Cicogna, Iscr. Ven. iii. 134.
made a piratical descent upon Nicosia, and had carried off all the women who were still young enough for the Eastern market. But one of these, a heroine whose name is lost, fired the ship’s powder-magazine and saved herself and her companions from outrage by causing the instant death of every soul on board. This was in the latter half of the sixteenth century.
Thirsting for vengeance, the Venetians now eagerly joined Philip II. of Spain in the league proposed by the Pope. The three fleets were to meet at Messina, and much precious time was lost, during which the Turks completed their conquest of Cyprus, which was heroically defended by Marcantonio Bragadin. His fate was horrible. His nose and ears were cut off, and he was obliged to witness the death of his brave companions, Tiepolo, Baglione, Martinengo, and Quirini. They were stoned, hanged, and carved to shreds before his eyes, and a vast number of Venetian soldiers and women and children were massacred before him during the following ten days. At last his turn came to die; he was hung by the hands in the public square and slowly skinned alive. It is said that he died like a hero and a saint, commending his soul to God, and forgiving his enemies.
The ferocious Mustapha, by whose orders these horrors were perpetrated, ordered his skin to be stuffed and had it carried about the streets, under a red umbrella, in allusion to the arms of the Bragadin family. The hideous human doll
Molmenti, Seb. Venier.
was then hoisted to the masthead of Mustapha’s ship as a trophy and taken in that way to Constantinople.
But in his lifetime Bragadin had ransomed a certain man of Verona from the Turks, and had earned his undying gratitude. This Veronese, hearing of his benefactor’s awful end, swore to bring home his skin, since nothing else remained, and with incredible skill and courage actually entered the Turkish arsenal at Constantinople, where the trophy was kept, stole it and brought it home. It is related that the skin was found as soft as silk and was easily folded into a small space; it is preserved in the church of San Giovanni e Paolo.
The vengeance of the league was slow, but it was memorably terrible; in 1571 Don John of Austria, a stripling of genius, scarcely six and twenty years of age, commanded the three fleets and led Christianity to victory at Lepanto.
Lepanto, A. Vicentini; ducal palace.
One of the decisive battles of the world checked the Mohammedan power for ever in the Gulf of Corinth, and the blood of eighty thousand Turks avenged the inhuman murder of Bragadin and the self-destruction of the captive Venetian women.