Page:A History of the Knights of Malta, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.djvu/376

346 of the quarter of St. Mary of Victory, the point where the last and most desperate struggle had taken place in the previous siege.

A commission was appointed, consisting of the chancellor D’Amaral, the Turcopolier John Buck, and Gabriel de Pomeroys, whose duty it was to examine into the stores of provisions and ammunition contained within the arsenals of the city. They reported that the supply of both was ample, and that no further provision of either was necessary. As a matter of fact the ammunition of the besieged soon fell short, and this deficiency was one of the main causes which led to the loss of Rhodes. This report, by which the Grand-Master was misled as to the state of his magazines, was brought forward against the unfortunate D’Amaral as an additional proof of the treason of which, as we shall presently see, he was convicted. The absurdity of the accusation is apparent; the treason, if such it were, must have been shared in by his brother commissioners, against whose fair fame no suspicion has ever attached. Nothing, in fact, is more likely than that the commissioners should have underestimated the expenditure of powder. The siege was much more protracted than the former one, whilst the amount of powder consumed in the niining operations of Martinigo, eminently successful as they were, went far towards exhausting the supply, and could hardly have been foreseen or provided for by D’Amaral or his associates.

D’Amaral, unfortunately for himself, was of so haughty and turbulent a disposition, that he was perpetually adding to the number of his antagonists, and giving them some fresh pretext upon which to found additional accusations against him. Thus, at this critical moment he headed a cabal which broke out amongst the knights of the Italian langue, who, under the excuse that the Pope was assuming the patronage of their commanderies, requested permission to depart for Rome so as to plead their cause in person before his Holiness. This request was very naturally refused by L’Isle Adam, who, at the moment he was expecting to see the whole power of the Ottoman empire arrayed against him, could ill spare the services of a single knight. D’Amaral, still undoubtedly smarting under a sense of jealousy at the preference shown for L’Isle Adam, prompted them to take for themselves the leave