How the Underdog Crusaders Defeated the Mighty Ottoman Turks at the Battle of Lepanto

“The Battle of Lepanto” by Flemish painter Laureys a Castro. Public Dmain

Commentary

Since the 1370s, the Ottoman Turks had been making themselves the dominant power in the Middle East and the Mediterranean, rolling back Christian and other Muslim opponents. In 1453 they destroyed the last remnant of the Roman Empire when they smashed in the walls of Constantinople; in 1517 they seized Egypt and Arabia and claimed the Sunni Caliphate; in 1522 they drove the Knights of St. John out of their fortress in Rhodes; in 1527 they reached the gates of Vienna.

Turkish fleets, including those of their North African pirate underlings, threatened every mile of the Christian Mediterranean coastline. From his Topkapi Palace, their emperor ruled territory from the Atlantic to the Euphrates and plotted to take even more land from the infidels; an invasion of southern Italy was being considered.

Turkish success owed much to Christian disunity. Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, the ambassador of the Holy Roman Empire to Constantinople, surveyed the situation in the 1550s and declared:

“On their side is the vast wealth of their empire, unimpaired resources, experience and practice in arms, a veteran soldiery, an uninterrupted series of victories, readiness to endure hardships, union, order, discipline, thrift and watchfulness. On ours are found an empty exchequer, luxurious habits, exhausted resources, broken spirits, a raw and insubordinate soldiery, and greedy quarrels; there is no regard for discipline, license runs riot, the men indulge in drunkenness and debauchery, and worst of all, the enemy are accustomed to victory, we to defeat. Can we doubt what the result must be?”

Though previous attempts at a Christian alliance against the Turks had failed, Pope Pius V laboured to put together a coalition to save Cyprus in 1571. The resulting “Holy League” included ships from Spain, Venice, Genoa, the Knights of St John, the Papal States, and Florence. Keeping order in this fragile alliance was the job of Don John of Austria, the illegitimate brother of the Spanish King, who had to hang a few troublesome captains in order to assert the necessary unity.

The combined Christian fleet numbered 212 ships, almost all oar-propelled galleys, 40,000 sailors and 28,000 infantry. On Oct. 7, 1571, they faced a Turkish force of 251 ships, 50,000 oarsmen, and 31,000 soldiers near Lepanto in the Gulf of Patras off the coast of southwestern Greece. The key to the battle was the deployment, in front of the Holy League’s ships, of four galleasses—large, clumsy, heavily-armed vessels bristling with cannons, which blew up 70 Muslim galleys before they could reach the Christian line. The Turkish galleys carried crack Janissary troops, the elite fighting force of the Ottomans, but they were outgunned by their opponents.

A drawing titled “One of the Venetian Galleasses at Lepanto.” Public Domain

The flagships of the two fleets headed toward each other: the Real of Don John and the Sultana of Ali Pasha collided and bloody deeds were performed on the decks by soldiers from both sides before Ali Pasha was killed and his severed head displayed aloft. Christian galley slaves in many Turkish ships mutinied and killed their captors. The sea was littered with bodies of the dead and dying, and oars, shields, weapons, crates, masts, and galleys burned down to the water.

The day ended in a near-complete Christian victory; they had sunk or captured over 150 enemy ships, killing or capturing 20,000 men and liberating 12,000 Christian slaves from the Turkish galleys. They had suffered 10,000 dead and 15,000 wounded. It was the most deadly battle fought in Europe since Hannibal had defeated the Romans at Cannae 1,800 years before.

The Turks would soon rebuild their fleet and continue to dominate the eastern Mediterranean, but their defeat at Lepanto cost them dearly in experienced sailors and fighters. The Holy League would soon dissolve, but the myth of Ottoman invincibility was broken for good. Christian fleets would never face a serious naval threat again in the central or western Mediterranean. The boost to morale was incalculable, and Lepanto still figures prominently in the civic mythology of Venice and Spain.

Prompted by the numerous processions in Rome by the Rosary Confraternity petitioning the aid of Mary, Pope Pius V attributed the triumph at Lepanto to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin and created a new festival for Our Lady of Victory. Two years later, Pope Gregory XIII changed the name to the “Feast of the Holy Rosary,” and in 1960 Pope Paul VI renamed it again to the “Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary.”

There are numerous churches dedicated to either Our Lady of Victory or Our Lady of the Rosary. Maria del Rosario is a common Spanish girl’s name while Rosario is a popular name for boys in the Catholic world.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.