Great as
were those others who perished, faithful to the death as were those noble
knights who died to a man in the culminating agony of St. Elmo, adroit,
resourceful, master of himself and others as was the famous Dragut, there
is one name and one alone that shines like a beacon light upon a hill-top
when we think of the siege of Malta. Jean Parisot de la Valette, whose name
is enshrined for ever in that noble city which crowns Mount Sceberass at
the present day, was the forty-eighth Grand Master of the Noble Order of
the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem the charter for which, contained in
the original Bull of Pope Paschal II., dated 1113 (in which the Holy Father
took the Order under his special protection), may be seen to this day in
the armoury of the palace at Valetta. At the time when the supreme honour
was conferred upon him, in the year 1557, he had passed through every grade
of the Order: as soldier, captain, general, Counsellor, Grand Cross: in all
of them displaying a valour, a piety, a self-abnegation beyond all praise,
A man of somewhat austere manner, he exacted from others that which he gave
himself--a whole-hearted devotion to the Order to which he had consecrated
his life. Fearing no man in the Council Chamber, even as he feared no foe
in the field, he ever spoke his mind in defence of that which he deemed to
be right. Proud, with the dignity becoming a man of his ancient lineage, he
merged all personal haughtiness in the zeal he felt in upholding the rights
and privileges of that splendid confederation of knights of the best blood
in Europe over which he had been called upon to preside at the mature age
of sixty-three.
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