Navpaktos is a charming little Greek town
at the entrance to the Gulf of Corinth. In the early
morning, old men sit over glasses of Ouzo and cups of coffee on tottery
blue chairs along the quay. Day after day they enjoy the spectacle of the
peaks across the Gulf on the Peloponnesus emerging from the haze. This was
where, on 7 October 1571, Christian navies battled Ottoman galleys
bristling with canons to save, as the West saw it, the powers of
Christendom from being subdued by Muslim forces. A bloodbath for both
sides, the event went down in history as the "Battle of Lepanto", which is
the Italian name for Naupactus, the name of the town in ancient times.
Renaissance Europe always feared — not without reason —
the possibility of being invaded by Ottoman armies. Three centuries before
the Battle of Lepanto, Crusaders laid waste entire regions of what is now
Turkey at regular intervals. Now the tables had been turned. Whilst the
West was imploring its Saints to intercede for its armies, the Ottoman
forces were burning Belgrade. In 1526 they conquered Hungary and, by 1529,
they had reached the gates of Vienna. This was the point at which the West
retaliated. After morning mass on Sunday, 7 October 1571, the galleys of
the "Holy League", an alliance of Venetians, Spaniards and Papal troops,
were cautiously cruising the northern coast of the Gulf of Corinth when
suddenly a murmur went up from ship to ship: the Ottoman fleet had been
sighted. Numbering 274 men-o'-wars, it was drawn up in a broad crescent
formation ten nautical miles to the east in the Gulf. At that time, the
rules of naval warfare did not permit flagships to engage in combat. This
convention was, however, jettisoned at Lepanto. By the time the Ottoman
Sultana rammed the foredeck of the Spanish Real, splintering it under the
blow, the battle had already been decided. Fighting ceased at 2 p.m., when
a Spaniard beheaded the Ottoman commander in the fray and brandished his
horrible trophy for the Turkish forces to see. Overcome at the sight, the
Ottoman navy was paralysed. The Sultana was seized and the battle won by
the Christian forces. The Holy League suffered 7,000 casualties, while
40,000 Ottoman seamen had been killed. One of the most distinguished
survivors was Miguel de Cervantes. The Spanish writer, whose left hand was
permanently maimed from injuries sustained in the fighting, recorded his
experience in Don Quixote.
Yet, the hero of the day was John of Austria. The
commander of the victorious Western forces was the illegitimate son of
Emperor Charles V and Barbara Blomberg, the daughter of a belt-maker from
Regensburg, Germany. The man who had been scorned as a bastard won renown
as the saviour of Europe, and was even paid homage by the Pope.
