December 1447 – 4 October 1448
Skanderbeg and Venice, 1447–1448
Venice holds Dagnum, the seat of the League member Lekë Zaharia, who was killed by Nicholas Dukagjini over a quarrel about a marriage. A Venetian document of January 1445 already calls Zaharia the former lord, and other accounts date his death to 1447. Zaharia had no children, and his mother handed Dagnum to Venice, which then took his other lands, Sati among them. Skanderbeg demands Dagnum back for the League, because the fortress guards a trade route, and he refuses a Venetian offer of 1,000 ducats to drop the claim.
In December 1447 Skanderbeg leaves three to four thousand men under Vrana Konti to guard the eastern frontier and marches on Dagnum with 14,000 men. The garrison refuses to surrender, and he lays siege to the fortress and cuts Durrës off from its hinterland and its trade. On 4 March 1448 Venice offers a pension of 100 gold ducats a month for life to anyone who kills Skanderbeg, and in June it sends Andrea Venier, provveditore of Shkodër, to urge the Ottomans to invade Albania.
Durrës on a map of Simon Pinargenti, 1573Wikimedia Commons, Simon Pinargenti, Public domain (Durrës Pinargenti 1573.jpg)
On 23 July 1448 Skanderbeg crosses the Drin with 10,000 men and meets 15,000 Venetian soldiers and local mercenaries under Daniele Iurichi, governor of Shkodër. After hours of fighting the Venetian army breaks and is chased to the gates of Shkodër, and by the Albanian accounts it loses 2,500 men killed and 1,000 captured. In August, while Skanderbeg is fighting the Ottomans, the Venetians take and burn the fort of Baleč, which his men had rebuilt to cut off Dagnum. On 4 October 1448 Skanderbeg and Gjergj Arianiti, for the other lords, make peace with Venice at Lezhë: Venice keeps Dagnum, gives the League the land of Buzëgjarpri at the mouth of the Drin and pays Skanderbeg 1,400 ducats a year.
Sources
- Marin Barleti, Historia de vita et gestis Scanderbegi Epirotarum principis (about 1508).
- Stefano Magno, Annali veneti e del mondo (16th century).
- Fan S. Noli, George Castrioti Scanderbeg (1405–1468) (1947).
- John V. A. Fine, The Late Medieval Balkans (1994).
- Harry Hodgkinson, Scanderbeg: From Ottoman Captive to Albanian Hero (1999).
- Oliver Jens Schmitt, Das venezianische Albanien (1392–1479) (2001).
- Oliver Jens Schmitt, Skanderbeg: Der neue Alexander auf dem Balkan (2009).
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