After a series of bloody assaults, from the 24th of May to the 21st of June, the garrison were reduced to extremity. They sent a swimmer across the port to the Grand Master, to request succour, and five large boats were soon fitted out and filled with knights. But the shore was now lined with Turkish artillery, and they were unable to effect a landing. “The besieged in the fort being now out of all hopes of succour, thought of nothing but ending their lives like good Christians and true religious. For which purpose they were all night long preparing themselves for it, by receiving the sacraments of the church: when this was over, and that nothing remained but the giving up their souls to God, they embraced one another with tenderness, and retired to their several posts in order to die with their weapons in their hands, and expire in the bed of honour. Such as were not able to walk by reason of their wounds, had themselves carried in chairs to the side of the breach, where, armed with swords, which they held with both their hands, they waited with a heroic resolution till such time as their enemies, towards whom they were not able to advance, should come and attack them in their posts. “The next day, the 23rd of June, the Turks, at daybreak, came on to the assault with great shouts, as if they were going to a victory which it would be impossible to dispute with them. But the Christian soldiers defended themselves with invincible bravery; one would have thought that the certainty of an approaching death which they were to share in common with the knights, had put them on the same level with respect to courage. They advanced to meet the enemy with as much intrepidity as if they had beaten them, and such as could not walk fired on the enemy with their pieces; and when by reason of their continual discharges they had spent all their powder, they supplied themselves from the pouches of their comrades who had dropped by their side: in fine, the knights having sustained an assault for four hours together, had but sixty persons left to defend the breach; but these were something more than men, who, by a noble contempt of death, still made their enemies tremble. The commander, seeing the place on the point of being forced by the Turks, recalled some Christian soldiers, who till then had maintained themselves upon the cavalier which lay before the fort. The basha, seeing the breach fortified with this small reinforcement, discontinued the assault in an instant, as if he had again been disheartened by so obstinate a resistance, and pretended to retire, but it was only to make his janissaries seize, not only on the cavalier, which was abandoned, but likewise on all such points as were higher than the breach, and overlooked the inside of the fort. The besieged employed this little suspension from fighting in dressing their wounds, not so much for the sake of preserving the poor remains of life as