The Siege of Shkodra by Marin Barleti

Author:Marin Barleti
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Onufri Publishing House

The sultan returns to Istanbul

When the campaign against Drisht had concluded, the sultan ordered that all necessary preparations should be meticulously made for the encirclement of Shkodra. Then at Ahmet’s counsel the sultan left some large battalions for the siege and decided to return to Byzantium with the rest of his army.

On September 8, before the rising of the sun, and after ordering the pavilions to be torched at night, the sultan set off from Shkodra, amidst the blasts of trumpets and other instruments, with two large pennants in front (one white and one crimson), and with magnificent formations of an army said to comprise forty thousand men. As he departed he left nothing uncursed or unblasphemed: all of Epirus, all its places one by one, all its inhabitants, their sowing and reaping, the trees—everything, everything! Oh, how he cursed Shkodra up and down! He had subdued countless kings, princes, and peoples with the greatest of ease, but in Shkodra he had lost all those heads; he had sustained so many strong blows; and now he was departing with disgrace and shame. So he blamed it all on fate, which had heretofore worked in his favor but in this case had not given him any help at all but had dealt him just the opposite. In the end the sultan convinced himself that this was, so to speak, a dark premonition that his empire—or he himself—was about to come to an end.

Verily in this he was not mistaken: before much time had elapsed, he set off for a campaign in Asia and passed from this life.264

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.