Pierre d'Aubusson

Pierre d'Aubusson (1423 – 3 July 1503) was a Grand Master of the order of St. John of Jerusalem (the Knights Hospitaller) and a zealous opponent of the Ottoman Empire.

Pierre probably joined the Knights of St. John in 1444 or 1445 and then left for Rhodes.

Pierre d'Aubusson was born in the castle of Le Monteil (today: Le Monteil-au-Vicomte, in the French department of Creuse), the fifth son of Jean d'Aubusson. His older brother Antoine had a brilliant career serving Charles VII and Louis XI, and the other three brothers became bishops.

The alleged story of his youth to 1444, which has appeared in print since the 17th century, is unreliable. It derives from the fertile imagination of R.P. Dominique Bouhours, a Jesuit who published a biography of Pierre d'Aubusson (Paris, Mabre-Cramoisy, 1677) at the behest of Marshall d'Aubusson-La Feuillade.

Pierre d'Aubusson was elected "Grand Prior" of the "Langue d'Auvergne" in early 1476. In June 1476, he was elected Grand Master of the Order, having been a very close associate of a previous Grand Master, Raymond Zacosta, and responsible for the repair and modernization of the fortifications of the city of Rhodes, the other castles of the Order on the islands of the Dodecanese, and the Château Saint Pierre (formerly Halicarnasse, today Bodrum, Turkey).

Sultan Mehmed II began to threaten Europe. In May 1480 a large Ottoman fleet appeared before Rhodes, carrying an invading army of some 100,000 men under the command of Mesih Pasha (originally a Greek by the name of Michael Palaiologos who had converted to Islam after the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks).

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