Spring – 8 August 1474
Shkodër, 1474
In spring 1474 Mehmed sends Hadım Süleyman Pasha, the beylerbey of Rumelia, with about 8,000 men against Shkodër (Scutari), the chief town of the Venetian lands in Albania. The Ottomans take the country around the town, damage Lezhë and raze the castle of Dagnum. The Venetian captain Antonio Loredan holds the castle of Rozafa above the town, and Venetian reports of July put the besiegers at 50,000, with heavy guns.
The defence of Shkodër, painted by Paolo Veronese in 1585 for the Doge’s Palace, VeniceWikimedia Commons, Paolo Veronese, Public domain (Paolo Veronese - Siege of Scutari - WGA24944.jpg)
The Venetian Senate orders all its galleys to carry archers up the Buna to Shkodër. Triadan Gritti, the new captain general, sails in early May with six galleys to guard the coast and the mouth of the river. The Ottomans block the Buna with tree trunks, and on 15 June Gritti’s men beat the Ottoman troops on the river, but the larger ships are caught in the shallows at Shirgj and cannot bring all their cargo to the town.
Ivan Crnojević, the lord of Zeta, brings men and timber from Kotor over the hills to Žabljak, builds boats there and holds Lake Shkodër with 3 fustas and 15 smaller boats. His boats carry Leonardo Boldù and Venetian troops across the lake into the town, and Venetian reports put the defenders, with the ships’ crews and the light horsemen from Greece, at 25,000. The Ottomans give up the siege on 8 August 1474. Between 7,000 and 20,000 of them are reported killed, and about 3,000 people of the town die of hunger and thirst.
Žabljak on Lake Shkodër, an engraving of about 1860Wikimedia Commons, unknown engraver, Public domain (Zabljak 1860 c.jpg)
Sources
- Coriolano Cippico, Petri Mocenici imperatoris gestorum libri tres (1477).
- Marcantonio Sabellico, Historiae rerum Venetarum ab urbe condita (1487).
- Franz Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time (1978).
- Kenneth M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1204–1571), vol. 2 (1978).
- John V. A. Fine, The Late Medieval Balkans (1987).
- Oliver Jens Schmitt, Das venezianische Albanien (1392–1479) (2001).
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