History Unplugged Podcast · History Unplugged

How an Italian Engineer with 700 Knights Defeated 100,000 Ottoman Troops at the Siege Rhodes

·43 min·2 clips

Tadino used a tambourine-like listening device to detect Ottoman miners under Rhodes walls.

Gabriel Tadino is the hinge. The excerpt treats him as a military scientist and engineer the host thinks history has oddly pushed to the side. The big frame is still there: medieval chivalry is giving way to Renaissance problem solving, and Rhodes is where that change gets tested under siege. But the best material is more practical than grand. The defense is about systems, terrain, leadership, and whether the right specialist can arrive in time. Eduardo Albert gives the story its motion. Tadino needs to reach Rhodes, but Venice cannot look like it is helping the knights against the Ottomans. Crete becomes the jammed doorway. The governor refuses permission and keeps Tadino under observation. After a couple of ordinary days, he decides the danger has passed. That is when Tadino moves. Knights are waiting in a small cove up the coast, but the escape immediately runs into bad wind. That delay makes the whole passage feel tighter. Galleys search the coast while Tadino's party tries to look harmless, even dragging the brigantine onto the beach as if it needs repair. When asked about the Venetian brigantine, they send the searchers the wrong way and wait for better weather. It is not glamorous. It is careful, nervous, and very useful. Albert recalls Tadino reaching Rhodes on July 22nd, as the siege is closing in and Sultan Solomon arrives on Rhodes. The timing does the work. Tadino is not sold as a sword-waving hero, but as the specialist who would guide the defense through the first day of the new year. Sponsor copy interrupts the history, so the cleanest thread is Tadino's hidden passage to Rhodes. It is a siege prelude built on engineering judgment, political fog, and one narrow opening.

As heard by us

A tense escape carries Gabriel Tadino into Rhodes' desperate defense.

Gabriel Tadino enters the episode as a major military scientist and engineer of the 16th century, pulled toward a starkly uneven fight: 700 Knights Hospitaller and several thousand mercenaries against 100,000 Ottoman troops at Rhodes.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want an engineer, 700 Knights Hospitaller, and 100,000 Ottoman troops in one improbable siege at Rhodes.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from History Unplugged Podcast