View PDF version of this page

SOZOiMENO. DIEDO. 87 who saved themselves by swimming ashore. It was a miserable sight to see the bodies of those unhappy beings in the air : may Uod give peace to their suiils. Would that His Divine Majesty had granted to ns all who have remained alive the same fate. To me it would have been more/welcome than to see my younger daughter in the hands of the infidels, and the elder burnt to death. In the city of .Nicosia they have left a garrison of 4000 infantry and 1000 horse under the eoinmand of Mnzoffer. Mustafa with the rest of the troops marched to Famngosta and encamped in the village of Pom'adamo, three miles from the fortress. DTEDO^ Giacomo Diedo, a Senator, published at Venice in 1751, in four volumes quarto, his History of the Republic of Venice from its foundation to the year 1747. Our translation from volume li. book vi. pp. 228—237, gives in Its entirety his account of the siege and fall of Nicosia, July 22—September 9,1570. He appeare largely indebted to the earlier writings of Paolo Parata (1540—1598), whose account of the same period may be read in his Storia della Guerra di Cipro, Libri tre, 8vo, Siena, 1827, pp. 88—133. The kingdom of Cyprus, one of the principal islands of the Mediterranean, looks on the East towards Syria, to which (if we may trust ancient traditions) it was once joined, on the Λ Vest towards Sarmania, the ancient Pamphylia, on the Sonth towards Egypt, and on the North towards Cilicia, now called Carnmanin. Its length extends for two hundred miles from S.W. to B., its breadth is seventy miles only, and its circumference about seven hundred. It is happy in its climate, which allows its inhabitants to raise of the fruits of the earth more than they need for themselves, and allows them to export much produce, especially sugar, cotton and saffron. It abonnds in white salt, and contains mines of gold, silver and other metals : so that from the variety of ite products, and its favourable situation it was called Macaria, the Happy Land. It is true that as time and change shed their malign influence over every region in the universe, the face of this happy land too was altered. There was a time when the island was for a while left until led, and despoiled of its inhabitants by the want of rain: but heaven's inclemency slackened at length, and this noble and pleasant laud resumed its old aspect, and by the influx of still larger crowds was peopled anew. In the most remote ages Cyprus had nine kings, but after the Macedonian Empire, upon the division which Alexander at his death made of his vast dominions, Alexandria, in which was comprised the kingdom of Cyprus, fell to Ptolemseus. Ptuleinoens was overcome by Demetrius, son of Antigonus, king of Syria, and for a short time lost possession of the island, but he soon recovered it and handed it on to his successor Philadelphus. As the .Roman Empire was enlarged out of the spoils of the Greek, the kingdom was reduced to a province under successive Governors, until Isaac Comnenns, the last who enjoyed that title and authority, was deprived of thein by Richard, King of England, who sold it for a hundred thousand ducats to the Knights Templar, by whom, on account of the turbulence of the islanders, it was restored to the English. Richard sold it again under the same conditions to Guy Lusiguan, whose descendants for a space of more than three hundred years succeeded him in his dominions and kingly title. James, the last of the line, married Catherine Cornare, a noble Venetian lady with a dowry of a hundred thousand ducats, and a few months later passed to another life leaving

View PDF version of this page