LEPANTO
1571
The Turk has long been known as the "sick man of Europe," and the story of
the Ottoman Empire for a hundred years has been a tale of gradual
dismemberment. Thus it is no easy matter for us to realize that for
centuries the Ottoman power was the terror of the civilized world.
It was in 1358 that the Ottomans seized Gallipoli, on the Dardanelles, and
thus obtained their first footing in Europe. They soon made themselves
masters of Philippopolis and Adrianople. A crusading army, gathered to
drive the Asiatic horde from Europe, was cut to pieces by the Sultan
Bajazet at Nicopolis in 1396. On the day after the battle ten thousand
Christian prisoners were massacred before the Sultan, the slaughter going
on from daybreak till late in the afternoon. The Turk had become the terror
of Europe.
Constantinople was taken by Mahomet II in 1453, and the Greek Empire came
to an inglorious end. Then for more than a century Austrians, Hungarians,
and Poles formed a barrier to the advance of the Asiatic power into Central
Europe.
But the Turks during this century became a maritime power. They had
conquered the Crimea and were masters of the Black Sea. They had overrun
Greece and most of the islands of the Archipelago. They had threatened
Venice with their fleets, and had for a while a foothold in Southern Italy.
They took Rhodes from the Knights of St. John, annexed Syria and Egypt, and
the Sultan of Constantinople was acknowledged as the Khalifa of Islam, the
representative of the Prophet by the Mohammedan states of North
Africa--Tripoli, Tunis, and Morocco. In 1526 the victory of Mohacs made the
Turks masters of Hungary. They had driven a wedge deep into Europe, and
there was danger that their fleets would soon hold the command of the
Mediterranean.
These fleets were composed chiefly of large galleys--lineal descendants (so
to say) of the ancient triremes. There was a row of long oars on either
side, but sail power had so far developed that there were also one, two,
even three tall masts, each crossed by a long yard that carried a
triangular lateen sail. The base of the triangle lay along the yard, and
the apex was the lower corner of the triangular sail, which could be hauled
over to either side of the ship, one end of the yard being hauled down on
the other side. The sail thus lay at an angle with the line of the keel,
with one point of the yard high above the masthead, and by carrying the
sheet tackle of the point of the sail across the ship, and reversing the
position of the yard, the galley was put on one tack or the other. Forward,
pointing ahead, was a battery of two or more guns, and there was sometimes
a second but lighter battery astern, to be used when the galley was
escaping from a ship of superior force. Turks, in the Eastern
Mediterranean, Moors in the West, recruited their crews of rowers by
capturing Christian ships and raiding Christian villages, to carry off
captives who could be trained to the oar. This piracy, plundering, and
slave-hunting went on in the Mediterranean up to the first years of the
nineteenth century, when, after the Turks themselves had long abandoned it,
the sea rovers of the Barbary States in the western waters of the inland
sea still kept it up, and European nations paid blackmail to the Beys of
Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers to secure immunity for their ships and sailors.
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries no part of the Mediterranean was
free from the raids of the Moslem pirates. Such was the peril of the sea
that ships used to carry two sets of sails, one white for use by day, the
other black, in order to conceal their movements in the darkness. Thousands
of Christian slaves were always wearing out their miserable lives in the
galleys and prisons of the Mohammedan ports. Isolated expeditions were
sometimes made by this or that Christian power for their deliverance. Two
religious orders were founded to collect alms for their ransom, to minister
to them in their captivity, and to negotiate for their deliverance. But all
this was only a mitigation of the evil, and year after year there went on
the enslavement of Europeans, men for the galleys, women for the harems.
One would have thought that all Europe would have banded itself together to
drive back the Turk from the Danube and sweep the corsairs from the
Mediterranean. To their honour be it said that successive Popes endeavoured
to arouse the old crusading spirit, and band civilized and Christian Europe
together for an enterprise that was to the advantage of all, and the
neglect of which was a lasting disgrace. But their efforts were long
defeated by the mutual quarrels and jealousies and the selfish policy of
the European powers. Venice and Genoa long preferred to maintain peace with
the Sultans, in order to have the undisturbed monopoly of the Eastern
trade. France was too often the ally of the Turk, thanks to her traditional
rivalry with the House of Austria, the rulers of the German Empire. The
pressure of Turkish armies on the Eastern frontiers of the Empire made it
impossible for the Emperors to use their full strength on the Rhine or in
North Italy.
Again and again Rome uttered the cry of alarm, and the warning passed
unheeded. But at last it was listened to, when a new outburst of aggressive
activity on the part of the Turks for a while roused the maritime nations
of the Mediterranean from their lethargy, and then a glorious page was
added to the story of naval warfare.
In the year 1566 Suleiman the Magnificent died. He had conquered at Mohacs
and besieged Vienna, enlarged the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire on land,
and made its fleets the terror of the Mediterranean; but the year before he
died his pashas had failed disastrously in their attempt on Malta, and his
successor, Selim II (whom Ottoman historians surname "the Drunkard"), was
reported to be a half-imbecile wretch, devoid of either intelligence or
enterprise. So Europe breathed more freely. But while the "Drunkard" idled
in his seraglio by the Golden Horn, the old statesmen, generals, and
admirals, whom Suleiman had formed, were still living, and Europe had
lulled itself with false hopes of peace.
For the sake of their Eastern trade interests the Venetians had as far as
possible stood neutral in the wars between Turk and Christian, and had long
been in undisturbed possession of Cyprus. For eighty years they had held it
under a treaty that recognized certain rights of the Sultan to the island
as a dependency of Egypt. They had stood neutral while Suleiman took Rhodes
and besieged Malta, though on either occasion the intervention of the
Venetian fleet would have been a serious blow to the Ottoman power. The
Venetian Senate was therefore disagreeably surprised when an envoy from
Constantinople demanded the evacuation of Cyprus, and announced that the
Sultan intended to exercise his full rights as sovereign of the island. The
armaments of the Republic were at a low ebb, but Doge and Senate rejected
the Ottoman demand, and defied the menace of war that accompanied it.
The neutrality of Venice had been the chief obstacle to the efforts of
Pius V to form a league of the maritime powers of Southern Europe against
the common enemy of Christendom. When, therefore, the Venetian ambassadors
applied to the Vatican for help, the Pope put the limited resources of his
own states at their disposal, and exerted his influence to procure for them
help from other countries. Pius saw the possibility of at last forming a
league against the Turk, and was statesman enough to perceive that a more
effective blow would be struck against them by attacking them on the sea
than by gathering a crusading army on the Theiss and the Danube.
His own galleys were prepared for service under the orders of Prince
Colonna, and a subsidy was sent to Venice from the papal treasury to aid in
the equipment of the Venetian fleet. The papal envoys appealed to the
Genoese Republic, the Knights of Malta, and the Kings of France and Spain
to reinforce the fleets of Rome and Venice. But France and Spain were more
interested in their own local ambitions and jealousies, and even Philip II
gave at first very limited help. With endless difficulty a fleet of galleys
was at last assembled, Maltese, Genoese, Roman, Venetian, united under the
command of Colonna. By the time the Christian armament was ready a larger
Turkish fleet had appeared in the waters of Cyprus and landed an army,
which, under its protection, began the siege of Nicosia. After long delays
Colonna's fleet reached Suda Bay in Crete, and joined a squadron of
Venetian galleys kept for guardship duties in Cretan waters.
Though Colonna was in nominal command, the fleet was really controlled by a
committee of the chiefs of its various squadrons. There were endless
councils of war, and it is a trite saying that "councils of war do not
fight." Prudent caution is oftener the outcome of such debates than daring
enterprises. There was a time, in the first days of September, when, if the
Suda fleet had gone boldly to the relief of Nicosia, it might have raised
the siege, for the Venetian garrison was making such a vigorous defence
that in order to press the siege the Turkish pashas had stripped their
fleet of thousands of fighting-men to employ them in the trenches. But the
golden opportunity passed by, and when at last Colonna took his galleys
across to the coast of Asia Minor, Nicosia had fallen, and the Turks had
begun the siege of the other Cypriote fortress, Famagusta.
Again there were divided counsels and pitiful irresolution. The commanders
of the various contingents were brave men, veterans of the Mediterranean
wars. But the coalition lacked one determined leader who could dominate the
rest, decide upon a definite plan of action, and put it into energetic
execution. Time was wasted till the bad weather began. Then the various
squadrons made their way to the ports where they were to pass the winter. A
squadron of the Venetians remained in the Cretan ports. The rest dispersed
to the harbours of Italy and the Ionian islands.
The aged pontiff heard with bitter disappointment that nothing had been
accomplished. The news might well have made even a younger man lose heart.
But with undaunted courage he devoted himself to forming a more powerful
combination for the great effort of the coming summer.
It was all-important to secure the alliance of the King of Spain, who was
also ruler of Naples and Sicily. But it was only after long negotiations
and smoothing away of endless jealousies between Spain and Venice, that at
last the treaty of the "Holy League" was signed by the Republic of Venice,
the King of Spain, and the Pope, Pius V undertaking to bring in help from
the minor Princes and Republics of Italy and the Knights of Malta.
It was proposed that there should be a fleet of three hundred ships, of
which two hundred were to be galleys and a hundred _navi_, that is
full-rigged sailing-ships. It was the first time that the sailing-ship had
been given so important a place in naval projects in the Mediterranean, and
this shows the change that was rapidly coming into naval methods. The
allies were jointly to raise a force of 50,000 fighting-men, including 500
gunners.
Once the treaty was arranged preparations were pushed forward, but again
there were wearisome delays. It was easy enough to build galleys. The
arsenal of Venice had once laid a keel at sunrise and launched the galley
before sunset. But to recruit the thousands of oarsmen was a longer
business. It was not till well into the summer of 1571 that the armada of
the Holy League began to assemble at the appointed rendezvous, Messina.
Meanwhile, the Turks were pressing the siege of Famagusta, blockading it by
land and sea, and sapping slowly up to its walls. The heroic commandant of
the place, Antonio Bragadino, a worthy son of Venice, made an active
defence, retarding by frequent sorties the progress of the enemy's siege
works.
By the month of June the Turks had lost nearly 30,000 men, including those
who fell victims to the fever that raged in their camps. Bragadino's
garrison had been thinned by the enemy's fire, by sickness, and by
semi-starvation, and at the same time the magazines of ammunition were
nearly empty. Behind the yawning breaches of the rampart an inner line of
improvised defences had been erected, and the citadel was still intact. If
he had had a little more flour and gunpowder, Bragadino would have held out
as stubbornly as ever. But with starving men, empty magazines, and no sign
of relief, he had to accept the inevitable. He sent a flag of truce to
Mustapha Pasha, the Ottoman general, and relying on the impression made by
his stubborn defence, asked for generous terms.
Mustapha professed a chivalrous admiration for the heroism of the
Venetians. It was agreed that the garrison should march out with the
honours of war, and be transported under a flag of truce to Crete and there
set at liberty. The Ottoman general pledged himself to protect the people
of Famagusta, and secure for them the free exercise of their religion.
The war-worn soldiers marched out. Bragadino, with the Venetian nobles,
were received at Mustapha's tent with every mark of honour. But no sooner
had the officers been separated from their men, and these divided into
small parties, than all were made prisoners, bound, and robbed of all their
personal property. The Turks had often shown remorseless cruelty after
victory, but they generally observed the terms of a capitulation
honourably. Mustapha's conduct was an unexampled case of treachery and
barbarity.
The Venetian soldiers were sent on board the Turkish galleys and chained to
their oars as slaves. Bragadino saw his officers beheaded before the
Pasha's tent. He might have saved his life by becoming a renegade, but he
was incapable of such apostasy and treason. The barbarian, in whose power
he was, invented new torments for his victim. Bragadino had his ears and
nose cut off, and thus mutilated he was paraded round the Turkish army, and
then rowed in a boat through the fleet, and everywhere greeted with insult
and mockery. Then Mustapha sentenced his prisoner to be flayed alive. The
torture had hardly begun when he expired, dying the death of a hero and a
martyr. Mustapha sent to Selim the Drunkard as trophies of the conquest of
Cyprus the heads of the Venetian nobles and the skin of Bragadino stuffed
with straw. The news of the fall of Famagusta and the horrors that followed
it did not reach the allied fleet till long after it had sailed from
Messina.
But even during the period of preparation there were tidings that might
well have inspired the leaders of the League with a new energy. The danger
from the East was pressing. In the spring the Ottoman fleet in the waters
of Cyprus had been reinforced with new galleys from the arsenal of
Constantinople, and a squadron of Algerine corsairs under the renegade
Pasha Ulugh Ali, one of the best of the Turkish admirals. Thus
strengthened, the fleet numbered some two hundred and fifty sail. Even
before Famagusta fell Mustapha detached powerful squadrons which harried
the Greek archipelago, and then rounding the capes of the Morea, made
prizes of peaceful traders and raided villages along the western shores of
Greece and in the Ionian islands.
During the period of the Turkish power Europe was saved again and again
from grave danger, because the Ottoman Sultans and the Pashas of Barbary
never seem to have grasped the main principles of maritime warfare. They
had no wide views. Most of the men who commanded for them on the sea had
the spirit of pirates and buccaneers rather than of admirals. They put to
sea to harry the trade of the Christian states and to raid their coast
villages, and so secure prizes, plunder, and slaves. They frittered away
their strength on these minor enterprises. Again and again occasions
offered, when to concentrate their naval forces for a series of campaigns
that would sweep the Christian fleets one by one from the sea would have
made them masters of the Mediterranean, placed its commerce and its coasts
at their mercy, and opened the way for a career of conquest, but they
allowed these opportunities to escape.
The peril that menaced European civilization in 1571 was that at last the
Moslem powers of the Mediterranean were actually combining their sea forces
for a great effort of maritime conquest. Their operations were still
delayed by their traditional disposition to indulge in plundering raids, or
to wait for the fall of a blockaded fortress, instead of making the
destruction of the opposing sea power their first object. If the pashas of
Selim's fleets had really understood their business, they might have
destroyed the Christian squadrons in detail before they could effect their
concentration in the waters of Messina. But the Turkish admirals let the
opportunity escape them during the long months when the "Holy League" was
being formed and its fleets made ready for action.
That the danger was met by the organization of a united effort to break the
Moslem power on the sea was entirely due to the clear-sighted initiative
and the persistent energy of the aged Pius V. He had fully realized that
the naval campaign of 1570 had been paralysed by the Christian fleet being
directed, not by one vigorous will, but by the cautious decisions of a
permanent council of war. He insisted on the armament of 1571 being under
the direction of one chief, and exercising his right as chief of the
League, Pius V had to select the commander of its forces; he named as
captain-general of the Christian armada Don Juan of Austria.
Don Juan was then a young soldier, twenty-four years of age. He was the son
of the Emperor Charles V and his mistress, Barbara Blomberg of Ratisbon.
His boyhood had been passed, unknown and unacknowledged by his father, in a
peasant household in Castille. As a youth he had been adopted by a noble
family of Valladolid. Then Philip II had acknowledged him as his
half-brother, and given him the rank of a Spanish Prince. He studied at
Alcala, having for his friends and companions Alexander Farnese, the "Great
Captain" of future years, and the unfortunate Don Carlos. Don Juan's rank
gave him early the opportunity of displaying in high command his marked
genius for war. He was employed in expeditions in the Mediterranean, and
directed the suppression of the Moorish revolt in Granada in 1570. He was
then named "Capitan-General del Mar"--High Admiral of the Spanish fleets.
Young as he was when Pius V appointed him commander-in-chief of the forces
of the Holy League, his services by land and sea, as well as his princely
rank, gave him the necessary prestige to enable him to command even older
generals like Marco Antonio Colonna, the leader of the papal and Italian
forces, and the veteran Sebastian Veniero, who directed those of Venice.
During the period of concentration it was Veniero who had the most
difficult problem to solve. The Venetian fleet had separated into two
divisions at the close of the campaign of 1570. The weaker wintered in the
harbours of Crete. The stronger detachment passed the winter at Corfu, in
the Ionian islands. In the early summer of 1571 Veniero took command at
Corfu, and occupied himself with preparing the fleet for sea, and
reinforcing it with new galleys from the arsenal of Venice, and newly
raised drafts of sailors, rowers, and fighting-men. Before his
preparations were complete, the vanguard of the Turkish armada, continually
reinforced from the East, appeared on the western coasts of Greece. To
attack them with the force he had at hand would be to court destruction.
Ulugh Ali, who commanded the vanguard of the enemy, was perhaps the
best-hated of the Moslem admirals. A Calabrese fisherman, he had been
captured as a young man by one of the Barbary corsairs, and spent some
miserable years chained as a galley-slave at an oar. At last his endurance
broke down, and he escaped from his misery by becoming a Mohammedan. Under
his new name he rose rapidly to command, enriched himself by successful
piracy, and before long won himself the rank of a Pasha and a vice-royalty
in North Africa. But, happily for Europe at large, though unfortunately for
many a village along the shores of Greece and Illyria, Ulugh Ali as admiral
of the Turkish fleets remained still a pirate, with the fixed idea that a
plundering cruise was better than a naval campaign. Had the renegade been
more admiral than pirate, he had an opportunity of changing the course of
history in that early summer of 1571.
His fleet cruising off the coasts of Epirus held a central strategic
position in relation to the still dispersed Christian fleets. The papal
contingents on the western shores of Italy and the Spanish fleets in the
ports of the Two Sicilies, or coasting from Spain by the Gulf of Lyons and
the Italian shores, were, it is true, beyond his immediate reach, but he
could easily lop off one important branch of the triple League by cutting
off the Venetians. The squadron from Crete must pass him to the southward;
the more important contingent from Corfu must pass between him and Southern
Italy in narrow seas where he could hardly fail to bring it to action, and
if it fought, the chances were he would overwhelm it. Or he might attack it
at Corfu, or drive it from the island back upon Venice. If he had good luck
he might hope to be in time even after this to strike a blow also at the
Cretan squadron.
But he thought only of plundering and burning along the coasts, carrying
off crowds of prisoners, some of whom were at once added to his crews of
chained rowers. Veniero at Corfu had to steel his heart against entreaties
to come to the rescue of the mainland coast population. He could not save
them, and he dared not destroy his fleet in a hopeless effort. He must
seize the opportunity while the Turks were occupied with their raids to
sail unopposed to Messina. He decided even to risk the loss of Corfu. He
was acting on the sound principle that in war all minor objects must be
sacrificed to the chief end of the campaign. But he could not be sure that
in obeying his original orders, and taking his fleet to Messina, he was not
in another way risking his position, perhaps his life. He was leaving to
the Turks the temporary command of the Adriatic. After he left Corfu they
carried fire and sword along the Illyrian coast. There was a panic in
Venice, and the city of the lagoons made hasty preparations for defence.
But Veniero's action was soon justified. The news that the Christian armada
was assembled at Messina alarmed Ulugh Ali into abandoning any further
enterprises in the Adriatic, and his squadrons withdrew to join the
concentration of the Turkish fleets at the entrance of the Gulf of Corinth.
It was not till 23 August that the Spanish Prince arrived at Messina, took
command of the assembled fleets, and proceeded at once to organize his
forces, and issued his sailing and battle orders.
Nearly three hundred ships crowded the harbour of Messina. There were three
fleets, the Italian squadrons under the papal admiral Colonna, the Venetian
fleet, and the fleet of Philip II formed of the ships of Spain and Naples.
The main force of the three fleets was made up of galleys. But there were
also six galleasses and some seventy frigates, the former depending
chiefly, the latter entirely, on sail power for propulsion. The frigate
was, in the following century and almost up to our time, what the cruiser
is in the armoured navies of to-day. But in the Mediterranean fleets of the
fifteenth century the _frigata_ represented only an early type, out of
which the frigate of later days was developed. She was a small
sailing-ship, sometimes a mere yacht, armed only with a few light guns. The
frigates were used to convey stores, the swifter among them being often
employed as dispatch boats. Depending entirely on the wind, it was not
always easy for them to accompany a fleet of galleys. Don Juan gave up the
idea of making them part of his fighting fleet. It was still the period of
the oar-driven man-of-war, though the day of sails was close at hand.
The six galleasses represented a new type, a link between the oared ships
of the past and the sailing fleets of the immediate future. They were heavy
three-masted ships, with rounded bows, and their upper works built with an
inward curve, so that the width across the bulwarks amidships was less than
that of the gundeck below. The frames of warships were built on these lines
till after Nelson's days. This "tumble home" of the sides, as it was
called, was adopted to bring the weight of the broadside guns nearer the
centre line of the ship, and so lessen the leverage and strain on her
framework. The guns had first been fired over the bulwarks, but at a very
early date port-holes were adopted for them. The galleass had a high
forecastle and poop, each with its battery of guns, pointing ahead, astern,
and on each side. Other guns were mounted on the broadsides in the waist of
the ship; and to command the main-deck, in case an enemy's boarders got
possession of it, lighter guns were mounted on swivels at the back of the
forecastle and on the forepart of the poop. Compared to the low, crowded
galley, the galleass was a roomy and much more seaworthy ship. She was
generally a slow sailer, but in order to enable her to make some progress,
even in calms or against a head wind, and so work with a fleet of galleys,
she had a rowers' deck, under her main or gundeck, and on each side twelve
or fifteen oars of enormous length, each worked by several men. She had the
drawbacks of most compromises. She could not sail as well as the frigate,
and her speed with the oar was much less than that of the galley. But the
gain was that she could be used as a floating battery, carrying many more
guns than the few pieces mounted in the galley's bows. The galleass's guns
were high above the water, and the galleys dreaded their plunging fire.
Each of Don Juan's six galleasses carried some thirty guns of various
calibres, and to defend their high sides against an attack by boarders,
their fighting-men were chiefly arquebusiers.
In order to fuse the triple fleet of the Allies into one armada, and to
avoid the risk of international jealousies, Don Juan proceeded to form his
galleys into five squadrons, each made up of ships selected from the three
fleets, so that none of these divisions could claim to act only for Rome,
or Spain, or Venice.
The organization of the Christian armada may be thus summed up in tabular
form:--
----------------+----------------------+--------+------------------------
Division. | Commander. |Galleys.| Sailing-ships.
----------------+----------------------+--------+------------------------
Vanguard |Juan de Cardona | 7 |
| | |Galleasses 6
M o { | | |Frigates 70
a f {Left Wing |Agostino Barbarigo | 53 | --
i { | | | 76
n b { | | |
a {Centre |Don Juan de Austria | 62 |These frigates sailed
l t { | | |during the voyage as a
i t { | | |separate squadron under
n l {Right Wing |Giovanni Andrea Doria | 50 |Don Cesar d'Avalos.
e e { | | |They were employed as
| | |storeships and tenders.
Reserve |Alvaro de Bazan, | |
|Marquis de Santa Cruz | 30 |
----------------+----------------------+--------+------------------------
Total 202 +76 sailing-ships = 278
ships in all.
----------------+----------------------+--------+------------------------
[Illustration: GALLEYS OF THE KNIGHTS OF MALTA IN ACTION
WITH TURKISH GALLEYS]
It is interesting to note that instead of choosing one of the large
sailing-vessels as his flagship, Don Juan displayed his flag, the standard
of the League, from the masthead of the largest of the Spanish galleys, the
"Reale," a splendid ship built for the Viceroy of Catalonia three years
before. She had sixty oars, a battery of guns pointing forward through a
breastwork in the bow, and another gun on her high poop, pointing over her
stern, which was adorned with elaborate wood carvings, the work of Vasquez
of Seville, one of the most famous sculptors of the day. She had a crew of
300 rowers and 400 fighting-men. In the battle-line two other great galleys
were to lie to right and left of the "Reale," on her starboard, the
flagship of Colonna, the papal admiral, and to port that of Veniero the
Venetian, flying the lion banner of St. Mark. Next to these were the
galleys of the Princes of Parma and Urbino. On the extreme right of the
centre was the post of the flagship of the Knights of Malta, commanded by
the Grand Master Giustiniani. All the galleys of the central squadron flew
blue pennons as their distinguishing flag.
The vanguard and the right flew green triangular flags. When the line was
formed Cardona and his seven galleys were to take post on the left or inner
flank of the right division. Doria, the Genoese admiral, was on the extreme
right.
The left flew yellow pennons. Its admiral was the Venetian Barbarigo, a
veteran of many a hard-fought campaign.
Santa Cruz, the admiral of the reserve squadron, was posted in the middle
of his line, flying his flag on board the "Capitana" or flagship of the
Neapolitan squadron. All the flagships had as a distinctive mark a long red
pennon at the foremast-head.
Twenty-eight thousand fighting-men were embarked on the fleet. The Italian
soldiers were the most numerous, then came the Spaniards. There were about
2000 of other nationalities, chiefly Germans. The Venetian galleys were
rather short of fighting-men, and to remedy this weakness Veniero, though
with some reluctance, consented to receive on board of them detachments of
Don Juan's Spanish infantry.
On almost every ship there were serving a number of young gentlemen
volunteers. To give a list of their names and of the commanders of
galleasses and galleys and detachments of troops embarked would be to draw
up a roll of the historic names of Italy and Spain. Lepanto might well be
described as not only the closing battle of crusading days, but the last
battle of the age of chivalry. And, strange to say, on board of one of
Colonna's galleys, acting as second in command of its fighting-men, there
was a young Spaniard who was to "laugh Europe out of its chivalry"--Don
Miguel Cervantes de Saavedra, author of "Don Quixote" some thirty years
later.
At the end of the first week of September the fleet was ready for sea, but
the start was delayed by bad weather. For several days a storm raged in the
Straits of Messina, accompanied by thunder and lightning and torrents of
rain. At length, on the 14th, the sky cleared and the sea went down. Next
day Don Juan sent off the squadron of frigates under the command of Don
Cesar d'Avalos, with orders to proceed to Taranto and await the main body
of the fleet there.
At sunrise on the 16th the great fleet left Messina. The "Reale" led the
way; the tall galleasses were towed out by the galleys. It took some hours
for the whole armada to clear the harbour, then, on the admiral's signal,
they set their sails, and with wind and oar steered south-westward across
the straits. The first day's voyage was only a few miles. Don Juan was
taking the opportunity of reviewing his fleet, and testing his arrangements
for its formation. Each captain had his written orders giving his position
when under way and in the line of battle. It was in this formation the
fleet anchored along the Italian coast beyond Reggio, on a front of five
miles.
Next day the fleet rounded Cape Spartivento, the toe of Italy, and after an
attempt to continue the voyage on the 19th was forced by bad weather to put
back and anchor under shelter of the land for some twenty-four hours.
As the weather improved, Don Juan decided not to coast round the Gulf by
Taranto, but to lay his course from Cape Colonna for Cape Santa Maria (the
heel of Italy), and then across the opening of the Adriatic to Corfu. A
frigate was sent to inform D'Avalos of the change of plans, and the armada,
helped by a favouring wind, stood out to sea and for a while lost sight of
land.
It was known that the Turkish fleet had concentrated in or near the opening
of the Gulf of Corinth. It might also have put to sea, and Don Juan took
precautions in view of a possible encounter during his voyage. Cardona,
with his seven swift galleys of the vanguard, was directed to keep twenty
miles ahead during the daytime, closing in to a distance of only eight
miles at sunset, and increasing the interval again at dawn. The three
squadrons of the main body appear to have been formed each in line ahead,
the leading ships, those of the admirals, at the head of each squadron,
with such lateral intervals between the columns that line of battle could
be formed, by the ships coming up to right and left of their flagships.
Santa Cruz with the reserve acted as a rearguard, and was to assist any
vessel that might be in difficulties. The rear ship of each squadron was to
display a large lantern at the mast-head after dark. The admiral's ship was
distinguished by three large lanterns.
Forty galleys were detached to bring reinforcements of infantry from
Taranto and Gallipoli. Four swift galleys under the command of Gil
d'Andrada were sent on in advance to obtain information of the Ottoman
fleet.
From Cape Santa Maria the course was set for the Ionian Islands. On the
morning of 24 September, through the driving rain that accompanied a heavy
thunderstorm, the look-outs of the vanguard could distinguish the chain of
islands north of Corfu, the islets of Merlera, Fano, and Samothraki, which
with the reefs that almost connect them form a natural breakwater. The wind
and sea were rising, and the fleet anchored inside the shelter of the
islands and reefs. It was not until 26 September that it reached at length
the harbour of Corfu. It had taken ten days to complete a passage that the
tourist from Messina to Corfu now covers in a single day.
At Corfu the commandant of the fortress had terrible tales to tell of Ulugh
Ali's raid on the island, and the horrors that the Turks had perpetrated in
the villages, which now presented a scene of ruin and desolation. Gil
d'Andrada rejoined the fleet there. He had not seen the Turkish armament,
but he had obtained news of it from coasters and fishermen. He estimated
from these reports that it was inferior in numbers to the Christian fleet,
and he had learned that, as if conscious of its weakness, it had taken
shelter well up the Gulf of Corinth, in the Bay of Lepanto. The bay lies
eastward of the point where the gulf contracts into a narrow strait between
the "Castles of Roumelia" and "the Morea," then held by the Turks. The
defences were of such strength that at the time the strait was popularly
known as "the Little Dardanelles."[5] It was thought that it would be
hopeless for the allied fleet to attempt to force the passage.
[5] Admiral Jurien de la Graviere in his study of the campaign
of Lepanto remarks that many a fortified strait has owed its
inviolability only to its exaggerated reputation for the
strength of its defences, and adds that in the Greek war of
independence a French sailing corvette, the "Echo," easily
fought its way into the gulf past the batteries, and repassed
them again when coming out a few days later.
Four days were spent in the waters of Corfu, and 4000 troops of the
garrison were embarked. Gil d'Andrada's four galleys had again been sent
away to reconnoitre the enemy. On 30 September the weather was fine and the
wind favourable, so Don Juan led his fleet from Corfu to the Bay of
Gomenizza, thirty miles to the south-east, on the coast of Albania. The
galeasses guarded the entrance of the bay; the galleys were moored inside
it, bow on to the shore, with their guns thus directed towards it. Working
parties were landed under their protection to obtain supplies of wood and
water. On 2 October some Spaniards engaged in the work were surprised and
made prisoners by Turkish irregulars, Albanian horsemen, who carried them
off to the headquarters of Ali Pasha, the Turkish generalissimo, at
Lepanto.
Gil d'Andrada rejoined at Gomenizza with news that the Turkish fleet was
not more than 200 strong; that pestilence had broken out among its
fighting-men, and that many of the galleys were undermanned. This
encouraged Don Juan to attempt an attack upon it as it lay in the gulf.
But Ali Pasha had also received reports that led him to underrate the
strength of the Christian armada, and so induced him to put out to sea in
search of it. Twice he had reconnoitred the allied fleet. Before Don Juan
arrived at Messina, Ulugh Ali had sent one of his corsairs, Kara Khodja, to
cruise in Sicilian waters. The corsair painted every part of his ship a
dead black, and one dark night, under black sails, he slipped into Messina
harbour. The utter daring of his enterprise assisted him. Gliding like a
ghost about the roadstead, unmarked and unchallenged, he counted galleys,
galleasses, and frigates, and brought back an under-estimate of the allied
strength, only because the fleet was not yet all assembled. He repeated his
exploit while the fleet lay in the waters of Corfu. He could not approach
so closely as at Messina, but what he saw led him to believe it was no
stronger than when he first reconnoitred it. When Ali Pasha questioned the
prisoners taken at Gomenizza, using torture to make them answer him, he
thought their admissions confirmed Kara Khodja's reports. So he decided to
come out of Lepanto and attack the allied armada.
Thus each fleet believed the other to be inferior in strength, and
consequently desired an early engagement. The Turkish fleet was made up of
210 galleys and 64 galliots and smaller craft, 274 sail in all, and its
commander, Ali Pasha, was one of the veteran admirals of Suleiman's
victorious days; 25,000 soldiers had been embarked under the Seraskier, or
General, Pertev Pasha. Ali had organized his fleet in four divisions,
centre, right wing, left wing, and reserve. All the ships had oars as well
as sails, and though Ali had no huge floating batteries, like the six
galleasses of Don Juan's fleet, the Turkish admiral could match the
Christians with galley for galley, and have a surplus of 8 galleys and 66
smaller craft. Of these the 44 galliots were almost as useful as the
galleys. Unlike the latter, which had two and often three masts, the
galliot had only one, and was smaller in size. But the Turkish galliots,
mostly belonging to the piratical states of North Africa, were as large as
many of the Christian galleys of the second class; they could sail well,
and they were manned by crews of fighting-men that had a long record of
piratical warfare.
The organization of Ali's fleet was:--
------------+----------+-----------+----------------+---------
Division. | Galleys. | Galliots. | Smaller Craft. | Totals.
------------+----------+-----------+----------------+---------
| | | |
{Right Wing | 54 | 2 | -- | 56
{ | | | |
{Centre | 87 | 8 | -- | 95
{ | | | |
{Left Wing | 61 | 32 | -- | 93
| | | |
Reserve | 8 | 2 | 20 | 30
------------+----------+-----------+----------------+---------
Totals | 210 | 44 | 20 | 274
------------+----------+-----------+----------------+---------
The fifty galleys of the right wing were ships from Egypt, the ports of
Asia Minor, and the arsenal of Constantinople, united under the command of
Mohammed Chuluk Bey, Governor of Alexandria, known among the Christian
sailors of the Mediterranean as Mohammed Scirocco. The centre, commanded by
Ali in person, was made up of galleys from Rhodes and the Greek islands,
and from Constantinople and Gallipoli, and the Tripolitan squadron under
Djaffir Agha, Governor of Tripoli. The left under Ulugh Ali, the Viceroy of
Algiers, included ships from Constantinople, Asia Minor, Syria, and the
ports of North-west Africa. The reserve, chiefly composed of small craft,
was under the command of Murad Dragut of Constantinople.
There were a good many Greek and Calabrese renegades among the captains of
the galleys, but the Syrians and the mixed Arab race of Alexandria had
learned the ways of the sea; some even of the Turks were good sailors, and
the men of Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers had made the sea their element. The
thousands of rowers, who provided the propelling power of the galleys, were
for the most part Christian slaves, chained to their heavy oars, by which
they slept when the fleet anchored, living a life of weary labour, often
half starved, always badly clothed, so that they suffered from cold and
wet. Death was the immediate penalty of any show of insubordination, and
the whip of their taskmasters kept them to their work. There were men of
all classes among them, sailors taken from prizes, passengers who had the
bad luck to be on board captured ships, fishermen and tillers of the soil
carried off in coast raids. They were short-lived, for their masters did
not spare them, and considered it a more economic policy to work the rowers
to the utmost and replace them by other captures when they broke down.
The oarsmen of the allied fleet had also a hard lot, but not as bad as that
of Ali Pasha's galley-slaves, because in the Christian fleet there was a
considerable proportion of men hired for the campaign. But there was also a
servile element, Turks taken prisoner in previous campaigns and chained to
the oar in reprisal for the treatment of Christian captives by Ottoman
commanders, and a considerable number of what we should now call convicts
sentenced to hard labour, a rough lot of murderers, brigands, thieves, and
the like. It must be remembered that in most European countries the
sentence for such offences would have been death. The convict galley-slaves
of Don Juan's fleet were encouraged by the prospect of winning either
complete pardon or a remission of part of their sentences if there was a
victory, and to enable them to co-operate in winning it, they were told
that they would be freed from their chains and armed when the day of battle
came.
The 25,000 fighting-men of Ali Pasha's fleet were chiefly militia. There
were only a few thousand of the formidable Janissaries. And among the small
arms of the Turkish fleet there were more bows and arrows than muskets. Don
Juan had, on the other hand, a considerable number of arquebusiers on his
ships. He had the further advantage that while even the largest of the
Turkish galleys had only low bulwarks, the galleys of the allied fleet were
provided with _pavesades_, large bucklers and shields, to be fitted along
the bulwarks when clearing for action, and also permanent cross barriers to
prevent a raking fire fore and aft.
When Ali left the roadstead of Lepanto, and brought his fleet out from
behind the batteries of the "Little Dardanelles," he believed he had such a
marked superiority over the allied fleet that victory was a certainty, and
he expected to find Don Juan either at Gomenizza or in the waters of the
Ionian Islands. Pertev Pasha and several of the admirals had opposed Ali's
decision, and had urged him either to remain at Lepanto, or run out of the
gulf, round the Morea, and wait in the eastern seas for the campaign of
next year. Their reason for this advice was that many of the fighting-men
were new levies unused to the sea. But Ali's self-confidence made him
reject this prudent counsel.
On 2 October, Don Juan had made up his mind to leave Gomenizza, enter the
Gulf of Corinth, and risk an attack on the passage of the Little
Dardanelles. Accordingly in the afternoon he gave orders that the fleet
should prepare to sail at sunrise next day. During the long delay in the
island waters belated news came that Famagusta had fallen on 18 August, and
with the news there was a terrible story of the horrors that had followed
the broken capitulation. The news was now six weeks old, and this meant
that the whole of the enemy's fleet might be concentrated in the Gulf of
Corinth, but after the disasters of Cyprus an attempt must be made to win a
victory against all or any odds.
At sunrise the armada streamed out of the Bay of Gomenizza, and sped
southwards with oar and sail. The Gulf of Arta was passed, and the admirals
were reminded not of the far-off battle that saw the flight of the Egyptian
Queen and the epoch-making victory of Augustus Caesar, but of a sea-fight in
the same waters only a few years ago that had ended in dire disaster to the
Christian arms. Then through the hours of darkness the fleet worked its way
past the rock-bound shores of Santa Maura, whose cliffs glimmered in the
moonlight. The roar of the breakers at their base warned the pilots to give
them good sea room. In the grey of the morning the peaks and ridges of
Ithaca and Cephalonia rose out of the haze upon the sea, and soon after
sunrise the fleet was moving through the narrow strait between the islands.
In the strait there were shelter and smooth water, but the wind was rising,
backing from north-west to west, and raising a sea outside Cephalonia that
sent a heavy swell sweeping round its southern point and into the opening
of the narrows. As the leading ships reached the mouth of the strait Don
Juan did not like the look of the weather, and decided to anchor in the Bay
of Phiscardo, a large opening in the Cephalonian shore just inside the
strait.
For two days the fleet lay weather-bound in the bay. During one of these
days of storm Kara Khodja, the Algerine, tried again to reconnoitre the
fleet, but was driven off by the guardships at the entrance of the strait.
On 6 October the wind shifted to the east and the sea began to go down. Don
Juan refused to wait any longer. The fleet put to sea, under bare masts,
and, rowing hard against the wind and through rough water, it worked its
way slowly across to the sheltered waters on the mainland coast between it
and the islands of Curzolari. Here the fleet anchored for the night, just
outside the opening of the Gulf of Corinth. Not twenty miles away up the
gulf lay the Turkish fleet, for Ali had brought it out of the Bay of
Lepanto, and anchored in the Bay of Calydon.
When the sun rose on the 7th, the wind was still contrary, blowing from the
south-east. But at dawn the ships were under way, and moving slowly in long
procession between the mainland and the islands that fringe the coast.
There was a certain amount of straggling. It was difficult to keep the
divisions closed up, and the tall galleasses especially felt the effect of
the head wind, and some of the galleys had to assist them by towing.
As the ships of the vanguard began to clear the channel between Oxia Island
and Cape Scropha, and the wide expanse of water at the entrance of the Gulf
of Corinth opened before them, the look-outs reported several ships hull
down on the horizon to the eastward, the sun shining on their white sails,
that showed like flecks of cloud on the sea-line.
[Illustration: LEPANTO. COURSE OF ALLIED FLEET FROM ITHACA
CHANNEL TO SCENE OF BATTLE]
The signal was sent back, "Enemy in sight," for the number of sails told it
must be a fleet, and could be none other than that of Ali Pasha. The allied
squadrons began to clear for action, and Don Juan displayed for the
first time the consecrated banner sent him by Pius V, a large square flag
embroidered with the crucifix and the figures of Saints Peter and Paul.
It was an anxious time for the Christian admiral. His fleet, now straggling
for miles along the coast, had to close up, issue from the channel, round
Cape Scropha, and form in battle array in the open water to the eastward.
If the Turks, who had the wind to help them, came up before this complex
operation was completed, he risked being beaten in detail.
While the fleet was still working its way through the channel, Don Juan had
sent one of the Roman pilots, Cecco Pisani forward in a swift galley to
reconnoitre. Pisani landed on Oxia, climbed one of its crags, and from this
lofty outlook counted 250 sail in the enemy's fleet, which was coming out
along the north shore of the gulf, the three main squadrons abreast, the
reserve astern of them. Returning to the "Reale,"[6] the pilot gave a
guarded report to Don Juan, fearing to discourage the young commander now
that battle was inevitable, but to his own admiral, the veteran Colonna, he
spoke freely. "Signor," he said, "you must put out all your claws, for it
will be a hard fight."
[6] The flagship.
Then the wind suddenly fell and the sea became calm as a lake. The Turks
were seen to be furling their now useless sails. The rapidity with which
the manoeuvre was simultaneously executed by hundreds of ships excited the
admiration of the Christians. It showed the enemy had well-disciplined and
practised crews. But at the same time the fact that at a crisis, when every
moment gained was priceless, the Turks had lost the fair wind, convinced
the allies that Heaven was aiding them, and gave them confidence in the
promises of their chaplains, grey-cowled Franciscans and black-robed
Dominicans, who were telling them that the prayers of Christendom would
assure them a victory. Their young chief, Don Juan, left the "Reale" and
embarked in a swift brigantine, in which he rowed along the forming line of
the fleet. Clad in complete armour he stood in the bow holding up a
crucifix, and as he passed each galley he called on officers and men to
spare no effort in the holy cause for which they were about to fight. Then
he returned to his post on the poop of the "Reale," which was in the centre
of the line, with several other large galleys grouped around her. As each
ship was pulled into her fighting position, the Christian galley-slaves
were freed from the oar and given weapons with which to fight for the
common cause and their own freedom.
It was intended that the galleys of the left, centre, and right should form
one long line, with the six galleasses well out in front of them, two
before each division. These were to break the force of the Turkish onset
with their cannon. But when the long line of the enemy's galleys came
rushing to the onset, Don Juan's battle array was still incomplete.
Barbarigo's flagship was on the extreme left under the land. His division
had formed upon this mark, "dressing by the left," as a soldier would say.
The tall galleasses of two gallant brothers, the Venetians Ambrogio and
Antonio Bragadino, kinsmen of the hero of Famagusta, lay well out in front
of the left division. All the ships had their sails furled and the long
yards hauled fore and aft. Don Juan had formed up the centre division, two
more galleasses out in front, the "Reale" in the middle of the line, the
galleys of Veniero and Colonna to right and left, and two selected galleys
lying astern, covering the intervals between them and the flagship. Only a
few oars were being used to keep the ships in their stations. So far so
good, but the rest of the allied fleet was still coming up. The reserve was
only issuing from the channel behind Cape Scropha, and Doria was leading
the right division into line, with his two galleasses working up astern,
where their artillery would be useless. Thus when the battle began not much
more than half of the Christian armada was actually in line. But for the
sudden calm the position would have been even worse.
[Illustration: LEPANTO 1. ALLIES FORMING LINE OF BATTLE. TURKS
ADVANCING TO ATTACK]
It was almost noon when the battle began. The first shots were fired by the
four galleasses, as the long line of Ottoman galleys came sweeping on into
range of their guns. Heavy cannon, such as they carried, were still
something of a novelty in naval war, and the Turks had a dread of these
tall floating castles that bristled with guns, from which fire, smoke, and
iron were now hurled against them. One of the first shots crashed into the
deck of Ali Pasha's flagship, scattering destruction as it came. The
Turkish line swayed and lost its even array. Some ships hesitated, others
crowded together in order to pass clear of the galleasses. Daring captains,
who ventured to approach with an idea of boarding them, shrank back under
the storm of musketry that burst from their lofty bulwarks. The Turkish
fleet surged past the galleasses, broken into confused masses of ships,
with wide intervals between each squadron, as a stream is divided by the
piles of a bridge.
This disarray of the Turkish attack diminished the fire their bow-guns
could bring to bear on the Christian line, for the leading galleys masked
the batteries of those that followed. Along the allied left and centre,
lying in even array bows to the attack, the guns roared out in a heavy
cannonade. But then as the Ottoman bows came rushing through the smoke, and
the fleets closed on each other, the guns of the galleys were silent. For a
few moments the fight had been like a modern battle, with hundreds of guns
thundering over the sea. Now it was a fight like Salamis or Actium, except
for the sharp reports of musketry in the melee and the cannon of the
galleasses making the Turkish galleys their mark when they could fire into
the mass without danger to their friends.
The first to meet in close conflict were Barbarigo's division on the
allied left and Mohammed Scirocco's squadron, which was opposed to it on
the Turkish right. The Egyptian Pasha brought his own galley into action on
the extreme flank bow to bow with the Venetian flagship, and some of the
lighter Turkish galleys, by working through the shallows between Barbarigo
and the land, were able to fall on the rear of the extreme left of the
line, while the larger galleys pressed the attack in front. The Venetian
flagship was rushed by a boarding-party of Janissaries, and her decks
cleared as far as the mainmast. Barbarigo, fighting with his visor open,
was mortally wounded with an arrow in his face, and was carried below. But
his nephew Contarini restored the fight, and with the help of
reinforcements from the next galley drove the boarders from the decks of
the flagship. Contarini was mortally wounded in the midst of his success.
But two of his comrades, Nani and Porcia, led a rush of Venetians and
Spaniards on to Mohammed Scirocco's flagship, whose decks were swept by the
fire of the arquebusiers before the charge of swords and pikes burst over
her bows. The onset was irresistible. The Turks were cut down, stabbed,
hurled overboard, Mohammed himself being killed in the melee.
By the time the great galley of Alexandria was thus captured the landward
wings of the two fleets were mingled together in a confused fight, in which
there was little left of the original order. There was more trace of a line
on the allied or Christian side. The Turks had not broken through them, but
they had swung round, somewhat forcing Mohammed's galleys towards the
shore. When the standard of the Egyptian admiral was hauled down by the
victorious Venetians, and the rowers suddenly ceased to be slaves and
fraternized with the conquerors, some of the captains on the Turkish right
lost heart, drove their galleys aground in the shallows and deserted them
for the shore, where they hoped to find refuge among friends. On Don Juan's
left, though the fighting continued in a fierce melee of ships locked
together, and with crews doing wild work with loud arquebuse and clashing
sword, the battle was practically won.
[Illustration: LEPANTO 2. BEGINNING OF THE BATTLE
(NOON, OCT 7 1571)]
Meanwhile there had been close and deadly fighting in the centre. The main
squadron of the Turks had, like their right division, suffered from the
fire of the advanced galleasses. Several shots had struck the huge galley
that flew the flag of the Capitan-Pasha, Ali, a white pennon sent from
Mecca, embroidered in gold with verses of the Koran. Ali steered straight
for the centre of the Christian line, where the group of large galleys, the
"Reale" with the embroidered standard of the Holy League, Colonna's ship
with its ensign of the Papal Keys, and Veniero's with the Lion-flag of St.
Mark, told him he was striking at the heart of the confederacy. He chose
Don Juan's "Reale" for his adversary, relying on the Seraskier Pertev
Pasha, and the Pasha of Mitylene on his left and right, to support him by
attacking the other two flagships.
Ali held the fire of his bow-guns till he was within a short musket-shot of
his enemy, and then fired at point-blank. One of his cannon-balls crashed
through the bow barrier of the "Reale," and raked the rowers' benches,
killing several oarsmen. As the guns of the "Reale" thundered out their
reply, the bow of the Turkish flagship, towering over the forecastle of Don
Juan's vessel, came through the smoke-cloud and struck the Spanish ship
stem to stem with a grinding crash and a splintering of timber, throwing
down many of the crew. The Turkish bow dug deep into the Spanish ship, and
in the confusion of the collision it was thought for a moment she was
sinking, but a forward bulkhead kept her afloat. Ali's ship rebounded from
the shock, then glided alongside the "Reale" with much mutual smashing of
oars. The two ships grappled, and the hand-to-hand fight began. At the same
time Pertev Pasha grappled Veniero's flagship, and another Turkish galley,
commanded by Ali's two sons, forced its way through the line and engaged
the two galleys that lay astern of the flagship. Then the Pasha of Mitylene
closed upon Colonna's ship, and all along the centre the galleys came
dashing together. The crash of broken oars, the rattling explosions of
arquebuses and grenades, the war-notes of the Christian trumpets and the
Turkish drums, the clash of swords, the shouts and yells of the combatants,
rose in a deafening din. Froissart wrote in an earlier day that sea-fights
were always murderous. This last great battle of the medieval navies had
the character of its predecessors. In this fight at close quarters on the
narrow space afforded by the galleys' decks there was no question of
surrender on either side, no thought but of which could strike the hardest
and kill the most. Nor could men, striving hand to hand in the confusion of
the floating melee, know anything of what was being done beyond their
limited range of view, so that even the admirals became for the moment only
leaders of small groups of fighting-men. On the poop and forecastle of the
"Reale" were gathered men whose names recalled all that was greatest in the
annals of Spanish chivalry, veterans who had fought the Moor and voyaged
the western ocean, and young cavaliers eager to show themselves worthy sons
of the lines of Guzman and Mendoza, Benavides and Salazar. Don Juan,
arrayed in complete steel, stood by the flagstaff of the consecrated
standard. Along the bulwarks four hundred Castilian arquebusiers in
corselet and head-piece represented the pick of the yet unconquered Spanish
infantry. The three hundred rowers had left the oars, and, armed with pike
and sword, were ready to second them, when the musketry ceased and the
storming of the Turkish galleys began. From Ali's ship a hundred archers
and three hundred musketeers of the Janissary corps replied to the fire of
the Spaniards. The range was a few feet. Men were firing in each other's
faces, and at such close quarters the arquebuse with its heavy ball was a
more death-dealing weapon than the modern rifle. Such slaughter could
not last, and the _caballeros_ were eager to end it by closing on the Turks
with cold steel.
[Illustration: LEPANTO 3. THE MELEE (ABOUT 12.30 P.M.)]
Twice they dashed through the smoke over Ali's bulwarks, and for a while
gained a footing on the deck of the enemy's flagship. Twice they were
driven back by the reinforcements that Ali drew from the crews of galleys
that had crowded to his aid. Then the Turks came clambering over the bows
of the "Reale," and nearly cleared the forecastle. Don Bernardino de
Cardenas brought up a reserve from the waist of the ship and attacked the
Turkish boarders in the bows. He was struck by a musket-ball. It dinted his
steel helmet, but failed to penetrate. Cardenas fell, stunned by the shock
of the blow, and died next day, "though he showed no sign of a wound."
Don Juan himself was going forward sword in hand to assist in the fight in
the bows of the "Reale," and Ali was hurrying up reinforcements to the
attack. It was a critical moment. But Colonna just then struck a decisive
blow. He had boarded and stormed the ship that attacked him, a long galley
commanded by the Bey of Negropont. Having thus disposed of his immediate
adversary, he saw the peril of the "Reale." Manning all his oars, he drove
the bow of his flagship deep into the stern of Ali's ship, swept her decks
with a volley of musketry, and sent a storming-party on to her poop. The
diversion saved the "Reale." The Spaniards hustled the Turks over her bows
at point of pike, and Ali, attacked on two sides, had now to fight on the
defensive.
On the other side of the "Reale" Veniero's flagship was making a splendid
fight. It is the details of those old battles that bring home to us the
changes of three centuries. A modern admiral stands sheltered in his
conning tower, amid voice tubes and electrical transmitters. Veniero, a
veteran of seventy years, stood by the poop-rail of his galley, thinking
less of commanding than of doing his own share of the killing. Balls and
arrows whistled around him, along the bulwarks amidships his men were
fighting hand to hand with the Seraskier's galley that lay lashed
alongside. There were no orders to give for the moment, so he occupied
himself with firing a blunderbuss into the crowd on the Turkish deck, and
handing it to a servant to reload with half a dozen balls, and then firing
again and again.
Here, too, in the main squadron were fighting the galleys of Spinola of
Genoa, of the young Duke of Urbino, of the Prince of Parma, of Bonelli, the
nephew of Pius V, of Sforza of Milan, and Gonzaga of Solferino, and the
young heirs of the Roman houses of Colonna and Orsini. Venice had not all
the glory of Lepanto. All Italy still remembers that every noble family,
every famous city, from the Alps to Sicily, had its part in the battle.
Colonna's timely aid to the "Reale" was the turning-point of the fight in
the centre. Led by Vasquez Coronada and Gil d'Andrada, the Spanish infantry
poured into Ali's ship, and winning their way foot by foot cleared her
decks. Not one of her four hundred fighting-men survived. Ali himself was
one of the last to fall. One account says that when all was lost he cut his
throat with his dagger, another that he was shot down at close quarters.
His head was cut off, placed on a pike, and carried to Don Juan with the
captured standard of Mecca. The chivalrous young admiral turned with
disgust from the sight of the blood-dripping head, and ordered it to be
thrown into the sea.
The battle had lasted an hour and a half. Don Juan saw in the capture of
the enemy's flagship the assurance of victory. Like all great commanders,
he knew the value of moral effect. He hoisted the consecrated banner of the
League at the tall mast-head of the conquered galley, and bade his
trumpeters blow a flourish and his men shout victory. In the confusion and
uproar of the melee not many of the ships would see what was happening
round the "Reale," but this demonstration would attract the attention of
friends and foes in the centre of the fight. It was just one of the moments
when, both parties becoming exhausted by the prolonged struggle, success
would belong to the side that could put forth even for a while the more
vigorous effort, and the sight of the papal standard fluttering from the
Turkish mast, instead of the banner of Mecca, inspired this effort on the
part of the Christians, and depressed and discouraged their adversaries.
Pertev Pasha had lost heavily under the fire of the Venetian flagship, and
had failed in an effort to board her. He cut his galley adrift. Veniero let
her go, and turned to attack other enemies. Pertev's ship drifted down on
two Christian galleys, and was promptly boarded and taken. The Seraskier
slipped on board of a small craft he was towing astern, reached another
ship, and, giving up all hope of victory, fled with her from the fight.
Veniero had meanwhile rammed and sunk two other galleys. He was wounded
with a bullet in the leg, but he had the wound bandaged and remained on
deck. The old man gave Venice good reason to be proud of her admiral.
Along the left and centre of the Christian armada there was now victory.
Admirals and captains were busy storming or sinking such of the enemy's
ships as still maintained the fight. On the left Barbarigo had been
mortally wounded, and the losses had been heavy, but the success was so
pronounced that large numbers of men had been landed to hunt down the
Turkish fugitives on the shore. In the centre there was still some hard
fighting. Here it was that Miguel Cervantes, leading the stormers to the
capture of a Turkish galley, received three wounds, one of which cost him
his left hand.
When the battle began at noon, first on the allied left, then in the
centre, Doria, the Genoese admiral who commanded the right, was not yet in
position. His orders were to mark with his flagship the extreme right of
the line of battle so that the rest of his division could form on this
point. But it was soon seen that he was keeping away, steering southward
into the open sea, with his division trailing after him in a long line, the
galleasses that should have been out in front coming slowly up behind the
squadron. Ulugh Ali with the left wing of the Turkish fleet had also
altered his course, and was steering on a parallel line to that taken by
the Genoese. Some of the Christian captains who watched these movements
from the right centre thought that Doria was deserting the armada, and even
that he was in flight, pursued by Ulugh Ali.
Doria afterwards explained that, as he steered out from behind the centre
to take up his position in the battle line, he saw that Ulugh Ali, instead
of forming on Ali Pasha's flank, was working out to seaward, and he
therefore believed that the Algerine was trying to get upon the flank of
the allied line, in order to envelop it and attack from both front and
rear, so as to crush the extreme right with a local superiority of force.
His plan was, therefore, to confine himself to observing Ulugh Ali's
movements, steering on a parallel course in the hope of eventually closing
and meeting him fairly ship to ship. Doria was an old sailor, perhaps the
most experienced leader in the fleet, except the veteran Veniero. If he had
been less of a tactician, perhaps he would have come into action sooner.
And it is strange that, while playing for position against Ulugh Ali, he
did not realize that if, instead of continually increasing his own distance
from the centre, he had at any moment turned back towards it, he could thus
force the Algerine admiral either to close with him or leave him free to
overwhelm the Turkish main squadron by enveloping its left.
It was Ulugh Ali, not Doria, who turned back and ventured on a stroke like
this. The Algerine had, after all, outmanoeuvred the over-clever Genoese.
The course taken by the two squadrons had, with the drift of the current,
placed Ulugh Ali's rearmost ships actually somewhat nearer the seaward
flank of the main fighting lines than Doria's galleys, which his squadron
also outnumbered. A signal ran down the long line of the Turkish left, and
while some of the galleys turned and bore down on Doria's division, the
rest swung round and, before Doria had quite realized what was happening,
Ulugh Ali, with the heaviest ships of his division, was rushing towards the
fight in the centre.
The brunt of the Algerine's onset fell upon a dozen galleys on Don Juan's
right flank. The furthest out, the flagship of the Knights of Malta, was
attacked by seven of the enemy's vessels. Next to her lay the papal galley
"Fiorenza," the Piedmontese "Margarita di Savoia," and seven or eight
Venetian ships. All these were enveloped in the Turkish attack which
engaged the line in front, flank and rear. There were no enemies the
Algerines hated so fiercely as the Knights of Malta, but, even though they
had the flagship of the Order at such a fearful disadvantage, they did not
venture to close with it until they had overwhelmed the knights and their
crew with a murderous fire of bullets and arrows at close quarters. Then
they boarded the ship and disposed of the few surviving defenders. The
commander, Giustiniani, wounded by five arrows, and a Sicilian and a
Spanish knight alone survived, and these only because they were left for
dead among the heaps of slain that encumbered the deck. Ulugh Ali secured
as a trophy of his success the standard of the Knights. In the same way the
"Fiorenza" and the "San Giovanni" of the papal squadron, and the
Piedmontese ship, were rushed in rapid succession. On the "Fiorenza" the
only survivors were her captain, Tomasso de Medici, and sixteen men, all
wounded; the captain of the "San Giovanni" was killed with most of his men,
and the captain of the Savoyard ship survived an equally terrible
slaughter, after receiving no less than eleven wounds.
But Ulugh Ali was not to be allowed to "eat up" the line ship by ship.
Reinforcements were now arriving in rapid succession. First Santa Cruz,
with the reserve, dashed into the fight, and though twice wounded with shot
from a Turkish arquebuse, drove his flagship into the midst of the
Algerines. Don Juan cut adrift a captured ship he had just taken in tow,
and with twelve galleys hastened to assist the reserve in restoring the
fight. Doria, leaving part of his division to encounter the galleys Ulugh
Ali had detached against it, led the rest into the melee. Colonna and
Veniero were supporting Don Juan. The local advantage of numbers, which
Ulugh Ali at first possessed, soon disappeared, but for more than an hour
the fight continued with heavy loss on both sides. Then the Algerine
admiral struggled out of the melee, and with fourteen ships fled
north-westward, steering for Cape Oxia and the wide channel between Ithaca
and the mainland. Santa Cruz and Doria pursued for a while, but a wind
sprang up from the south-east, and the fugitives set their long lateen
sails. Under sail and oar a corsair could generally defy pursuit.
The pursuers gave up the chase and returned to where Don Juan and the other
admirals were securing their prizes, clearing the decks of dead, collecting
the wounded, and hurriedly repairing damages. It was now after four
o'clock, and less than three hours of daylight remained for these
operations. Besides the handful that had escaped with Ulugh Ali, a few
galleys had got away into the Gulf of Corinth, making for Lepanto, but the
great Turkish armada had been destroyed, and the victorious armament was
mistress of the Mediterranean.
[Illustration: LEPANTO 4. ULUGH ALI'S COUNTER-ATTACK
(ABOUT 2.30 P.M.)]
The success had been dearly bought. On both sides the losses in the
hard-fought battle had been terrible. The allies had about 7500 men killed
or drowned, two-thirds of these fighting-men, the rest rowers. The nobles
and knights had exposed themselves freely in the melee, and Spain, Malta,
Venice, and the Italian cities had each and all their roll of heroic
dead. The list of the Venetians begins with the names of seventeen captains
of ships, including the admiral Barbarigo, besides twelve other chiefs of
great houses who fought under the standard of St. Mark in command of
companies of fighting-men. No less than sixty of the Knights of St. John
"gave their lives that day for the cause of Christ," to quote the annalist
of the Order. Several others were wounded, and of these the Prior
Giustiniani and his captain, Naro, of Syracuse, died soon after. One of the
knights killed in the battle was a Frenchman, Raymond de Loubiere, a
Provencal. Another Frenchman, the veteran De Romegas, fought beside Don
Juan on the "Reale," and to his counsel and aid the commander-in-chief
attributed much of his success in the campaign. The long lists of the
Spanish, Neapolitan, Roman, and Genoese nobles who fell at Lepanto include
many historic names.
The losses of the defeated Moslems were still heavier. The lowest estimate
makes the number of the dead 20,000, the highest 30,000. Ali Pasha and most
of his captains were killed. Ali's two sons and several of his best
officers were among the prisoners. Fifteen Turkish galleys were sunk or
burned, no less than 190 ships were the prizes of the victors. A few
galleys had escaped by the Little Dardanelles to Lepanto. A dozen more had
found refuge with Ulugh Ali in the fortified harbour of Santa Maura. The
Algerine eventually reached Constantinople, and laid at the feet of Sultan
Selim the standard of the Knights of Malta, which he had secured when he
was in temporary possession of Giustiniani's flagship.
Don Juan's best trophies of victory were the 12,000 Christian slaves found
on board the captured galleys. They were men of all nations, and some of
them had for years toiled at the oar. Freed from their bondage, they
carried throughout all Christendom the news of the victory and the fame of
their deliverer.
Hardly three hours of daylight remained when the battle ended, and the
Christian admirals reluctantly abandoned the pursuit of Ulugh Ali. The
breeze that had aided the Algerine in his flight was rapidly increasing to
a gale, and the sea was rising fast. The Christian fleet, encumbered with
nearly two hundred prizes, and crippled by the loss of thousands of oars
shattered in the fight, was in serious danger in the exposed waters that
had been the scene of the battle. By strenuous and well-directed efforts
the crews of oarsmen were hurriedly reorganized. Happily the wind was
favourable for a run through the Oxia Channel to the Bay of Petala. The
prizes were taken in tow. Sails were set. Weary men tugged at the oar,
knights and nobles taking their places among them. As the October night
deepened into darkness, amid driving rain and roaring wind-squalls, the
fleet anchored in the sheltered bay.
The gale that swept the Adriatic was a warning that the season for active
operations was drawing to a close, and the admirals reluctantly decided
that no more could be done till next spring. The swiftest ships were sent
off to carry the good news of Lepanto to Rome and Messina, Venice and
Genoa, Naples and Barcelona. The fleet returned in triumph to Messina, and
entered the port trailing the captured Turkish standards in the water
astern of the ships that had taken them, while pealing bells and saluting
cannon greeted the victors.
Lepanto worthily closed the long history of the oar-driven navies. The
galleasses, with their tall masts and great sails, and their bristling
batteries of cannon, which lay in front of Don Juan's battle line,
represented the new type of ship that was soon to alter the whole aspect of
naval war. So quickly came the change that men who had fought at Lepanto
were present, only seventeen years later, at another world-famed battle
that was fought under sail, the defeat of King Philip's "Grand Armada" in
the Narrow Seas of the North.
[Illustration: LEPANTO 5. FLIGHT OF ULUGH ALI--ALLIED FLEET
FORMING UP WITH CAPTURED PRIZES AT CLOSE OF BATTLE (ABOUT 4 P.M.)]