Siege of Rhodes: The Will Of The Hospitallers

With Sultan Mohammed II’s Turkish horde at the gates of Rhodes, the city’s Knights Hospitallers prepared an unholy welcome for the Ottoman siege.

by William McPeak Although the great Crusades were over by 1309 ad, one old crusading order continued to evolve, flourish, and make enemies—the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem. The Turkish domination of Asia Minor had passed from the Seljuks to the Ottoman Turks by the late 13th century, and with it came renewed and relentless harassment of the Knights until they were forced from their longstanding mainland base at Acre in 1291. The Knights reorganized, moved temporarily to the