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CLAUDE DELAVAL COBHAM
Exerpta Cypria
page 165

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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 hiin, cursing our Lord and saying, " where now is 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 wan passed. He did not slay him, but doomed him, as long as his soul cleaved to his bod}', to continual death in life, making hiin 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 hewn in pieces, with three hundred other Christians, who never dreamed of such gross perfidy, and impious savagery. Tbe Christians who were already embarked were brutally robbed and thrown into chains. The second day after the murders, August 7, Mustafa first entered the city. He caused Signor Tiepolo, Captain of Baffo, who was left Γη Signor Bragadiiio's room, to be hanged by the neck, as well as the Commandant of the cavalry. On August 17, a day of evil memory, being a Friday and their holiday, Signor Bragadino was led, full of wounds, which nad 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 full of earth up, aud another down, on each redoubt, and forced to kiss the ground when he passed before Mustafa. Then he was led to the shore, set in a slung seat, with a crown at his feet, and hoisted on the yard of the galley of the Captain of Rhodes, hung "like a stork" in view of all the slaves and Christian soldiers in the port. Then this noble gentleman was led to the square, the drums beat, the trumpets sounded, and before a great crowd they stripped him, and made him sit amid every insult on the grating of the pillory. Then they stretched him on the ground and brutally flayed him alive. His saintly soni bore all with great firmness, patience and faith, never losing heart, but ever with the sternest constancy reproaching them for their broken faith : with never a sign of wavering he commended himself to his Saviour, and when their steel reached his navel he gave back to his Maker his truly happy and blessed spirit. His skin was taken and stuffed with straw, carried round the city, and then hung on the yard of a galliot was paraded along tho coast of Syria with great rejoicings. The body was quartered, and a part set on each battery. The skin, after its parade, was placed in a box together with the head of the brave Captain Hestor Baglione, and those of S. Luigi Martinengo, Gr. Α. Bragadino and G. A. Queruli, and all were carried tu Constantinople and presented to the Gran Signor, who caused them to be put in his prison, and I who was a captive chained in that prison as spy of the Pope, on my liberation tried to steal that skin, but could not. From the account of this and other gentlemen named above the Turkish host encamped about Famagosta numbered two hundred thousand persons of every rank and condition, of whom eighty thousand were paid soldiers, besides the fourteen thousand janissaries taken from all the garrisons of Syria, Caramania, Anatolia and even from the Sublime Porte. The armed adventurers were sixty thousand, their vast numbers being due to the reports which Mustafa had spread through the Turkish territory that Famagosta was far richer than Nicosia, aud when people had seen and heard of the immense wealth of Nicosia, they came in such crowds, especially as the passage across was so easy. On this second occasion this army surrounded Famagosta for seventy-five days, firing on it incessantly, and discharging 140,000 iron balls, which were seen and counted : others pnt the number at 170,000. The chief personages in the host were, its General, the wretch Mnstafa, the Pasha of Aleppo, the CALEPIO. 157

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