The Hospitallers: crusaders and privateers

How the Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem did it gradually turned into military maritime vocation? This is the question that the book meets Anne Brogini entitled "The Hospitallers and the Sea", attempts to answer by analyzing the operations of those we dubbed the "privateers in Christendom."

The text of Anne Brogini is in the usual format Illustoria collection (100 pages with a central 16-page booklet dillustrations color) and focuses on the period from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century. The Mediterranean is no longer Mare Nostrum of the Romans, but a real battlefield between Muslims and Christians. Since then their bases Rhodes Malta, the Hospitallers acting in concert with the Spaniards to fight against the formidable fleet of the Ottoman Empire.

It is focusing primarily on the characteristics of the race war which replaces the crusade as an essential activity of the Order of Malta (the order name from 1565) that the author is original and interesting work: areas ambushes, running or trade regulations related to these activities and it is a very good volume in this series often of uneven value.