Otranto, on the southern tip of the Italian peninsula's "boot heel" today is a pleasant holiday resort noted for its massive fortifications and clear blue water. One would hardly think it was once one of the hinges on which history turns.
Unfortunately those defenses were not in place when 128 ships with 25,000 soldiers of the Ottoman Empire appeared on the horizon in July 1480. And they looked unstoppable after capturing Constantinople only 27 years earlier. At the time, and as usual, the states of a disunited Italy were fighting each other or planning to; not favorable to a workable defensive strategy.
It took only two weeks to finally take the citadel and drag the garrison commander and a bishop out to be sawn in half. Twelve thousand residents lay dead as ten thousand were carried away into slavery. The cathedral was used as a stable. Raids were begun on towns up the Adriatic coast as this conquest was only the beginning of a campaign to take Rome, on the pattern of absorbing the Balkans after extinguishing the remnants of the Byzantine Empire.
Florence, the Papal states and the Kingdom of Naples wisely put aside their feuding, and along with two battalions from Hungary marched to Otranto's rescue. As they arrived to do what must have seemed to be very dubious battle, Fate intervened: Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II had just died in May 1481 and most of the Turkish troops, after negotiations, withdrew to Albania.
Today's seaside getaway had saved eternal Rome.
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