Page:A History of the Knights of Malta, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.djvu/416

386 length enabled to organize his expeditionary force. There he found everything in a state of the utmost confusion. The Pope had drawn down upon himself the vengeance of the emperor by joining in the league against him. The constable de Bourbon, who was that monarch’s commander in Italy, had under Charles’s direction led his troops to Rome, where, having carried the city by storm, he handed it over to pillage. After holding out for a month in the castle of St. Angelo, the Pope was himself captured and taken away prisoner to Naples. This political storm completely destroyed the prospects of the knights, and it was not until nearly two years afterwards, when peace had been signed between the emperor and the Pope, that the Grand- Master was able to gain any further hearing on behalf of the interests of his fraternity. During this protracted interval the favourable opportunity was lost. Achmet pasha had been assassinated, the plots of the Rhodians discovered, and consequently all hope of success in that quarter was over. . It only remained to revert to the original project of the occupation of Malta, and the Pope, who was now reconciled to the emperor, exerted his influence for the abatement of the distasteful conditions on which the islands had been originally offered.

The result of his interposition was that an act of donation received the imperial signature at Syracuse on the 24th of March, 1530, by which deed Charles vested in the Order of St. John the complete and perpetual sovereignty of the islands of Malta and Gozo, and the city of Tripoli, together with all their castles and fortresses. The only conditions attached to the gift were that the knights should never make war upon the kingdom of Sicily; that they should annually present a falcon to the viceroy as an acknowledgment; that the nomination to the bishopric of Malta should be vested in the emperor from amongst three candidates to be selected for that purpose by the Grand-Master; that this dignitary should have a seat in the council ranking next in precedence to him; together with several other minor clauses touching the extradition of Sicilian criminal refugees, and the selection of commanders to the galleys of the Order in the Mediterranean. The whole concluded with a proviso that should the brethren at any time desire to abandon the islands, they were not to transfer them to any other power