archives.

The Templars were magnificent soldiers, and the annals of the Crusades are full of their feats of arms. Few knights acquired the fame they did in their expeditions across the seas; though always inferior in number to the infidel, who held them in greater fear than the Crusaders, they almost always defeated them. The defence of Gaza, the battle of Tiberias, the capture of Damietta, and the Egyptian Crusade, are all splendid attestations of their courage and prowess.

The Templars in time reached the summit of their fortunes, the height of their prosperity and their fame, and nothing was left to them but to decay. Inflated with wealth, laden with privileges which gave them almost sovereign power, the only judges they recognised were the pope and themselves. The order at last became so demoralised by luxury and idleness that it forgot the aim for which it was founded, disdained to obey its own rules, and gave itself up to the love of gain and thirst for pleasure. Its covetousness and pride soon became boundless. The knights pretended that they were above the reach of even crowned heads: they seized and pillaged without concern the property of both infidels and Christians.

Their jealousy of the Knights Hospitallers induced them to interfere with a man of position, a vassal of the Order of St. John, and to drive him from a castle he possessed in the neighbourhood of their establishment at Margat. This caused a violent quarrel between the two orders, which soon became a permanent struggle for supremacy. The pope wrote to the grand masters of both orders to exhort them to re-establish peace and good-will, and to forget their mutual rancour, so dangerous for Christendom and so fatal to the interests of the Holy Land. An apparent truce took place between them; but the Templars had not forgotten their hatred, and they lost no opportunity of showing it to the knights of St. John. Moreover, they no longer cared to support the holy cause that had led to the birth of their order. They signed a treaty of alliance with the Old Man of the Mountain, the leader of the sect of the Assassins or Ishmaelites, the most implacable enemies of the cross; they allowed him, on condition of paying tribute, to fortify himself in Lebanon; they made war against the king of Cyprus and the prince of Antioch; ravaged Thrace and Greece, where the Christian nobles had founded principalities, marquisates, and baronies; took Athens by storm, and massacred Robert de Brienne, its duke.

In short, the consciousness of their strength, of their wealth, and of their power, inspired the Templars with an audacity that nothing could restrain. Their pride, which had become proverbial, was particularly offensive. Their belief and their morals were very far from orthodox, and even in 1273, Pope Gregory X. had thought of fusing their order in that of the Hospitallers. In the beginning of the following century, Philippe le Bel, King of France, received weighty accusations against them of most serious offences, accusations that were generally believed to be true, and consulted Pope Clement V. on the subject. Clement at first declared the crimes with which they were accused to be altogether improbable, but the grand master having insisted on a rigorous inquiry, the pope wrote to the king for the details of his information. Philippe le Bel wished to decide the matter himself, and proceeded to arrest all the Templars within his jurisdiction, amongst them their grand master, Jacques de Molai, who had just returned from Cyprus.

One hundred and forty knights were examined in Paris, and all but three confessed that the order practised a secret initiation, in which the aspirants were bound to deny Christ, and spit upon the cross; and that, moreover, immoral customs were practised amongst them. Many of them also confessed that they had committed acts of idolatry. A learned contemporary writer, De Wilcke, a German protestant clergyman, has epitomized the researches of two of his co-religionists--Moldenhawer, who discovered in the National Library in Paris the original records of the examination, and Munster, who found in the library of the Vatican the original notes of the proceedings that took place in England. This is De Wilcke’s conclusion: “The two facts of the denial of Christ and the spitting on the cross are attested by all the witnesses who were examined, with one or two exceptions.”

In spite of the scandal caused by these confessions, Pope Clement V. urgently protested against Philippe’s course of action, and represented to him that the Templars were a religious body, under the control of the Holy See alone, that the king was consequently wrong to make himself their judge, and that he had no authority over either their possessions or their persons.

Philippe unwillingly yielded to the pope’s remonstrances, and the pontiff himself examined seventy-two Templars, whose confessions tallied with the avowals made in the first instance at Paris.

An inquiry was instituted in England, in Italy, in Spain, and in Germany. The answers extracted in the course of the different examinations were not exactly coincident, but the confessions of impiety and immorality were very numerous, except in Spain. The Aragonese Templars took up arms and held themselves on the defensive in their fortresses; they were however, conquered by King James II., and thrown into prison as rebels. The Templars of Castile were arrested, tried before an ecclesiastical tribunal, and declared innocent.

The pope acknowledged the existence of serious irregularities amongst the knights of the order, but persisted in reserving to himself the right to pronounce a final decision. He, however, instructed every bishop in the Christian world to investigate the cases within his own diocese, and to absolve the innocent, and condemn the guilty Templars according to the utmost rigour of the law.

The provincial council of Paris handed over the contumacious to the secular authorities; fifty-nine of the guilty knights were burnt in that city at the back of the abbey of St. Antoine. A second council, at Senlis, in a similar manner delivered nine Templars to the mercies of the secular judge, who sentenced them to be burnt at the stake. It is said that the culprits retracted their confession on the scaffold, and died protesting their innocence. As soon as the commissioners appointed by the pope were informed of these executions they suspended their sittings, declaring that the terror inspired by these capital penalties deprived the prisoners of the tranquillity of mind necessary to their defence. They further requested the council of Paris to act with more deliberation.

When Pope Clement V. had obtained all the necessary information he convoked the council of Vienne (Fig. 150), and there, on the 22nd of March, 1312, pronounced his decision, which rather absolved than condemned the order, and placed their persons and their property at his disposal and at that of the Church. In Spain and in Portugal, this property was applied to the defence of the Christians against the constant attacks of the Saracens and the Moors (Fig. 151); but the greater portion of the possessions of the Templars, and particularly those they held in France, was transferred to the keeping of the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, who continued to devote themselves to the cause of the holy places, and kept up the good works to perform which the Templars had received so many and such costly donations.