February 1467 – 17 January 1468
Krujë, 1467–1468
Skanderbeg comes home in spring 1467 with a little money and grain from Ferrante of Naples. At Lezhë (Alessio) he joins Lekë Dukagjini and the lords of the north, and he gathers 13,400 men by Demetrio Franco’s count, among them Venetian soldiers and men from Durrës, Shkodër, Lezhë, Drisht and Bar. They march past the mouth of the Mat and through the woods of Jonima to the hills around Krujë, where Ballaban’s camp lies to the south-west of the town.
On 19 April Skanderbeg beats the Ottoman reinforcements under Ballaban’s brother Jonuz at Krrabë and takes Jonuz and his son Haydar prisoner. Four days later the relief army and the garrison attack the besiegers together, and Ballaban is killed by a shot from the arquebusier Gjergj Aleksi. The 10,000 men left in the camp, by the count of the Neapolitan official Bernardino de Geraldinis, offer to give up the camp for a free passage, but Lekë Dukagjini and other lords refuse. The Ottomans cut their way out through Dibra, and Skanderbeg enters Krujë on 23 April 1467.
Skanderbeg then attacks Elbasan, but he has too few guns and men to take it. In summer 1467 Mehmed comes back by Berat, and Mahmud Pasha searches the mountains for fifteen days while Skanderbeg escapes to the coast. Mehmed besieges Krujë for a few days and withdraws, and his horsemen raid the lands around Shkodër and Durrës. In January 1468 Skanderbeg calls the Albanian lords to Lezhë, where he falls ill and dies on 17 January 1468, aged 62, and Venetian soldiers join the garrison of Krujë.
Skanderbeg’s grave in the church of St Nicholas at Lezhë, below the castleWikimedia Commons, Belgian man, Public domain (Skanderbeg grave and Lezhë Castle.jpg)
Sources
- Michael Kritovoulos, History of Mehmed the Conqueror (about 1467).
- Demetrio Franco, Comentario de le cose de’ Turchi, et del S. Georgio Scanderbeg (1480).
- Tursun Beg, Tarih-i Ebü’l-Feth (about 1490).
- Marin Barleti, Historia de vita et gestis Scanderbegi Epirotarum principis (about 1508).
- Fan S. Noli, George Castrioti Scanderbeg (1405–1468) (1947).
- Kenneth M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1204–1571), vol. 2 (1978).
- Franz Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time (1978).
- Kristo Frashëri, Gjergj Kastrioti Skënderbeu: jeta dhe vepra, 1405–1468 (2002).
- Oliver Jens Schmitt, Skanderbeg: Der neue Alexander auf dem Balkan (2009).
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