1. VALONA
The late Italian occupation of Valona has drawn attention to what has been called one of the two keys of the Adriatic. It may, therefore, be of interest to trace the history of this important strategic position, which has been held by no less than twelve different masters.
The name αὐλών, “a hollow between hills,” was applied to various places in antiquity, and from the accusative of this word comes the Italian form “Valona,” or, as the Venetians often wrote it, “Avalona.” In antiquity there were, however, few allusions to this particular αὐλών, the probable date of its foundation being, therefore, fairly late, although the pitch-mine of Selenitza, three hours to the east, was worked by the Romans in the time of Ovid[801], and Pliny the Elder[802] knew the now famous island of Saseno, to which both Lucan[803] and Silius Italicus[804] allude, as a pirate resort. But there is no mention of Valona till the second half of the second century A.D., when Ptolemy[805] describes it as “a city and harbour.” It subsequently occurs several times in the Antonine, Maritime and Jerusalem Itineraries[806], and in the Synekdemos of Hierokles[807]; whereas Kanina, the little town on the hill above it, which may have been its akropolis, was “built,” according to Leake[808], “upon a Hellenic site,” and identified by Pouqueville[809] with Œneus, the fortress taken by Perseus during the third Macedonian war, and probably destroyed by Æmilius Paullus, which would thus explain its long disappearance from history.
Despite the importance of its position as a port of transit between Rome and Constantinople, Valona is rarely named even by Byzantine historians before the eleventh century. Bishops of Valona, who were at different times suffragans of Durazzo or Ochrida, are mentioned in 458, in 553, and in 519, when the legates sent by Pope Hormisdas to Constantinople were received by the then occupant of the See[810]. It was there that Peter, Justinian’s envoy, met those of Theodatus, the two Roman Senators, Liberius and Opilio, and learnt what had befallen Amalasuntha, the prisoner of Bolsena[811]. Constantine Porphyrogenitus[812] merely enumerates it as one of the cities comprised in the Theme of Dyrrachium. Possibly it was one of the Byzantine harbours between Corfù and the Drin, which escaped temporary absorption in the Bulgarian Empire of Symeon (c. 917). But Kanina was included in that of the other great Bulgarian Tsar Samuel (976-1014), until Basil II, “the Bulgar-slayer,” overthrew that powerful monarch[813], and it is, therefore, probable that Valona too was for a brief space a Bulgarian port. The Sicilian expeditions against Greece in the eleventh and twelfth centuries naturally brought Valona into prominence as a landing-place for troops. Anna Comnena[814] frequently mentions it. Thus, in 1081, Bohemund, son of Robert Guiscard, took and burnt Kanina, Valona, and Jericho, as the ancient harbour of Eurychos (the Porto Raguseo of the Italians) was then called; Robert was nearly shipwrecked in a storm off Cape Glossa, and later on spent two months in the haven of Jericho. When he left Albania in 1082 he bestowed Valona upon Bohemund, and when he made his second and fatal expedition in 1084 it was to Valona that he crossed from Otranto. Trade privileges at Valona (renewed by subsequent Emperors in 1126, 1148 and 1187) formed part of the price which the Emperor Alexios I paid for the assistance of the Venetian fleet in this contest[815]. It was there that the Greek Admiral Kontostephanos watched for Bohemund’s return, and shortly afterwards we find Michael Kekaumenos, Imperial governor of Valona, Jericho and Kanina. In 1149, after the capture of Corfù, Manuel II went to Valona, and encamped there several days before sailing for Sicily to punish King Roger for his attack upon Greece. He landed on the islet of Aeironesion (identified by Pouqueville and Professor Lampros with Saseno); but storms prevented his “punitive expedition,” so he left Valona by land for Pelagonia[816].
The fourth crusade, which led to the dismemberment of the Greek Empire, consequently affected the Adriatic coast. The partition treaty of 1204 assigned to Venice the province of Durazzo, which included Valona, as well as Albania, and in the following year the Venetian podestà at Constantinople formally transferred these possessions to the Republic, which sent Marino Valaresso with the title of “Duke” to govern Durazzo. But meanwhile Michael I Angelos had established in western Greece the independent Hellenic principality known as the Despotat of Epeiros, which included both “Old” and “New” Epeiros (in the latter of which was Valona), extending from Naupaktos to Durazzo, and which he agreed in 1210 to hold as a nominal fief of Venice, from the river Shkumbi, south of Durazzo, to Naupaktos, paying a yearly rent, and promising to grant to the Venetian merchants a special quarter in every town of his dominions, freedom from taxes, and assistance in case of need against the Albanians[817]. Thus Valona for fifty-three years formed an integral part of the Greek Despotat of Epeiros.
The mutual rivalry of the two Greek states which had arisen out of the ruins of the Byzantine Empire—the Empire of Nicæa and the Despotat of Epeiros—suggested to the ill-fated Manfred of Sicily that he might recover the ephemeral conquests of the Sicilian Normans on the eastern shores of the Adriatic. In 1257, while Michael II of Epeiros was at war with the Nicene troops, he occupied Valona, Durazzo, Berat, the Spinarza hills (near the mouth of the Vojussa, or perhaps Svernetsi on the lagoon of Valona), and their appurtenances; and Michael, desirous of securing Manfred as an ally against his Greek rival, made a virtue of necessity by conferring these places together with the hand of his daughter Helen upon the King of Sicily on the occasion of their marriage[818] in 1259. Manfred wisely appointed as governor of his trans-Adriatic possessions a man with experience of the East, Filippo Chinardo, a Cypriote Frank, and his High Admiral. Indeed, when Manfred fell in battle at Benevento, fighting against Charles I of Anjou, in 1266, Chinardo, who married Michael II’s sister-in-law and received Kanina as her dowry, continued to hold his late master’s Epeirote dominions, but later in the same year was assassinated at the instigation of the crafty Despot[819]. The latter had doubtless hoped, now that his son-in-law was no more, to re-occupy the places which had been his daughter’s and his sister-in-law’s dowries. But a new claimant now appeared upon the scene. The fugitive Latin Emperor of Constantinople, Baldwin II, by the treaty of Viterbo in 1267 ceded to Charles I of Anjou “all the land which the Despot Michael gave, handed over and conceded as dowry or by whatsoever title to his daughter Helen, widow of the late Manfred, formerly Prince of Taranto, and which the said Manfred and the late Filippo Chinardo (who acted as Admiral of the said realm) held during their lives[820].” The Sicilian garrisons of Valona, Kanina and Berat held out, however, against both Michael II and Charles I, the latter of whom was for some years too much occupied with Italian affairs to intervene actively beyond the Adriatic. Accordingly, a devoted follower of Chinardo, Giacomo di Balsignano (near Bari), remained independent as castellan of Valona; but in 1269 Charles, having made this man’s brother a prisoner in Italy, declined to release him at the request of Prince William of Achaia, unless Valona were surrendered. Although he actually named one of his own supporters to take Balsignano’s place, that officer held out at Valona for four years more, when he handed over Valona, but was at once re-appointed castellan of both Valona and Kanina by Charles. Thus, in 1273, began the effective rule of the Angevins over Valona. In the following year, the Italian castellan received fiefs in Southern Italy in exchange for Valona and Kanina, and a Frenchman, Henri de Courcelles, was appointed in his stead[821]. Chinardo’s heirs, who had at first been allowed to live on at Valona, were imprisoned at Trani.
The Angevins attached considerable importance to Valona, especially from a military point of view. Frequent mention is made of the castle in the Angevin documents; Greek fire was deposited there, its well is the subject of several inquiries, and it served as a base for Charles I’s designs upon the Greek Empire, which were cut short by the Sicilian Vespers. The chief Angevin officials were a castellan (usually a Frenchman, e.g. Dreux de Vaux), a treasurer, and more rarely a “captain” of the town, who was subordinate to the castellan, who was in his turn under the Captain and Vicar-General of Albania. The garrison sometimes consisted of Saracens from Lucera, and its fidelity could not always be trusted, for a commission was on one occasion sent over to inquire whether it had sold munitions to the Greek enemies of the Angevins. Nor was the harbour, which the Venetians frequented, free from pirates[822]. After the death of the vigorous Despot Michael II, it was not so much from his feeble successor, Nikephoros I of Epeiros, as from the able and energetic Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos, that the Angevins had to fear attacks upon Valona, especially after the defeat of their army and the capture of its commander at Berat in 1281. There is no documentary evidence of the presence of any Angevin governor after 1284 at Valona, which, between that date and 1297, when we find a certain “Calemanus” described as “Duke” of the Spinarza district, and, therefore, almost certainly of Valona also, must have been occupied by the Byzantines[823]. Nevertheless, the Angevins continued to regard the Epeirote lands of Manfred and Chinardo as theirs on paper. They are mentioned in the ratification of the treaty of Viterbo by the titular Latin Empress Catherine in 1294, by which they were confirmed to King Charles II, who in the same year transferred them to his son Philip of Taranto[824], then about to marry Thamar, daughter and heiress of the Despot Nikephoros I of Epeiros.
The Byzantines evidently attached considerable importance to Valona and its district, for the successive Byzantine governors were men of family and position: Andronikos Asan Palaiologos, subsequently governor of the Byzantine province in the Morea, who was son of the Bulgarian Tsar, John Asên III, connected with the reigning imperial family, and father-in-law of the future Emperor John Cantacuzene; Constantine Palaiologos, son of Andronikos II; and a Laskaris[825]. Under these exalted personages were minor officials, such as George Ganza, a friend of the Despot Thomas of Epeiros, and his son Nicholas, who successively held the office of Admiral of Valona for over twenty years, while the latter on one occasion grandiloquently styles himself protosevastos et protovestiarius et primus camerlengus of the Emperor; the sevastos Theodore Lykoudas, and Michael Malagaris, prefect of the castle of Kanina[826]. During this second Byzantine period, when Valona was civitas Imperatoris Grecorum (as a document styles it), there was a considerable trade with both Ragusa and Venice, and a colony of resident Venetian merchants there. Occasionally, however, serious quarrels arose between the Ganza family and the Ragusans and Venetians, who demanded satisfaction from the Emperor, and on one occasion Ganza’s son was killed. That there was likewise traffic with the opposite Italian coast is clear from King Robert of Naples’ repeated orders to his subjects to export nothing to a place which belonged to the hostile Byzantine Empire, and to which the Angevins still maintained their claims. For as late as 1328 Philip of Taranto named a certain Raimond de Termes commander of Berat and Valona[827], and death alone prevented him and his brother, John of Gravina, who in 1332 received the kingdom of Albania with the town of Durazzo in exchange for the principality of the Morea, from prosecuting the Angevin claims. The Albanians, however, rose and attacked Berat and Kanina in 1335, but were speedily suppressed by Andronikos III, the first Emperor who had visited Albania since Manuel I[828].
But a more formidable enemy than Angevins or Albanians now threatened Valona. The great Serbian Tsar, Stephen Dushan, was now making Serbia the dominant power of the Balkan peninsula, and the value of the harbour of Valona and the castle of Kanina could scarcely escape the notice of that remarkable man. An entry in a Serbian psalter informs us that the Serbs took Valona and Kanina[829] in the last four months of 1345 or in the early months of 1346, and Serbian they remained till the Turkish conquest. Dushan, like the Byzantines, showed his appreciation of these places by appointing as governor of Valona, Kanina and Berat his brother-in-law, John Comnenos Asên, brother of the Bulgarian Tsar, John Alexander. This Serbian governor, a Bulgar by birth, married Anna Palaiologina, widow of the Despot John II of Epeiros, and mother of the last Despot of Epeiros, Nikephoros II, and became so far Hellenised as to take the name of Comnenos (borne by the Greek Despots of Epeiros, whose successor he pretended to be, and whose title of “Despot” he adopted), and to sign his name in Greek in the two Slav documents which he has bequeathed to us[830]. Although, like his predecessors, he preyed upon Venetian and other shipping at Valona, for which the mighty Serbian Tsar paid compensation, he became a Venetian citizen[831], and was allowed to obtain weapons in Venice for the defence of Cheimarra and its port of Palermo from Sicilian pirates[832]. After the death of Dushan and in the confusion which ensued he embraced the cause of the latter’s half-brother, the Tsar Symeon, who had married his step-daughter, Thomais, against Dushan’s son, and he is last mentioned in 1363, when nearly all the Venetians at Valona died of the plague, and he perhaps with them[833]. Alexander, perhaps his son, followed him as “Lord of Kanina and Valona,” and allied himself with Ragusa[834], of which he became a citizen. The name of Porto Raguseo (Pasha Liman of the Turks), at the mouth of the Dukati valley on the bay of Valona, still preserves the memory of this connection, and was the harbour of the “argosies” of the South Slavonic Republic, whose merchants had their quarters half-way between Valona and Kanina.
In 1371 those places came into the possession of the family of Balsha, of Serbian origin, which a few years earlier had founded a dynasty in what is now Montenegro. Balsha II, who with his two brothers had already taken Antivari and Scutari (“their principal domicile”), killed a certain George, perhaps Alexander’s son—for Alexander is thought to have perished by the side of Vukashin at the battle of the Maritza in 1371—and in a Venetian document of the next year is described as “Lord of Valona.” In consequence of his usurpation the inhabitants of Valona fled for refuge to the islet of Saseno in the bay, and placed themselves under the protection of Venice[835]. Under Balsha II Valona formed part of a considerable principality, for on the death of his last surviving brother, in 1378, the “Lord of Valona and Budua” had become sole ruler of the Zeta—the modern Montenegro—and then, by the capture of Durazzo from Carlo Topia, “Prince of Albania,” assumed the title of “Duke” from that former Venetian duchy. By his marriage with Comita Musachi, he became connected with a powerful Albanian clan[836]; but his ambition caused his death, for Carlo Topia begged the Turks to restore him to Durazzo, while Balsha, like other Christian rulers of his time, instead of concentrating all his forces against the Turkish peril, wasted them in fighting against Tvrtko I, the great King of Bosnia, for the possession of Cattaro. Consequently, when the Turks marched against him, he could raise only a small army to oppose them; he fell in battle on the Vojussa in 1385, and his head was sent as a trophy to the Sultan.
Upon his death his dominions were divided; Valona with Kanina, Saseno, Cheimarra, and “the tower of Pyrgos[837]” alone remained to his widow. Left with only a daughter, Regina, she felt unable to defend all these places from the advancing Turks; so, in 1386, she offered “the castle and town of Valona” to Venice on “certain conditions[838].” The cautious Republic replied that her offer would be accepted, if she would hand over freely “the castle of Kanina with its district and the town of Valona with its district.” This shows that the Venetians, like their recent Italian representatives, realised that Valona required Kanina for its defence, as well as a certain Hinterland. The reply went on to add that, in case she declined to accept this condition, Venice would be content to take over these places, paying her half their rents for her life, while she paid half their expenses. Under those circumstances, she could remain at Valona, or come to Venice, as she chose. But, if she would accept neither proposition, then Venice would be willing to take Kanina and the other places, giving her all the rents for her life, on condition that she paid all the expenses of their maintenance. Nothing came of this negotiation; but in 1389 her envoy agreed to furnish three rowers annually to the captain of the Venetian fleet in recognition of Venetian dominion over the islet of Saseno, which commanded the bay. Thus Venice, like the late Admiral Bettòlo, considered that the occupation of that islet was sufficient. In 1393 Dame Comita Balsha made Venice a second offer of Valona. But, in the meantime, the battle of Kossovo had been fought; the Serbian Empire had fallen, and it was obvious that the Turks had become the most powerful Balkan state. Thus, although Comita was ready to give Venice the men whom she had promised in recognition of Venetian rights over “the towers of Pyrgos and Saseno,” and disposed to cede Valona, her offer was declined with thanks, because “we Venetians prefer our friends to remain in their own dominions and govern them rather than we.” Two years later her envoy, the Bishop of Albania, made a third offer of all the four places which she held: Valona, Kanina, Cheimarra, and the tower of Pyrgos, provision being made for her and her son-in-law that they might go where they liked and live honourably there. This meant in cash 7000 ducats for their lives out of the 9000 which the bishop estimated as the total revenue of the above places. The Venetians ordered their Admiral to inquire into the state of the places and the amount which they produced, before deciding, and ere that Comita died[839].
She was succeeded by her son-in-law, “Marchisa” (or Merksha) Jarkovich, “King of Serbia,” a near relative of her own by blood and a cousin of the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II. He must, therefore, have been a relative of the latter’s Serbian wife, who was a daughter of Constantine Dragash, Despot of part of Macedonia[840]. He at once, in 1396, offered to cede Valona, Cheimarra, Berat, and the tower of Pyrgos to Venice, but was told that his offer could not be accepted till the Venetians had accurate information about them. He then turned to Ragusa, of which he became an honorary citizen with leave to deposit all his property there for safety. In 1398 he again applied to Venice, because he did not see how he could defend his lands against the Turks. Venice thought it undesirable that they should become Turkish, but decided first to send her Admiral to inquire into their revenues, cost, and condition, expressing a preference for leaving them in their present ruler’s hands. In 1400, as this inquiry had not yet been made, another envoy was sent from Valona to Venice, only to receive the same answer. Upon Merksha’s death, his widow sent yet another envoy to Venice in 1415, with a like result, and was reminded of her late husband’s and her subjects’ debts to the Republic. Then the end came; a document of July 21, 1418, informs us that Valona had fallen into the hands of the Turks[841]. Consequently, lest they should attack the Venetian colony of Corfù or passing Venetian ships, the Venetian bailie, who was about to proceed to Constantinople, was instructed to endeavour to obtain its restitution with that of Kanina and its other appurtenances to Regina Balsha, whose husband had been, like herself, a Venetian citizen. If the Sultan refused, then the bailie was authorised to offer up to 8000 ducats for Regina’s former possessions, and another offer was made in 1424[842]. The Turks, however, retained Valona continuously for 273 years, and, with one brief interval, for 495.
There is little record of its history in the Turkish period. In June, 1436, Cyriacus of Ancona spent two days there, and copied a Greek inscription which he found on a marble base at the Church of Georgios Tropæophoros[843]. In 1466 Venice was alarmed at the repairs executed there by its new masters, which endangered Venetian interests owing to its proximity to the Republic’s colonies in that part of the world—Corfù and its dependencies, in the south, and Durazzo, Alessio, Dulcigno, Antivari, Dagno, Satti, Scutari and Drivasto, in the north—and to the quantity of wood for shipbuilding which it could furnish. Accordingly, the Republic suggested to Skanderbeg to attack it with his own forces, and with Venetian and colonial troops[844]. Nothing came of this suggestion, but in 1472 a Corfiote, John Vlastos, offered to consign Valona and Kanina to Venice on condition of receiving a fixed sum down and an annuity; and the Republic instructed the Governor of Corfù to enter into negotiations with him[845]. This also failed, and Valona, in Turkish hands, became, as had been feared, a base for attack against the Ionian Islands and even Italy. Thence, in 1479, the Turks moved against the remaining possessions of Leonardo III Tocco, Count of Cephalonia; thence, in the following year, they sailed to take Otranto[846]. In 1501, during the Turco-Venetian war, Benedetto Pesaro entered the bay of Valona with a flotilla of light vessels, but a sudden hurricane caused the death by drowning of all his men except those taken prisoners by the Turks[847]. In 1518 the Governor of Valona, a renegade Cheimarriote, succeeded, with the aid of Sinan Pasha, the Turkish Admiral, in compelling Cheimarra to accept Turkish suzerainty by the concession of large privileges. Sinan was so greatly pleased with Valona that he became its governor. In the same year two Turkish subjects attempted from Valona a coup de main upon Corfù, and it was there that the former of the two great Turkish sieges of that island, that of 1537, was decided upon by Suleyman I[848]. In 1570 a further descent was made from Valona, where the Turks had established a cannon-foundry, upon Corfù[849]. In 1638 the attack by the Venetian fleet upon certain Tunisian and Algerian ships off Valona nearly provoked war with Turkey, and led to a temporary prohibition of trade between the inhabitants of that and of other Turkish possessions and Venice[850].
The Turco-Venetian war towards the close of the seventeenth century led at last to the Venetian occupation of Valona, then a place of 150 houses surrounded by a low wall. The motives were the fertility of the district and the desire to expel the Barbary corsairs. Morosini’s successor, Girolamo Cornaro, accompanied by many Greeks, after being delayed two days by a storm off Saseno, landed at Kryoneri, a little to the south of the town, early in September, 1690, where he was joined by 500 Cheimarriotes and Albanians. A Turkish attempt to prevent his landing was repulsed; Kanina, weakly fortified by crumbling walls, was forced to surrender, and its fall had as a natural consequence the capitulation of Valona without a blow. Cornaro, leaving Giovanni Matteo Bembo and Teodoro Cornaro as provveditori of Valona and Kanina, proceeded to attack Durazzo, but was forced by a storm to return to Valona, where, on October 1, he died[851]. Venice intended at first to keep these two acquisitions. Carlo Pisani was ordered to remain at “Uroglia” (Gervolia opposite Corfù) with four galleys for their defence, while the fortifications of Kanina were repaired and cisterns made. But when the Capitan Pasha encamped on the banks of the Vojussa to intimidate the Albanians, many of whom wished to join Venice, the garrisons began to suffer from lack of food and consequent desertions. Thereupon, Domenico Mocenigo, the new Venetian Captain-General, proposed and carried out the demolition of Kanina by mines, and wrote to the home government advocating the destruction of Valona on the ground that its preservation would cripple the campaign in the Morea. A debate upon its fate followed in the Senate. Francesco Foscari urged its retention on account of its geographical position at the mouth of the Adriatic and on a fine bay, well supplied with fresh water from Kryoneri (or “Acqua Fredda”). He alluded to the valuable oak forests in the neighbourhood, whose acorns furnished the substance known by the topical name of valonea to dyers, to the ancient pitch-mines, the salt-pans, and the fisheries. To these material considerations he added the loss of prestige involved in the surrender of a place whose capture had been celebrated with joy by Pope Alexander VIII and announced as an important event to the King of Spain, because it signified the destruction of the corsairs, so long the terror of the Papal and Neapolitan coast of the Adriatic. Besides, “Valona,” he concluded, “opens for us the door into Albania.” To him Michele Foscarini replied, proposing to leave the decision to the naval council, and this proposal was adopted. Mocenigo’s first idea had always been to abandon the place, and his resolve was confirmed by the advance of the Turkish troops under Chalil Pasha; but General Charles Sparre, a Swedish baron, who was sent to execute his orders, found that the rapid approach of the enemy made such an operation too dangerous. The Venetians accordingly burnt the suburb, but prepared to defend the town. But at the outset both Bembo and Sparre were killed by the Turkish artillery fire, and, though the garrison made a successful sortie, the Captain-General repeated his order to blow up Valona. Four cannon and one mortar were left there to deceive the Turks, and on March 13, 1691, after a siege of forty days, they too were removed and Valona evacuated and destroyed. The Turks offered no opposition to the retreating Venetians, and the opinion was freely expressed that the place could have been defended. Thus, after six months, ended the Venetian occupation of Valona[852]. When Pouqueville[853] visited it rather more than a century later, he saw the remains of the two forts blown up by the Venetians, and found that one street with porticoes recalled their former residence. In his time the population was 6000, including a certain number of Jews banished from Ancona by Paul IV. The place was then, as now, very unhealthy in summer, but he foretold a brilliant future for it, if the marshes were once drained.
The Turks neglected Valona, as they neglected all their Albanian possessions. Sinan Pasha had been so good and popular a governor that, although a native of Konieh, he was nicknamed “the Arnaut,” and his descendants long held the appointment as almost a family fief; indeed, as late as the middle of the eighteenth century, the natives of Valona besieged and cut to pieces a certain Ismail Pasha, who had endeavoured to wrest the governorship of the town from one of Sinan’s descendants[854]. A generation later, however, a sanguinary feud, which broke out between the members of this governing family, led the other notables of Valona to invoke the intervention of the famous Ali Pasha of Joannina, who had already cast covetous eyes on the place, then ruled by Ibrahim Pasha. But the treacherous “Lion of Joannina” carried off not only Ibrahim but also the notables of Valona to the dungeons of his lake-fortress, where they were subsequently put to death. Ibrahim, however, lingered on, and was forced to address a petition to the Turkish government begging it, in consideration of his age and infirmities, to bestow the governorship of Valona and Berat upon his gaoler’s eldest son, Mouchtar Pasha, who appointed a Naxiote Christian, Damirales, as his representative in the former town. In 1820 the Turkish authorities, resolved to crush the too-powerful satrap of Joannina, easily induced the people of Valona to drive out Mouchtar’s partisans. But the population repeatedly gave the Turks cause for alarm, and in 1828 Rechid Pasha treacherously executed a powerful Bey of Valona, who had come to pay his respects to him at Joannina. Nevertheless the local people continued to resist any obnoxious Turkish authority[855].
During the first Balkan war, on November 28, 1912, Albanian independence was proclaimed at Valona, and an Albanian government formed, of which Ismail Kemal Bey was President[856]. But when an Albanian principality was created in the following year, and Prince William of Wied was chosen as its ruler, Valona recognised Durazzo as the capital. Meanwhile, Italy had intimated that she could not consent to the inclusion of Valona, to which she attached special importance, within the new Greek frontier; and insisted on the islet of Saseno, which had formed part of the Hellenic kingdom since 1864, being ceded to the Albanian principality. Greece complied with this demand, and on July 15, 1914, the Greek garrison abandoned Saseno at the order of the Venizelos Cabinet. When the European war broke out, Italy took the opportunity, on October 30, to occupy Saseno by troops under the command of Admiral Patris, who found it inhabited by twenty-one persons, and re-christened the highest point “Monte Bandiera” from the Italian flag which was hoisted there[857]. She had sent a sanitary mission to Valona itself and, on December 25, occupied that town. Then, as in 1690 and as in the days of Manfred and his successors, Kanina was likewise in Italian hands, while for the first time in its long history Valona has been connected with Great Britain, for the new jetty there was the work of the British Adriatic Mission, sent to rescue the retreating Serbian army. But, by the Tirana agreement of August 3, 1920, Italy renounced Valona (assigned to her by the treaty of London in 1915), and now holds Saseno alone.
RULERS OF VALONA
| Byzantine Empire | -1081 | |
| Normans of Sicily | 1081-4 | |
| Byzantine Empire | 1084-1204 | |
| Despotat of Epeiros | 1204-57 | |
| Manfred | 1257-66 | |
| Chinardo | 1266 | |
| Giacomo di Balsignano | 1266-73 | |
| Angevins of Naples | 1273-(?)97 | |
| Byzantine Empire | (?) | 1297-1345/6 |
| Serbs | 1345/6-1417 | |
| Turks | 1417-1690 | |
| Venetians | 1690-1 | |
| Turks | 1691-1912 | |
| Albanians | 1912-14 | |
| Italians | Dec. 25, 1914-Aug. 3, 1920 | |
| Albanians | 1920- | |