rdfs:comment
| - The Valette family had been an important one in France for many generations, various members having accompanied the Kings of France in the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Crusades. Jean Parisot's grandfather, Bernard de Valette, was a Knight and King's Orderly, and his father Guillot was a Chevalier de France. Jean Parisot was a distant cousin (through their mutual ancestor Almaric de Valette) of Jean Louis de Nogaret de La Valette, first Duke of Épernon.
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abstract
| - The Valette family had been an important one in France for many generations, various members having accompanied the Kings of France in the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Crusades. Jean Parisot's grandfather, Bernard de Valette, was a Knight and King's Orderly, and his father Guillot was a Chevalier de France. Jean Parisot was a distant cousin (through their mutual ancestor Almaric de Valette) of Jean Louis de Nogaret de La Valette, first Duke of Épernon. Little is known about Valette's early life, although he was present during the Great Siege of Rhodes in 1523, and accompanied Grand Master Philippe Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, after the Order's expulsion from Rhodes by the Ottoman Turks under Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. Universally referred to as "La Valette," he was never actually called that during his lifetime. He was simply Jean de Valette, nicknamed Parisot. (The mistake arose some decades after his death when people began to confuse him with the city named in his honor, "La Citta Valletta.") Although his birth year is usually given as 1494, both chroniclers of the Great Siege of Malta, Francisco Balbi di Correggio and Hipolito Sans, say he was 67 at the time, thereby implying that he was born in 1498. In his history of the Order of St. John, the 18th-century historian Abbe Vertot (whose history is largely based on - but often confuses - the earlier one of Giacomo Bosio) indicates that Valette was indeed the same age as both Suleiman I and Lala Kara Mustafa Pasha (the commander of the Ottoman land forces), which would mean that he was actually 70 years old at the time of the siege.
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