For over a century after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman Empire enjoyed an almost unbroken series of victories in Eastern Europe and throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. In 1571, the
By the early sixteenth century, Rhodes, the "Isle of Blossoming Roses," had become a thorn in the Ottoman Empire's side. In 1522, Sultan Suleiman I resolved to put an end to it and unleased a force of
