In 1571 the Turks attacked and would by years end conquer Cypress, ripping it from the hold of the Republic of Venice. To counter the Turkish might the several Christian states (Venice, Spain, Knights of St. John), led by Pope Pius V, assembled a fleet of several hundred ships, many of the men of war. The fleet had already fallen apart once the year before and there was little hope that it would stay together this time. The Spainish were under strict orders to not attack the Turks.
But their leader, Don Juan of Austria (half brother to the Spainish King) was spoiling for a fight, and when word came to the fleet of the Turkish devastation in the Adriatic the fleet put to see to hunt them out. However, it was not until word came to them that the Turks had skinned the garrison comamnder in Cyprus alive, that the men of the fleet actively sought battle.
They met the Turkish fleet, much larger, outside Lepanto.
The battle which followed was insane. Some 600 ships came to grips with each other in the shallow waters. They rammed into each other, pounded each other with canon and arquebuses, fired flights of arrows, boarded ships with sword, axe and even pike hedges. By all accounts the battle was a titanic clash of iron and wood, bone and blood. Men fought on ships and they exploded beneath them, burned and sank. Others who plunged into the sea were lanced and shot. Neither side showed any mercy to the other. Men who escaped to shore were hunted and slain while they fled.
In all the madness of smoke and blood this instance stands out.
At one point the Christian fleet was split and a wide gap opened with skilled Corsairs (in the employ of the Sultan) took advantage of, driving into the exposed inner flank of Don Juan's center. About 40 ships plowed into the gap. Some half a dozen Christian ships, seeing the plight threw their own boats into the maelstrom and were overwhelmed. They fought long enough however to hold the line.
In one ship a Spanish Knight Federico Venusta on the Doncella had "his hand mutilated by the explosion of his own grenade. He demanded a galley slave cut it off. When the man refused, he performed the operation himself and then went to the cook's quarters, ordered them to tie the carcass of a chicken over the bleeding stump, and returned to battle, shouting at his right hand to avenge his left!" (Empires of the Sea by Roger Crowley, 2008, Random House -- excellent book!)
Fiction doesn't get any better.
4 comments:
That's a good story. Is that an etching of the engagement?
It is. This battle was the first time the west got an upper hand over the Turks in about a century of sea warfare so there are tons of paintings, tapestries, etc. This one caught the insanity of the battle, which by all accounts was just that. Small set piece battles on ships grinding in to each other, smoke, blood, iron and no mercy asked, nor any given.
Wasn't Lepanto also the last time galleys were used in any large numbers in a naval battle?
Indeed it was. The largest naval engagement of the era . . . on of the largest ever . . . and it used a great many galleys. The Turks in particular. On several ships the slaves at the oars rose up and added to the bloody mess.
The Republic of Venice also deployed huge merchant galleys turned into floating gun platforms that wreaked havoc in the Turkish lines.
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