Page:The Book of Orders of Knighthood and Decorations of Honour of All Nations.djvu/71

Rh which they had gloriously maintained for nearly two hundred and twenty years, in fifty vessels which brought them, and four thousand inhabitants of the place to Candia. Thence they repaired to Venice, Rome, Viterbo, Nizza, Villafranca, and Syracuse; until 1530, when the Emperor Charles V, enfeoffed them with the island of Malta, together with Tripolis, and the islands of Gozzo and Comino, under the condition that they should wage an incessant war against the pirates and infidels.

In this their new residence, they served for a long time for Europe, as a strong bulwark against the Turks; they were courted by the monarchs of Protestant Europe, despite the slur cast upon their religious principles, ever since the introduction of the Reformation in England, Germany, and the Northern States of Europe, and notwithstanding the loss of Tripolis (1552) which was wrested from them by Dragut, the Saracen General. During the whole of the 17th century, it was, indeed, by their assistance alone that the European powers, each and all, were enabled to make head against the powerful Turks, and finally succeeded in expelling them from Candia, Prevesa, St. Maura, Koron, Navarin, Modon, and Chio.

Nor are there wanting brilliant pages in their history as late even as the middle of the eighteenth century, though the Order had then greatly suffered by the moral degeneration of its members. The events, however, of 1761, by which Malta and the Order were only saved from total destruction by the intercession of France, sufficiently testified to the utter decline and fall of that gigantic institution, while the Turks, themselves, thenceforth began to look at the Knights of Malta no longer as dangerous enemies, but as mere troublesome, factious, and quarrelsome neighbours, whom they were obliged to spare and leave unmolested, simply because they were protected by the great powers of Europe.