Siege of Rhodes (1522)

In the second half of 1522 the young sultan Suleiman the Magnificent besieged the island fortress of Rhodes, home for two centuries of the Knights Hospitaller, the crusading order of St John. Between 26 June and 22 December a small garrison held out against a vast army, until mines and cannon had wrecked most of the walls and the knights accepted terms. Their departure removed the last Christian military outpost off the Anatolian coast and strengthened the Ottoman Empire's grip on the eastern Mediterranean.

The Hospitallers had taken Rhodes in the early fourteenth century, after the fall of Acre in 1291 ended the crusader presence in Palestine. From the island they traded across the Aegean and raided Turkish shipping, a constant irritation to the Ottomans just off their southern coast. An Ottoman siege in 1480 failed, and after an earthquake the following year the knights rebuilt their defences in the new Italian style designed to resist artillery: thicker walls, a wider ditch, massive outworks and bulwarks around the towers.

Philippe Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, elected grand master in 1521, expected a fresh attack. He strengthened the walls further and called on the order's members across Europe for help, but few came. Each section of the walls was entrusted to one of the order's national divisions, or "tongues", and a heavy chain closed the harbour.

An Ottoman fleet of some 400 ships reached Rhodes on 26 June 1522, and Suleiman arrived on 28 July with an army reported at 100,000 men. Estimates for the defence are much smaller, roughly 6,700 men, of whom about 700 were knights. The Ottomans blockaded the harbour, bombarded the city and attacked almost daily, while their miners tunnelled under the walls. On 4 September two great mines brought down part of the bastion of England. The attackers stormed the gap three times that day, but English and German knights, led in part by the grand master himself, held it.

On 24 September the commander Mustafa Pasha threw his troops against four bastions at once. The bastion of Spain changed hands twice before Suleiman called off the attack. Furious, the sultan condemned Mustafa, his brother-in-law, to death but spared him after appeals from his officials. His successor, Ahmed Pasha, an experienced siege engineer, concentrated on mining. A further great assault at the end of November also failed, but by then both sides were worn out, the knights by losses and the lack of any relief, the besiegers by casualties and disease.

Suleiman offered the defenders their lives if they gave up, and pressed by the townspeople, the grand master opened talks. A truce on 11–13 December broke down, the bastion of Spain fell on 17 December, and on 20 December L'Isle-Adam asked for terms again. Two days later the city's Latin and Greek inhabitants accepted the sultan's conditions, which were generous. The knights could leave within twelve days with their arms and relics, islanders could depart at any time over three years, churches were not to be turned into mosques, and those who stayed were spared Ottoman taxes for five years.

On 1 January 1523 the knights marched out in armour with banners flying and sailed on 50 ships to Venetian Crete, followed by several thousand civilians.

Rhodes eased Ottoman sea communications between Constantinople, Cairo and the Levant, and it later served as a base for the conquest of Crete, completed in 1669. The homeless knights moved to Sicily until, in 1530, Emperor Charles V granted them Malta, Gozo and Tripoli. There they would face Suleiman again in the Great Siege of Malta of 1565.

Our 1500 map shows Rhodes still held by the knights off the Ottoman coast, and the 1530 map shows the island, now part of Greece, under Ottoman rule.