ictest retirement with the young maiden's aunt--at this period,
we say, a fleet of three hundred sail quitted Constantinople under the
command of the kapitan-pasha, or lord high admiral, and proceeded toward
the Island of Rhodes. At the same time, Solyman the Magnificent crossed
into Asia Minor, and placing himself at the head of an army of a hundred
thousand men, commenced his march toward the coast facing the island,
and where he intended to embark on his warlike expedition. His favorite
Ibrahim accompanied him, as did also the Grand Vizier Piri Pasha, and
the principal dignitaries of the empire.

It was in the spring of 1521 that the Ottoman fleet received the army on
board at the Cape in the Gulf of Macri, which is only separated by a
very narrow strait from the Island of Rhodes; and in the evening of the
same day on which the troops had thus embarked, the mighty armament
appeared off the capital city of the Knights of St. John.

CHAPTER XLVII.

THE SIEGE OF RHODES.

On the following morning, salvoes of artillery throughout the fleet
announced to the inhabitants and garrison of Rhodes, that the sultan was
about to effect a landing with his troops.

The debarkment was not resisted; for it was protected by the cannonade
which the ships directed against the walls of the city, and the
Christians had no vessel capable of demonstrating any hostility against
the mighty fleet commanded by the kapitan-pasha.

Villiers of Isle Adam, the generalissimo of the Christian forces, had
reduced to ashes all circumjacent villages, and received their
inhabitants into the city itself. But the Ottomans cared not for the
waste and desolation thus created around the walls of the city; but
while their artillery, alike on land and by sea, maintained an incessant
fire on the town, they threw up works of defense and established depots
of provisions and ammunition. The sultan went in person accompanied by
Ibrahim, and attended by a numerous escort, to reconnoiter the
fortifications, and inspect the position of his troops.

On the other side, Villiers of Isle Adam distributed his forces in such
a manner that the warriors of each nation defended particular gates.
Thus the corps of Spaniards, French, Germans, English, Portuguese,
Italian, Auvergnese and Provincials, respectively defended eight of the
gates of Rhodes; while the lord general himself, with his body-guard,
took his post at the ninth. For the knights of Rhodes comprised