ALBANIA

The Albanians were descendants of the ancient Illyrians. Ptolemy mentions a city of Albanopolis and a tribe called the Albanians as early as the 2nd century, and by the 11th century the name had been extended to cover all of the Illyrian tribes. Part of the Byzantine Empire until the late-13th century, during the early part of the period covered by this volume much of Albania was held by the Angevins of Naples, who deemed it a kingdom (1271-1368), and the Serbs under Dushan (1343-55), though the Byzantine despots of Epiros and then the Morea also retained parts until well into the second half of the 14th century. After the death of Dushan the northern part of the country, modern Montenegro, became independent under George Balsha, who with his sons set up his capital at Scutari (Shkoder), and in 1368 he and his erstwhile enemy Charles Thopia, who had adopted the title Prince of Albania, in addition seized the Angevin possessions; of these, the Navarrese Company (see page 28) succeeded only in recapturing Durazzo (Durres) in its campaign of 1376. George Balsha died in 1385 fighting against the Ottomans at the Battle of Savra, where he allegedly confronted an army of 40,000 with just 1,000 men. From the 1380s on Ottoman pressure mounted, and the Balshas were obliged to have recourse to Venetian aid, in exchange for which between 1392-95 they had to hand over Durazzo, Alessio (Lesh) and Drivasti. Hostilities with the Venetians subsequently became almost as commonplace as those with the Turks, and although the Albanians, utilising the mountainous nature of their countryside to best advantage, usually prevailed in the field (especially under their talented commander Stephen Crnoievic, ‘the Black Prince’, who in addition fought and defeated the Ottomans in 63 battles and skirmishes in the period 1424-36), Venice nevertheless managed to expand her Albanian possessions by purchase and conquest so that by 1444 she held Alessio, Drivasti, Dagno, Satti, Scutari, Durazzo, Dulcigno and Antivari.

The Ottomans had in the meantime proceeded to consume the divided country piecemeal, often being invited in by rival chieftains wanting their help against one another. They were exercising direct control over some areas as early as the 1380s, and over most of central and southern Albania by the early 1430s (Kroya was captured in 1415, Valona, Kanina and Berat in 1417, Girokastra in 1419, loannina in 1431, and Serres in 1433). Sizeable Albanian auxiliary contingents had therefore started to appear in Ottoman armies in the late-14th century. The country became a sancak of the Ottoman Empire in 1430, and in 1440 a certain Iskender Bey was appointed sancak bey of the province. This was the celebrated Scanderbeg (a corruption of his Turkish name), an Albanian whose real name was George Castriotes, who had been reared as a hostage at the Ottoman court in Adrianople. In 1443 he rebelled against the Turks and, with just 300 horsemen, seized the city of Kroya and began a resistance movement that freed much of the country, as a result of which an Albanian League (the League of Lezha) was formed, with Scanderbeg as commander-in-chief of its armed forces. He did not receive universal support, however, and he often had to overcome stiff, even martial, opposition from many of the highland chieftains, who were so opposed to his undisguised attempts to unite the country under his sole leadership that some of them actually welcomed Ottoman armies as their liberators. Nevertheless, despite the frequent setbacks that were to result from the treachery and desertion of various chieftains over the years, Scanderbeg was able to resist and repel repeated Ottoman counter-attacks right up to his death in 1468, winning over 25 battles against them, including several massive sieges of Kroya. Thereafter Albanian resistance faltered, though Turkish attacks were more or less successfully weathered until 1477 under the country’s new leader Lek Dukagjin, one of Scanderbeg’s old lieutenants, in alliance with the Venetians, who following Scanderbeg’s death had been permitted to instal garrisons in Kroya and other fortresses in additon to those they already held. However, Ghin Musachi, a contemporary, recorded of the annual Ottoman inroads that ‘the forces of the Turks always increased while ours decreased; almost all the young men of Albania were killed; there were only a few old men left, and their forces were exhausted, and their states dwindled.’ Subsequent campaigns therefore saw the gradual reduction of the Venetian and Albanian garrisons, until the signing of a treaty in 1479 left Venice with just 3 coastal strongholds, those of Durazzo, Dulcigno and Antivari. The rest of the country (except for inhospitable Montenegro) now belonged to the Ottomans.

Burchard, who travelled c. 1308, reckoned that at that time the Albanians were capable of fielding 15,000 cavalry, an estimate that is doubtless a little on the low side; in 1378, for instance, George Balsha and Charles Thopia invaded Bosnia with 10,000 men, and Stephen Crnoievic alone fielded 7,000 against the Ottomans in 1448. Admittedly these were all extremely powerful chieftains holding large parts of the country, but even Scanderbeg’s father, John Castriotes, a relatively minor chieftain, was able to offer the Venetians the service of an auxiliary contingent of 2,300 cavalry in 1411 (in exchange for 1,000 ducats a year). Scanderbeg’s army never exceeded about 18,000 men. Its core comprised some 8-10,000 men, chiefly light horse who are described in the ‘Commentarii’ (attributed to Pope Pius II) as ‘lightly armed cavalry, swift horsemen, good for looting and plundering’.15 About 2-3,000 of them (a 15th century Italian source says 3,500) constituted the household troops, whose names and acts of bravery, so we are told by Melchior Michaelis (15th century?), Scanderbeg knew by heart, and whose sleeping quarters and meals he shared ‘as a common soldier’. These included what Barletius described in the late-15th/early-16th century as Scanderbeg’s praetoria cohors, a personal bodyguard made up entirely of soldiers from Kroya, probably numbering 6-800 men (see below). A further 3-5,000 men were posted on Albania’s eastern frontier under Scanderbeg’s uncle, Moise Golem, from whose lands (the two Dibras) they were largely recruited. Of all of these troops, the majority were therefore raised from the Castriotes family lands. At the most only about a quarter were provided by Scanderbeg’s allied chieftains and nobility whom, as we have already seen, he had good cause to distrust. (In fact he actually took every opportunity to replace them with his own officers, one of the means by which he was able to consolidate his position and weld together the League’s loose confederation of independent chieftains.) At Abulena in 1457 only 5,000 of the army of 17,000 were provided by League chieftains.

In addition a further 10,000 or so men could be raised by recourse to a general call to arms. In 1450, for instance, Scanderbeg increased his forces to 18,000 men by this means; of these, 1,500 were sent to garrison Kroya under Count Vrana Altisferi, 8,000 were held back by Scanderbeg himself (doubtless his central army), and the balance were organised into small detachments to harass and ambush the approaching Turks (who were commanded by the future sultan Mehmed II). In addition there were further troops to be found scattered across Albania as fortress garrisons, each of 400-2,000 men, comprising infantry and, by Scanderbeg’s time at the latest, artillery too.

Scanderbeg’s forces probably had gunpowder artillery and firearms from the outset, at least for the defence and siege of fortresses. Kroya, for instance, had about 30 small cannon in 1450. It seems likely that it was introduced into Albania by the Venetians in the second half of the 14th century for use in their own fortresses, a capacity in which they continued to maintain sizeable ordnance thereafter (5 bombards, 6 bombardelles and 20 handguns in Scutari in 1452, to mention but one example). The largest train of artillery recorded in use by the Albanians on any occasion during the 15th century appears to have been that fielded for the siege of Berat in 1455, where Scanderbeg’s 14,000-strong army was provided with 5 bombards and 13 cannon plus 500 handguns (the latter also being recorded in use by Albanian troops during the defence of Sfetigrad in 1448).

One further source of troops was provided by foreign mercenaries and auxiliaries. In 1450, for instance, we are told that Scanderbeg’s field-army included ‘Slavs, Italians, Germans and others’ (the ‘others’ undoubtedly including Hungarians), and in 1451 his ally Alfonso V the Magnanimous, Aragonese king of Naples, provided him with several hundred Catalans. A few years later, in 1455, Alfonso may have provided a force of as many as 2,000 men plus some artillery, though the sources actually differ regarding its size; the most reliable claim it comprised either 500 handgunners and 500 archers (Barletius), or 1,000-1,200 infantry and 500 cavalry (Makusev). Its commanders were Tesso Sabello and Sancto Garillo. In 1460-61 Scanderbeg returned the favour by providing Albanian troops to support Alfonso’s successor, Ferdinand I, against his Neapolitan barons and the French claimant to the throne, Rene d’Anjou. Scanderbeg himself led the 1461 contingent, which an Albanian envoy to Ferdinand described as numbering 1,000 horse and 2,000 infantry archers, figures which are confirmed in addition by a Milanese envoy in Venice. Another source, however, mentions only 2,000 men in all, while three other contemporaries speak of a contingent of 600, 700 or 800 cavalry, this probably representing Scanderbeg’s personal guard unit from Kroya.