CHAP. III.]

ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM.

87

turers, and Zapata, with two hundred Spanish foot,in all twelve hundred men.

But so strict the blockade, that the grand masterthought it best to refuse, and made a signal forthem to return to Sicily, yet contrived to send theviceroy a letter, that there was no help for it;that rather than a new massacre, and attemptsthat could not but be fruitless, wait he must, andtry to resist until the army came to be master ofthe pass into Borgo, which implies the entire island;for which twelve thousand men, eighty galleys,and provisions for one month would be quite suffi-cient. ‘‘Yet fearful are our wants.” July 11th.

Some believe it was no impossibility, but thatthe grand master judiciously refused, in order tohasten the radical cure. 1 So the viceroy wrotewith his own hand to his Catholic majesty, enclo-sing the letters of the grand master himself.

Several breaches so wide were effected on the14th July, that a troop of horse could charge anddismount, and remount quite easily! Yet whatserved they? In the general assault, thirty thou-sand pots of wildfire, and the superiority of straightlong swords over the scimitar, aided superhumanvalour, and the Turks fled with frightful slaughter,while the Christian shout was ever, Remember St.