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Updated: May 26, 2025
It has a wall and bastions built of stone. It is abundantly provided with cannon and war-supplies, which are sent from the Manilles. There are also 30 Portuguese families, 60 or 80 Chinese families, who engage in different trades, and 50 or 60 Christian Molucca families. "They have another fort between Gammalamma and Malaia, called Sts.
The Kent and Tyger opened fire on the southeast and northeast bastions, and these two vessels bore the brunt of a tremendous cannonade from the fort. The French artillery was well served, doing fearful damage on board the British vessels. On the Kent, save the admiral himself and one lieutenant, every officer was killed or wounded.
There were nearly fifty forts and redoubts in these lines, of sufficient importance to have names which in those days became household words, not only in the Netherlands, but in Europe; the siege of Ostend being the one military event of Christendom, so long as it lasted. These names are of course as much forgotten now as those of the bastions before Nineveh.
A wall, with tower bastions, enclosed the whole, and detached square towers within overlooked all; while a ditch, fifteen feet deep, ran outside, and beyond it were gardens, with high thorn and cactus fences: altogether it was a very formidable position. Shortly before one o'clock on the 5th, the Persian videttes and reconnoitring parties were made out; but they very rapidly retreated.
The rebels were in enormous force at these positions; field-guns and howitzers poured grape and canister into the assaulting columns, and musketry rained on them from the adjoining houses. Time after time attacks were made, till the sadly harassed soldiers, completely worn out, were forced to retire to the Kabul Gate and the bastions and ramparts they had already gained.
Upon this immense work the Order had expended no small proportion of their revenue since their capture of the island in 1310, and the result was a fortress that, under the conditions of warfare of that age, seemed almost impregnable; and this without any natural advantage of position. In addition to the five great towers or bastions, the wall was strengthened by square towers at short intervals.
The towers were of a more massive construction than the wall itself, especially in the lower portion, where vast blocks were common. The wall was also broken at intervals by gates, some of which were posterns, either arched or covered in by flat stones, while others were of larger dimensions, and were protected, on one side or on both, by bastions.
The fort was flanked with two bastions of wood and grass, until such time as they could be covered with stone. The fort was ready for habitation at the commencement of the year 1629, and Champlain took up his residence there at this date, with two young Indian girls whom he had adopted as his children.
This point has not been taken into due consideration by modern writers; the fortifications of Rome, designed or begun or finished at the time of Paul III., have nothing to do with the sack of 1527, with the Connétable de Bourbon, or with the Emperor Charles V. All the bastions, that of the Belvedere excepted, point towards the sea-coast, which was perpetually harried and terrified by Turkish or Barbary pirates.
It was likely that ere long they might be called upon to stand a siege, but, acquainted as they were with the strength of the place its deep and seemingly impassable moat, its massive walls, and protecting towers and bastions it had seemed to them that Rhodes was capable of withstanding all assaults, however numerous the foe, however oft repeated the invasion.
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