It is impossible to say why the command-in-chief had
not been entrusted to him, as the Sultan had the precedent of Kheyr-ed-Din
upon which to go. It can only be conjectured that Soliman, having
discovered how unpopular that appointment had been amongst his high
officers, did not care to risk the experiment the second time; and in
consequence employed Sinan. To this officer the aphorism of Seignelay
applies in its fullest force. He was as brave a man as ever drew a sword in
the service of his master; he was, however, a hesitating and incompetent
leader, with one eye ever fixed on that distant palace on the shores of the
Golden Horn in which dwelt the arbiter of his destiny and of all those who
sailed beneath the banner of the Crescent.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE KNIGHTS OF ST. JOHN
The Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, afterwards known as the Knights
of Rhodes, and eventually as the Knights of Malta--A brief sketch of the
Order, including the relation of how Gozon de Dieu-Donne, subsequently
Grand Master, slew the great Serpent of Rhodes; also some account of
Jean Parisot de la Valette, forty-eighth Grand Master, who commanded at
the Siege of Malta, in which the arms of Soliman the Magnificent were
defeated after a siege lasting one hundred and thirteen days.
Amongst all those principalities and powers against which Dragut contended
during the whole of his strenuous existence, there was no one among them
which he held in so much detestation as the famous Knights of Saint John,
known in the sixteenth century as the Knights of Malta.
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