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THE HISTORY OE THE ORDER OF [book IV.

romantic feats than is here room for (so bright thatall the northern coasts of Africa were in ablaze), the beleaguered heroes to their eternalhonour, made a splendid defence during years, withinwalls reputed indefensible, and which certainly wererude and inefficient, and never made to resist cannons,but built before the use of gunpowder, and nowtottering from age in many places, and very firmnowhere. Finally Tripoli fell, with an infinitefame and slaughter of our knights, early in August,1551, and on the 18th of that month, towardsevening, the French ambassador arrived at Maltawith the distressing news, which not a knight re-mained alive to carry; but the foreign diplomatist,then off Barbary, on his way to Egypt, did not aninstant doubt but it would please his governmentthat he should unhesitatingly diverge from hiscourse, and, in spite of the war, seize that oppor-tunity of serving the sanctuary of all the Christiannations. 1

The Sicilian was then very wrong to recount astruths, nasty calumnies, and the King of Francemight have spared his letter; were it not that itrenders still more certain, upon authentic, judicial,infallible authority, that fraud or misconduct wereutterly out of question, and that, at Tripoli, all1 Bosio : par. ii., lib. xv. 314.