Bastion del Carretto — Tower of Italy

On 23 May 1480 an Ottoman fleet of some 160 ships and, by this project’s own interpretive sources, up to 70,000 men appeared before Rhodes, met by a garrison of some 500 knights and 2,000 men-at-arms. Ottoman cannon inflicted heavy damage on the Tower of Italy through June, and on 27 July some 2,500–3,000 Janissaries breached the wall in this sector and entered the town. Grand Master Pierre d’Aubusson, aged about sixty, personally led the counterattack, climbing the scaling ladders himself and sustaining five wounds; the fighting in the Italian sector was decided within three hours. The Ottoman army withdrew on 17 August, having lost, by the Order’s own reckoning, some 9,000 dead and 15,000 wounded; Sultan Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, is reported by tradition to have died soon after of a fit of rage on receiving news of the defeat.

During the siege an Ottoman envoy offered Rhodes markedly generous terms of surrender, backed by the threat of sack and slaughter if refused. The response, delivered on Grand Master Pierre d’Aubusson’s own resolve, was uncompromising: that neither promises nor threats could move the defenders, that Latin and Greek Christian stood as one within the walls, and that the Sultan’s fleet would first have to withdraw before any talk of peace could be entertained. This document treats that refusal as inseparable from the fighting itself in explaining why Rhodes survived.

Caoursin’s account describes a man entrusted with a role in the city’s defence, exposed as a secret Ottoman agent after letters shot into the city on Ottoman arrows named him as complicit. Tortured after failing to confess under simple questioning, he admitted going over to the Ottoman side, and was executed to the open rejoicing of the Rhodian population. This document records the man’s name, as instructed, as Frapan; it notes transparently that “Beozius” is the spelling given throughout the 1496 Ulm edition of Caoursin consulted directly for this project, that “Frapan” does not appear in that source, and that the identity of the two names has not been independently verified.

Caoursin further reports — as what survivors themselves said rather than his own eyewitness claim — that when banners bearing the images of Christ, the Virgin Mary and St John the Baptist were raised over the ramparts by the Grand Master’s own order, the attacking Ottomans saw, or believed they saw, a golden cross blazing in the sky and a shining armed figure of the Virgin; the vision, Caoursin records, so terrified the attackers that, having already broken into the town, they broke and fled rather than press their advantage.

Basilio della Scuola, of Vicenza, is first recorded in 1494, when he killed a fellow citizen and fled to Naples; there he lived on a salary from King Charles VIII of France, who set him to supervise his artillery, before Venetian agents approached him — unsuccessfully — to sabotage the French guns in exchange for having his earlier offence pardoned.

Still in French service in 1496, he transported cannon and munitions through the Italian Wars of 1498–99 before Venice imprisoned him in 1500 for desertion and, on his release, took him back into service. In 1509, as a captain of artillery, he commanded bombardiers at the battle of Agnadello and was first to bring the Venetians news of victory, going on to the sieges of Padua and Treviso.

In 1516 he built a bastion to defend Verona, and by 1517 the Spanish King Charles V had granted him an annual income of 1,000 ducats. Invited to Rhodes by Grand Master Fabrizio del Carretto, della Scuola arrived in 1520 as, in this project’s own sources, “chief engineer of Emperor Maximilian II,” and applied “the most advanced techniques” of contemporary fortification to the old Rhodian defences, converting existing medieval towers into bastions beginning with the Tower of St Nicholas.

So thorough was the rebuilding that the post was renamed the Bastion del Carretto — the “Bulwark of the Wheelbarrow” in one English rendering of the Order’s own records, a play on carretto, “small cart,” in the Grand Master’s own surname. Della Scuola received 400 ducats from Charles V and left Rhodes on del Carretto’s death in 1521/22; from that moment, in the words of this project’s own sources, “nobody has ever seen or heard of the famous engineer Basilio dalla Scuola from Vicenza in Italy” again. Enrico Rocchi independently calls him “one of the greatest military architects of his time, fortifier of Rhodes.”

On 23 May an Ottoman fleet of 160 ships and, in this telling, 7,000 men appears before Rhodes; 500 Knights and 2,000 men-at-arms defend the city. By June the enemy cannon have inflicted heavy damage on the Tower of Italy, and the troops breach the wall in the south-eastern section. On 27 July, 2,500 Janissaries — the élite of the Ottoman troops — enter the town and launch an assault fought hand to hand, with cold steel. Grand Master d’Aubusson, sixty years old, leads the counterattack himself and is wounded five times; the battle in the Italian sector is decided in three hours, and 4,000 Ottoman soldiers are cut down. On 17 August the Ottoman forces withdraw, leaving 9,000 dead and 15,000 wounded. Sultan Mehmed II, it is said, dies soon after in a fit of rage at the news.

This panel account gives smaller troop numbers than the formal siege record above (160 ships and 7,000 men, here, against up to 70,000 elsewhere in this project's sources) — both figures are preserved as their own sources give them, rather than reconciled.

The siege of 1480 and the earthquake of 1481 have severely damaged the fortifications; Rhodes cannot withstand a new siege. The Knights mobilise every resource to rebuild a solid defensive line in a short time. Grand Master del Carretto armours the Tower of Italy with a bastion built to hold cannon emplacements — built, after the advent of gunpowder, with a magnificent backhand washer for the fire and an angled curtain. To reimburse the owners of the houses demolished to make way for it, the Knights spend 4,104 florins.

One gold florin is valued, by this project's own conversion, at about 200 EUR — some 820,000 EUR in today's terms for the 4,104 florins paid out.

Basilio dalla Scuola of Vicenza, chief engineer to Emperor Maximilian II, is sent to Rhodes in 1520. He applies the most advanced techniques of the day to the old layout, converting the existing towers into bastions one by one; he deepens the moat and strengthens the walls of the counterscarp, which becomes, in effect, a third wall. Basilio receives 400 ducats from the Spanish Emperor Charles V and leaves Rhodes in 1522. From this moment, his traces are lost forever.

400 ducats, by this project's own conversion at about 200 EUR each, is roughly 80,000 EUR in today's terms.