The Battle of Lepanto

The Battle of Lepanto, fought on October 7, 1571, was a crucial naval engagement between the Holy League, a coalition of European Catholic states, and the Ottoman Empire. Taking place in the Gulf of Patras near Greece, this battle marked the largest naval conflict in the Mediterranean during the 16th century. The Holy League’s victory halted Ottoman expansion into Europe, marking a turning point in the struggle for control over the Mediterranean. The battle is also noted for its impact on the decline of Ottoman naval dominance and its influence on European art and literature.

Lepanto—Last Gasp of the Galleys

Introduction

By the 16th century, an annual ceremony held in the lagoon of Venice had become a spectacular maritime festival. The focal point of the ritual was the Bucentaur, the royal state galley of the Venetian Republic. Once this ship was launched, the Doge of Venice held aloft a golden ring and solemnly pronounced the union of the city and the sea. This odd wedding ceremony symbolized the association between the prosperity of the Venetian Republic and its control over the Mediterranean. In earlier times, the ceremony would have affirmed the maritime strength of Venice, but by the mid-16th century, the ritual had become tinged with apprehension brought on by a new and terrifying Islamic power: the Ottoman Turks.

The Opponents

• (1) The Turks had burst out of Anatolia, toppling the once-mighty Byzantine Empire and capturing the great city of Constantinople in 1453. Led by contingents of elite Janissary warriors, Ottoman Turkish armies had beaten Persia and overrun the entire eastern Mediterranean, and then moved onto the sea, snapping up island after island and fortress after fortress. Dozens of Venetian outposts in the eastern Mediterranean were pillaged or captured.
• (2) The remaining major outpost of Christendom in the eastern Mediterranean was the island of Cyprus, held by the Venetians, and in 1570, the Ottomans turned their attention to it. The threat to Cyprus finally brought the feuding Christian kingdoms of the western Mediterranean band together to try to stop the Turks.
• (3) The Battle of Lepanto, the largest naval battle of the Renaissance, was a cataclysmic struggle that pitted the seemingly unstoppable Ottoman Turks against a desperate Christian naval coalition that included the Venetians, the pope, the Knights of Malta, and Spain.
• (4) Not only would Lepanto prove to be a turning point in Ottoman naval expansion, but it constituted the final chapter of a type of naval warfare that had remained remarkably static for the first 3,500 years of recorded human history: the clash of oared war galleys.

The Ships

• (1) The dominant warship that had been in use was a long, slender wooden galley propelled by hundreds of oarsmen, and the tactics still included ramming and boarding enemy vessels. Gunpowder weapons had begun to make an appearance, and each Renaissance galley was equipped with a large cannon at the bow and a few smaller ones to either side. Some of the soldiers manning the deck of the galley were also equipped with fairly primitive handheld firearms.
• (2) The Turks had been slower to incorporate these new weapons into their ships; thus, Turkish galleys tended to have somewhat smaller and fewer cannons. Similarly, their crews made greater use of the traditional missile weapons than the new guns. Although Turkish ships were typically smaller than their Christian counterparts, because they lacked the weight of heavy cannons, they were also faster and more maneuverable.
• (3) The Cristian fleet included six Venetian galleasses, a bizarre and flawed hybrid of old and new technologies. These ships were broader and heavier than war galleys and had wooden castle-like structures at their front ends. Up to nine heavy cannons were placed in these castles, and lighter ones were added along the sides and at the stern, uniquely allowing the galleasses to fire in all directions.

The Campaign

• (1) Pope Pius V had brought together the Christian coalition that fought at Lepanto. Realizing that no single Christian power could stand up to the Turks, Pius made it his personal project to create a Christian alliance that would be strong enough to do so.
• (2) Accordingly, the Holy League was formed, consisting of the Papal States, Spain, Venice, Genoa, Tuscany, Naples, Sicily, and the Knights of St. John in Malta. Collectively, they mustered a fleet of approximately 200 ships, 30,000 soldiers, and 40,000 oarsmen.
• (3) Command of the coalition settled on Don Juan of Austria. The fleets donated to the joint effort all had their own commanders, and there was tension among them, especially between the
  Spanish and the Venetians.
• (4) In overall charge of the Turkish fleet was Ali Pasha, commanding about 200 galleys and more than 100 lighter combat vessels manned by roughly 30,000 soldiers and 50,000 oarsmen. Thus, the scale of the Battle of Lepanto was enormous, involving approximately 140,000 men on board nearly 600 ships.
• (5) Although the Holy League had been formed to defend Cyprus, assembling the forces took far too long, and the Turks were able to conquer most of the island while the Christian fleet slowly made its way across the Mediterranean to the harbor of Lepanto in the Gulf of Corinth.
• (6) Strictly speaking, the loss of Cyprus also removed the urgency to fight the Turkish fleet, but word of the cruel treatment that had been inflicted on the Christian officer in charge so inflamed the Venetians that they demanded immediate battle. The fleets met on October 7, 1571, just off Scropha Point in the Gulf of Patras.

The Battle

• (1) The Holy League deployed its ships into four squadrons:
  (a) On the left wing were 53 galleys under the command of Agostino Barbarigo.
  (b) In the center were 52 galleys led by Don Juan in his flagship, the Real.
  (c) On the right were 53 galleys under the command of Gian Andrea Doria.
  (d) Behind this line was a rearguard of 38 galleys under Don Alvaro de Bazan.
• (2) Each of the three main squadrons had two galleasses, which were towed to a position about 500 yards in front of the Christian battle line. The galleasses of the northern and central divisions made it to their appointed stations, but the pair assigned to the south were held up by contrary winds and their own unwieldiness and lagged to the rear.
• (3) The Turks mirrored this formation: a center squadron of 87 galleys under Ali Pasha in his flagship, the Sultana; a northern wing of 60; a southern one of 61 under the capable admiral Uluch Ali; and a small rearguard of 8. As was customary, the Turkish formation adopted a shallow crescent shape, while the Christians maintained a straight battle line.
• (4) The subsequent battle began in the north when the two galleasses stationed there opened fire on the oncoming Turkish galleys. A lucky shot holed one of the larger Turkish ships beneath the waterline near the bow, and it began to sink. As the Turkish galleys, eager to get to grips with the main line of the Holy League, sped past the galleasses, they took a heavy beating from the Christians’ guns, disrupting the Turkish formation.
• (5) Meanwhile, in the center, the galleasses had opened fire with similar results, and the two lines converged. A long hand-to-hand struggle followed as ships ground against one another and their crews swept back and forth, alternately boarding other vessels and being boarded themselves.
• (6) The Sultana was mobbed by coalition ships. After hours of fighting and three separate attempts, the Sultana was boarded, its crew overcome, and slaughtered. and Ali Pasha himself was slain. The fighting in the center continued for another half hour or so, but the Christian ships now had the advantage, and large numbers of Turkish galleys began to surrender.
• (7) In the south, the Turkish commander Uluch Ali and the Christian leader Andrea Doria both eschewed a head-on charge in favor of trying to outflank each other. The net effect was that both southern squadrons began to angle away further to the south, creating a gap between the southern squadrons and the rest of the battle.
• (8) Seeing that he could not get around his foe by moving south and that some of the Christian ships had become detached from the main group, Uluch Ali turned his ships north and drove for the gap.
• (9) Had Ali charged back to the center a bit earlier, he could have had a great effect on the overall battle, but the fight in the center had already been won by the Holy League, and Christian ships now began to converge on him from all sides. By midafternoon, the battle was over.

Outcomes

• (1) For the Christians, Lepanto was a stunning victory, made all the more glorious by being unexpected. On the other side, the Ottomans consoled themselves by ascribing the defeat to the inscrutable will of God and asserting that, when the entire campaign was considered, even though they had lost a fleet, they had gained a more valuable prize in Cyprus.
• (2) Lepanto might have led to substantial gains for the Christians, but their always-fractious coalition quickly fell prey to rivalries and infighting. They thus failed to exploit the opportunity that the victory of Lepanto offered them. The Mediterranean region settled into a standoff, with each side retreating into its own domain.
• (3) The Turks quickly rebuilt a sizable fleet, but their maritime ambitions were severely and permanently checked. They could replace ships fairly easily, but they could not replace their trained crews so readily. Lepanto marked the end of major Turkish raids on the western Mediterranean and the effective end of their assaults on the key island and port outposts of Christendom.
• (4) Although Ottoman ambition may have been checked on the water, it was by no means extinguished. The Ottoman Turks would simply seek other directions in which to extend their influence and power, and their eyes soon focused on their land border with central Europe as the stage for their next great thrust into Christendom. The final showdown between the two forces would take place a century later, on the plains of central Europe, with the great siege of Vienna in 1683.

Conclusion

The Battle of Lepanto stands as a pivotal moment in European and Mediterranean history. This decisive victory for the Holy League not only curbed the Ottoman Empire’s expansion into Europe but also marked the decline of Ottoman naval dominance in the region. Despite the Ottomans quickly rebuilding their fleet, they never regained their former maritime power. The battle symbolized the potential of unified Christian forces in the face of a common threat and had a lasting impact on European culture, inspiring a wealth of art, literature, and religious fervor. In the broader scope of history, Lepanto is remembered as a turning point that shaped the geopolitical landscape of the Mediterranean and reinforced the strategic importance of naval power.

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