Cyprus

FOLLOWING THE YOUTHFUL King Henry, the survivors of the fall of Acre took refuge in Cyprus. Here the Hospital already had extensive possessions, including valuable sugar plantations, and on its property at Limisso the Convent was officially established in 1292.

Two principal problems faced the Hospitallers: the first was to rebuild the Order after the appalling bloodletting at Acre, from which only seven knights had escaped with their lives. In 1302 the Chapter General laid down the number of knights and sergeants at arms that each country must send to bring the strength of the Convent to eighty fighting men; when we contrast this with the hundreds of knights who had garrisoned the castles of Syria we can appreciate the magnitude of the catastrophe from which the Order was struggling to recover.

The second problem was to find a strategic role after the loss of the Holy Land. It was plain, at any rate, that the knights could only continue the war of the Cross by taking to the sea, and this course was adopted without delay. A force of galleys was created which as early as 1293 was sent to the aid of Armenia, and in collaboration with the Templars several raids were made on Moslem territory, including an attempt, from the base of Ruad, to recover Tortosa. These efforts were doomed to failure. After the conquest of Acre, Egypt held the position of hegemony in the East which during the course of the fourteenth century it ceded to Ottoman Turkey. Neither the Kingdom of Cyprus nor the decimated military orders could hope to make any serious impact on its power. Cyprus,

Regarding the orders as dangerous subjects, put difficulties in the way of their re-equipping themselves for war, and forbade them to extend their land-holdings, so that neither the Templars nor the Hospitallers were reconciled to it as a permanent base. Armenia still held out as the only Christian kingdom on the Asiatic coast, and if the Hospitallers had committed all their resources to its defence they would have espoused a heroic role, but one for which they would have received small thanks in Europe - or perhaps in Armenia, whose monarchy was even less welcoming than that of Cyprus. In these conditions the pinpricks against Egypt were the only alternative to complete impotence, and in 1302 the abandonment of Ruad was the recognition of their failure.