After the battle of Mohacs, Sultan Suleiman had “sat on a golden throne” while his soldiers decapitated thousands of prisoners. The Venetians were playing a grim but well-understood role in a gory traditional drama. The performance was designed to be exemplary, and to satisfy the sultan in Constantinople that the long and costly siege had not been in vain. Bragadino’s officers and staff were beheaded in front of him, so that a rivulet of blood flowed across the hard dry ground and washed over his feet. Then he was ceremonially disfigured, with his nose and ears hacked off like a common criminal.

Surgeons stanched the flow of blood and made sure that the wounds did not become infected. Bragadino was cared for solicitously over a period of two weeks and allowed to recover his strength. Meanwhile, his remaining troops, not knowing what had happened to their leader, had marched out of Famagusta to the galleys to leave for Crete, in accordance with the treaty. At the harbor they were taken and enslaved, and chained by hand and foot to the oars in the Ottoman galleys. The final act was designed to make a mockery of the Venetians and to strip their commander of all the attributes of nobility. After prayers on Friday, August 17, the Ottoman army gathered on the siege works that surrounded the city. Bragadino was brought out before them, still wearing his senator’s robe. He was forced to his hands and knees, and a mule’s harness was put on his back, with a bridle and bit in his mouth. Two heavy baskets filled with earth were loaded onto the harness, so that he bent under their weight. He carried them to repair the breaches in the Ottoman earthworks made by the fire from his own guns. Throughout the morning he was led back and forth in front of the troops, in and out among the tents, whipped forward and abused by the mass of soldiers. Each time he passed the Ottoman commander’s tent, he was forced to prostrate himself and eat a mouthful of the dusty soil.

Later in the day the scene transferred to the harbor. The senator was hauled to the topmast of a galley, in front of all his former troops, now galley slaves. He hung in chains without nose and ears, twisting at the masthead under the hot sun. Lowered to the ground, he was taken to the marketplace and tied to a whipping frame, where all the people of Famagusta could witness his humiliation. Then, as the sun fell past its apogee, after he was “hung up by the heels like a sheep,” an Ottoman butcher began the slow process of flaying him alive, removing the skin intact. The chronicle recounts that Bragadino died when the skinner’s knives reached the “height of his navel.” The grisly task completed, the butcher scraped the hide clean of fat. Lala Mustafa and his troops watched the whole process in silence. On the next day the skin of Bragadino was stuffed with straw and neatly sewn up like a huge doll. Mounted on his own horse and paraded through the streets under the senatorial parasol, Bragadino’s simulacrum rode in a parody of his departure from the city on August 4. His skin was next hung from the yardarm of Lala Mustafa’s galley, and was still dangling there like a flag, but by now tanned by the weather, when the triumphant conqueror of Cyprus returned to the waters of the Golden Horn. Its final destination was the galley slaves’ prison (bagnio) in Constantinople, where it was hung as a mute warning to any who thought to resist or rebel.

Every Venetian in the fleet knew that the Ottomans were besieging the town of Famagusta in Cyprus. The island’s capital, Nicosia, had fallen a few months after the invasion of July 1570. Twenty thousand inhabitants had been slaughtered when the Turkish troops broke into the city, and the rest of the islanders submitted to avoid the same fate.

The Long Turkish War or Thirteen Years' War was an indecisive land war between the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire, primarily over the Principalities of Wallachia, Transylvania, and Moldavia.[7] It was waged from 1593 to 1606 but in Europe it is sometimes called the Fifteen Years War, reckoning from the 1591–92 Turkish campaign that captured Bihać.

In the Balkans, in 1595 a Spanish fleet of galleys from Naples and Sicily under Pedro de Toledo, marquis of Villafranca, sacked Patras, on the Rumelia Eyalet of the Ottoman Empire, in retaliation for Turkish raids against the Italian coasts.[12] The raid was so spectacular that Sultan Murad III discussed the extermination of the Christians of Constantinople in revenge, but he finally decided to order the expulsion of all the unmarried Greeks from the city.[13] In the following years, Spanish fleets continued to raid the Levant waters, but there was not a reprisal of the large-scale naval warfare between Christians and Ottomans.[14] Instead, they were privateers such as Alonso de Contreras who took the role of harassing the Ottoman sailing

On the eastern front of the war, Michael the Brave, prince of Wallachia, started a campaign against the Ottomans in the autumn of 1594, conquering several castles near the Lower Danube, including Giurgiu, Brăila, Hârşova, and Silistra, while his Moldavian allies defeated the Ottoman armies in Iaşi and other parts of Moldova.[15] Michael continued his attacks deep within the Ottoman Empire, taking the forts of Nicopolis, Ribnic, and Chilia,[16] and even reaching as far as Adrianople.[17] At one point his forces were only 24 kilometres (15 mi) from the Ottoman capital, Constantinople.

У исто вријеме, једна „депутација босанских
бегунаца предала је ђенералу Молинарију молбу
да исту отправи самоме аустријскоме цару. Турци
у Босни и Херцеговини јавно исмевају поменуто
писмо, ма да га је султан примио, говорећи: ‘Никада
крст не може бити раван са кораном; ђаури не
могу имати једнака права са последоватељима
пророка’.13
___
13 Српске новине, бр. 51, год. XXXXIV, У Београду, Уторник 5. Марта
1876.

U isto vrijeme, jedna „deputacija bosanskih
begunaca predala je đeneralu Molinariju molbu
da istu otpravi samome austrijskome caru. Turci
u Bosni i Hercegovini javno ismevaju pomenuto
pismo, ma da ga je sultan primio, govoreći: ‘Nikada
krst ne može biti ravan sa koranom; đauri ne
mogu imati jednaka prava sa posledovateljima
proroka’.13
___
13 Srpske novine, br. 51, god. XXXXIV, U Beogradu, Utornik 5. Marta
1876.

Ekonomska kriza vladala je cijelim Osmanski carstvom. Strani zajmovi gušili su državni organizam, dok je pogoršanje cijele situacije dodatno produbljivala međunarodna agrarna kriza (Ekmečić 1989:279, 280). Ukupan državni dug prije 1875. iznosio je 202 miliona funti sterlinga, a čitav godišnji prihod bio je oko 18 miliona funti (Ekmečić 1973:25).
Vlada u Carigradu napušta zlatnu podlogu osmanske valute i prelazi na papirni novac (Ekmečić 1989:249).

Da su vas milovali 500 godina izlizali biste se.

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Da su vas milovali 500 godina izlizali biste se.

Evo i da jeste istina da su nas milovali 500 godina i ljubili svaki dan , opet je trebalo proterati okupatora i njihove saradnike sa svoje zemlje.

Naravno, slažem se. Ali iako je bilo dosta okupatora, samo se jedan izrazito mrzi.

Da su vas milovali 500 godina izlizali biste se.