Siege
Skanderbeg and his forces besieged the Ottoman-occupied castle and began pounding it with the help of the Aragonese artillery. The commander of the Ottoman garrison then proposed to hand over the city if no reinforcements would come for a month Believing the situation was well in hand and that the castle would fall, Skanderbeg left with a sizable contingent of his army in the direction of Vlorë. Although he tutored his commanders, Skanderbeg could never bring them up to his level of knowledge in military affairs. His formal training and experience in Anatolia and his service with the Ottoman army proved to be valuable for the Albanian resistance against the Ottomans.
At the head of the remaining force he left Muzaka Thopia, his brother-in-law, since Berat was formerly a possession of Muzaka’s family. After a successful bombardment, the Ottoman commander of the garrison agreed to turn over the keys to the castle if the sultan had not sent reinforcements within a certain amount of time. This was a ploy to fool the Albanian forces into a false sense of security and delay any actions, giving reinforcements time to arrive.
Read more about this topic: Siege Of Berat (1455)
Famous quotes containing the word siege:
“One likes people much better when they’re battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)