Page:A History of the Knights of Malta, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.djvu/52

 the majority of them abandoned their colours, and the Hospitallers found that they were left almost alone. No longer able to keep the open field they threw themselves into the city of Edessa with the intention of holding it to the last. In this critical conjuncture Eustace Garnier, constable of Palestine, a man far advanced in years, but in spite of his age full of vigour, collected a body of seven thousand men, the principal force of the small lordship of Sidon. To these he joined such of the Hospitallers as had been left behind at Jerusalem, and with this slender reinforcement he marched upon the Turcomans, routed them completely, and rescued both the prisoners who had fallen into the hands of Balak.

This victory was followed at no distant date by two others, the details of which it is scarcely necessary here to relate. Indeed, the chronicles of those times are filled with little else than a succession of petty enterprises undertaken by the Latins either for the purpose of protecting from invasion some point of their exposed frontier, or, as was not unfrequently the case, to carry the war into the enemy's country. In all these struggles the knights of St. John bore their share, as is fully testified by the historians of the period. Indeed, but for their assistance the king of Jerusalem would have found it impossible to maintain himself against the ever-increasing pressure from without. This was so fully recognized that Pope Innocent II., in the year 1130, issued a bull in which he records in glowing terms the opinion entertained of their services throughout Europe. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that a body of men who were rendering themselves so indispensable to the maintenance of Christianity in the East should receive every remuneration and the grant of every privilege which it was in the power of grateful Christendom to bestow.

It was about this time that a fraternity very similar to that of St. John sprang into existence. The duties of the Hospitallers, though in many ways attractive to the chivalric temper of the times, partook somewhat too much of the sedate occupations of the monk to be altogether pleasing. It must be remembered that though constantly engaged in warfare all their spare time was still devoted to the nursing duties of their Hospital, which, indeed, even now practically remained