Page 156 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

156 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

sponded. Although the Hospitallers clearly controlled Rhodes, it was the wish of the citizens
– mostly Greek Christians and Jews – that they remain doing so. They pitched in to help with
the rebuilding of the walls and the stocking of the stores. Giacomo de Curti, another eyewit-
ness, was clearly impressed with had been accomplished, reporting that Rhodes was filled
with “grain, wine, oil, cheese, salted meat and other food stuffs in great quantity.” 16
On 20 May the Turkish fleet was sighted. Curti notes that “the sea was covered with sails
as far as the eye could see.” In a letter written by d’Aubusson on 28 May he numbers the
17
Turkish fleet at 109 ships, claiming that they carried 70,000 soldiers as well as “a great many
cannon, bombards and wooden towers with other engines of war.” the men were put into
18
place and the cannons and engines of war quickly set up. Then the siege began. 19
From the end of May to the end of July the fighting went on. This was no siege where
the attackers established lines and sat back to wait for deprivation to take its toll. Every day
Ottoman cannons fired into the walls and fortresses; and every day Ottoman soldiers rushed
through the moat and at the walls; every day the Hospitallers and townspeople fought back
for their very survival. Early targets included the Fort of St. Nicholas which stood on a mole
stretching into the harbor, its guns and garrison protecting both the military harbor on one
side and the commercial harbor on the other. Intensive Ottoman gunfire destroyed much of
the fort, turning it into rubble, but from the rubble the Hospitallers fought back. Some 220
meters across the water from the fort the Turks had mounted a battery which d’Aubusson
later recalled consisted of “three huge bronze bombards to batter down the town, whose size
and power were incredible, and which fired balls of stone of nine palms.” Mery Dupuis, a
20
Hospitaller Knight who was present at the siege, describes the destruction:
about three hundred shots from the bombards battered the tower in such a way that the
side facing the land where the bombards were firing seemed to be a large pile of stones, all of
the tower there battered and broken, and the stones fallen one onto another. But the other side
of the tower, that which faced the sea, stood whole and entire in such a way that it seemed
that it had never been hit by any bombard shot, so not only the top of the tower but also the
crenellations were all clear and visible from the sea. And in fact that part of the tower which
could be seen from the landward side where the bombards were firing seemed indefensible
and that nobody dared to be inside it. 21
The Turks even tried to bridge the gap between their battery and the Fort, but hand-to-
hand fighting foiled this as well. They were forced to choose a new target was selected.
The new target was on the eastern side of Rhodes, against a part of the city known as the

16 Giacomo de Curti, Ad magnificum spectabilemque, f.1r.
17 Curti, p. 1r.
18 Setton, Papacy and the Levant, I:351 n.18.
19 For the details of the 1480 siege of Rhodes see Robert Douglas Smith and Kelly DeVries, The Sieges of
Rhodes in 1480 and 1522 (forthcoming).
20 Pierre d’Aubusson, Letter to Emperor Frederick III in Scriptorum rerum germanicarum, ed. M. Freher
(Berlin, 1602), p. 306. Other eyewitnesses, Dupuis (in The history of the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of
Jerusalem, styled afterwards, the Knights of Rhodes, and at present, the Knights of Malta, ed. abbé de Vertot
[Edinburgh: R. Fleming, 1757], III:93), Caoursin (p. 6), and Curti (f. 2r) also mention the placement of these
bombards at St. Anthony’s church, although Curti has four placed in the battery instead of three.
21 Dupuis, p. 94.