Battle of Gallipoli (1416)

Battle of Gallipoli

Date	29 May 1416
Location	off Gallipoli
Result	Venetian victory

Belligerents

Republic of Venice

Ottoman Empire

Commanders and leaders

Pietro Loredan (WIA)

Çali Bey †

Strength

12 galleys

32 galleys and galleots

Casualties and losses

12 killed, 340 wounded

Heavy casualties, 15/27 ships captured

The Battle of Gallipoli occurred on 29 May 1416 between a squadron of the Venetian navy and the fleet of the Ottoman Empire off the Ottoman naval base of Gallipoli. The battle was the main episode of a brief conflict between the two powers, resulting from an Ottoman raid against Venetian possessions in the Aegean Sea in early 1416. Although a crushing Venetian victory, which confirmed Venetian naval superiority in the Aegean Sea for the next decades, the settlement of the conflict was delayed until a peace treaty was signed in 1419.

In 1413, the Ottoman prince Mehmed I ended the civil war of the Ottoman Interregnum and established himself as Sultan and the sole master of the Ottoman realm. In 1414, he campaigned in Anatolia against Junayd of Aydın, and when he came to Smyrna several of the most important Latin rulers of the Aegean Sea—the Genoese lords of Chios, Phokaia, and Lesbos, and even the Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller—came to do him obeisance. The contemporary Byzantine historian Doukas (c. 1400 – after 1462) reports that the Sultan was enraged that the Duke of Naxos was absent, and as a retaliation he equipped a fleet of 30 vessels, under the command of Çali Bey, and in late 1415 sent it to raid the Cyclades, the domain of the Duke of Naxos. The Ottoman fleet ravaged the islands, and carried off a large part of the inhabitants of Andros, Paros, and Melos. On the other hand, the Venetian historian Marino Sanuto the Younger (1466–1536) indicates that the Ottoman attack was in retaliation for the raids against Ottoman shipping undertaken by Pietro Zeno, the lord of Andros. Although Zeno was a Venetian citizen and vassal of the Republic of Venice, he had not been included in the previous treaties between the Republic and the Ottomans, and had continued raiding Ottoman shipping on his own account.

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Wikipedia