View PDF version of this page

FALCIIETTI. SOZOMENO. HI Along this road every day some of them kept suddenly mounting up, and always killed some of our men. When they wero now fully furnished with everything necessary for the attack they ceased firing and came to a parley, demanding the surrender of the city. Report was duly made to the coinmauders and to the Governor Rinconi, and it was determined to give no ear to their proposals but to treat them as enemies. A few days later, on the morning of Saturday, Sept. 9, as reveille was sounded, they were already on the walls, having climbed np quietly in the night along the roads they had made without being discovered by our soldiers, and attacked us so suddenly that we could offer little resistance to their first charge. But our troops retired to a shelter constructed by Captain Palazzo, where they met the enemy gallantly. And there the Turks would have got no further into the city, had it not been that while we were fighting there burst on our flank a great band of the enemy who were understood to have entered by another bastion. They killed very many of our men, among whom were the commander, his brother and Captain Palazzo. No resistance was possible, and one fled here, another there. I got safe with twenty-five of my company to the Square of the Salines, where was gathered a large band of nobles. We made a stand, and when the Square was taken with great loss on our side, we retreated to the Great Square, where were the chiefs on horseback, with the Bishop and many others. Here we made a fresh stand, but lost ground and retreated to the palace of Signor Dandolo, where we found himself and the Bishop. The gates were bolted, and when the Turks were for charging at them we told them from the windows that we surrendered. They would not consent, but the Lientenant, Signor Dandolo, set free a Turk whom he had taken prisoner, and sent him to tell the Pasha that we suirendered with all our forces, and b;d him order his men not to kill us. The Pasha sent a note to the janissary who was to take us prisoners; they set to killing and haling us away, and in their onslaught Signor Dandolo was killed, and the .Bishop made prisoner with many others. I had been on the bastion Podochataro, where onr standard bearer had lost his ensign which I recovered. I was in all the fights mentioned above, and was at last made prisoner by a Turk, who led me to the pavilion, where three days later I was sold for sixteen sequins to a renegade, who canned me off to the fleet and set me on a galley where Τ lay chained for twenty days. SOZOMENO. Qio. Sozomeno served as an Engineer during the siege of Nicosia, and was made a prisoner at its fall. His name occurs in A. Calepio's list of "noble Cypriot Captains enslaved." I have not been able to sec Sozomeno, Gio., Narrai ione della guerra di Nicosia fatta nel Regno di Cipro da' Turchi V anno 1570, Svo, Bologna, 1571, but I have little doubt that the translation here offered of a manuscript preserved in the Biblioteca Olivcriana at Pesaro, No. 117, which is clearly contemporary with the events it narrates, would be found in close correspondence with that work. The narrative is addressed " al Serssnio gran principe di Toscana Sr. Mìo Ossmo," probably the Grand Duke Cosimo, who died in 1574. The narrative of Gio. Sozomeno, Engineer. The first day of July the Turkish fleet appeared in the waters of Baffo, and the second day news reached us that it had landed at the Salines on that very day all the cavalry and infantry without meeting any resistance, although S. Astorre Buglione, Governor General, wanted to show himself with the cavalry and mounted musketeers to throw the landing into c, 11

View PDF version of this page