Page:A History of the Knights of Malta, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.djvu/190

164 grand-marshal. The bailiff of Aragon was the grand-conservator, whose duties were somewhat analogous to those of a commissary-general in a modern army. The bailiff of Germany was grand bailiff of the Order, his jurisdiction being that of chief engineer. The bailiff of Castile and Portugal was grand-chancellor, and, as such, was supreme over the legal tribunals. The bailiff of England was the Turcopolier or chief of the light cavalry.

It has been a matter of some dispute as to what was the real signification of the term Turcopolier. The most probable of the explanations seems to be that of Ducange, who states in his glossary that the word Turcopolier is derived from the Greek πωλος, a colt, and thence an offspring generally, signifying the child of a Turkish parent. They were in all probability the children of Christian fathers by Turkish mothers, who, having been brought up in their father’s religion, were retained in the pay of the Order. “Being lightly armed, clothed in eastern fashion, inured to the climate, well acquainted with the country and with the Mussulman mode of warfare, they were found extremely serviceable as light cavalry and skirmishers, and consequently always attached to the war battalions.” The earliest record now in existence where mention is made of an English Turcopolier is dated in 1328, when an English knight was appointed to the office, and from that time until the year 1565, the post was invariably filled by an Englishman.

It is difficult to account for the arbitrary attachment of a peculiar office to each different langue, when it is remembered that most of these posts seem to have required much technical professional knowledge, and should, one would have thought, have been held by men chosen owing to their fitness for the appointment. It would certainly have appeared more sensible to have selected as chief engineer a man who had made the science of engineering, as then known and practised, his peculiar study, rather than to have given the appointment invariably to the bailiff of Germany, when that dignitary may have been, and probably very generally was, ignorant of the simplest rudiments of the profession. The only solution of this