The Hospitaller War Machine

From Fortresses of The Knights, ISBN 99909-72-06-0

The Hospitaller War-Machine

'We and our brethren, mixing knighthood with religion, sweat in the unending toil of defending [the Holy Land]. We do not refuse to spill our blood as we resist the enemies of the Cross of Christ and we make greater expenses than ever before in its defence' . - Letter from Master Gilbert d'Assailly to the Bishop of Trani.

The Military Orders of knighthood which came into existence during the Crusades can all be said to have evolved in response to the exigencies of Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land. The Hospitaller Order of St John, in particular, began as a charitable institution based upon the founding of a hospital in Jerusalem for the care of pilgrims and even when its brethren eventually took up arms, they did so as an extension of their eleemosynary activities in order to protect pilgrims on the dangerous insecure routes leading to and from Jerusalem. Together with the Templars, they soon began to participate in the military affairs of the kingdom and eventually developed into an effective and feared military organization, one that combined the concepts of knighthood and monasticism to ensure a single-mindedness of purpose that anchored their Order in the forefront of the Christian struggle against the infidel in a kind of holy war.

The heart of this war machine, like that of any other military organization with its origins deeply rooted in the medieval world, were the knights, an elite corps of feudal warriors drawn from among the noble families of Europe. Unlike their secular counterparts, however, the Hospitaller milites were warriors bound by religious vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience to an organization devoted towards furthering the aims and ambitions of the church. This did not make them the less militant. On the contrary, it only served to reinforce their role as the soldiers of Christ. In all the theatres of war in which the Order established its convent, the Hospitallers followed an unremitting aggressive policy of offensive actions - the chaveaux in the Holy Land and the naval corso in Rhodes and Malta. This continual belligerency inevitably roused heavy retaliation from their Muslim enemies. In effect, the Hospitallers' survival throughout nearly six hundred years of warfare was as much a result of their daring, bravery, and fighting prowess as it was due to their unceasing efforts in strengthening and building fortifications. Their ability to survive on the border outposts of Christendom in the face of ever-growing Muslim power was largely possible only because of the possession of formidable fortresses.

It can thus be said that the history of the Hospitaller knights is in many ways a history of fortifications. For it begins in the Holy Land with the gift of the castle of Bait Gibrin from King Fulk of Jerusalem in 1136, and ends with the surrender of the Maltese islands to Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798. In between, there were nearly six centuries of incessant warfare, sieges, and fortress-building spread across the shores of the Mediterranean. Six centuries that saw the evolution of the art and science of fortification from the medieval castle at one end, down to the polygonal gun forts at the other. Crac des Chevaliers, Marqab, the fortresses and castles of Rhodes and the Dodecanese islands, and the bastioned enceintes and towers of Malta, are amongst the most outstanding examples of military architecture in the world and all stand monument to the extraordinary effort which the knights of St John invested in the design and construction of their fortifications in an unending struggle to redress the odds stacked against them.

For the moment the Hospitaller brethren took up arms, fortified strongholds became an indispensable tool of their crusading mitier The importance of these fortifications and their role in the continued existence of the Order becomes all the more clear when one appreciates the comparative smallness of the Hospitallers' military organization, which never amounted to more than a few hundred brethren backed by a few thousand men, the latter generally mercenaries or native militia recruited from the Order's territories. Stacked against them, however, was the might of the Muslim world, and on many occasions this was unleashed with great fury. With shortage of manpower being a constant feature of the Order's existence, it was inevitably the stone walls which had to make up for the lack of warriors 'in the permanent and arduous task of defence.' Frequently, the formula worked well and the knights owed much of their fame to a succession of epic sieges, notably those of Rhodes in 1480 and Malta in 1565, in which they successfully resisted considerably larger Turkish armies. And even where it failed, as at Acre in 1291 and Rhodes in 1522, the knights were able to extract some glory from their defeats. Charles Vs well-worn comment that nothing was ever so well lost as Rhodes was inspired by its surrender to Sultan Suleiman after a 5,000 strong Christian force led by Grand Master L'Isle Adam held out for six months against a Turkish army of 200,000 men.

In all the theatres of war in which the Order established its military base - the Latin East, Rhodes, and Malta - the knights' fortifications served primarily as the eastern bulwarks of Christendom. Their strongholds functioned both as frontier marches guarding against Muslim incursions into Christian territory and as military bases spearheading raiding expeditions into enemy lands. Twice the Hospitaller knights were forced to withdraw from their position under the heavy blows of the mighty Turkish war machine as it forced its way westward towards Christian lands, first at Acre in 1291 and then Rhodes in 1522, and each time the Order had to seek a new base and adapt itself to continue its struggle. Perhaps the most significant factor that was to influence the nature of the fighting tradition of the Hospitaller knight was the Order's transformation into a naval force for, with the loss of Acre in 1291, the Hospitaller knights had no other option but to trade their chargers for galleys in order to retain their crusading metier going on to fight most of their battles at sea. preying on Turkish shipping from their island bases of Rhodes and, later, Malta.

Although with the acquisition of its territorial possessions, particularly the islands of Rhodes and Malta, the Hospitaller Order acquired the trappings of an independent sovereign state, it remained intrinsically an international force which, whenever the need arose, could draw upon huge resources from those European nations represented in its organization. At the head of this brotherhood stood the grand master, who was elected for life by the senior members of the Order. The grand master, however, was subject to the Hospitaller statutes and was expected to govern with the advice of the council. His actual power was circumscribed by the chapter general, the supreme legislative authority. This assembly comprised all the senior brethren of the Order and was convened occasionally to enact laws and impose taxes. The day-to-day administration of the government of the Order was performed by the Gran Consiglio, the council or conventus, which was presided over by the grand master himself and involved the senior knights, the grand priors and bailiffs, residing at the convent, the Order's headquarters.

Grand priors, bailiffs, or piliers (pillerii), the heads of the various nationalities making up the Order, were responsible for administering the Order's vast territorial properties. The various nationalities, known as tongues, langues or languages, were in effect based on the geographical groupings of such territorial possessions, known as priories. Each priory was itself subdivided into basic administrative units known as commanderies, governed by a commendator. Those commanderies crucial for the defence of the Order were known as castellanies and fell under the jurisdiction of a castellan. The grand priors actually residing in the convent, the conventual bailiffs, held the important posts in the government of the Order. These responsibilities were established according to strict and elaborate rules intended to guarantee that political power within the Order was not concentrated into the hands of any one faction. Thus, second in rank to the master, came the grand commander (magnus commendator), a post always occupied by the pilier of the langue of Provence. His role was to control the common treasury. The pilier of Auvergne served as the grand marshal, the senior military commander. France supplied the grand hospitaller who administered the hospital, Italy the admiral in charge of the Order's naval forces, and Aragon. the conservator, who was responsible for the upkeep of charitable foundations. The pilier of England, the grand turcopolier. controlled the native militia. With the demise of the English langue in the mid-sixteenth century, this duty was delegated to the seneschal. The pilier of Germany held the title of magnus praeceptor and was entrusted with the command of the military outposts.

It was the Gran Consiglio which was directly concerned with the overall management of fortifications. It delegated such tasks, however, to commissions of knights assisted by competent military engineers. In 1475, for example, a commission of two knights was set up to inspect and record, every two years, the state of the towers and castles of Rhodes. A competent 'Commissario delle Fabriche c fortificationi, c le munitione' during that period was the knigh FrA Filippo di Giudone. Grand master d'Aubusson, prior to his being elected to his magistracy in 1476, held the post of 'Provediteur des Fortifications'. After the mid-seventeenth century these commissions were institutionalized into permanent sub-committees of the council, known as the congregation of war and fortification. By the late eighteenth century, these came to be composed of the marshal, four commissioners, the seneschal, the resident military engineer, the ordinary commissioner of fortification, the commander of artillery, and the commanders of the regular reciments. The member of the congregation most directly in control of the fortifications, however, was the resident engineer, the Ingeniere della Religione, who was employed specifically by the Order and entrusted with the supervision and maintenance of all fortified works. One of the earliest known engineers who operated in such a capacity was Bartholino de Castilione. He is known to have been employed at Bodrum and other islands in 1502. It is also in Rhodes that one first comes across the distinction between the ordinary resident engineer and the foreign military expert loaned by some European monarch to help design specific projects for the Order. Beneath the engineer came the master masons, skilled craftsmen and the native labourers. Slaves, too, were frequently put to work digging trenches and transporting earth.

Creating and maintaining a network of fortifications and outposts, an army, and after 129 1, even a navy, demanded a good organizational framework and huge resources went into ensuring that the Order's armed forces, garrisons, and fleet of galleys were adequately supplied with the weapons and munitions necessary for war. The money which paid for all this military effort and kept the Order's war machine oiled came form various founts. A large part was derived from the commanderies which remitted, annually, a fraction of their incomes (fixed at one-third) to the central treasury of the Order. To this revenue was usually added the profits generated from the spoglios, the spoils of war and mortuaries (properties of knights which reverted to the Order on their death) but these funds merely helped pay soldiers wagers and other current --- expenditures, and were frequently insufficient to support the extraordinary outlays that accompanied military campaigns and largescale building of fortifications. The bulk of the money to cover such enterprises generally came from donations and gifts made to the Order by European princes and monarchs, and, more frequently, by individual members of the Order itself, some of whom were considerably wealthy men in their own right.

Indeed, the Hospitallers were drawn from the noble aristocratic families of Europe and their nobility gave the Order direct access to the courts of many a European monarch. These connections also allowed the Order to tap the expertise of many of the leading military engineers employed in the warring armies of Europe. Their services ensured that Hospitaller military works remained within the stream of the latest developments in the art of fortifications. On many occasions, however, the Hospitaller knights and the engineers in their employ did not simply succeed in keeping abreast of the latest developments in the art of fortification, but were able, in the words of Prof. Quentin Hughes, 'to actually lead the field - they were early in the development of concentric defences, gun-powder artillery bastions, countermining, the caponier, the fougasse and polygonal forts. From the twelfth to the end of the eighteenth century, Hospitaller military architecture manifests nearly all the emerging devices of fortification which were to influence the nations of the West.'

Purchase Details

A bit expensive, I got my paperback copy in Malta for L28, about £37