Venetian Cyprus
The Republic of Venice was a sovereign state and maritime republic with its capital in Venice. Founded, according to tradition, in 697 AD, over the course of its 1,100 years of history, it established itself as one of the major European commercial and naval powers. At the height of its expansion, between the 13th and 16th centuries, it governed the Peloponnese, Crete and Cyprus, most of the Greek islands, as well as several cities and ports in the eastern Mediterranean.
The Island of Cyprus was an overseas possession of the Republic of Venice from 1489, when the independent Kingdom of Cyprus ended, until 1571, when the island was conquered by the Ottoman Empire.
Acquisition
Venice for centuries wanted to control Cyprus and Venetian merchants worked on the island beginning in 1000 AD, when the Venetian (commercial and military) expansion in the eastern Mediterranean had started.
The Venetian desire for Cyprus was inspired mainly by profit but they also saw Cyprus primarily as a military base. Anticipating conflict, they undertook an ambitious plan of fortification. Famagusta and Nicosia were ringed with massive earthworks, cased with stone. An outer wall was erected around Kyrenia castle, the gap being filled with earth to form an artillery rampart. The best military architects in Europe were brought in to design and execute these projects.
In 1468, James II of Cyprus of the House of Lusignan became King of Cyprus. In 1468, he chose Catherine Cornaro (born in Venice from the noble family of the “Corner”) as his wife and Queen consort of Cyprus. The King’s choice was extremely pleasing to the Republic of Venice, as it could henceforth secure the commercial rights and other privileges of Venice in Cyprus. They married in Venice on 30 July 1468 by proxy when she was 14 years old.
James died soon after the wedding due to a sudden illness and, according to his will, Caterina, who at the time was pregnant, acted as regent. She became monarch when their infant son James died of malaria in August 1474 before his first birthday.
The Kingdom of Cyprus had long since declined, and had been a tributary state of the Egyptian Mamluks since 1426. Under Caterina, who ruled Cyprus from 1474 to 1489, the island was controlled by Venetian merchants, and on 14 March 1489 she was forced to abdicate and sell the administration of the country to the Republic of Venice.
So, the last Crusader state became a colony of Venice, and as compensation, Catherine was allowed to retain the title of Queen and was made the Sovereign Lady of Asolo, a county in the Venetian terraferma in northern Italy, in 1489.
In 1489, the first year of Venetian control, Turks attacked the Karpass Peninsula, pillaging and taking captives to be sold into slavery. In 1539 the Turkish fleet attacked and destroyed Limassol. Fearing the ever-expanding Ottoman Empire, the Venetians had fortified Famagusta, Nicosia, and Kyrenia, but most other cities were easy prey.
The Venetian governors saw it as a necessity for all the cities of Cyprus to be fortified due to the Ottoman threat. In 1567 Venetians built the new fortifications of Nicosia, which are well-preserved until today, demolishing the old walls built by the Franks as well as other important buildings of the Frankish era including the King’s Palace, other private palaces and churches and monasteries of both Orthodox and Latin Christians. The new walls took the shape of a star with eleven bastions: the design of the bastion was more suitable for artillery and a better control for the defenders. The walls had three gates: the “Kyrenia Gate” to the north, the “Paphos Gate” to the west, and the “Famagusta Gate” to the east. The River Pedieos flowed through the Venetian walled city, but in 1567 it was diverted outside into the newly built moat for strategic reasons, due to the expected Ottoman attack.
The Venetians even modified Kyrenia Castle to meet the threat that the use of gunpowder and cannons posed. The castle’s royal quarters and three of its four thin and elegant Frankish towers were demolished and replaced by thickset circular towers that could better withstand cannon fire.
Indeed, commercial activity under the Republic of Venice turned Famagusta into a place where merchants and ship owners led lives of luxury. The belief that people’s wealth could be measured by the churches they built inspired these merchants to have churches built in varying styles. These churches, which still exist, were the reason Famagusta came to be known as “the district of churches”. The development of the town focused on the social lives of the wealthy people and was centred upon the “Lusignan Palace,” the Cathedral, the Square and the harbour.
In the summer of 1570, the Turks struck again, but this time with a full-scale invasion rather than a raid. About 60,000 troops, including cavalry and artillery, under the command of Lala Kara Mustafa Pasha landed unopposed near Limassol on July 2, 1570, and laid siege to Nicosia. The city fell on September 9, 1570; 20,000 Nicosians were put to death, and every church, public building, and palace was looted. Word of the massacre spread, and a few days later Mustafa took Kyrenia without having to fire a shot. The Venetian walls of Nicosia were incomplete and not useful in stopping this powerful Ottoman army, which was reinforced in the last months of 1570.
Siege of Famagusta
The siege of Famagusta happened in Venetian-controlled Famagusta, the last Christian possession in Cyprus. Famagusta fell to the Ottomans in August 1571 after a siege that lasted nearly a year.
The large and wealthy island of Cyprus had been under Venetian rule since 1489. Together with Crete, it was one of the major overseas possessions of the Republic. Its population in the mid-16th century is estimated at 160,000. Aside from its location, which allowed the control of the Levantine trade, the island possessed a profitable production of cotton and sugar.
The defences of Cyprus, Crete, Corfu, and other Venetian possessions were upgraded in the 1560s, employing the services of the noted military engineer Sforza Pallavicini. Their garrisons were increased, and attempts were made to make the isolated holdings of Crete and Cyprus more self-sufficient by the construction of foundries and gunpowder mills. However, it was widely recognised that, unaided, Cyprus could not hold for long. Its exposed and isolated location so far from Venice, surrounded by Ottoman territory, put it “in the wolf’s mouth” as one contemporary historian wrote. In the event, lack of supplies and even gunpowder would play a critical role in the fall of the Venetian forts to the Ottomans. Venice could also not rely on help from the major Christian power of the Mediterranean, Habsburg Spain, which was embroiled in the suppression of the Dutch Revolt and domestically against the Moriscos. Another problem for Venice was the attitude of the island’s population. The harsh treatment and oppressive taxation of the local Orthodox Greek population by the Catholic Venetians had caused great resentment.
The Turks decided to conquer Cyprus and on 27 June 1570 the invasion force, some 350–400 ships and 80,000–150,000 men, set sail for Cyprus. They besieged and destroyed the capital Nicosia and other Venetian fortifications. The incomplete Venetian walls of Nicosia were of no use in stopping the powerful Ottoman Army, and as many as 20,000 members of the garrison and citizens of the city were massacred.
On 15 September 1570 the Turkish cavalry appeared before the last Venetian stronghold in Cyprus, Famagusta. At this point already, overall Venetian losses (including the local population) were estimated by contemporaries at 56,000 killed or taken prisoner. The Venetian defenders of Famagusta numbered about 8,500 men with 90 artillery pieces and were commanded by Marco Antonio Bragadin. They would hold out for 11 months against a force that would come to number more than 200,000 men, with 145 guns, providing the time needed by the Pope to cobble together an anti-Ottoman league from the reluctant Christian European states.
Marcantonio Bragadin led the defence of Famagusta with Lorenzo Tiepolo, Captain of Paphos, and general Astorre Baglioni (the last “Governor” of Venetian Cyprus).
The Ottoman forces kept pressure on for eleven months, while their artillery relentlessly pounded the city’s bulwarks. According to Venetian chroniclers, about 6,000 garrison troops stood against some 250,000 Turks with 1,500 cannons, backed by about 150 ships enforcing a naval blockade to stave off any reinforcements. These numbers are, however, likely exaggerated.
The besieged garrison of Famagusta put up a heroic struggle lasting well beyond the most optimistic assumptions, against far superior enemy numbers and without any hope of help from Venice. Furthermore the Turks were employing new tactics. The entire belt of walls surrounding the town and the exterior plain was filled with earth up to the top of the fortifications. In the meantime a number of tunnels were dug towards and under the city walls to undermine and breach them.
In July, 1571 the Turks eventually breached the fortifications and their forces broke into the citadel, being repulsed only at the cost of heavy losses. With provisions and ammunition running out, and no sign of relief from Venice on August 1, Bragadin asked for terms of surrender.
Venetian chronicles claim the Turks lost some 52,000 men in five major assaults, including the first son of the Turk commander, Lala Kara Mustafa Pasha. The Venetian garrison lost nearly 8,000 soldiers and was reduced to just nine hundred soldiers, many of them wounded and starving (like the local civilians who in the last month were continuously begging Bragadin to surrender).
Death of Bragadin and Legacy
Famagusta’s last defenders made terms with the Ottomans before the city was taken by force, since the traditional laws of war allowed for negotiation before the city’s defences were successfully breached, whereas after a city fell by storm all lives and property in the city would be forfeit.
The Ottoman commander generously agreed that, in return for the city’s surrender, all Westerners in the city could exit under their own flag and be guaranteed safe passage to Crete; Greeks could leave immediately, or wait two years to decide whether to remain in Famagusta under Ottoman rule, or depart the city for any destination of their choice. For the next three days, evacuation proceeded smoothly.
Then, at the surrender ceremony on August 5 where Bragadin offered the vacated city to Mustafa, the Ottoman general, after initially receiving him with every courtesy, began behaving erratically, accusing him of murdering Turkish prisoners and hiding munitions.
Bragadin denied it, and probably told Mustafa that he was trying to find an excuse to get revenge because a few hundred Venetian soldiers were able to resist for many months his 250,000 Ottoman soldiers. Suddenly, Mustafa pulled a knife and cut off Bragadin’s right ear, then ordered his guards to cut off the other ear and his nose. Mustafa even ordered the killing of governor Astorre Baglioni, who was complaining that the Ottomans were not respecting the surrender agreement.
There followed a massacre of all Christians still in the city, with Bragadin himself abused. After being left in prison for two weeks, his earlier wounds festering, he was “dragged round the walls with sacks of earth and stone on his back; next, tied to a chair, he was hoisted to the yardarm of the Turkish flagship and exposed to the taunts of the sailors. Finally he was taken to the place of execution in the main square, tied naked to a column, and flayed alive. Bragadins quartered body was then distributed as a war trophy among the army, and his skin was stuffed with straw and sewn, reinvested with his military insignia, and exhibited riding an ox in a mocking procession along the streets of Famagusta. The macabre trophy, together with the severed heads of general Alvise Martinengo, Gianantonio Querini, and castellan Andrea Bragadin, was hoisted upon the masthead pennant of the personal galley of the Ottoman commander, Amir al-bahr Mustafa Pasha, to be brought to Constantinople as a gift for Sultan Selim II.
Bragadin’s fame rests upon the resistance that he made against the vastly superior besieging forces. From a military point of view, the besieged garrison’s perseverance required a massive effort by the Ottoman Turks, who were so heavily committed that they were unable to redeploy in time when the Holy League built up the fleet which was later victorious against the Muslim power at Lepanto: this was the legacy of Bragadin and his Venetians to Christianity.
Historians to this day debate just why Venice did not send help to Bragadin from Souda, Crete. It is alleged that some Venetians thought about putting their limited military assets to better use in the forthcoming clash, already in sight, which would climax in the Battle of Lepanto.
When news of Bragadin’s death reached Venice, he was regarded as a “martyr” and his story galvanised Venetian soldiers in the fleet of the Holy League. The Venetian seamen went on to fight with greater zeal than any of the other combatants at the decisive Battle of Lepanto where an Ottoman fleet was crushed by the combined force of much of southern Europe.
The Battle of Lepanto
The Battle of Lepanto was fought on October 7, 1571, between the Ottoman Empire and a Christian coalition (Venice, Genoa, and Spain) named The Holy League. It is the last great clash of navies using oar powered vessels, before the arrival of the age of sail. It is important because it showed Europe that the Ottomans could be defeated, and that European civilization was a formidable force when it could unite.
The Ottomans had never suffered such a defeat as the Battle of Lepanto before 1571. Only 30 Ottoman vessels survived. 30,000 Ottomans were killed or wounded, and 3,000 were taken prisoner.
15,000 Christian galley slaves were freed. 8,000 Christians died, 21,000 were wounded, and 10 galleys had been lost.
The League achieved their victory in part because they used gunpower more effectively. Understanding that they faced a monumental opponent, they employed the most advanced weaponry and tactics possible.
On October 9, 1571, the League leaves port, but are in no shape to retake Cyprus. A rivalry remains between Venice, Genoa, and Spain.
In 1683, western civilization achieves another victory at the Battle of Vienna, when an Ottoman invasion is thwarted. This victory is more decisive than Lepanto, and leads to the decline of the Ottoman Empire to a secondary power. Lepanto can be seen as a precursor to Vienna.
During their rule over Cyprus from 1489 to 1571, the Venetians made a significant cultural and architectural impact that is still evident today. Examples include the fortified walls, gates, and bastions in Nicosia, Famagusta, and Kyrenia, as well as influences on Cypriot language, art, music, and cuisine.
Source: classic history.net en.wikipedia.org
Image: Bragadin refuses to surrender Famagusta to the Turks by Giuseppe Lorenzo Gatteri (Italian, 1829 – 1884). Map of Nicosia Walls 1574.