In 1522, Sultan Soliman II., surnamed the Magnificent, discovered amidst his father’s archives an exact account of the island of Rhodes, and resolved to attack it. He put forward, as a pretext, a desire to punish the knights of the order for the losses they were daily inflicting on the Turkish navy, and the hope of paralyzing their efforts in favour of the Holy Land. The treachery of André Amaral, the chancellor of the order and the grand prior of Castile, who wished to revenge himself on his brother knights for having preferred to himself as their grand master, Philippe de Villiers de l’Ile-Adam, made Soliman aware of the scanty material resources of the island, and persuaded him to undertake the fatal siege, in which treachery and deceit were his most powerful allies. In vain did he collect a fleet of four hundred sail, an army of one hundred and forty thousand men and sixty thousand pioneers; in vain he swept the ramparts with the fire of his guns, in vain he dug ditch after ditch, mine upon mine, and endeavoured to wear out the besieged by his harassing and ceaseless attacks. His want of success would have certainly exhausted his patience, and he would probably have raised the siege had not the traitor Amaral revealed to him the weak condition of both the town and its garrison. At last, however, on the 30th of November, the Turks made what was supposed to be their final effort. They penetrated as far as the inner defences, and the struggle was a terrible one. Roused by the tocsin, the grand master, the knights, and the inhabitants poured on to the ramparts and threw themselves on the enemy, who had already deemed themselves successful, and forced them to retreat.