Page:A History of the Knights of Malta, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.djvu/335

Rh Very important changes had of late years been taking place in the East, which threatened the island of Rhodes with a renewed attack from the Ottoman power. The emperor Bajazet was the father of three sons, of whom the two elder partook greatly of his own inert and peaceable disposition. The youngest, whose name was Selim, inherited all the ambition and warlike aspirations of those ancestors who had raised the Turkish empire to its existing state of grandeur. Being as politic as he was warlike, Selim, the sole dream of whose life was to ascend the throne to which by birth he had no claim, exerted all his powers to ingratiate himself with the janissaries of his father’s army. In this attempt he succeeded so well that with their aid he contrived to depose his aged parent. He followed up this step by murdering him, as well as his two elder brothers, and the youthful parricide, having thus cleared the way, mounted the throne without fear of rivalry.

The accession of this fierce and warlike prince caused the utmost dismay amongst the neighbouring nations. With just reason they dreaded that before long they would become the victims of the same aggressive policy which had seated him on the throne of his father. In this fear the knights of Rhodes warmly participated, and they consequently at once cemented a treaty of affiance with the king of Persia and the sultan of Egypt. The storm burst, in the first instance, over the latter kingdom, and despite the efforts of the allies carried everything before it. The power of Selim, assisted by the treachery of the two Mamelouk governors, to whom had been confided the defence of the frontier, enabled him in the course of four years to overrun the whole of that country, and to add it to his own dominions. The traitorous Mamelouk chiefs were invested, one with the government of Egypt, the other with that of Syria, and the conquest being thus completed, Selim turiied his attention towards Rhodes, for the reduction of which he commenced immediate and formidable preparations. Whilst thus occupied he died suddenly of malignant cancer, and so afforded anoiher respite to the fraternity, of which the members were not slow in availing themselves for the still further protection of their island.

His only son, Solyman, ascended the throne precisely at the