Beschreibung:

Giustificatione delle Attioni del Sr. Gioan Andrea Doria di quell'anno che comando' le XLIX galere contra il Turco , in Italian, manuscript on paper [Italy, probably Genoa, 17th century] A revealing insight into the questionable, and arguably cowardly, tactics of the Genoese admiral and nobleman Giovanni Andrea Doria (1539-1606) during the Ottoman-Venetian war of 1570-73. 262 x 191mm. ii + 49 + ii, textually complete but originally part of a larger whole, contemporary foliation 187-235 followed here. 14-15 lines, catchwords survive (marginal foxing and staining, the ink often bleeding through the page). Near-contemporary card, vellum spine (offsetting and remnants of vellum from another manuscript on binding, some staining). A 17th-century copy of a 1570 document explaining the actions of the Genoese Giovanni Andrea Doria during the Ottoman-Venetian war that led to the fall of Cyprus and its capital Nicosia. On 27 June 1570, the Ottoman forces landed unopposed at Salines, while the Venetians withdrew to the forts, waiting for reinforcements to arrive. The Siege of Nicosia lasted for seven weeks, and on 9 September, when the defenders had exhausted their ammunition, the Ottomans succeeded in breaching the walls. A massacre of the city's 20,000 inhabitants ensued. A reinforcement Christian fleet of Venetian (under Girolamo Zane), Papal (under Marcantonio Colonna) and Neapolitan/Genoese/Spanish (under Giovanni Andrea Doria) vessels that had belatedly been assembled at Crete by late August and was sailing towards Cyprus, turned back when it received news of Nicosia's fall. Doria's dallying and reluctance to commit his fleet to the war effort is imputed to him in the present text. Doria would go on to fight in the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.