You know, Count, such knights as you are only found in Madame de Souza's novels.
In 1309 it was conquered by the Knights Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem at the instigation of the pope and the Genoese, and converted into a great fortress for the protection of the southern seas against the Turks.
The scene of the third act represented a palace in which many candles were burning and pictures of knights with short beards hung on the walls.
But the piratical acts of these traders, in which the knights themselves sometimes joined, and the strategic position of the island between Constantinople and the Levant, necessitated its reduction by the Ottoman sultans.
These fortifications are all the work of the Knights of St John.
