Scanderbeg, i.e. Iskander (Alexander) Beg or Bey, the patriot chief of the Albanians, was born in Albania about 1403, but his parents were both of Servian descent. By the Christians he was commonly called George Castriot, though the Servian family name was Branilo. Young George was carried away by the Turks when only seven years of age, and was brought up in the creed of Islam. His personal prowess and skill as a military leader made him a favourite with Sultan Murad (Amurath) II., who gave him the command of a division in the Ottoman armies. But when about forty years of age he took a momentous step, which he had some time been meditating: after the Turks were repulsed by the Hungarian forces at Nissa (Nisch) in 1443, Scanderbeg deserted with three hundred Albanian followers, having first extorted from the sultan's secretary an order to the governor of the mountain fortress of Croya (Ak-hissar) that he was to hand over that stronghold to him (Scanderbeg). From that time the Albanian chief, who now renounced Islam for Christianity, the creed of his fathers and his countrymen, was an unrelenting foe to the Turks; they never beat him but once, and his name grew to be a terror to their soldiery. In less than a month after the capture of Croya the whole of Albania was up in arms, and the Turkish garrisons had been seized or compelled to retire out of the country. Early in the following year the Albanian chiefs unanimously elected Scanderbeg their leader. He collected an army of 15,000 men, and with them nearly annihilated in the defiles a Turkish force of 40,000; and other columns shared the same fate in the succeeding campaign. The years 1446-48 were chiefly occupied with a fierce war against Venice. At length Amurath II. himself took the field (1449) with 150,000 men; but the little hill-fort of Sfetigrad successfully defied him until he had lost 30,000 soldiers, and then it was only taken through treachery. And being after that effectually foiled before the walls of Croya, the sultan withdrew in disgust. These splendid achievements brought to Scanderbeg congratulations, as well as material assistance in stores and volunteers, from the potentates of Italy and Hungary; but none of them sent the brave leader an army, or took up the war with him. The proud Albanian chiefs too began to fall away, mainly because of Scanderbeg's manifest purpose of aggrandising his own family and enlarging its power; some of them even went over to the enemy and led Turkish armies against him. But he nevertheless continued to crush every force that the Turks poured into the mountain fastnesses of Albania, or stationed near its frontiers. At length in 1461 a truce of ten years was concluded between the combatants. Two years later, however, at the instigation of Pope Pius II., who tried in vain to league the Christian princes together against the all-conquering Ottomans, Scanderbeg renewed the war, and again defeated every force that dared to attack him. Even Mohammed II., conqueror of Constantinople, conducted two campaigns in person against the invincible chief, and retired baffled both times, on the first after losing 35,000 men before Croya. Scanderbeg died at Alessio on 17th January 1468, of malarial fever, doubtless also worn out by a quarter of a century's fierce and incessant fighting. He was personally a man of tall stature and commanding appearance, terrible in battle, inflexible in resolution, of wonderful activity, and full of resource, a man whom victory did not demoralise, nor desertion dishearten; nor was natural kindness wholly destroyed by the savage nature of the strife he was engaged in. There can be no doubt that for a time he broke the force of Moslem irruption, and had he been adequately supported would have inflicted some permanent injury upon the Turkish power. After his death the Albanian opposition speedily collapsed—an incontestable proof of Scanderbeg's genius. See C. Paganel, Histoire du Scanderbeg (1855), and the Edinburgh Review (October 1881).