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PREFATORY NOTE THE deep interest felt by Christian Europe in the fateful sieges of Nicosia and Famagusta is seen in the ample material at the command of the later historian. On them indeed hang the next 300 years of Cypriot history. It is fortunate for us that men who had lived through them were willing to recall and record such appalling scenes, to describe how they had escaped death, and endured slavery. Contemporary accounts are neither few nor meagre. I doubt if the sieges of Delhi and Lucknow have had more, or more spirited, chroniclers. I will notice here what is already in print : other personal narratives may lie unnoticed in manuscript in Italian libraries. One, perhaps the most valuable, the Narration of Angelo Gatto, was published as late as 1895, and the new edition of my Excerpta Cypria gives a translation of another by F. Falchetti, from a MS. still unprinted at Pesaro. Benedetti, Membre, and one or two other pamphlets which I have not been able to see, are noted in my Bibliography of Cyprus, under dates 1570—73. ' The official or general historians are of course to be con-sulted. Diedo, Paruta (see Excerpta Cypria, pp. 87—119), Conti, Manolesso, Guarnerius, Knolles, Foglietta, Graziani (of the last two I have printed translations), de Thou, Jauna, Arrighi, Romanin, have all chapters on the War of Cyprus. It is not a little remarkable that not one of these writers even mentions the many striking buildings, ecclesiastical or civil, other than the fortifications, which adorned Nicosia and Famagusta. The havoc and desolation, especially in the latter city, which we see and lament to-day, must date from the sieges, yet none of those who defended the walls thought of describing for us how the cities looked from within. II—2

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