CHAP. III.]

ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM.

31

D’Aubusson, remarkable for his military acquire-ments—particularly in the branch of it then mostrequisite at Rhodes, fortification—and he wasnamed captain-general and inspector of the wholeisland; and he widened the ditches of the city, andat the grand master’s private expense, raised a wallon the sea-side of above a hundred perches long andsix yards high, and prodigious thickness . 1 So thatworse than Nero, Mahomet. II. (whose mother hadbeen a Christian, and himself bred up as such, andinstructed by the good and learned GreekPatriarch) professed Mahometanism, and hated theChristians, being truly of no religion, but utterlyungodly, and full of vices the most cruel , 2 con-sidering the magnitude of an attack on Rhodes, heprepared for it by that of Negropont, in which theVenetian Erizzo distinguished himself by his gallantdefence and honourable death; and his beautifuldaughter died a blessed martyr, after barbarianshad murdered her father. Mahomet, who hadpromised to spare his head by a sworn capitulation,kept it by having the unfortunate Provveditoresawed in two, leaving his head intact. Nor is itsurprising the Turk conquered, with an army oftwo hundred thousand, and a powerful fleet off the

1 Bosio: par. ii., Kb. ix., anno 1472.

2 Bouhours : Yie D’Aubusson, i. 26.