April – September 1478
Shkodër, 1478
Mehmed answers the Venetian offer by asking for 10,000 ducats a year as well, and he prepares a new campaign into Albania. The Senate accepts these terms on 5 May 1478, but when its envoy Tommaso Malipiero reaches the sultan on the march, Mehmed also demands Shkodër, Drisht and Lezhë, and Malipiero goes home. On 14 May 8,000 akıncı under Ali Bey Mihaloğlu and 7,000 horsemen under Iskender Bey, the bey of Bosnia, and Malkoçoğlu reach Shkodër. Davud Pasha, the beylerbey of Rumelia, camps on the hill north of the castle five days later, and Mustafa Bey, the beylerbey of Anatolia, follows in June.
Krujë, starved by more than a year of blockade, surrenders on 15 or 16 June 1478. Tursun Beg writes that its defenders are put to the sword, but some Venetians taken there are still prisoners in 1479. Mehmed comes by Elbasan and Krujë and reaches Shkodër on 1 July. Antonio da Lezze holds the castle with about 1,600 men and women, and the Ottoman guns fire 2,534 shots at it by von Hammer’s count and more than 3,200 by Barleti’s.
The siege of Shkodër of 1478 in an engraving of about 1500Wikimedia Commons, unknown engraver, Public domain (Siege of Shkodër 1478-1479.jpg)
Five general assaults from 11 to 27 July are thrown back, and Babinger puts the Ottoman losses at 12,000 on 22 July alone. At the end of August Mehmed turns on the smaller fortresses: Žabljak surrenders almost without a fight, Drisht is taken on 1 September and 300 of its people are executed before the walls of Shkodër, and Lezhë is found almost empty. Ottoman raiders ride once more through Friuli, Styria and Carinthia that summer, and on 8 September Mehmed goes home and leaves Gedik Ahmed Pasha to starve Shkodër out.
The castle of Drisht on its hillWikimedia Commons, Arianit Dobroshi, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Drisht 02.jpg)
Sources
- Tursun Beg, Tarih-i Ebü’l-Feth (about 1490).
- Aşıkpaşazade, Tevârîh-i Âl-i Osmân (late 15th century).
- Marcantonio Sabellico, Historiae rerum Venetarum ab urbe condita (1487).
- Marin Barleti, De obsidione Scodrensi (1504).
- Kemalpaşazade, Tevârîh-i Âl-i Osmân (early 16th century).
- Franz Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time (1978).
- Kenneth M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1204–1571), vol. 2 (1978).
- Oliver Jens Schmitt, Das venezianische Albanien (1392–1479) (2001).
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