Early 1450 – 26 October 1450
Krujë, 1450
Early in 1450 the Ottoman governor of Gjirokastër takes Berat in a night attack, and Gjergj Arianiti leaves Skanderbeg’s side. On 5 April Murad and Mehmed set out against Krujë, the seat of the League of Lezhë. Skanderbeg leaves a garrison under Vrana Konti in the castle, 4,000 men by one account and 1,500 by another, with food for sixteen months, and he sends the women and children to the Venetian towns on the coast. With 8,000 men, 6,000 of them on horseback, he takes up a position on Mount Tumenishta above the town.
The castle of Krujë on its rockWikimedia Commons, d_proffer, CC BY 2.0 (Kruja Castle from the distance.jpg)
Murad reaches Krujë on 14 May, or in June by another account, with an army that the Albanian accounts put at 100,000 men. When Vrana Konti refuses to surrender, Murad has ten guns cast before the walls, the largest of them firing stones of 400 pounds. Skanderbeg raids the Ottoman camp from the mountain and attacks the supply caravans, and Murad posts Mehmed with a force to guard the camp. The merchants of Venetian Shkodër sell food to the besiegers and those of Durrës to Skanderbeg, until the Venetian bailo at Durrës stops the trade with the Ottomans.
The guns open a breach after four days, but the garrison beats off the assault and repairs the wall, and a mine that the besiegers dig under the walls later collapses in the rock. Vrana Konti refuses an offer of 300,000 aspers and a high rank in the Ottoman army. By September disease spreads in the Ottoman camp, and on 26 October 1450, or in November by other accounts, Murad lifts the siege before the winter and marches back to Edirne, losing more men to Albanian raids on the way. Skanderbeg keeps Krujë, but he has lost most of his other lands, whose lords make terms with Murad.
Sources
- Marin Barleti, Historia de vita et gestis Scanderbegi Epirotarum principis (about 1508).
- Laonikos Chalkokondyles, Histories (c. 1464).
- 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).
- Harry Hodgkinson, Scanderbeg: From Ottoman Captive to Albanian Hero (1999).
- 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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