Dear Folk,
On October 7, 1571, the myth of the unbeatable Turks was to sink in the Mediterranean Sea at the Battle of Lepanto.
The Ottoman Turks had soundly defeated the Habsburg's Europeans in Hungary (see "Know Mohacs") and other battles. Suleyman the Magnificent had been a capable and dynamic leader. Unfortunately he had died leaving his son, Selim II "The Sot", in charge of the family business (see "The Magnificent and the Gal with Antelope Eyes".) On the European side the leader was Don Juan of Austria. He was the illegitimate son of Charles V and half-brother to Philip II of Spain (see "Isabel, Dafydd & Ash").
The Ottoman Turks in 1570 had demanded the surrender of Cyprus which was held by the Venetians. Although a Christian fleet of Sicilians and papal vessels set sail to relieve the attack, they arrived at Rhodes only to hear the news that Nicosia had already been taken. That seemed to the rescue force that it was already too late. Famagusta fell in early August of that year and by September 9, 1570 the Cypriot capital fell to the heathen Turks.
The next year the Europeans decided to get tough. There was a real danger of all of Europe falling to the curved sword and clever tactics of those rascally Ottomans. Venice, Spain, and the Pope announced that they had formed a permanent alliance to fight the infidel. In August 1571, the largest Christian fleet to come together in the sixteenth century assembled in the bay of Naples. Don Juan was given command of 242 vessels drawn from the navies of the Hospitallers, Savoy, Genoa, Venice, Spain, and the Papal states. There were about 30,000 men aboard when they set sail to find the Turks.
Nafpaktos is the closest modern town to where the battle was actually fought. It is in the Corinthian Gulf. The Gulf of Lepanto is really a long arm of the Ionian sea running from east to west separating the Pellopennesian peninsula to the south from the Greek mainland to the north. Okay, you know that Greece looks like a chubby arm descending into the Mediterranean. There is what looks like a hand coming from that arm with fingers jutting out.. At where the wrist would be is a stretch of water going from the west into the arm. That is the gulf. Got an idea where that is now?
Ali Pasha was the naval commander of Selim II's navy. For six weeks his ship had been anchored inside the fortified port of Lepanto in the Gulf of Corinth's inner portion. They were sailors and overseas: lots of boys spending their money, seeing the sites. On October 5 they hauled up anchor and rowed (yes, they had oars) out westward to leave the place. Ali Pasha had heard that the Christians had a fleet roaming around and so when they got fifteen miles of the mouth of the inlet, he had all the ships drop anchor and wait. He sent his scout ships commanded by his faithful Kara Kosh to see what was up. The scouts took all day to look around. They got back the next midnight with word that the Christian fleet was at Cephalonia, a small island almost directly opposite the mouth of the Gulf.
Next morning early, Ali Pasha got word from his scouts on the hills that they could see the Christians tooling down the coast toward the mouth of the inlet. It was not a good place to get trapped. Ali Pasha had everyone head out into open water. Within a short time the two fleets were facing each other. The Turks had two hundred thirty galleys and one hundred auxiliary vessels. Ali Pash commanded the center squadron facing that commanded by Don Juan of Austria. Pretty evenly matched.
The navy was much more civilized in those days. They signaled each other when they were ready for battle. The challenger, in this case the Turks, would fire a single cannon. The respondent would fire two each signaling that they were ready. The Turks hoisted a huge green silk banner decorated with the Moslem crescent and with holy writ inscribed upon it on the Turkish flagship.
In sixteenth century, craft would be strenuously rowed toward each other to ram, and hopefully sink, the opponent. After initial contact, grappling hooks pulled the boats together and boarding parties clambered over the side onto each other's vessels to hack and hew at the crew. Even the privatize guns of the time needed to be close to hit. That was all to change in this battle.
.Don Juan's ships were equipped with fine cannon and men who knew how to fire them. From the very first salvo the cannon balls tore through the Turkish ships and many were sunk before even contacting the enemy. The cannon were what made the difference. Certainly the Turks were not inferior as fighters; both sides were evenly matched in men and ships. And yet...
After an hour of fighting the flag ship with her green banner fell to the Christians. The Turk's right wing was completely sacked. Not a galley escaped there. By four o'clock in the afternoon the whole battle was over. No Turks were left alive to fight in that stretch of water. The sea looked like chunky tomato soup from all the blood and bodies floating in it. By evening it looked like a storm was coming on. Don Juan ordered the fleet to regroup and head for the bay. The commanders of the other vessels eventually met together on Don Juan's craft just before midnight October 7.
They toted up the losses. The Christian fleet had lost seven to eight thousand men and about 16,000 wounded. However, only about fifteen ships had been sunk. They counted the losses light. The Turks, of course, faired much worse. Less than fifty of the three hundred plus ships escaped. One hundred and seventeen galleys were captured intact and the rest were suck or destroyed after they had been run ashore by the fleeing Turks. Of the seventy-five thousand Turks who had entered the battle, a majority were killed, five thousand taken prisoner. On the bright side, ten thousand Christian galley slaves were liberated. Maybe a few Turks got away by swimming to shore but it really did not matter. Turkey had no navy left. That was it.
Venice received the homecoming fleet in a week of celebration. The seventh of October was declared a perpetual holiday to celebrate. In 1572, Pope St. Pius V ordered an annual commemoration of Our Lady of Victory to be made to implore God's mercy on His Church and all the faithful. And, to thank Him for His protection and numberless benefits, particularly for having delivered Christendom from the arms of the infidel Turks by the sea victory of Lepanto in the previous year. This was like the rebel alliance blowing up the Death Star. Folks wrote poems and painted paintings depicting it. Of course the authors of those works were nowhere near the fighting.
That isn't exactly true. Miguel Cervantes was actually there and wounded at the battle. He had been a member of the Spanish infantry at the time. He had earlier been captured by the Barbary pirates, too. He was a vet.
This battle marked the end of Turkish naval supremacy and the beginning of the Ottoman Empire's decline on both land and sea. Perhaps the most important result of the battle was its effect on men's minds: the victory had ended the myth that the Turks could not be beaten. It also marked the end of the rowing galleys.
What have we learned? Being a bastard is not necessarily a draw back when it comes to military matters? Suleyman might not have lost the fleet that way if he had been alive? No force is invincible except the force of habit? How about artillery is the Queen of Battle?
If you are out there hoisting the crescent on a green silk banner, writing of your wartime experiences, lobbing cannon balls through wooden ships and leather covered men, or just swimming desperately for shore and you want to forward these missives, please do only keep my name and sig. attached.
A former rocketeer myself,
Ellsworth Weaver
SCA – Sir Balthazar of Endor
AS – Polyphemus Theognis
TRV – Sebastian Yeats