Marcantonio Bragadin

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Tiziano Aspetti , Marcantonio Bragadin (1571 approx.)
His grave San Zanipolo

Marcantonio Bragadin (also: Marco Antonio Bragadin , born April 21, 1523 in Venice , † August 17, 1571 in Famagusta , Cyprus ) was a Venetian officer . As captain general and governor of Cyprus, he fought against the Ottomans .

Life

He was the son of Marco Bragadin and Adriana Bembo. After brief professional experience as a lawyer , Bragadin began his military career in the Venetian fleet in 1543, which was interrupted on various occasions by taking on political offices. In 1569 he was appointed governor general of the island of Cyprus threatened by the Ottomans.

Siege of Famagusta

Bragadin initially expanded the fortifications of Famagusta considerably to make them resistant to the new firearms . The Ottomans landed on the island on July 3, 1570 and took Nicosia after a two-month siege . After the surrender, the local Venetian garrison and civilians were largely massacred and the rest sold into slavery. The Venetians withdrew to the fortress of Famagusta, which they defended under Bragadin for months against enormous Ottoman forces. During the siege, Muslim pilgrims captured in the city were executed . For political and strategic reasons, the Venetian leadership failed to come to the aid of Bragadin with reinforcements from Crete , because they did not want to split up their own forces. Famagusta fell on July 31, 1571. The Ottoman Commander-in-Chief Lala Kara Mustafa Pascha assured Bragadin and the garrison safe conduct into Venetian territory. However, during the surrender negotiations, Lala Kara Mustafa killed Bragadin's entourage and took Bragadin himself prisoner. Bragadin's ears and nose were cut off when he was captured. After thirteen days of imprisonment, during which Bragadin refused to convert to Islam under torture, he was skinned alive in public and then cut into four . His body parts were given to Ottoman units as trophies . His skin was filled with hay, the body thus created was clad in uniform parts , he was placed on an ox and paraded with it through Famagusta. He was then impaled on the prow of Mustafa Pasha's galley along with the heads of other Venetian commanders and brought to Constantinople .

A few months after the capture of Famagusta, the Ottomans were subject to the armed forces of the so-called " Holy League " in the naval battle of Lepanto , but this no longer had any influence on the fate of Cyprus. The island remained in Ottoman possession for the next three centuries.

Tomb

In 1580, after paying a large ransom , Bragadin's skin was successfully transferred from Constantinople to Venice, where it was first buried in the church of San Gregorio , then in San Zanipolo , where it is still located today.

Individual evidence

  1. Fregosi, Paul "Jihad in the West: Muslim Conquests from the 7th to the 21st Centuries"

literature

predecessor Office successor
Marco Michiel Governor of Cyprus
1569–1571
––