The Battle of Lepanto

Over on The Brussels Journal they are celebrating the 425th anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto. The Battle of Lepanto was a naval engagement fought on October, 7, 1571, between the forces of The Holy League and the Ottoman Empire. The battle was fought at the northern edge of the Gulf of Patras but takes its name from the Greek city of Lepanto, the location of the Ottoman naval base from which their fleet sailed.

The Holy League consisted of the Papacy, Venice, Genoa, the Knights of Malta, Spain and the Duchy of Savoy. The Holy League fleet of 206 galleys and 6 galleasses was under the overall command of Don Juan of Austria. The Ottoman fleet, under the command of Ali Pasha consisted of around 250 ships, mostly galleys.

The battle is remember for three things. One, it was a victory for the forces of Christian Western Europe which came at a time when there were precious few victories against the forces of Islam (the Ottomans had not lost a battle in nearly 100 years). Two, Don Juan used the cannon mounted on the galleys in a way which foreshadowed the use of the cannon in more modern naval warfare. Three the perfidy of Giovanni Andrea Doria who led the Genoese contingent of the fleet.

Doria's actions were probably the result of orders from the Genoese government and grew out of the extreme hostility which the Italian city-states of Genoa and Venice felt for each other. During the battle Doria sailed his galleys too far to the south, opening a hole in the Holy League's line of battle. This was probably done in an attempt to expose the flank of the Venetian fleet to the Ottomans and increase their losses. Instead it was the Knights of Malta who were left exposed and were massacred to the last man by the Turks. After the battle Giovanni Andrea Doria (nephew of the great admiral Andrea Doria) was cursed throughout the Christian world as a coward and backstabber.

The battle gave an enormous boost in morale to Christian Europe, but had little lasting impact on the balance of power in the Mediterranean. The internal rivalries of the Holy League prevented them from following up on the victory and the Muslims had rebuilt their fleet and reasserted their dominance of the Eastern Mediterranean in less than a year.

As Europe continued to live in near continual danger from the perpetual jihad which Islam wages whenever it feels strong enough to do so the Christian victory at The Battle of Lepanto took on an ever exaggerated and mythic importance so that in the years after Islam went into decline and was driven out of Europe and back into the Middle East and North Africa it was seen as the "turning point".

Aside from Don Juan and Giovanni Andrea Doria another famous participant in the battle was Miguel de Cervantes who would later author Don Quixote.