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CHAP. III.] ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM. 211

be based on the Hospitallers? We have seen fortyof them slain at Tripoli, and that it was held bythe Grand Master to have almost extinguished hisorder in Asia. We do not know of any comingfrom Europe. But, supposing that some did come,with that self-devotion for which they are celebrated.Let them equal those they were to replace; andAcre, itself, gives sixty; yet, in all, we have onlyone hundred and forty, and that is the very most.Vertot tells us in one line , 1 that between Hospi-tallers and Templars, there were killed, at Acre,four hundred of them; and, in the next , 2 that theTemplars lost three hundred there, and only tenof them escaped alive, which leaves the Hospitallersless than one hundred to be killed; and killed theywere, almost all. But Yertot was not, perhaps,scrupulously exact, and did not mean to includetheir leaders, neither Villiers, who survived, norClermont or Beaujeu, who were slain. They hadhired troops, but with little money they could havefew, and their feudal, which used to be their chiefforces, lay wholly extinguished. Knights mayserve as officers, leaders, examples. But, after all,the main defence of Acre depends on its inhabitants,to whom are to be added five hundred Cypriots,brought by the king of that island, some few

1 Yertot: iv. 72.

2 Id.: iv. 72.

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