Guillaume Caoursin

[1] He was an eye-witness to the siege of Rhodes in 1480, an unsuccessful attack on the Hospitaller garrison led by Pierre d'Aubusson by an Ottoman fleet of 160 ships and an army of 70,000 men under the command of admiral Mesih Pasha.

In 1466, he accompanied the Grand Master Piero Raimondo Zacosta to Rome for the holding of a general chapter.

Zacosta died in Rome and Caoursin returned to Rhodes with the new grand master Giovanni Battista Orsini.

Shortly after this siege, he married and d'Aubusson, recognizing the services he had rendered to the Order in the new compilation of legal statutes, presented him with a thousand gold florins.

[1] On July 5, 1816, a relic of Caoursin was discovered in the chapel of the house of Notre-Dame de Douai, which, since the destruction of the Templars, belonged to the Hospitallers.