Siege of Rhodes (1480)

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Siege of Rhodes
Part of: Turkish Wars
Contemporary depiction of the siege by Guillaume Caoursin
Contemporary depiction of the siege by Guillaume Caoursin
date May 23 to August 17, 1480
place Rhodes ; Greece
output Defeat of the besiegers
Parties to the conflict

Fictitious Ottoman flag 2.svg Ottoman Empire

Flag of the Order of St. John (various) .svg Order of St. John

Commander

Mesih Pasha

Blason Pierre d'Aubusson.svg Pierre d'Aubusson

Troop strength
70,000-100,000 7,000, including around 600 knights and 1,500 mercenaries
losses

9,000 dead;
15,000 wounded

around 300 knights of the order; an unknown number of other defenders

The siege of Rhodes , the capital and most important fortress of the Order of St. John , began on May 23, 1480 and ended - after a last unsuccessful assault attempt on July 28 - in August 1480 with the re-embarkation of the Turkish siege army Sultan Mehmed II (r. 1451– 1481).

procedure

Already at the beginning of December 1479 a Turkish landing attempt, which was probably a kind of "armed reconnaissance", had been rejected by the knights of the order. Thereupon Pierre d'Aubusson (1423-1503), the reigning Grand Master of the order , sent a request for help to the friars in the rest of Europe, due to which an army with the 450 best knights of the order from France and Italy, as well as 2,000 soldiers, had already been established before the siege began came to the aid of his brother Antoine from France. The expected major attack by the Ottomans came in May 1480, when they gradually landed up to 100,000 infantry, cavalry and artillery on Rhodes with around 170 ships. These cut off the city completely from the outside world and systematically laid its fortifications in ruins with the heaviest artillery during the following weeks and months .

After two large-scale assault attempts in June, the Turks launched a general attack on the already heavily damaged fortifications on July 28, 1480. They succeeded in occupying the ramparts and the fall of the city seemed certain when a herald of the Turkish commander-in-chief Mesih Pasha (a palaeologist ) announced a ban on looting and claimed the treasures of the city for the sultan. This announcement had a devastating effect on the morale of the Turkish soldiers: Angry and disappointed, some of them left the positions they had just captured; Others, in turn, are likely to have taken this withdrawal movement as an escape for their comrades-in-arms and now began to flow back too, so that the entire Turkish army was soon in retreat. The defenders commanded by d'Aubusson now used the confusion that had developed among their enemies for a courageous counterattack, which turned the Turkish retreat into a flight and cost many more Turks their lives.

consequences

After this renewed failure, the Turkish commander-in-chief Mesih Pasha saw no more possibility of persuading his troubled army to attempt another assault. All he had left was the inglorious departure from the island. The sultan's anger over this failure did not cost Mesih Pasha his life, but he lost all of his high offices and was transferred to the province as a simple Sanjakbey . The Turks had left behind a completely devastated island, the reconstruction of which was made even more difficult by a severe earthquake the following year .

Printed sources and literature

  • Franz Babinger : Mehmed the Conqueror. World striker at a turning point. License edition for R. Piper GmbH & Co. KG, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-492-10621-8 .
  • Wilhelm von Caoursin : De obsidione et bello Rhodiano . Small Latin script about the siege of Rhodes by the Turks in 1480, printed by Johann Snell in Odense, 1482.
  • Robert Douglas and Kelly DeVries: Rhodes Besieged: A New History. The History Press, Stroud 2011, ISBN 978-0752461786 .
  • Klaus-Peter Matschke: The cross and the half moon. The history of the Turkish wars. Artemis & Winkler Verlag, Düsseldorf and Zurich 2004, ISBN 3-538-07178-0 .

Web links

Commons : Siege of Rhodes (1480)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

See also

Remarks

  1. Babinger (1987), p. 420.
  2. Babinger (1987), p. 439.
  3. Matschke (2004), p. 218.
  4. It is considered to be the first printed book in Denmark. The German translation of the “Historia von Rhodis” (Bodo Gotzkowsky (ed.): Johannes Adelphus, Selected Writings. Volume Two: Historia von Rhodis, Die Türckisch Chronica. Editions of German Literature from the XVth to XVIIIth Centuries, Vol. 86, Berlin , New York) by Johannes Adelphus Muling was published by Martin Flach in Strasbourg in 1513. Historia Von Rhodis, How chivalrously she behaved with the tyrannical keiser Machomet vß Türckye [n], funny vn [d] leplich zuo read . Martin Flach, Strasbourg 1513, VD 16 C 790, online .