Yet the Hospitallers had their enemies; those who had plundered and destroyed one order, and given it up to centuries of defamation, would willingly have done the same by its survivor. It was said of them that they never gave alms;—scarcely an accusation, had it even been true, if indeed they kept their subjects from the need of alms-giving; but false, unless we leave out of sight the hospital and its vast system of charity daily dispensed in grand and lavish profusion. And that they did not spare themselves in their exertions to meet the expenses of that system, is evident from the law made about that time limiting the table of the knights to a single dish. The Hospitallers had been nominally declared heirs to the unfortunate Templars; yet, save the odium attaching to the suspicion of possessing enormous wealth, they gained little by the decree; for in almost every country, with the exception of England, the property of the suppressed order found its way into the royal coffers. Villeneuve, and the grand masters who succeeded him, were unsparing in their efforts to maintain the primitive and religious character of the order; and though, doubtless, there were abuses to reform, yet if we read the repeated remonstrances addressed to them from the Pontiffs, the accusations do not come to much. “There is a general feeling,” writes Clement V., “that you do not make a very good use of your money; it is said you keep fine horses, are superbly dressed, keen dogs and birds of prey, and neglect the defence of Christendom.” It must be allowed that these charges are somewhat vague. The real crime of the Hospitallers in the eyes of those who incessantly endeavoured to poison the minds of the Pontiffs against them, was their supposed wealth, which their accusers longed to sequestrate, and which, though greatly exaggerated, was made the pretence for throwing on them the chief burden of the Turkish war. During its long continuance they bore a part which should at least have acquitted them from the charge of slothfulness in the cause of Christendom. A new league having been formed against the infidels between the Pope, the king of Cyprus, the republic of Venice, and the Order of St. John, it was Biandra prior of Lombardy who led their forces in the attack on Smyrna, which he carried, sword in hand, at the head of his knights. Later, when the league was falling to pieces, it was revived by the grand master Deodato de Gozon. This Deodato was a very hero of romance—a second St. George, were we to credit the popular story of his combat with the dragon.[4] In his own day he deserved to receive the title of the “Magnanimous.” Immediately on his election he sailed in quest of the Turkish fleet, which he found at the little isle of Embro, near the mouth of the Dardanelles. Falling on it by surprise, he gained a brilliant victory, and captured 118 of the enemy’s vessels; and on returning from this exploit, he found the ambassadors of the king of Armenia