they desired, the Knights, ere long, established themselves in a more satisfactory home on the island of Rhodes. _F. C. Woodhouse, Military Religious Orders of the Middle Ages, part 1, chapter 3-6._ ALSO IN: _Abbe de Vertot, History of the Knights Hospitallers, books 1-3 (volume 1)._ _A. Sutherland, Achievements of the Knights of Malta, chapters 1-9 (volume 1)._ HOSPITALLERS OF ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM: A. D. 1310. Conquest and occupation of Rhodes. "The most important conquest of the time … was that of Rhodes, by the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, both from its durability and from the renown of the conquerors. The knights had settled in Cyprus after they had been expelled from Acre, but they were soon discontented to remain as vassals of the King of Cyprus. They aspired to form a sovereign state, but it was not easy to make any conquests from the Infidels in a position which they could hope to maintain for any length of time. They therefore solicited permission from the Pope to turn their arms against the Greeks. His Holiness applauded their Christian zeal, and bestowed on them innumerable blessings and indulgences, besides nine thousand ducats to aid their enterprise. Under the pretext of a crusade for the recovery of Christ's tomb, the knights collected a force with which they besieged Rhodes. So great was their contempt for the Greek emperor that they sent an embassy to Constantinople, requiring Adronicus to withdraw his garrisons, and cede the island and its dependencies to them as feudatories, offering to supply him with a subsidiary force of three hundred cavalry. Adronicus dismissed the ambassadors, and sent an army to raise the siege; but his troops were defeated, and the knights took the city of Rhodes on the 15th August, 1310. As sovereigns of this beautiful island, they were long the bulwark of Christian Europe against the Turkish power; and the memory of the chivalrous youth who for successive ages found an early tomb at this verge of the Christian world, will long shed a romantic colouring on the history of Rhodes. They sustained the declining glory of a state of society that was hastening to become a vision of the past; they were the heroes of a class of which the Norse sea-kings had been the demigods. The little realm they governed as an independent state consisted of Rhodes, with the neighbouring islands of Kos, Kalymnos, Syme, Leros, Nisyros, Telos, and Chalke; on the opposite continent they possessed the classic city of Halicarnassus, and several strong forts, of which the picturesque ruins still overhang the sea." _G. Finlay, History of the Byzantine and Greek Empires, book 4, chapter 2 (volume 2)._ ALSO IN: _W. Porter, History of the Knights of Malta, chapters 7-10 (volume 1)._