ABSTRACT
Cyprus passed into Venetian hands on the eve of events that were to have profound political and military consequences for centuries to come. The crisis of the first half of the sixteenth century involved Venice in the struggles that were consuming the northern Italian powers with suspicion and discord. Thus, beginning in 1508, the wars started by the League of Cambrai under the leadership of Pope Julius II embroiled Italy in bloodshed for the next 20 years and placed the lands under Venetian sovereignty at risk. At that time the Mediterranean Sea was practically under the control of the Spanish Empire, with only the Gulf of Venice and the routes around the coasts of Greece to Constantinople and Alexandria constituting some semblance of a maritime buffer zone between the Spanish and Ottoman empires. The temporary, or rather symbolic, peace treaty between Venice and the Ottomans so laboriously concluded in 1479 failed to stop the Turks’ bellicose preparations or conceal
later in fact, the Ottoman armies fell upon Styria and Carinthia and also seized Vallona and Otranto. Then in 1503 they invaded the Venetian possessions in the Morea and, having easily dispersed a poorly commanded Venetian fleet, imposed a peace which allowed the Serene Republic sovereignty over only Nauplia, Patras and Monemvasia.
