Page 375 - A Knight of the White Cross

after five years longer service at Rhodes, received a commandery in
England. He held it a few years only, and then returned to the Island, where

he obtained a high official appointment.

In 1489 Sir John Boswell became bailiff of the English langue, and Sir
Fabricius Caretto was in 1513 elected grand master of the Order, and held
the office eight years, dying in 1521.

When, in 1522, forty-two years after the first siege, Rhodes was again

beleaguered, Gervaise, who had, on the death of the countess, become
Count of Forli, raised a large body of men-at-arms, and sent them, under
the command of his eldest son, to take part in the defence. His third son

had, at the age of sixteen, entered the Order, and rose to high rank in it.

The defence, though even more obstinate and desperate than the first, was
attended with less success, for after inflicting enormous losses upon the
great army, commanded by the Sultan Solyman himself, the town was

forced to yield; for although the Grand Master L'Isle Adam, and most of his
knights, would have preferred to bury themselves beneath the ruins rather

than yield, they were deterred from doing so, by the knowledge that it
would have entailed the massacre of the whole of the inhabitants, who had
throughout the siege fought valiantly in the defence of the town. Solyman

had suffered such enormous losses that he was glad to grant favourable
conditions, and the knights sailed away from the city they had held so long

and with such honour, and afterwards established themselves in Malta,
where they erected another stronghold, which in the end proved an even
more valuable bulwark to Christendom than Rhodes had been. There were

none who assisted more generously and largely, by gifts of money, in the
establishment of the Order at Malta than Gervaise. His wife, while she

lived, was as eager to aid in the cause as he was himself, holding that it was
to the Order she owed her husband. And of all their wide possessions there
were none so valued by them both, as the little coral heart set in pearls that

she, as a girl, had given him, and he had so faithfully brought back to her.

THE END