Qualla: Ottoman conquest of Lesbos https://qualla.com/ottoman-conquest-of-lesbos en-us © 2026 Bendyline Thu, 23 Jul 2026 20:34:08 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/f/y/ottoman-conquest-of-lesbos-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Ottoman conquest of Lesbos https://qualla.com/ottoman-conquest-of-lesbos Ottoman conquest of Lesbos: Introduction https://qualla.com/ottoman-conquest-of-lesbos/ Photo credit Tedmek, Public domain. Before he sailed against Lesbos, Mehmed II walked through the ruins of Troy. The young sultan who had taken Constantinople nine years earlier stood among the fallen stones and, according to the historian Kritoboulos, declared himself the avenger of the ancient Trojans against the Greeks. Then he marched to Assos, on the Anatolian shore, and looked across a narrow strait of water at the island he had come to swallow. It was August 1462. Within a month, the last Genoese lordship in the Aegean would be gone.

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Image: Tedmek | Public domain

]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/f/y/ottoman-conquest-of-lesbos-wp/swfy-ottoman-conquest-of-lesbos-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Ottoman conquest of Lesbos: The Adventurers Who Ruled an Island https://qualla.com/ottoman-conquest-of-lesbos/ Photo credit Tedmek, Public domain. For over a century, Lesbos had belonged to the Gattilusio, a Genoese family who won the island in 1355 the way ambitious men of that age won things: a marriage to a Byzantine emperor's sister, and a willingness to fight for the rest. From their castle at Mytilene they ruled a sma...

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Image: Tedmek | Public domain

]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/f/y/ottoman-conquest-of-lesbos-wp/swfy-ottoman-conquest-of-lesbos-the-adventurers-who-ruled-an-island.mp3 0:06 2 full Ottoman conquest of Lesbos: The Siege https://qualla.com/ottoman-conquest-of-lesbos/ Photo credit Katsiaryna Naliuka, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Ottomans landed on 1 September. When envoys demanded surrender, Niccolò answered that he would yield only to force, so force came. Six enormous cannon were hauled into position, each able to hurl a stone weighing more than 700 pounds, and for ten days they hammered the walls ...

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Image: Katsiaryna Naliuka | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/f/y/ottoman-conquest-of-lesbos-wp/swfy-ottoman-conquest-of-lesbos-the-siege.mp3 0:06 3 full Ottoman conquest of Lesbos: The Promises and the Price https://qualla.com/ottoman-conquest-of-lesbos/ Photo credit Rostislav Botev, CC BY-SA 3.0. Mahmud Pasha had sworn by his sword and by the sultan's head that the people's lives would be spared. The promises did not hold. Some 300 Italian soldiers were executed as pirates. On 17 September, the inhabitants of Mytilene were marched past the sultan and three clerks who wrot...

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Image: Rostislav Botev | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/f/y/ottoman-conquest-of-lesbos-wp/swfy-ottoman-conquest-of-lesbos-the-promises-and-the-price.mp3 0:06 4 full Ottoman conquest of Lesbos: Four and a Half Centuries https://qualla.com/ottoman-conquest-of-lesbos/ Photo credit Nedim Ardoğa, CC BY-SA 3.0. The fall of Lesbos was not a sideshow. It snuffed out the last semi-independent Christian state in the northeast Aegean and helped ignite the First Ottoman-Venetian War the following year. Venice would try to take Mytilene back in 1464 and fail. The island settled into Ottoman ru...

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Image: Nedim Ardoğa | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/f/y/ottoman-conquest-of-lesbos-wp/swfy-ottoman-conquest-of-lesbos-four-and-a-half-centuries.mp3 0:06 5 full