After the extinction of the
Kingdom of Jerusalem with the fall of
Acre in 1291, the order sought refuge in the
Kingdom of Cyprus. Finding themselves becoming enmeshed in Cypriot politics, their Master,
Guillaume de Villaret, created a plan of acquiring their own temporal domain, selecting
Rhodes to be their new home, part of the
Byzantine Empire. Due to repeated disagreements with the
king of Cyprus Henry II, which left the privileges of the Knights Hospitaller unaltered,
Foulques de Villaret made the decision to transfer the Order to the nearby island of Rhodes which was under the formal authority of the
Byzantine emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos. He then went to
Avignon and
Paris to ask for help and consent from
Pope Clement V and King
Philip IV of France. The pontiff approved the project and, without revealing the end of the mission, ordered the sending of new crusaders and in September 1308 a fleet of
Genoese and
Neapolitan ships set sail from
Brindisi. The emperor had rejected the homage proposal made by Villaret and sent reinforcements to defend the island. The Knights repulsed them. On 15 August 1310, after over
four years of campaigning, the
city of Rhodes surrendered to the knights. They also gained control of a number of neighbouring islands and the
Anatolian port of
Halicarnassus and the island of
Kastellorizo. At Rhodes, the resident knights of each langue were headed by a
baili. The English Grand Prior at the time was
Philip De Thame, who acquired the estates allocated to the English langue from 1330 to 1358. In 1334, the Knights of Rhodes defeated
Andronikos III Palaiologos and his Turkish auxiliaries. In the 14th century, there were several other battles in which they fought. In 1374, the Knights took over the defence of
Smyrna, conquered by
a crusade in 1344. They held it until it was
besieged and taken by Timur in 1402. were forced to become a more militarised force, fighting especially with the
Barbary pirates. They withstood two invasions in the 15th century, one by the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt
Sayf ad-Din Jaqmaq in 1444 and another by the
Ottoman Sultan
Mehmed the Conqueror in 1480 who, after
capturing Constantinople and defeating the Byzantine Empire in 1453, made the Knights a priority target. In 1402, they created a stronghold on the peninsula of Halicarnassus (present
Bodrum). They used pieces of the partially destroyed
Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the
Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, to strengthen their rampart, the
Petronium. In 1522, an entirely new sort of force arrived: 400 ships under the command of Sultan
Suleiman the Magnificent delivered 100,000 men to the island (200,000 in other sources). Against this force the Knights, under Grand Master
Philippe Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, had about 7,000 men-at-arms and their fortifications. The
siege lasted six months, at the end of which the surviving defeated Hospitallers were allowed to withdraw to
Sicily. Despite the defeat, both Christians and Muslims seem to have regarded the conduct of Philippe Villiers de L'Isle-Adam as extremely valiant, and the Grand Master was proclaimed a Defender of the Faith by
Pope Adrian VI. ==Gallery==