CHAPTER XII

THE SIEGE AND SALAMIS

I COULD see but few changes in Famagusta since I visited it fourteen years ago. Trees have grown up round the tombs where the execrable and bloody Mustafa and some of his generals lie buried; also the Commissioner, Mr. Travers, has planted other trees in portions of the moat where they do not flourish very well owing to the stony nature of the subsoil. Moreover, a large fig-tree which I remember growing in the said moat has vanished-I recall that I myself found a Cyprian woman engaged in trying to cut it down, and frightened her away. Probably when we had departed, she returned and completed the task. Lastly, when I was here before the iron cannonballs fired into the city by the Turks three centuries since, still lay strewn all about the place as they had fallen. Now they have been collected into heaps, or vanished in this way or in that. Otherwise all is the same, except that Time has thrust his finger a little deeper into the crevices of the ruined buildings.

What a tragedy was the siege of Famagusta! Probably few of my readers, and of the British public at large not one in every hundred thousand, have even heard of that event. Yet if it happened to-day the whole world would ring with its horror and its fame. The Boer war that at present fills the newspapers and the mouths of men has, to this day of writing, cost us

at the outside six thousand dead. At the siege of Famagusta, taking no account of those in the city, if I

remember right for I forty thousand of the beneath the walls.

quote from memory, more than attacking force alone perished

This in brief was the tale as it is told by Fra Angelo Calepio of Cyprus, an eye-witness and a doctor in theology of the order of Preachers, and others. In the year 1570, according to Fra Angelo, the Sultan Selim was persuaded by his head mufti to undertake the enterprise of the conquest of Cyprus from the Venetians: "avarice, lust of fame, difference of religion, diabolic suggestion, divine permission, an unbounded appetite for new territory to be added to the Ottoman dominion, these were the remote causes for the conspiracy against Cyprus. A nearer cause was the wish of Selim, the Emperor of the Turks, to build a mosque and school." Cyprus was to furnish the revenues for this pious enterprise. Fra Angelo says also that the Sultan was influenced to the conquest of the island "from his fondness for its excellent wines and the beautiful falcons that are taken there."

A great army was collected and allowed, owing to the mismanagement of affairs by the Venetians and local authorities, to invest the inland capital of Nicosia. After a gallant defence by the untrained troops and inhabitants within, they took the town. It is curious to read to-day, that grim badinage such as has recently been practised by the Boers investing Ladysmith, was indulged in by the Turks at Nicosia. Thus they drove a donkey up the wrecked wall crying in mockery, "Don't hurt the poor ass, it can do you no harm," and shouted, "Surrender, for you are in a bad way."

The horrors that occurred when once the Turkish soldiers were inside Nicosia are too dreadful to dwell on. Here is a single example. Says Fra Angelo: "Among

the slain were Lodovico Podochatoro and Lucretia Calepia, my mother, whose head they cut off on her servingmaid's lap. They tore infants in swaddling-clothes from their mothers' breasts, of whom I could baptize only one," and so forth. On the day following the sack the best-looking of the surviving lads and girls were sold by auction, “the buyers taking no thought or count of their noble birth, but only of the beauty of their faces." But these poor victims, or most of them, were not destined to serve as slaves in any Turkish harem. The great galleon of Muhamites and two other vessels were laden with them as a gift to the Sultan, to Mehmed Pasha, and Murad the Sultan's son. But some noble girl or woman, her name is not recorded though surely her glory should live on for ever, thinking that the death of herself and her companions was preferable to so infamous a fate, contrived to creep to the magazine and fire it, with the result that the galleon and two other ships with every living soul on board of them were blown into the air. The incident is in perfect keeping with the horrid history of that period throughout Europe.

Famagusta was invested by Mustafa and between one and two hundred thousand soldiers and adventurers upon September 18, 1570, the defence being under the charge of the immortal Mark Antonio Bragadino, the captain of the city. For nearly eleven months did the little garrison and townsfolk hold out, with but scant aid from Venice. They beat back assault after assault-there were six or eight of them; they mined and countermined; they made sallies and erected new defences as the old were battered down; in short they did everything that desperation could contrive or courage execute. length when only five hundred Italian soldiers and a few Cyprian men and women were left sound within their gates, and many of their walls and towers had been

At

blown into the air, it was want that conquered them, not the Turk.

"The position of the city was now desperate; within the walls everything was lacking except hope, the valour of the commanders, and the daring of the soldiers. The wine was exhausted, neither fresh nor salted meat nor cheese could be had except at extravagant prices. The horses, asses, and cats were consumed. There was nothing to eat but bread and beans, nothing to drink but vinegar and water, and this too soon failed!"

Then after between 140,000 and 170,000 cannonballs, many of which I have seen lying about to this day, had been fired into the city, and the Turks had suffered a loss of from thirty to fifty thousand men, at length the brave Bragadino negotiated an honourable surrender under the terms of which the defenders were to be given their arms, lives, and goods, “a safeconduct to Candia under an escort of galleys," and the townsfolk the grace of staying "in their houses to enjoy what was their own, living like Christians without any molestation therefor."

Upon these terms peace was signed, and the soldiers began to embark in the vessels provided for them. The next evening, or at any rate upon that of August the 5th, the Signor Bragadino, accompanied by about a dozen officers and attended by a guard of fifty men, according to Fra Angelo, and nearly two hundred according to Bishop Graziani, paid a visit to Mustafa who received him courteously and kindly, praising the valour of the defence. The visit concluded, they rose to take leave, whereupon Mustafa asked that the prisoners captured during the siege might be sent to him. Bragadino replied that he had no prisoners. Then the Turk, pretending to be astonished, shouted out, "They were then

murdered during the truce," and bade his soldiers who stood ready to seize and bind the Christians.

Now it was that the brutal ruffian, Mustafa, showed himself in his true colours. The story is best told in the words of Mr. Cobham's translation of Fra Angelo Calepio, although Bishop Graziani's account as rendered by Midgley is almost as good.

"They were defenceless, for they were compelled to lay aside their arms before entering the tent, and thus bound were led one by one into the open square before the tent, and cut to pieces in Mustafa's presence. Then twice and thrice he made Signor Bragadino, who showed no sign of fear, stretch out his neck as though he would strike off his head, but spared his life and cut off his ears and nose, and as he lay on the ground Mustafa reviled him, cursing our Lord and saying, 'Where is now thy Christ that He doth not help thee?' The general made never an answer, but with lofty patience waited the end. Count Hercule Martinengo, one of the hostages, was also bound, but was hidden by one of Mustafa's eunuchs until his chief's fury was passed. He did not slay him, but doomed him, as long as his soul cleaved to his body, to continual death in life, making him his eunuch and slave, so that happy he had he died with the rest a martyr's death. There were three citizens in the tent, who were released, but the poor soldiers bound like so many lambs were hewed in pieces, with three hundred other Christians, who never dreamed of such gross perfidy, and impious savagery. The Christians who were already embarked were brutally robbed and thrown into chains.

"The second day after the murders, August 7th, Mustafa first entered the city. He caused Signor Tiepolo, Captain of Baffo, who was left in Signor Bragadino's room, to be hanged by the neck, as well as the commandant of the cavalry. On August 17th, a day of evil memory, being a Friday and their holiday, Signor Bragadino was led, full of wounds which had received no care, into the presence of Mustafa, on the batteries built against the city, and for all his weakness, was made to carry one basket