Skanderbeg Is God
10-15-2011, 02:40 PM
Skenderbeg again showed his great faith in God and deep loyalty to friends after his great friend and patron Alphonse, King of Naples and Sicily, died in 1460. Italy was plunged into bloodshed and rebellion, and Ferdinand I, Alphonse's son and successor, came under attack from the French once again. Feeling a deep moral obligation to repay his steadfast friends and allies on the other side of the Adriatic, Skenderbeg himself led an elite cavalry of 2,000 men there in the summer of 1461 and soon turned the tide against the French and their Italian collaborators in the bloody battle of Apulia. In reading the accounts of Skenderbeg's exhortation to his soldiers before the battle of Apulia, one is reminded exhorting his troops at Valley Forge:
``This now is our case, my good soldiers. ..... We are now across the sea far from our own homes and from our own country. ..... We are amongst strangers, altogether without hope of ever returning again to our own (home) ..... if we do not win a notable victory over our enemies. But have courage, my men: Let us consider that this is God's will ..... that we should maintain ..... the seat of the Church. And never doubt that He will send us even from heaven an easy and speedy victory.. . and then shall we return to our own country victors, joyous and triumphant.''
``This now is our case, my good soldiers. ..... We are now across the sea far from our own homes and from our own country. ..... We are amongst strangers, altogether without hope of ever returning again to our own (home) ..... if we do not win a notable victory over our enemies. But have courage, my men: Let us consider that this is God's will ..... that we should maintain ..... the seat of the Church. And never doubt that He will send us even from heaven an easy and speedy victory.. . and then shall we return to our own country victors, joyous and triumphant.''