A knight of the White Cross; a tale of the siege of Rhodes - 1480 A.D.

A Knight of the White Cross; a tale of the siege of Rhodes                                  By G.A. Henty




Young Gervaise Tresham leaves England and the turmoil of the Wars of the Roses to become a Knight of St. John. Starting as a page of the Grand Master, Gervaise quickly attains knighthood and defends Europe and Christendom against the anarchy of piracy in the Mediterranean at that time and the expansion of the Turkish empire. Sir Tresham is there to defend the fortress at Rhodes during the first siege of that city by Soleiman.

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PREFACE. 

The order of the Knights of St. John, which for some 
centuries played a very important part in the great struggle 
between Christianity and Mahomedanism, was, at its origin, 
a semi-religious body, its members being, like other monks, 
bound by vows of obedience, chastity, and poverty, and pledged 
to minister to the wants of the pilgrims who flocked to the 
Holy Places, to receive them at their great Hospital or guest 
house at Jerusalem, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, and 
to defend them on their passage to and from the sea, against 
attack by Moslems. In a comparatively short time the constitution 

of the order was changed, and the Knights Hospitallers became, 

like the Templars, a great military Order pledged to defend the Holy 

Sepulchre, and to war everywhere against the Moslems. The Hospitallers 

bore a leading share in the struggle which terminated in the triumph of the 
Moslems, and the capture by them of Jerusalem. The Knights 
of St. John then established themselves at Acre, but after a 
valiant defence of that fortress, removed to Crete, and shortly 
afterwards to Ehodes. There they fortified the town, and 
withstood two terrible sieges by the Turks. At the end of 
the second they obtained honourable terms from Sultan Solyman, and 

retiring to Malta established themselves there in an even stronger fortress 

than that of Ehodes, and repulsed all the efforts of the Turks to dispossess

them. The Order was the great bulwark of Christendom against the invasion 
of the Turks, and the tale of their long struggle is one of absorbing

interest, and of the many eventful episodes none is more full of incident

and excitement than the first siege of Rhodes, which I have chosen for the 

subject of my story. 

G. A. HENTY                                                                     

The Siege of Rhodes