2. Scanderbeg

eorge Castriota, the man known as Scanderbeg, stands among the greatest romantic heroes of central Europe in the era between the Crusades and the Napoleonic wars. As we dug deeply into my Italo-Albanian origins, my husband Hal and I became fascinated by what we learned, beginning with the fact that one of Scanderbeg's biographers was Clement Clark Moore, better known for having written, "'Twas the Night Before Christmas."

    Moore offers an incident from the time the Albanian hero supposedly lived in the Sultan's court. Two Persian mercenaries named Iaia and Zampsa challenged him. Iaia sought to fight Scanderbeg first; if Iaia fell, Zampsa would take his place.

    The Sultan's servants objected to the inequality of one man fighting two, but Scanderbeg, naturally, accepted. On horseback, Scanderbeg and Iaia charged each other. Iaia struck Scanderbeg's shield, but split his lance. Scanderbeg turned for a second run. Suddenly, Zampsa also attacked, but the great Albanian warrior pierced Zampsa through the throat with his lance. Sword in hand, Scanderbeg turned again toward Iaia. He parried the mercenary's thrusts, then sliced him nearly in half with one blow. "Thus," wrote Moore, "these two stout and hardy warriors, to the great joy of the beholders, were vanquished by the hand of one man."

    And to all a good night.

    George Castriota was born probably around 1405. Much of his early life is shrouded by legend: that while young, George, like his three brothers before him, was sent to the court of Sultan Mehmed to join the Janissary Corps. Trained in the military arts, converted to Islam, George Castriota was given the name Scanderbeg, after "Iskender" (Alexander the Great), a hero to the Turks. "Beg" was the Ottoman rank of General. Although Scanderbeg rose to a position of high trust in the Ottoman Empire, he reportedly masked a hatred for the Sultan, who had poisoned his brothers--or so went the legend.

    Some question exists as to whether or not George Castriota actually served as a Janissary, and if so, when? At various times, his father John told others, particularly the Venetians, about having to surrender his youngest son as pawn to the Sultan. But Papa John may have said that only as an excuse to side with the Turks when convenient. Various historians claim George was sent to the Sultan's court at the age of five, eleven, or even eighteen.

    The most reliable of the Scanderbeg biographers, Bishop Noli, brands the story of Scanderbeg's tour with the Janissaries as fiction. Stories of the Sultan having poisoned the three older sons also appear unfounded, all four sons having been with the father, John, in Albania in 1426. Scanderbeg apparently did serve with the army of the Sultan two years after that date, but took orders from his father. His brothers also participated in Turkish expeditions under the terms of their family's vassalage, but most likely returned home after each expedition until the next request came for their services. One brother, Reposhi, eventually joined a monastery.

    In 1438 Murat II, who had succeeded Mehmed as Sultan, appointed Scanderbeg administrator of Croya. Two years later, Scanderbeg left Croya and went to Dibra, another fortress village only a day's journey away. The northern Albanians, following the unsuccessful revolt by the southern Albanians (including the Muzaki), approached Scanderbeg with the request that he lead them. Scanderbeg delayed, supposedly because of an agreement with the Sultan that he would succeed his father as governor of Albania. When John Castriota died in 1442, however, the Sultan offered the post to a Turk. Scanderbeg certainly must have been furious at this deception on the part of the Sultan. Still, he hesitated, waiting for the appropriate time to seize power.

    That same year, the Hungarians, under the leadership of Janosh Hunyadi, shifted from the defense to the offense, hoping to evict the Turks from the Balkans. Hunyadi encouraged people behind Turkish lines to wage guerilla warfare against the Turks. Pope Eugenius IV pressured Balkan and Albanian nobles to cooperate with Hunyadi. The time was ripe for the Albanians also to assert their independence and regain their freedom. But Scanderbeg still chose to obey the Sultan and marched in the direction of the Danube river. He had been appointed second in command of the Turkish defense near the city of Nise.

    On November 3, 1443, Hunyadi crossed the Danube and attacked. At first, the Sultan's troops stopped the Hungarians. Then the Hungarians began to prevail. Whether preplanned or because he sensed an opportunity, Scanderbeg seized the Sultan's secretary and forced him to issue a document giving Scanderbeg all the provinces of Albania. That document in hand, Scanderbeg killed the secretary.

    With 300 Albanian horsemen, Scanderbeg abandoned the front and headed for Dibra. Cheered by the population of that city, he recruited 600 more men and continued to Croya. None of the Turkish garrison stationed within Croya had yet heard of the Hungarian victory at Nise. Scanderbeg entered the castle at Croya with a small troop, leaving the others outside. He read in public the purloined document proclaiming himself governor of Croya and Albania. That night, the remainder of his troops stole into the city and massacred the Turks. Taking down the Turkish flag, Scanderbeg raised the red flag of the Castrioti with its black eagle. The date was November 28, 1443, and it marked the beginning of the Albanian war for independence.

    Scanderbeg swiftly captured a chain of fortresses from Croya to Ternaci, held by small Turkish garrisons. This offered the other Albanian nobles an opportunity to liberate their feudal domains. During the month of December 1443, they cleared the whole of central Albania of Turkish forces. George Castriota had professed the faith of Mohammed during his service to the Sultan. Now, he resumed his Catholic religion, although retaining his Turkish name and title: Iskander Beg. Muslem colonists and converts in Croya and other fortresses were offered a choice: Christianity or death. Most of them refused conversion and were massacred. After this religious purge, Scanderbeg returned to Croya and celebrated Christmas.

    On March 2, 1444, Scanderbeg summoned the feudal lords of Albania to assemble at the Cathedral of Saint Nicholas in Alessio (Lesh, also known as Lezhe). Alessio was a Venetian possession on the Adriatic seacoast. The crafty Venetians, always eager to play one rival against the other, apparently endorsed the assembly. Among more than a dozen chieftains present was Theodor Corona Muzaka of Berat.

    Scanderbeg realized that his small army could not defeat the Sultan's troops alone. He proposed an alliance, an "Albanian League," arguably the first national manifestation in Albanian history. The assembly appointed Scanderbeg as head of the League and commander of its military forces. In essence, Scanderbeg became "king" of Albania, or at least its principle citizen. Each League member remained free to determine the amount of financial and military assistance which he was to contribute in the common defense. The landowners pledged financial and military support for Scanderbeg, each household providing one soldier, thus uniting the separate armed bands of the feudal lords into a single Albanian army. The income of the League was estimated at about 200,000 golden ducats. During the meetings, word arrived that Sfetigrad had fallen to Albanian troops, its Turkish governor arrested. All considered this news a good omen.

    Not Venice, however. The Venetians always operated, understandably, in their own self-interest. The Signoria, who governed Venice, didn't want any of their neighbors, whether Albanians or Turks, to become too powerful, because that would upset the balance of power in their section of the world and threaten their ability to trade. An island city with few, if any, natural resources, and with only the surrounding lagoon offering a line of defense, Venice had to depend on its navies plus an ability to wheel and deal. Despite having encouraged the Albanian League's founding, Venice immediately entered into negotiations with Murat II, pointing out the threat the League posed him. Venice proposed a protectorship over several Albanian cities. The Sultan declined the Venetian offer.

    Scanderbeg traveled through the country recruiting his army, which would consist mostly of infantry and very light cavalry. From his years of close association with the Turkish army, particularly their Janissary corps, he knew the strengths of the Turks as well as their weaknesses.

    He wanted his men to be able to move more rapidly even than the Turks. The Albanian cavalrymen would use a small, quick breed of horses that no longer exists today in Albania. Scanderbeg, knowing the mountainous terrain in which he would need to fight most of his battles, wisely scorned the heavily-armored mounted troops, common in Western Europe during this period. Such knights in armor already had showed themselves incapable of defeating the more lightly-armored Turkish Janissaries.

    Bishop Noli claimed that Scanderbeg's armed forces never exceeded 10,000 in number. "Only one fourth of them--sometimes less--came from the allied princes, whom Scanderbeg did not trust very much." Scanderbeg's personal guard, "whose names and deeds he knew by heart, and whose meals and sleeping quarters he shared as a common soldier was composed entirely of the youth of Croya. Unquestionably it was this small standing army of a few thousand veterans, which won all of Scanderbeg's victories." In general, Bishop Noli distrusted the battle figures suggested by most historians, past and present. He felt that invariably they exaggerated the numbers of participants as well as the numbers of those wounded and killed.

    On June 29, 1444, an Ottoman army commanded by Ali Pasha and supposedly consisting of 25,000 men, entered Albania near Dibra. Scanderbeg placed some of his troops in the Dibrian fort, the remainder dispersing in the open countryside. The Turks attacked the fort, suffering losses, but began to gain ground and seemed about to overrun the defenders. Suddenly two phalanxes of Albanian cavalrymen attacked, forcing the enemy to retreat. At that moment, Scanderbeg assumed the offensive with his reserves, trapping the Turks in the narrow valley of Torviolli. The Turks retreated, reportedly leaving 7,000 dead. Albanian losses were estimated at 2,000 dead, 2,000 wounded. These hit-and-run tactics were typical of Scanderbeg's fight against the Turks. He seldom offered a stationary target and engaged the enemy only when it suited him. Scanderbeg may not have been the first guerilla fighter in history--and he certainly was not the last--but he was to prove one of the most successful at that tactic by which a small group of defenders, knowledgeable of the countryside, frustrate an invading force superior in numbers and weapons.

    After the rout of the Sultan's army, Scanderbeg allowed his soldiers to loot neighboring Turkish regions. His men returned to Croya leading large flocks of sheep, goats, cows, and horses. Happy crowds cheered them. "To think," the soldiers joked. "Ali Pasha was beaten by a bunch of horse thieves." But later that fall, the Turks defeated a combined Hungarian and Polish army, killing King Vladislav during battle. Although Scanderbeg planned to join the fight, the Serbians would not allow him to pass through their territory.

    Despite the threat of further Turkish invasions, tribal life and traditions remained important in Albania. At the beginning of 1445, Scanderbeg's youngest sister Mamitsa married Muzaki Thopia at a wedding historically important because it was attended by many of the main Albanian nobles. In order to be able to marry Mamitsa, Muzaki Thopia had divorced his first wife, Zanfina Muzaka. Not all of the Muzaki applauded this action, but nevertheless attended the wedding.

    Women ordinarily had little status in Albania. Before the birth of a child, friends and relatives would gather at the home of the parents. If it was a boy, they would begin a large celebration; if it was a girl, they went home! Although this seems the height of male chauvinism, perhaps it was in the interest of the women, too, that the birth of a male be cheered. Considering the large number of men who would fall in battle during the wars with the Turks, Albania soon became a country overpopulated with widows. They probably could have used a few more virile males around. Nevertheless, women were treated with great respect within the Albanian tribes, and a man insulting one often lost his life to avenging members of her family. Women accompanied male relatives into battle to tend the wounded and remove the dead.

    Arranged marriages were the norm, and would remain the norm among Albanian society, continuing even into Falconara in the twentieth century. Women often were betrothed when infants. Should a girl later decide not to marry the man chosen by her parents, she had to swear perpetual virginity. If she married another man, it might cause a blood feud between the two families. The husband received no dowry, his family purchased his wife for a specified price, deposit due at betrothal. Male Albanians sought brides from reputable families: lineage and status being more important than the girl herself. She could be ugly as long as she came from a reputable family, since the children she bore would resemble their maternal uncles.

    Family relationships were extremely important in Albania. The tribe, or clan, or fis, consisted of a number of family households with common male ancestry. The head of the tribe was the oldest male, the patriarch, and there was also a council of elders. Tribal loyalty was essential; members of strong tribes considered themselves strong. According to one proverb: "Woe to the brave man in a weak clan." And also: "Justice is strong when the clan is strong."

    Also important, symbolically as well as actually, was the hearth: the family fire around which the clan gathered. Soldiers returned from battle knowing they would receive a warm welcome at the hearth. Albanians who left the country would look back nostalgically at the hearth they had been forced to abandon.

    Tribes held common land, forests, pasture, and water. If a tribal member needed something that was common property, the entire tribe decided upon his case at a tribal council. This council, or court, also passed verdicts according to unwritten customs, later formalized as the Canon of Lek Dukaghin. Rules covered every detail of tribal obedience. The tribe demanded loyalty from each of its members, especially in cases involving the honor and reputation of the tribe. Even into the twentieth century, tribal law in Albania would be governed by the Law of Lek.

    The wedding between Mamitsa Castriota and Muzaki Thopia occurred on January 26, 1445 in Muzakiana, between Croya and Durazzo. The Albanian chieftains who attended included Paul and Nicholas Dukaghin, two of the chieftains who met with Scanderbeg when he formed the League. Also present was Lek Dukaghin, who may or may not have been the one responsible for the canon mentioned above.

     During the party after the wedding ceremony, Lek Dukaghin and Lek Zacaria of Dagno argued over a woman, eventually drawing knives. In the resulting melee involving both tribes, 105 died, 200 were wounded. Antagonisms resulting from this one lovers' disagreement eventually would impact on the cohesiveness of the Albanian League. It seemed the sons of the eagle often were their own worst enemies.

     In 1445 and again in 1446, Scanderbeg repulsed Turkish armies, but the Sultan had not yet unleashed his full military might. These preliminary wars were merely incursions, a regular tactic used by the Turks in border provinces marked for conquest, meant to soften them for the inevitable crushing blow. Among those who described the war in Albania with the Turks was a member of the Muzaki tribe: Don Giovanni, as he would be called after escaping to Italy. Don Giovanni wrote about this period with despair: "Then began the continuous wars of the Turks in Albania, in which many chieftains and gentlemen died; and the forces of the Turks always increased while ours decreased; almost all the young men of Albania were killed; there were only a few old men left; and their forces were exhausted, and their states dwindled; still we defended ourselves as best we could."

     But Scanderbeg had more to worry about than attack from the East. In 1447, two years after Mamitsa Castriota's bloody wedding party, Lek Ducaghin ambushed his rival, Lek Zacaria, killing him. Zacaria died without heirs, leaving open the ownership question of his strategically important castle in Dania. Scanderbeg claimed Dania for the League, but before he could take possession Zacaria's mother, Boza, requested protection from Venice. Scanderbeg attacked Dania and other castles on the coast, but he had no artillery. One of his continuing military problems was an inability, because of lack of weapons, to conduct a proper siege. Although a great defensive warrior, Scanderbeg met with less success when forced to move to the offensive.

    Fighting continued on two fronts. Skanderbeg repelled two Turkish armies, but political intrigues equaled battles. Scanderbeg obtained alliances with Hungary and Serbia and also courted the King of Naples, Alfonso I, a member of the Spanish House of Aragon and a foe of the Venetians. In 1442, Alfonso had taken control of the Kingdom of Naples, which then consisted of all of southern Italy, including Sicily. That also included the area where Falconara is today.

    Like most rulers of the era, Alfonso played the game of alliances, shifting from one side to the other as it suited him. At this time he was supporting the Duke of Milan in his war with Venice over Lombardy. Venice, meanwhile, contacted the Sultan and urged him to resume war against Albania, promising a life pension of one hundred gold ducats a year to anyone who could kill Scanderbeg. The Venetian bounty never would be collected; Scanderbeg would prove invulnerable to the blades of assassins.

    Despite having to face Turkish invasions every year, Scanderbeg found time in 1448 to help King Alfonso squelch a revolution near Crotone, a town below the Gulf of Taranto. Scanderbeg did not participate himself, but sent 5,000 men under the leadership of Demetrio Reres and his two sons, George and Basil. Following their victory in Crotone, many of these mercenary soldiers settled permanently in Italy, accepting land from a grateful Alfonso, rather than return to their own besieged country. Albanians founded twelve villages in the province of

Catanzaro, and the following year four villages in Sicily. These were the first Albanian settlements in Italy.

    Back in Albania, the war with Venice continued, Scanderbeg eventually winning a peace settlement that included 1,400 golden ducats a year. He needed the money, since the Turks continued to plague him. In April, 1450, Murad II appeared again at the head of an invading army, accompanied by his twenty-year-old son Mehmed. Their primary target was Berat, the patriarchal home of the Muzaki.

    According to Kristo Frascari, a present-day Albanian who wrote a history of his country, the well-equipped Ottoman army numbered 100,000. Murad's caravan consisted of columns of camels and other beasts of burden hauling ammunition, provisions, and siege material, including enough metal to construct ten cannons capable of hurling 600 pound stones. The Turks, as was their custom, also brought sacks in which to collect booty, ropes with which to bind young boys and girls destined for slavery, and stakes on which to impale captured enemy soldiers. Thus armed, the Turks overwhelmed Berat, killing many members of the Muzaki family, dragging them and other defenders back to the Ottoman capitol in Edirne (Adrianople) to be displayed before the Turkish people, then skinned alive.

    The Turkish method of skinning alive was a unique form of punishment. It involved peeling the skin from the body, with the exception of the head, then stuffing the carcass with straw. The resulting human straw doll could be hung from the walls of the Sultan's palace. Thus were the friends and relatives of the seven families who settled Falconara displayed in Edirne.

    Berat conquered, the Turks marched along the Shkumbin valley north toward Scanderbeg's fortress city of Croya. As they did, bands of guerillas pecked at their caravans, forcing the Turkish soldiers to pursue them into the wooded countryside into inevitable ambushes. Nevertheless, on May 14, despite heavy losses, the Sultan stood before the walls of Croya.

    "The people were terror-stricken," writes Bishop Noli. "Scanderbeg needed all his bishops to inspire courage and hope. Each one of them came to tell the army and the people, who were assembled on an open field, of the heavenly visions they had seen with their own eyes. These went far to prove that Scanderbeg would be victorious and the Sultan would be smashed to pieces. Scanderbeg himself claimed to have experienced a similar vision: Saint George, the Patron Saint of Albania had appeared to him in shining armor, had handed him a flaming sword with which to smite the enemies of Christendom."

    Just in case Saint George's sword failed, Scanderbeg plotted a more standard defense. He left a garrison of 1,500 in the fort with Count Vrana. All able-bodied citizens remained to assist them. He evacuated others--old men, women, and children--to the mountains or the seacoast. Scanderbeg himself withdrew with 8,000 men to positions in the surrounding mountains. He organized these troops into small, mobile bands.

    When he arrived, the Sultan sent an emissary into the fortress in keeping with Ottoman military law, which required that before a siege, the defenders be given an opportunity to profess Islam. Count Vrana naturally refused the offer. Scanderbeg also rejected a compromise in which the Sultan would withdraw his armies in return for an annual tribute. The siege began.

    Murad's guns battered the fortress. The 600-pound stones hurled over the walls, though formidable, caused little loss of life. The defenders posted observers in watchtowers. When they saw a boulder hurled into the air, they noted its trajectory, then rang a bell. Everyone looked up and fled from where the projectile hit the ground. These may have been history's first use of air-raid wardens. Nevertheless, the battering eventually breached the walls. The Turks attacked, but though Count Vrana was seriously wounded, the defenders repelled them. From outside, Scanderbeg continuously harassed the besieging army, disrupting their communications, intercepting convoys, ambushing troops sent to find him.

    The epic struggle continued five months to the profit of the Venetians of Scutari, who sold food and ammunition to the Turks. This enraged the Albanians, who began killing the merchants and confiscating their merchandise. Venice yielded to Albanian protests and eventually ordered the Count of Durazzo to aid Scanderbeg instead of the Sultan. Early in October, apparently desperate, Scanderbeg even offered Croya to the Venetians. Fearful of the Sultan's wrath, the Venetians declined, but at the end of October, Murad raised the siege to spare his soldiers the hardship of a winter campaign. He returned to Edirne, reportedly having lost 20,000 men.

    Bishop Noli quotes Anatole France: "Glory is a very expensive luxury." Despite its successful defense, Albania, from Sfetisgrad to Durazzo, lay devastated. Berat had fallen. The walls of Croya had been battered to rubble. During the siege, the defenders burned crops to prevent the Turks from living off the land. After the siege, the Turkish cavalry ravished the surrounding country, destroying homes. Famine threatened to kill more people that winter than had the Sultan during his siege. The people were exhausted after six years of warfare. The League of Alessio was badly split. The Spani, Dushmani and Altisferi had left the League after the earlier Venetian War. Many others deserted to Venice or the Turks during the sieges of Sfetigrad and Croya. Scanderbeg appealed for help from the Kingdom of Naples. A treaty signed with Alfonso at Gaeta, Italy on March 26, 1451 brought Scanderbeg food and 200 muskets, but few soldiers.

     By now the leader of the Albanians was forty-six years old, having managed to resist all proposals of marriage, having spent most of his life with his soldiers. But with support from other Albanian nobles waning, Scanderbeg considered the situation critical. In order to win the support of George Araniti, he agreed to marry his daughter Donika. Scanderbeg struck a hard bargain, claiming a dowry so high that Araniti's three sons refused to attend the marriage ceremony on April 26, 1451. The Ducaghini avoided the ceremony also, their having concluded peace with the Sultan. Hamza Castriota, Scanderbeg's nephew and heir apparent, attended, but reportedly did not look pleased. Should Scanderbeg's union with Donkia Araniti result in children, Hamza might lose most of his inheritance. Muzaki Thopia, Scanderbeg's brother-in-law, served as delegate for the marriage contract. Andrea Muzaka served as Araniti's delegate. (This was not Andrea the Despot, who first surfaced in the pages of history in the fourteenth century, but rather, his grandson.)

    Andrea's son, Ghino Muzaka, also attended the wedding. He disliked Scanderbeg, considering him a "usurper." Ghino Muzaka believed that the desertions were because Scanderbeg, while waging war, was annexing the principalities of all the semi-feudal, or patriarchal, chieftains. This forced them to seek protection from either the Turks or Venetians. We know Ghino Muzaka's views, because later they would be preserved by his son, the already mentioned Don Giovanni. Don Giovanni, however, wrote from the point of view of a fifteenth century exiled capitalist, who hoped to reacquire his family's lost lands, the country around Berat. Kristo Frasheri, writing from the point of view of a twentieth century Albanian communist, still later would claim: "The necessities of war induced Scanderbeg to do away with the particularism of the nobles. Relying on the masses and the army, which was attached to him, he began to ignore the social standing of the nobles, violating their boundaries, quartering garrisons in their castles, and taking other security steps infringing their rights. Thus feudal boundaries began to disappear, the domains fused into a single state."

    In 1451, Murad II died. Following the death of his father, Mehmed II (later known as Mehmed the Conqueror) assumed leadership of the Ottoman Empire, determined to bring all the Baltic states under Moslem rule. Within the next dozen years, Mehmed would first conquer Constantinople (1453), then occupy Serbia (1459), the remainder of Greece (1460), and Bosnia (1463). During this period, Scanderbeg attempted to organize a Balkan alliance, a crusade of European Christian countries against the Turks. Pope Pius II seemed enthusiastic; most other Western leaders showed less inclination to help. To the rulers of western Europe, the Turks still remained too far away, off somewhere in the East. Why worry?

    Nevertheless, when Mehmed had conquered Constantinople in 1453, it at least caught the attention of the Italians, particularly the Venetians and Neapolitans. The fall of Constantinople in that pivotal year of European history marked the end of the once mighty Byzantine Empire, itself an offshoot of the even mightier Holy Roman Empire that once encompassed all of the Mediterranean, most of the Western World and much of the East. The Sultan renamed Constantinople Istanbul, and soon moved his capitol there from Edirne. It was obvious to the Venetians and Neapolitans that as soon as Mehmed finished digesting the Balkan states, he would turn his attention to the Italian states--and Rome, center of the Christian religion. Only Scanderbeg stood in Mehmed's way.

    Venice, ever practical, forgot its previous antagonism toward the Albanian leader and ordered the proveditor of Alessio to accompany Scanderbeg to Naples and Rome. During Scanderbeg's visit to Naples, King Alfonso agreed to provide more support. Two thousand Neapolitan soldiers with siege artillery reinforced Scanderbeg's 12,000 troops in a 1455 attempt to regain the tribal home of the Muzaki, Berat, and break the Turkish wedge into Albania. In July, the combined force of Albanians and Neapolitans blockaded Berat, battered the walls with artillery, and succeeded in breaching them.

    The defending Turkish garrison was commanded by Moses Goleni, a former Albanian member of the League who had switched sides. Moses offered to surrender within eleven days if not reinforced. Rather than continue the destructive assault, Scanderbeg decided to grant the truce and await the surrender, leaving to attack another nearby fortress. But before the truce expired, Isaak Beg Evrenoz arrived with 40,000 Turkish cavalrymen and routed the besiegers, massacring half of them including the commander, Muzaki Thopia, and all the Neapolitans. Isaak returned to Istanbul, permitting his soldiers to bring home as souvenirs the heads of the massacred Albanians, which they reportedly sold so Turkish children could play football in the streets. History has not recorded what the Turks used for goalposts.

    In addition to Moses Goleni, Hamza Castriota, angered about his lost inheritance, now served the Turks. Nicholas and Paul Ducaghin also stood in the Turkish camp. George Araniti and Stefan Cernojevich sided with the Venetians. The Muzaki, however, remained among Scanderbeg's strongest supporters.

    The invasions continued, but in 1459, Scanderbeg concluded a ten-year armistice with the Ottoman Empire. The armistice would last nowhere near that long, but Scanderbeg was at least temporarily freed from the annual Turkish assaults. He turned once again to help his allies in Naples. Alfonso was dead, succeeded by his illegitimate son, Ferrante. This offended the House of Anjou, which saw an opportunity to regain control of the Kingdom of Naples. The Anjou forces under the command of Giacomo Piccinino, supposedly the ablest condottiere of the time, and Jean d'Anjou, duke of Calabria and son of the French pretender, quickly routed Ferrante, trapping him at Barletta. Ferrante had lost almost all of his kingdom with the exception of the city of Naples.

    One of the rebellious nobles, Johannes Antonius de Ursinis, Prince of Taranto, wrote Scanderbeg on October 10, 1460, asking that he not intervene, suggesting that Ferrante was as good as deposed, hinting that the well-armed Italian troops would be too much for his ill-clad bands of guerillas. That obviously was not the right approach to discourage a man who prided himself on his prowess in battle. Scanderbeg replied that he was "a friend of virtue and not of fate." Whether Ferrante was virtuous might be questioned by some. In addition to being (according to biographer Orville Prescott) "cruel, avaricious and vindictive personally," he also often spoke Spanish, which particularly offended the proud Italians. Nevertheless, the House of Aragon had supported Scanderbeg in his battles with the Turks; the House of Anjou had not.

    In 1461 Scanderbeg sailed for Ragusa, better known today as Dubrovnik, an important Yugoslavian resort island. Ragusa was home of a large, influential Albanian community and its Senate solemnly received Scanderbeg, granting him a subsidy for the expedition. In August, Scanderbeg's nephew, John Stresi Balsha, led the first contingent onto Italian soil. The following day Scanderbeg arrived at Barletta with the rest of his troops: 3,000 picked cavalrymen and archers. They quickly broke the siege of Barletta and began raids on Anjou territory. Bishop Noli writes: "By means of hit-and-run tactics, he harassed the obsolete heavy cavalrymen of Piccinino continually, outmaneuvered, toppled them, threw them into confusion and terror. The swiftness of his blitz raids amazed those who witnessed them. Men who saw him fight with the mace and curved sword never forgot him, talked about him the rest of their lives. To use the words of Pontano: 'His name and his arrival not only confounded the plans of the enemy but filled all Italy with his fame and glory.'"

    Scanderbeg's wife Donika soon sent word of Turkish forces near the Albanian frontier. He left Italy to resume his war against the Turks, his troops soon following. The war between the Houses of Aragon and Anjou would continue in Italy for two years after Scanderbeg's departure, but Ferrante eventually emerged victorious. Grateful for Albanian support, and hoping their presence would intimidate future revolutionaries, Ferrante granted land to many of Scanderbeg's veterans who established fifteen more villages in the rolling country near Taranto. This was the second wave of Albanian settlement in Italy.

    The war with the Turks continued, despite demands by many Albanian nobles that Scanderbeg negotiate peace. A treaty was signed, but quickly renounced. Pope Pius II announced a crusade, which failed to materialize. By 1464, the Albanians seemed on the verge of surrender. According to Frasheri: "From the twenty years' war, the country was dilapidated, the national economy was destroyed, the land was denuded of its population, partly through slaughters, partly on account of emigration. The fields were desolate, men fit to bear arms had diminished." Help from abroad was inadequate. The European states continued to ignore the Balkans. Ferrante of Naples seemed unable to help his ally. The new Pope, Paul II, complained the Vatican had no money, thus offered no help. The Venetians, though now allied with Albania, were unreliable and might switch back to the Sultan at any time.

    Among those commanding the Turkish troops was Balaban Pasha Badera, reportedly the Sultan's greatest general, master strategist of the conquest of Constantinope. Balaban Pasha was an Albanian. Though raised in Turkey, he knew the Albanian countryside and also understood guerilla tactics. Before the first battle of Valcalia, Scanderbeg warned his commanders of Balaban's cleverness. After the Albanian cavalry engaged the enemy, apparently routing Balaban's main army, the Turks retreated toward the narrow gorges of Valcalia. Balaban halted at the valley's narrow end, stationing his men in rocky, wooded heights, laying a trap. Springing it, Balaban captured eight of Scanderbeg's top cavalry commanders.

    Among those captured were Ghino Muzaka and Ghin Manesi. (Apparently this was a different Ghino Muzaka from the one mentioned earlier who attended Scanderbeg's wedding. It may have been the Ghino Muzaka who was son of Biagio, also mentioned previously. Biagio was the unfortunate father who had five sons die at the hands of the Turks.) Scanderbeg offered thousands of ducats to ransom Muzaka, Manesi, and his other generals, but Balaban shipped them to Istanbul. The Sultan skinned them alive.

    War was not the only mass killer in this era. The Black Death, the bubonic plague, struck Istanbul during the summer of 1466. Because of extreme heat, the epidemic rapidly spread through the Turkish capitol. Some victims caught the plague and died almost immediately; others lingered through a week of torment. With more than 600 dead every day, gravediggers could not work fast enough and corpses accumulated in the streets. Those who could, abandoned the city. Istanbul was merely one of many major European and Asian cities to be decimated by the Black Death in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Life was cheap back then. The plague was spread from city to city by sea-traveling rats, infected by fleas. Albania, because of its mountainous isolation, apparently suffered less from the plague than most countries. Its plague was the Sultan.

    Scanderbeg traveled again to Rome to beg for help in his defense against continuing invasions by the infidel Turks. Bishop Noli reports: "He arrived in Rome on December 12, 1466 dressed as a plain, poor soldier and with only a few horsemen. He was received by a huge crowd headed by bishops and prelates. Paul II bestowed on him a sword of honor and a consecrated hat, in a brilliant ceremony, performed in Saint Peter's Cathedral." A contemporary Italian who saw Scanderbeg wrote: "He is a man advanced in years, past sixty. He arrived with a few horses. It seems he is poor and wishes to ask for help."

    Scanderbeg spoke at St. Peter's before the consistory of cardinals. "I have left behind a great fire kindled and flaming in my house," he said. "The enemy is even now at my door. He has not only destroyed and laid desolate my Nation, but has as well murdered and holds captive my people. He holds Croya, the key and bulwark of my Realm, in a tight siege and has resolved never to depart from there until it becomes Turkish. And I have no doubt that he will almost do it, if we are not immediately aided by your greatness and authority." The Pope granted Scanderbeg a subsidy of approximately 7,500 ducats, part of which was handed to him immediately, the remainder forwarded later to Albania. Scanderbeg next visited Naples. Ferrante rewarded him with 1,000 ducats plus supplies and ammunition.

    Later, in Venice, Scanderbeg learned that Balaban Pasha was besieging Croya. By April, Scanderbeg was back with his cavalry outside the fortress. The Albanians defeated the Turkish army, killing Balaban. The leaderless Turkish soldiers offered to surrender their arms and ammunition in return for their lives. Scanderbeg voted to grant them freedom, but no other chieftains agreed, figuring logically that the men they spared would be part of another army within the year. When they asked Lek Ducaghin his opinion, he responded: "Embe ta!" (Overrun them!) The Albanians began to massacre the Turks.

    Mehmed arrived that summer with more troops, moving first against Durazzo. The thick walls of that fortress city proved invulnerable against even the Sultan's heaviest artillery, but Mehmed would not go unrevenged. He pretended to withdraw, but when the peasants who had fled to the hills returned home, he slaughtered them. Reportedly no one over age seven survived. Before returning to Istanbul, Mehmed instructed his army to devastate the countryside.

    Scanderbeg once more had weathered an attack by the Ottoman Empire's mightiest legions--but his country was being destroyed! He attempted again to rally the often aloof chieftains and restore the Albanian League. As another Turkish army moved toward Scutari, Scanderbeg called a conference for January, 1468 at Alessio. Before he could leave, however, he fell ill with a fever, probably pneumonia.

    Scanderbeg lay dying. He spoke with the chieftains he had hoped to gather again in a league, stating: "Have no doubt whatsoever that the Ottoman tyrant will seek to cause disunity among you, to divide your forces. He will use many plots and devices to turn you one against the other. And when he sees you are at variance with each other, he will in the long run oppress you one by one and utterly consume and destroy all of you."

    Dismissing them, he asked Lek Ducaghin to send in his wife Donika and son John. Despite his final speech, Scanderbeg felt there was no Albanian capable of preserving the country's independence. His son was only fourteen. On his deathbed, he commended his orphaned country to his "most loyal and powerful" ally, the Venetian Republic. He offered his son to the protection and wisdom of the Signoria, the council that governed Venice. The Albanian armies fighting that moment at Scutari were victorious, but George Castriota Scanderbeg died on January 17, 1468.

    Bishop Noli reports: "The obituary announcement was shouted by Lek Ducaghini to the four winds in stentorian and heart-rending lamentations so that all Albania might hear and mourn. It was answered by the mournful neighing of Scanderbeg's steed, who refused to eat after his master's death and followed him to his grave. Scanderbeg was buried in the Cathedral of Saint Nicholas of Alessio, which he had rebuilt a few years before his death. Ten years later, when the Turks took Alessio, they opened his grave in order to get fragments of his bones for amulets, which would make them invulnerable."

    Part of the Scanderbeg legend is that when Mehmed II heard of the death of his foe, he cried out: "At last Europe and Asia are mine! Woe to Christendom! It has lost its sword and shield."

    Jan Myrdal, a Swede who wrote a history of Albania, writes: "At the time of Scanderbeg's death in 1468, Albania was more devastated than any other country in Europe. Trade was at a standstill. Many cities were so destroyed they never were rebuilt. Churches, monasteries, and castles had been burned down. All wealth had been plundered. Great numbers of people had been killed or starved to death. Others had fled."

    John Castriota and his mother were among those who left the country. They fled to Naples. Others remained and continued the war against the Turks, but without the unity Scanderbeg pleaded for on his deathbed. Many Albanian feudal lords--the Muzaki, the Spans, the Ducaghini, the Skuras, the Zacarias--apparently tried to recoup their losses by seizing lands, quarreled with each other. Some capitulated to the Turks, attaining as in the case of the Skuras and Ducaghini, positions of honor in the new Albania.

    In 1474 a large Turkish army laid siege to Scutari, bombarding it an entire month with artillery, but the fortress held. In 1476 another army besieged Croya, the Sultan vowing to maintain pressure until the defenders starved. The siege lasted two years before Croya fell on June 16, 1478. Mehmed ordered the defenders massacred, their families dragged away into slavery. The Turks again directed their attention to Scutari, which held until January 25, 1479, when the Venetians signed a peace treaty with the Turks. They gave away Scutari, Alessio, and Drishti, but kept Durazzo, Ulquin, and Tivar. Barely a decade after Scanderbeg's death, little remained of his kingdom but an inspiring legend.

    The third and final major migration of Albanians to southern Italy occurred at this time. Included in the Italo-Albanian villages founded in the period from 1476 and 1480 was the only one on the western slope of the Appenine mountains. It was settled by seven families. Its name: Falconara-Albanese.

    Scanderbeg's son, John Castriota, returned to Albania in 1481 at the age of twenty-seven to assist a peasant revolt against Turkish rule. At about the same time, the Turks established a foothold in Italy, near Otranto, hoping to use it for eventual conquest of the entire Italian peninsula. In September, 1481, however, the Italians pushed the Turks back into the sea. After several years in Albania, John Castriota fled again. In 1492, Sultan Bayasid II brought troops through Albania, planning to invade Italy. He never did, although in 1501, the Turks took Durazzo from Venice, and in 1506, crushed the last Albanian resistance.

    Following the Turkish conquest of Albania, the cities had been demolished and were virtually deserted by their former inhabitants. Many ancient cities--Drishti, Danja, Shirgji--never recovered. Others such as Durazzo, Scutari, Croya, and Berat were reduced to mere villages. Few artisans remained in the cities; trade was paralyzed. According to Frasheri: "On account of the Turkish domination, the former contacts of the Albanian coast with the Adriatic cities were interrupted. The important artery, Via Egnatia, was no longer used by foreign tradesmen as a means of communication. The rural ecnomy also was in utter decay. In the low coastal districts of Albania, hundreds of villages were abandoned or nearly so by the villagers who had migrated outside the country or had taken refuge in the mountainous regions. Large expanses of land lay fallow." Albania became a backward state.

    Only the Albanian free peasants remained, according to Bishop Noli. "They recognized the Sultan as their nominal overlord, some adopted Islam, but refused to pay taxes. Whenever the Turkish authorities tried to collect them, there was a rebellion under leaders, most of them anonymous. With the destruction of the towns the country became purely agricultural. Only the farmers and shepherds, some of them half-nomadic, could survive in the wild and inaccessible mountains where the Turk could not reach them. There they remained ragged and free."

    Finally in the twentieth century, at the end of World War I, Turkey's control of the Balkan countries, including Albania, ended. For two decades Albania was ruled as an independent monarchy, King Zog its ruler, then after World War II, the country turned communist. Yet Albania remained fiercely independent, distrustful as it might be of both friends and foes.

    The folklore of those who occupy present day Shqiperia, the sons of the eagle, promises that some day Scanderbeg will return. He will come walking upon long beams of light from the sun, rising across their jagged mountain peaks. He remains Albania's mightiest hero.

Chapter 3 >

Falconara: A Family Odyssey

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