Cervantes was at this time suffering from an intermittent fever, and his captain and comrades would have persuaded him to abstain from mingling in the fight; but he spurned the idea, and requested, on the contrary, to be placed in the post of honour, where there was most danger. He was posted near the shallop with twelve chosen soldiers. The galley, on board of which he was, distinguished itself in the action: it boarded the Captain of Alexandria, killed near five hundred Turks with their commander, and took the royal standard of Egypt. In this bloody fray Cervantes received three arquebuse wounds; two in the chesty and one that broke and destroyed his left hand. He always, however, regarded this loss with pride, and says, in one of his works, that the honour of having been at the battle of Lepanto was cheaply bought by the wounds he there received.

The advance of the season, the want of provisions, the number of their wounded, and the express orders of king Philip, prevented the victorious fleet from following up its victory; and don John returned to Messina on the 31st of October. The troops were distributed in various quarters, and the tercio of Moncada was posted in the south of Sicily. Cervantes himself, sick and wounded, remained in the hospital at Messina for at least six months. Don John of Austria had shown a lively interest in his fate on the morning succeeding to the battle, and did not forget him during his long confinement. The industrious Viardôt has discovered mention of various small sums given him by the pay office (pagaduria) of the fleet, under the dates of the 15th and 25th of January, and the 9th and 17th of March, 1572. When at last he recovered, an order was addressed by the generalissimo, on the 29th of April, to the pay-masters, that the soldier Cervantes should receive the high pay of four crowns per month, and be passed into a company of the tercio of Figueroa.

1572.
Ætat.
25.

The campaign of the following year was a failure. Of the three allied powers, the pope was dead, the Venetians grown cold,—the Spaniards alone remained to prosecute the war. Marco Antonio Colonna set sail on the 6th of June for the Archipelago, with a part of the allied fleet; and, among others, the thirty-six galleys of the marquis of Santa Cruz, on board of which was embarked the regiment of Figueroa, in which Cervantes served.

Don John sailed on the 9th of August following; but the only enterprise they attempted was an unsuccessful assault on the castle of Navarino; thus the account given of this disastrous campaign in the story of the captive in "Don Quixote" was related by Cervantes as an eye-witness.

1573.
Ætat.
26.

During the following year the Venetians signed a peace with Selim; and the league being broken up, Philip was obliged to renounce all direct attack upon the Ottoman power; but having assembled a large force, he determined to employ it on a descent on Algiers or Tunis. Since the time of Charles V., the Spaniards possessed Goletta, a fortress near Tunis. Having, therefore, disembarked his troops, he sent the marquis de Santa Cruz to possess himself of Tunis, which might easily have been done; but Philip, jealous of the views of his brother, recalled him in haste from Africa. Feeble garrisons were left in Goletta, which the Turks took by assault the same year.

Cervantes had entered Tunis with the marquis of Santa Cruz, and returned to Palermo with the fleet. He made one of the force which, under the duke of Sesa, vainly attempted to succour Goletta: he afterwards wintered in Sardinia, and was brought back to Naples in the galleys of Marcel Doria. In the month of June, 1575, he obtained leave from don John of Austria to return to Spain, after an absence of seven years. Viardôt assures us, that in the intervals of military service, or during the various expeditions, Cervantes visited Rome, Florence, Venice, Bologna, Naples, and Palermo. He became accomplished in the Italian language: the anti-Petrarchists of his time detected the influence of Italian literature, and accused him, as Boscan and Garcilaso had been accused, of corrupting his native Castilian.

1575.
Ætat.
28.

Cervantes, now twenty-eight years of age, having served in many campaigns, maimed and enfeebled, no doubt pined to revisit his native country. He had left it to seek his fortune; he was to return a simple soldier; yet the military profession continued dear to him; and when he speaks of the many misfortunes a soldier encounters,—his poverty so great that he is poor among the poor; ever expecting his slender pay, which he seldom receives, or is obliged to seize on, at the hazard of his life, and to the injury of his conscience; the hardships he encounters, the dangers he risks, and the small reward he gains,—yet he looks on all these circumstances as redounding to his glory, and rendering him deserving of honour and esteem from all men. We may believe also that Cervantes quitted Italy with well-founded hopes of preferment in his native country: he had distinguished himself in a manner that deserved reward. Don John appreciated his worth, and gave him letters to the king his brother, in which he gave due praise for his conduct at the battle of Lepanto, and begged Philip to confide to him the command of one of the regiments which were then being raised in Spain to serve in Italy or Flanders. The viceroy of Sicily, don Carlos of Aragon, and the duke of Sesa, also recommended him to the benevolence of the king and his ministers as a soldier whose valour and worth deserved recompence.[58]