Page:A History of the Knights of Malta, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.djvu/333

Rh reputation during the same struggle. The attack upon the Egyptian colony and its protecting ships was eventually completely successful, although the issue of the day hung for a long time in the balance. The fleet was utterly destroyed, many of the vessels being sunk, and the remainder captured, whilst their crews and the shipbuilders who were seized on land were brought as slaves into the harbour of Rhodes.

It was during the rule of D’Amboise that the gate which bears his name was completed. Newton thus speaks of this structure: “The castello is entered from the west by a noble gateway commenced by the Grand-Master D’Aubusson after a great earthquake, and finished by his successor D’Amboise, from whom this gate takes its name. Over the door within an ogee frame is a slab of white marble, on which is sculptured in relief an angel holding the escutcheon of D’Amboise, with the inscription Amboyse MDXII.”

The completion of this gateway must have been the last important act in the career of the Grand-Master, as he died on the 8th November, 1512, at the age of seventy-eight years, much honoured and regretted.

Guy de Blanchefort, nephew of Peter D’Aubusson, and grand-prior of Auvergue, became the forty-first Grand-Master, a post for which he was highly qualified, and to which his numerous important services had justly entitled him. It was to his care that Djem had been intrusted during the lengthened residence of that prince in France. He had subsequently been nominated to the office of lieutenant to the Grand-Master, in which position he had rendered much important assistance both to D’Aubusson and to D’Amboise. The high reputation which his talents had gained for him raised a general expectation that his tenure of office would be a distinguished one. He was not, however, fated to realize these flattering aspirations, his career having been cut short by death within a few months of his accession.

He was at the time of his nomination residing in his grand-priory, and the Turks took advantage of the absence of a Grand-Master from Rhodes to develop a plot amongst some of the Greek inhabitants and Turkish slaves. They had made preparations by which, on a given signal, one of the gates of