Progenerant aquilæ cotlumbam.”[79]
—Horace.
Sultan Mohammed I. had invaded Albania in 1413, and obliged John Castriot to deliver up his four young sons to him as hostages. He immediately, and against the solemn promise made to their father, caused them to be circumcised and educated in the Mussulman religion. George, our hero, was the youngest. He was endowed with a prodigious memory, and soon learned to speak the Greek, Turkish, Arab, Illyrian, and Italian languages. A handsome person, unusual bodily strength, and vigorous mental qualities won for him the warm affection of the next sovereign, Amurath II., who changed George’s name to Scanderbeg—i.e., Beg or Lord Alexander—and at the early age of eighteen gave him the rank of sangiac and command of five thousand horsemen on the confines of Anatolia. His personal prowess and military skill in Asia Minor brought him into considerable notice, and he was given a command in the European provinces of the empire.
This was a difficult position to be placed in; for he had not forgotten that he was born a Christian and had been impressed into his present service. He felt a great dislike to turn his arms against co-religionists and countrymen. His brothers were dead, and now his father died in 1432. At this juncture the sultan very unjustly took possession of his hereditary dominion, and, sending his mother and sister Mamisa into exile, put a pasha over the country. Scanderbeg did not immediately pronounce himself against this act of treacherous spoliation, although several Albanian noblemen, proud of his renown and convinced that he was not at heart attached to his new creed, corresponded with him secretly, urging him to come and put himself at the head of the Christian population to free the country from the infidel. The Albanians have always been distinguished for their spirit of nationality, and, like the inhabitants of all mountainous regions are remarkable for independence and love of home.
The favorable moment to declare himself had not arrived but his plans were maturing. At last, after a great battle lost by the Turks at Morava on the 10th of November, 1443, he concerted with his nephew Hamza and a few trusty friends of Christian origin, forced, like himself, to serve the foreign tyrant, and by a skilful ruse and very sudden irruption at the head of six hundred Albanians, who hastened to join him as soon as his defection was known, he obtained possession of Croia, the capital of his paternal dominions. The Turkish garrison, not so much by his orders as from an uncontrollable impulse of outraged feelings in the populace, was put to the sword. Scanderbeg was
just twenty-nine years old. He publicly renounced Mohammedanism and renewed his profession of the Catholic faith. The chiefs of Albania were then invited to meet him. When they came together at Croia, they called him their deliverer, unanimously proclaimed him Prince of Epirus, and soon collected an army of about twelve thousand men. While the troops were being raised, the civil service and revenues of the state were reorganized. Besides a large immediate contribution from his own countrymen, he obtained two hundred thousand ducats from his neighbors, the Venetians, and had a large source of income in the salt-mines near Durazzo.
Petralba was next taken, and this success brought new accessions of men and means to prosecute the war. Within a month after the first blow had been struck every fortress except one was captured, and every Turk either killed, a prisoner, or in flight. Sfetigrad could not be surprised, and, leaving a force of three thousand men to watch it and cut off supplies, Scanderbeg retired with the rest of the army to Croia for the winter, and occupied himself in making an alliance with the republic of Venice, which held several towns along the coast of Dalmatia, and in preparing for the inevitable struggle the sultan would make to recover the country. Amurath did not dissemble his anger at the revolt of one whom he had treated, he said, with so much kindness and taught the use of the arms he was now turning against him. Being engaged at the time against the Hungarians, he put off revenge until the spring, thinking that he could at any moment easily subdue the undisciplined bands of Albania; but when a truce was concluded
and spring opened with fair weather for an imposing campaign, he sent Ali Pasha in command of forty thousand men, his orders being to crush the insurrection at a single blow. Scanderbeg had by this time reduced Sfetigrad and strongly fortified and garrisoned the more important towns. He now took the field with only fifteen thousand troops, knowing that in such a country as the one he was to defend a very large force would be difficult to handle and impossible to feed. His tactics were generally those of partisan warfare. His little army was composed partly of cavalry from the northern, and partly of a hardy and active infantry from the southern section of the country. His object was to wear out the enemy by a stout resistance at every point, and harass the retreats which the very vastness of the Turkish armies would necessitate by the impossibility, if for no other reason, of providing for so many mouths. Only occasional raids were made in force upon the fertile plains of Thessaly and Macedonia to capture horses, cattle, sheep, and to gather in grain to be stored in the fortified towns. During the war of Albanian independence, which lasted a quarter of a century, the Turks always, except towards the end, repeated the fatal blunder of sending immense armies, consisting in some cases of two hundred thousand men, into a country where they could be maintained only for a single and brief campaign, and to fight a general who was sure, from his bravery, skill, and thorough knowledge of every torrent, mountain pass, road, and valley, to turn defeat into overwhelming disaster. It was thus that the army of Ali Pasha was drawn by wily manœuvres into a narrow district only
ninety miles from Croia and opening into the very heart of Albania. The upper end was very contracted, and here Scanderbeg drew up his main body of troops, to the number of ten thousand, which were posted in three divisions en échelon. As soon as the enemy was well engaged in the valley three thousand horsemen, who had been watching their slow advance, came down at its lower end, which had been left quite unguarded, while fifteen hundred irregular infantry lay in ambush on either side amidst the woody acclivities. As soon as the Turks came up to the Albanians they halted, tried to deploy, but could not, repeatedly charged and swept up in heavy columns against the small but solid masses who evenly filled the gap and made it impossible to flank them. The Turks after a while began to waver and fall into still greater disorder. Ali Pasha had blundered.
The Albanians now took the offensive. The signal-clarions sounded, and, while the Turks were attacked in front, the cavalry from the lower end of the valley charged them in the rear, and the infantry that lay in ambush came rushing down on both sides with terrific cries and sword in hand to complete their discomfiture. It was now a slaughter; and although the battle lasted only four hours altogether, over twenty thousand infidels were killed or wounded. Few prisoners—not more than two thousand—were taken. The rest of the enemy, under cover of darkness and from sheer exhaustion on the part of the victors, escaped through the now open passage at the lower end of the valley.