Scanderbeg

Sculpture of George Castrioti by Janaq Paco (Croia, Albania)

Two questions struck me as I learned of the life and deeds of George Castrioti (1405-1468), also known by the title given to him by the Ottoman Turks: Scanderbeg. The first question is, How is this guy real? He lived an impossibly epic life—taken from his family as a boy and forced to become an Ottoman soldier, only to revolt against his masters years later, return to Albania, and lead a glorious resistance against the Ottomans. According to Marin Barleti, Scanderbeg’s great biographer, the hero won no fewer than twenty-five battles against the Turks over the course of his career and suffered maybe one defeat, or draw, depending how you score it. Gibbon estimates that Scanderbeg personally killed 3000 Turks. Another historian claimed that “The exploits even of the renowned paladins of the Crusades, whether Godfrey or Tancred or Richard or Raymond, pale to insignificance by similar comparison.”

The second question is, Why has nobody heard of him? Scanderbeg was widely celebrated in the centuries following his death. The pope named him Athleta Christi, “champion of Christ,” for his armed defense of the Faith, and Spenser and Longfellow wrote verses about him. But he seems virtually unknown today in the West. I had never heard of him myself until 2023, when a friend who had travelled through Albania mentioned his name. By coincidence, just days later I came across a wild and harrowing account of his life in Raymond Ibrahim’s Defenders of the West and was shocked to think that such a man could ever have been forgotten.

A fuller look at the second question—which applies not just to Scanderbeg but basically every Christian hero from Pelayo to Jan Sobieski—will have to be saved for a future essay. Thankfully Ibrahim’s excellent book is driving a long overdue rediscovery. In this essay I want to focus on the first question: How was such a man possible? And how did he become what he became?

What we know of Scanderbeg comes largely from Barleti’s 1510 biography, drawing on eyewitness accounts from those who fought under his command. Modern skeptics and debunkers are quick to claim that Barleti’s chronicle should be taken “with a grain of salt,” but that skeptical saltiness has a way of morphing into disdain for more heroic ages. My own amateur investigations have hit upon mostly insubstantial complaints against Barleti, like a mistake about Mehmed II’s age and the literary invention of letters and speeches as the author judged fit for the circumstances (following the model of Thucydides). Barleti also doesn’t hesitate to criticize the hero. His book is not exactly hagiography. In more recent biographies like AK Brackob’s, the heroism is more “problematic” and even secular, with the author claiming that the Albanians of the 15th century didn’t really care about the civilizational war between Christendom and Islam, though Scanderbeg himself clearly did. If 16th century writers had their blind spots, so too do those of the 21st. It’s above my pay grade to analyze what sources are most strictly factual, but instinct pushes me hard in one direction; Ibrahim steers closer toward Barleti, and so do I. Between competing narratives, the older and more heroic one has claims over the newer skeptical versions—especially when it’s informed by men who were there for the action.

The Hero

George Castrioti was born in 1405, the youngest son of a feudal baron. His was not a happy childhood. With Albania so close to the border of the ever-expanding empire of the Ottoman Turks, George’s father John Castrioti had very difficult decisions thrust upon him. (Read Ibrahim’s Sword and Scimitar for a catalog of the murder, deception, pillage, treachery, desecration, and rape that Christian people could expect when the armies of the Crescent came near.) He resisted as best he could but in defeat had to make peace on their terms. The price of peace included his four sons: George and his older brothers were to be given over as hostages to be raised by the Sultan and made into Ottoman warriors.

This is essentially how the Ottomans recruited their ferocious janissary corps. Selecting the strongest youths from the conquered Christian populations, they took the boys away as “blood tribute” and trained them to kill their own people. Ibrahim writes:

These children were then marched to the Ottoman heartland, forcibly converted to Islam, indoctrinated in the teachings of Jihad, trained to be—and rewarded for being—warriors par excellence, and then set loose on their former Christian kin, thereby perpetuating the cycle of conquest, enslavement, and conversion, always to Islam's demographic gain and Christendom’s demographic loss.

To make the disaster even more total: the “new soldiers” were also abused, sexually and otherwise. This is the cost of losing to monsters. One historian estimates that hundreds of thousands of Christian families had a boy taken from them by the Turks and enrolled in the janissary corps. George Castrioti was eight years old.

As the years passed, he grew in strength and rose in the Ottoman ranks, becoming an invincible general who more than once fought in single combat against the sultan’s enemies and brought back severed heads to his master. His prowess earned him his famous nickname, which means Lord Alexander—they thought he was the second coming of Alexander the Great! But Murad II started to suspect his great warrior, and gave Scanderbeg plenty of reason to turn against him. Of course there was the standard problem of jealous men at court seeking to undermine those superior to them, but the tension turned deeply personal and deadly when Scanderbeg’s father died in 1439 and the sultan seized all Castrioti lands and killed the elder Castrioti brothers. Knowing he had a problem, Murad called Scanderbeg before him and offered the governorship of Croia, the seat of his father’s lands, or any territory he wished to rule. Scanderbeg must have sensed that something about the offer was not quite right, and he graciously answered that he would rather stay under the sultan’s wing: the great solider wished to remain in the field while he was still young—mid 30s by this point—and save political offices for his later years. One wishes that a Renaissance master had tried his hand at this scene of Scanderbeg looking his adoptive father in the eye and delivering lines of assurance, though both must have known something else was coming.

The turning point of Scanderbeg's story comes when the Turks clashed with Hungarian forces led by John Hunyadi at the Battle of Nish in 1443. The Hungarians won a great victory over the Turks, in large part because Scanderbeg threw the sultan’s forces into confusion when he ordered a retreat in the midst of battle—all the more bewildering because this was hardly Scanderbeg’s style.

In the confusion, he and 300 loyal janissaries disappeared from the Turkish camp. But just before disappearing he found the imperial secretary and forced him to write official orders that the Ottoman governor of Croia was to hand over the city to him. It was the last document the secretary ever wrote for the sultan—and the last thing he ever did in this life. Scanderbeg ran a sword through him and all his staff.

The soldier then made haste to Croia and presented his paperwork to the unsuspecting Ottoman governor, who did his duty and handed over Scanderbeg’s birthright to him, probably thinking little of it.

It’s So Over/We’re So Back

Imagine the experience of a Christian citizen of Croia after the death of John Castrioti in 1439. You had been living the thumb of the Turks, though your lord made an uneasy peace and did his best to shield you from worse treatment. Now, in the wake of Castrioti’s death, the sultan speedily consolidates his vassal’s holdings. You don’t have the might to resist the Turks; you’re too disorganized to even try. They have you at their mercy, and it will only get worse as they continue to claim blood tribute, draining your future strength and bolstering theirs. It’s really over—it has never been more over.

Then in 1443 John’s son returns.

But he’s been gone for 30 years. And he’s a Turk now, the sultan’s top general.

Do you hope-against-hope that he might still be your guy? What could possibly come of this? The moment must have been wild with uncertainty.

All questions were soon resolved. After receiving the keys to the city and sending the old governor home, the prodigal son and his men massacred the remaining Turkish garrison. They removed the Ottoman standards and hoisted the Castrioti family banner once again. At the council he called in the cathedral the next day, Scanderbeg, in the words of Gibbon, “dropped the mask of dissimulation, abjured the prophet and the sultan, and proclaimed himself the avenger of his family and country.”

This is the It's So Over/We're So Back cycle at its best. The meme captures a deep secret of the universe. Darkness is coming; devastation awaits; then hope mysteriously returns when you least expect it. Even stranger, your very hope might be born in disaster. Little did the Albanians know that the Turks had been creating an avenger-saint for their defense!

One of history’s great military campaigns now begins: Scanderbeg unites the divided factions of Albania and fights off relentless Turkish invasions for a quarter of a century. The Turks send a large army, led by Ali Pasha, to subdue Albania. Scanderbeg crushes it with a significantly smaller force. The Turks send another army led by Mustafa. Scanderbeg crushes it as well. Other Turkish armies led, in turn, by Hasan Bey, Yusef Bey, Carazabeg, and others meet a similar fate against the hero—again and again, basically every year. A master of guerilla warfare and ambush tactics, Scanderbeg often feigned vulnerability to lure his enemies into traps and then drenched the ground with Ottoman blood. Barleti constructs a Homeric simile of Scanderbeg preparing one of these ambushes like the host of a party laying out a “magnificent and sumptuous banquet.” Knowledge of the local terrain allowed him to offset numerical disadvantages just about every single time. He even seems to have preferred commanding a smaller and tighter fighting force. “For he affirmed that the multitude of troops and the excessive numbers of soldiers had many times caused confusion, and had been the disturbance and a hindrance to the victory.” If you can't beat your enemy with 12,000 men under your command, Barleti asks, what makes you think you would defeat them with more? (At least in this kind of warfare.)

As these victories mount, the real drama becomes less about fighting off the Turkish armies—that’s the easy part—and more about holding together a tricky alliance of unruly Albanian nobles. When the enemy finally realized he could not defeat Scanderbeg in battle, he sought to buy off his fellows—and it worked better than all previous efforts. Scanderbeg feared Turkish gold more than Turkish swords, Barleti writes: “He knew that covetousness and the hunger of gold having taken hold in men's hearts did make them sacrilegious and irreligious, and worse than brute beasts and monsters.” All the Turks needed was to find just one weak point in an army of otherwise virtuous soldiers.

Barleti tells of three betrayals. The first involved a greedy guardsmen during the Ottoman siege of Sfetigrad who threw a dead dog into the well, setting off a panic in the city and breaking their will to withstand the siege. The other betrayals were more personal: Moses Golemi and Hamza Castrioti, two of Scanderbeg’s top captains, the latter also his nephew. Barleti places the blame for the defection of Moses on the personal weakness that can undo a man when he hears deceptive flattery, and the blame for Hamza’s treachery on his resentment over being muscled out of the line of succession when Scanderbeg finally had a son. The more recent account from AK Brackob blames it on Scanderbeg’s overreaching as the leader of the Albanian resistance. Even in his critique, though, Brackob suggests that Scanderbeg ultimately did what he had to do. If the Albanians were to have any chance, power had to be consolidated in one man. It’s a very old principle. But belligerent nobles naturally won’t respond well to consolidation, so the defections were to be expected, part of the almost impossible challenge of maintaining fragile alliances against a gigantic empire. It should be a sobering thought that even a man like Scanderbeg can be undermined by promises thrown at weak or disgruntled men.

In the end, the guardsman’s treachery proved to be the most costly, as the Albanians lost Sfetigrad. Less came of the defections of his captains, though Moses helped the Ottomans to sneak up on Scanderbeg’s camp outside Belgrade without a warning, leaving his chief in a very compromised position. The skirmish that followed was Scanderbeg’s worst result in battles against the Turks, ending in a retreat after mild losses. But when Moses himself later attacked Scanderbeg at the head of an Ottoman army, the traitor was crushed. The same thing played out with Hamza.

Blessing, Suffering, Virtue

To return to the central question—how is such a man even possible?—the first answer that comes to mind is that God simply created a prodigy, as he is known to do from time to time. God sends these prodigies to achieve a special mission and show possibilities to the rest of us. Barleti’s translator puts it so:

Pardon me if I be somewhat immoderate or superstitious in admiring his excellency, for what almost can there be in any man that was not abundantly in our Scanderbeg? So many were his perfections and so few his imperfections, as it may justly be imagined, that God created him as a mirror for the world rather to wonder at than any way possibly to be matched, and yet, most worthy of all men to be imitated.

He truly was built different, fluent in eight languages, needing only two hours of sleep each night. As the passage suggests, Scanderbeg’s accomplishments are not likely to be matched by the sensitive young man of the 21st century—and yet to admire the hero is to feel the call to become something more. And, somehow, to love a hero is to share in his glory and to be ennobled by it. There’s little use trying to explain this cosmic mystery—most would never get it anyways—but it’s worth mentioning that it has big theological implications. The great heroes are a glimpse into the experience of truly loving God: the Lord wants you to share in his superabundance, and in loving him you somehow have him.

(You can begin to understand why powerful interests are eager to erase the memory of those great men who served God so heroically, like Scanderbeg. They want to deny you the strength that those examples can give. But that’s for the sequel essay…)

Another very different answer has to be added for consideration: Scanderbeg was not just a superhero-prodigy, but also a champion made through suffering. The darkness which this young man was forced to endure, starting at the age of eight, is all but unthinkable. And look what came of it.

I want to avoid Life Coach rhetoric about enduring hardships and emerging stronger on the other end—“whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” “everything happens for a reason,” and the like. Those have always sounded cheap in my ear and never once helped me endure difficulties. The only thing that does help is encountering stories like those of St Patrick or Joseph (Old Testament, not New)—men whose travails put them in remarkable positions or granted them new powers. Both Patrick and Joseph found themselves enslaved and far from home. But both were being formed for some great deed: Patrick was learning the language and culture of the people that he would be called to convert to the Faith, while Joseph was gaining the influence in Egypt which would help him to save his family. Without the suffering, neither of these feats are possible. You can insert the meme from Troy—a boy telling the hero something like, “That suffering you’re enduring is horrible; I wouldn’t want to face it,” and the hero replying, “That’s why no one will remember your name.”

Scanderbeg is the martial version of Patrick or Joseph. I can think of at least a few ways in which the years of darkness made triumph possible. The first is obvious: Scanderbeg learned everything about the Turkish ways of war—all the better to anticipate their movements against him. He also learned firsthand how flimsy their promises were and consequently had no interest in truces with such faithless people. More on the strategic side, Scanderbeg also gained access to spies who could inform him of Turkish movements and designs. And, to give the devil his due, the Turks trained him well enough. Inside Scanderbeg was a fire that men who had suffered less would have lacked.

It goes without saying that Scanderbeg’s career is also a study in the virtues, and his achievement becomes less of a mystery when one looks at the particular excellences that constituted the man. Faith, hope, and love are needed in abundance if one is to survive the darkness thrust upon Scanderbeg—and to trust that there’s something on the other side of suffering. Prowess is another: he had the physical and martial excellence to cut down an overwhelming enemy in battle after battle. This virtue assumes the courage to take big risks. And both prowess and courage require the strategic judgment—the cardinal virtue of prudence—that directs a man’s strength and allows him to identify the opportunities that present themselves in any given moment, so that he might achieve the good. At one point, Scanderbeg is asked how he will meet a pending Turkish attack; he doesn’t answer because he cannot answer; he is too prudent to decide upon a course of action without knowing the particulars. “The opportunity of the time,” he tells his fellows, “and the countenance of the enemy shall instruct us what is further to be done.” Prudent, attentive readiness beats pre-conceived plans.

Loyalty and generosity recur throughout Scanderbeg’s story. No matter how strong a man is, no matter how many enemy heads he has severed from torsos, he still needs friends. That Scanderbeg was able to hold together his coalition for so long is a testament to the loyalty he inspired—which cannot be separated from the loyalty he himself gave to his friends and the cause. Scanderbeg sold off family lands to fund the resistance; he dedicated his life to the fight; he shared every hardship that the common soldier suffered—the man had skin in the game. And even after he was betrayed by his captains, Scanderbeg generously forgave Moses and Hamza and took them back into his good graces.

Saving Rome

A scoffer will note that Scanderbeg’s resistance, heroic as it might have been, all came to nothing after his death in 1468. The story does take a dark turn, as Albania without its great protector eventually fell to the Ottomans and many Albanians sought refuge to the west.

But that’s hardly the last word on his legacy. When Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, Mehmed the Conqueror was just twenty-one years old. He had taken a prize long dreamed of by the enemies of Christendom—and he was out for more. Looking west, he saw Italy and Rome. Albania was in his way. Thanks to the resistance of Scanderbeg and others, the sultan didn’t set foot on Italian soil until many years later, in 1480. Mehmed’s forces landed in Otranto, massacred the people of that city, and turned the churches into mosques. It was time to be very afraid. Rome itself was in grave danger. But Mehmed died one year later at the age of forty-nine, and the Ottomans withdrew from Italy shortly afterwards. As Ibrahim notes, Scanderbeg’s heroism meant that the young Turk didn’t have more time and Rome didn’t fall.

On the final page of his chronicle, Barleti writes, “We may see in Scanderbeg a pure work of the finger of God, and the evident assistance of his divine hand and power for the succor and relief of his Church and chosen people.” Scanderbeg himself saw it this way, saying that he was born only for the defense and preservation of the Faith. We owe more than we know to this hero.