Siege of Shkodra

Background

Shkodra, called Shkodër or Scutari, was a key town and region within Albania Veneta. The Balšić noble family controlled it from 1355 until the Ottomans seized it briefly in 1393. Đurađ II Balšić took it back in 1395, and then in 1405, he handed it over to Venice, along with the fortresses of Drivast, Dagnum, and Šas. Sultan Mehmed II, who had captured Constantinople in 1453, aimed to take the Albanian coast to improve his chances of crossing the Adriatic and advancing on Rome.

For twenty-five years, Scanderbeg blocked Ottoman progress in Albania. His League of Lezha, a coalition of Albanian forces created in 1444 to fight the Ottomans, fell apart in 1468. Scanderbeg died that same year, but with Venetian help, Kruja and some northern Albanian garrisons continued to resist. Venice and the Ottoman Empire had been at war since 1463, with the Ottomans pushing for expansion and Venice trying to protect its trading posts.

Venice held and fortified several Albanian towns, including Shkodra, which it had acquired in 1396 and renamed Scutari. By 1466, Venice viewed Shkodra as the center and capital of Albania Veneta. The town was so crucial to Ottoman plans that, not long after the siege, the Ottoman writer Ashik Pashazade described it as "the hope of passage to the lands of Italy." The Ottomans first tried to capture Shkodra in 1474, but Sultan Mehmed II's general Suleiman Pasha failed, forcing a retreat and prompting the sultan to prepare a stronger assault.

Meanwhile, Mehmed II told Venice to hand over Kruja, Shkodra, and other Albanian towns as part of a peace deal. To pressure them, he ordered Iskender Bey, the sanjak bey of Bosnia, to raid Friuli. Count Carlo da Braccio pushed the invaders back, but before they returned to Bosnia, the Turkish forces caused heavy damage and took many people and cattle. Even after these losses, Venice refused to give up Shkodra, calling it their "last bastion in the East."

In 1477, the Ottomans took over most of the nearby Zeta region, including Žabljak, and crushed the main army of Ivan Crnojević either late that year or early in 1478. Crnojević quickly reclaimed Žabljak but held it only for a short time as the Ottomans focused their efforts on attacking Shkodra. Inside the city, some residents were suspected of having ties to the Ottomans and favored surrendering.

Forces involved

The Republic of Venice was intent on defending Shkodra. Expecting the new Ottoman attack, the Venetians prepared vigorously, sending their expert engineers to reinforce the fortifications according to the most modern techniques and maintaining a garrison of about 800 mercenaries in the city. In late 1477, as the new Ottoman threat grew imminent, many Venetian mercenaries deserted Shkodra. Therefore, the Venetian Senate finally approved the locals' requests for arms and gave permission for the recruitment of warriors from the surrounding villages.

The city of Shkodra would be defended by its strong walls and a mixed garrison of locals and the remaining Venetian mercenaries. In the spring of 1478, Mehmed II dispatched both the beylerbey of Rumelia, Koca Davud Pasha, and the new beylerbey of Anatolia, Mustafa Bey, to Shkodra with the armies under their control. Shkodran historian Marin Barleti recorded that there may have been up to 350,000 Ottoman soldiers involved in the attack. Ottoman chronicler Kivami wrote of 100,000 Ottoman soldiers in one attack alone.

Venice wanted to aid the besieged and sent their galleys up the Bojana River from the Adriatic Sea, but they were prevented by an Ottoman blockade at Shirgj. When the Ottomans approached Shkodra in May 1478, Venetian commander Antonio da Lézze sent the women and children to the seaside villages, but some women stayed behind to help the men. Approximately 2,000 people defended the castle from within, whereas hundreds of Albanian men and youths from the region helped from without, making guerilla attacks on the Ottoman tent camps.

Forces of Ivan Crnojević, with Ragusan support, sailed over the lake and attacked Ottoman tents at night. Other notable figures in the defense were Friar Bartholomew of Epirus, who had fought alongside Scanderbeg before taking holy orders and gave rousing speeches to rally the defenders, and Nicholas Moneta.

Siege

In the spring of 1478, Mehmed II first sent scouts and then his commanders toward Shkodra, causing widespread panic. On May 14, the first Ottoman troops arrived: 8,000 akinci under Ali Bey, 4,000 horsemen led by Iskender Bey, and 3,000 horsemen commanded by Malkoch. The townspeople hurried to strengthen the citadel, building extra defenses because they expected the outer walls to be destroyed by Ottoman cannon fire. The Ottomans burned nearby villages, and many residents of the Shkodra region escaped to safer areas.

Five days later, Davud Pasha, the pasha of Rumelia, arrived and placed his camp on the hill north of the castle, called Pasha's Hill, where most of the Ottoman artillery would be set up, at roughly the same height as the fortress. The defenders covered all sides but focused their efforts on the main gate, where the Ottomans concentrated their assault. Around June 5, Davud Pasha climbed St. Mark's Mountain (now Mount Tarabosh, west of the castle) to scout the area and plan.

A few days later, Mustafa Bey, the pasha of Anatolia, arrived with about 46,000 cavalry. On June 15, roughly 5,000 janissaries came to prepare for the sultan's arrival on July 1. Mehmed was then at Kruja, finishing a year-long siege. The people of Kruja, starving, were offered a choice: surrender and submit to Ottoman rule, or leave safely with their belongings.

They chose to leave, but were instead "mercilessly beheaded." By June 16, 1478, Kruja was under Ottoman control. Ottoman troops kept arriving at Shkodra through the rest of June. Around June 18, a small Ottoman delegation demanded the Shkodrans surrender, promising peace and rewards if they complied, and threatening torture and death if they resisted. Speaking for all the Shkodrans, Peter Pagnanus refused, making threats of his own.

Significance

After the fall of Shkodra in 1479, the Ottomans effectively controlled the entire territory of Albania and could focus on advancing to Italy. Ottoman chronicler Ashik Pashazade claimed "Shkodra has been conquered, a fortress near land and sea ... the hope of passage to Italy!" Indeed, the Ottomans would pass on to Italy in July, 1480, at the invasion of Otranto. So important was Albania to the Otranto invasion that Gedik Ahmet Pasha utilized it as a supply station and place of quick retreat.

Goffman records a 1548 battle off the coast of Préveza in which an inferior Ottoman fleet led by Barbarossa routed Andrea Doria's Catholic galleys largely because of the fresh reinforcements coming from the Ottoman-controlled Albanian shores. In Shkodra and other parts of northern Albania, the Ottomans transformed churches into mosques and promoted conversion to Islam. According to the Albanologist Robert Elsie, an estimated thirty to fifty percent of the population of northern Albania eventually converted by the early seventeenth century.

They converted mainly not for theological reasons, but primarily to have the right to bear weapons, to have access in the Ottoman state high ranks, to make career in the military and to avoid higher taxes. Franciscan missionary activity helped to stem this tide; nevertheless, conversions continued unabated throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. According to Albanian historian Dritan Egro, many high ranking Ottoman Albanians would push other Albanians to convert to Islam in order to fill Ottoman ranks and create an Albanian pyramid of power inside the Empire.

Shkodra became an administrative and military center known as a sanjak and it was one of the main Ottoman cities in the Balkans. The city became famous for its artisan weapon manufacturing by the locals for the Albanian mercenaries to use in battle or show as a sign of power. Between the 1750s to 1830s the city was the centre of the semi-independent Pashalluk of Shkodra led by the powerful Albanian Bushati family who would expand its power in large areas of western Balkans.

In 1867 it merged with the sanjak of Skopje to form the Vilayet of Shkodra. In 1912, Albania declared independence from the Ottoman Empire, procuring the favor of the London Conference of Ambassadors.