The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 10

by Unknown

Juan de Cardona, who sailed on the left of the right wing, finding no enemy opposed to him, brought his vessel round to the rear of the Turkish centre, and attacked Pertau Pacha, with whom Paolo Giordano Orsini was engaged in a somewhat unequal conflict. After a stout resistance the Christians entered the Turkish galley, out of which the Pacha, though wounded, succeeded in escaping in a boat.

The right wing of the Christians and the Turkish left wing did not engage each other until some time after the other divisions were in deadly conflict. Doria and Aluch Ali were, each of them, bent on outmanœuvring the other. The Algerine did not succeed, like Sirocco, in insinuating himself between his adversary and the shore. But the seamen whose skill and daring were the admiration of the Mediterranean were not easily baffled. Finding himself foiled in his first attempt, he slackened his course, and, threatening sometimes one vessel and sometimes another, drew the Genoese eastward, until the inferior speed of some of the galleys had caused an opening at the northern end of the Christian line. Upon this opening the crafty corsair immediately bore down with all the speed of his oars, and passed through it with most of his galleys. This evolution placed him in the rear of the whole Christian line of battle. On the extreme right of the centre division sailed Prior Giustiniani, the commodore of the small Maltese squadron. This officer had hitherto fought with no less success than skill, and had already captured four Turkish galleys. The Viceroy of Algiers had, the year before, captured three galleys of Malta, and was fond of boasting of being the peculiar scourge and terror of the Order of St. John. The well-known white cross banner, rising over the smoke of battle, soon attracted his eye and was marked for his prey. Wheeling round like a hawk, he bore down from behind upon the unhappy prior. The three war-worn vessels of St. John were no match for seven stout Algerines which had not yet fired a shot. The knights and their men defended themselves with a valor worthy of their heroic order. A youth named Bernardino de Heredia, son of the Count of Fuentes, signally distinguished himself; and a Saragossan knight, Geronimo Ramirez, although riddled with arrows like another St. Sebastian, fought with such desperation that none of the Algerine boarders cared to approach him until they saw that he was dead. A knight of Burgundy leaped alone into one of the enemy's galleys, killed four Turks, and defended himself until overpowered by numbers. On board the prior's vessel, when he was taken, he himself, pierced with five arrow wounds, was the sole survivor, except two knights, a Spaniard and a Sicilian, who, being senseless from their wounds, were considered as dead. Having secured the banner of St. John, Aluch Ali took the prior's ship in tow, and was making the best of his way out of a battle which his skilful eye soon discovered to be irretrievably lost. He had not, however, sailed far when he was in turn descried by the Marquess of Santa Cruz, who, with his squadron of reserve, was moving about redressing the wrongs of Christian fortune. Aluch Ali had no mind for the fate of Giustiniani, and resolved to content himself with the banner of Malta. Cutting his prize adrift, he plied his oars and escaped, leaving the prior grievously wounded to the care of his friends, and once more master, not only of his ship, but of three hundred dead enemies who cumbered the deck, a few living Algerine mariners who were to navigate the vessel, and some Turkish soldiers, from whom he had just purchased his life. This struggle cost the order, in killed alone, upward of thirty knights, among whom was the Grand Bailiff of Germany, commander-in-chief of its land forces. A few were also made prisoners, most of them desperately wounded. For one of them, Borgianni Gianfigliazzi, his relations at Florence, supposing him dead, performed funeral obsequies, in spite of which he returned home from captivity, and was afterward ambassador from the Grand Duke to Sultan Amurath. Two other knights, Mastrillo and Caraffa, finding themselves unsupported in an enemy's brigantine, had given themselves up, and had just bribed their captor to spare their lives and admit them to a ransom, when a Neapolitan galley coming by boarded the brigantine and turned their new master into their slave.

The main body of the Turkish left wing, though long of engaging the Christian right, fought with perhaps greater fierceness than any other part of the fleet. The battle was raging in that part of the line with very doubtful aspect, when Don John of Austria found himself free from the attacks of the enemies immediately around him. Thither, therefore, he steered to the assistance of his comrades. The Turks, perceiving the approach of a succoring squadron, and surmising the disasters which had occurred in the centre, immediately gave way and dispersed. Sixteen of the Algerine galleys, however, retired together, and rallying at a little distance, adopted the tactics of their chief, by making a circuit toward the shore of the Morea, and endeavoring to sweep round upon the rear of the Christians. Their manœuvres were closely watched by Don Juan de Cardona, who placed himself in their path with eight galleys. The encounter which took place between the two unequal squadrons was one of the bloodiest episodes of the battle. Cardona was completely successful, disabling some of his antagonists and putting the rest to flight. His loss was, however, very severe. His own galley suffered more damage than any vessel in the fleet which was not rendered absolutely unfit for service. The forecastle was a ruin; the bulwark and defences of all kinds were shattered to pieces; and the masts and spars were stuck full of arrows. Cardona himself, after escaping a ball from an arquebus, which was turned by a cuirass of fine steel given to him at Genoa by the Prince of Tuscany, received a severe wound in the throat, of which he died. Of the five hundred Sicilian soldiers who fought on board his galleys only fifty remained unwounded. Many of the officers were slain, and not one escaped without a wound. Others had suffered even greater loss. In the Florence, a papal galley, not only many knights of St. Stephen were killed, but also every soldier and slave; and the captain, Tommaso de' Medicis, himself severely wounded, found himself at the head of only seventeen wounded seamen. In the San Giovanni, another vessel of the Pope, the soldiers were also killed to a man, the rowing-benches occupied by corpses, and a captain laid for dead with two musket-balls in his neck. The Piamontesa of Savoy had likewise lost her commander and all of her soldiers and rowers.

Although Doria, having suffered himself to be outmanœuvred by Aluch Ali, and having failed to exchange a shot with that leader, could not claim any considerable part of the laurels of the day, he was nevertheless frequently engaged with other foes and made several prizes. He escaped without a wound, though he was covered with blood of a soldier killed by a cannon-ball close behind him.

On the left wing of the Christian fleet, the battle, which had begun so unpropitiously, was also brought to a prosperous issue. The wound of Barbarigo transferred the command to the commissary Canale. Aided by Nano, who commanded Barbarigo's galley, Canale engaged and sunk the vessel of the Pacha of Alexandria. Mahomet Sirocco himself, severely wounded, was fished out of the sea by Gian Contarini, and sent on board Canale's galley. As the wound of the Turk appeared to be mortal, the Venetian relieved him from further suffering by cutting off his head. Marco Quirini likewise did gallant service, compelling several of the enemy to strike their flags. Of the remaining galleys many were run ashore by their crews, of whom the greater number were slain or drowned as they attempted to swim to land.

The victory of the Christians at Lepanto was in a great measure to be ascribed to the admirable tactics of their chief. The shock of the Turkish onset was effectually broken by the dexterous disposition made of the galeases of Venice. Indeed, had the great ships been there to strengthen the sparse line formed by these six vessels, it is not impossible that the Turks would have failed in forcing their way through the wall of that terrible fire. Each Christian vessel, by the retrenchment of its peak, enjoyed an advantage over its antagonist in the freer play of its artillery. When, however, the galleys of Selim came to close combat with the galleys of the League, the battle became a series of isolated struggles which depended more upon individual mind and manhood than upon any comprehensive plan of far-seeing calculation. But Don John of Austria had the merit or the good-fortune of bringing his forces into action in the highest moral and material perfection; of placing admirable means in the hands of men whose spirit was in the right temper to use them. He struck his great blow at the happy moment when great dangers are cheerfully confronted and great things easily accomplished.

His plan of battle was on the whole admirably executed. The galleys of the various confederates were so studiously intermingled that each vessel was incited to do its utmost by the spur of rivalry. Vaniero and Colonna deserve their full share of the credit of the day; and the gallant Santa Cruz, although at first stationed in the rear, soon found and employed his opportunity of earning his share of laurels. On Doria alone Roman and Venetian critics, and indeed public opinion, pronounced a less favorable verdict. His shoreward movement unquestionably had the effect of enabling Aluch Ali to cut the Christian line and fall with damaging force upon its rear, and of rendering the victory more costly in blood and less rich in prizes. This movement was ascribed to the desire of the Genoese to spare his own ships, and to secure a safe retreat for himself in case of a disaster; and he was further even taunted with cowardice for hauling down the gilded celestial sphere, the proud cognizance of his house, which usually surmounted his flag-staff. To the latter charge his friends replied that the sphere was taken down to secure it from injury, it being the gift of his wife, and that his ship was too well known to both the fleets to find safety in the want of her usual badge. The other accusations, they considered, were disposed of by the necessity of shaping his course according to the tactics of the Algerine, and abundantly refuted by the vigor and success with which he at last attacked the enemy. It is not improbable that the true explanation of his conduct is that offered by the captain of a Neapolitan galley, present at the battle, that he wished to gain an advantage over Aluch Ali by seamanship, and that the renegade, no less skilled in the game, played it on this occasion better than he.

Although in numbers, both of men and vessels, the Sultan's fleet was superior to the fleet of the League, this superiority was more than counterbalanced by other important advantages possessed by the Christians. The artillery of the West was of greater power and far better served than the ordnance of the East; and its fire was rendered doubly disastrous by the thronged condition of the Turkish vessels. The lofty-peaked prows of these vessels seriously interfered, as we have already seen, with the working of their guns. A great number of their combatants were armed with the bow instead of the firelock, which placed them at an obvious disadvantage, except during heavy rains, which extinguished the match of the latter weapon. Of the Turks who carried the musket or arquebus few could handle them with the expertness of a Christian soldier. The advantages which the League derived from its galeases were heightened by the fact that a large proportion of its other vessels were superior to their antagonists. The galleys of the King of Spain were, in general, both more strongly built and more carefully protected against boarders than those of the Sultan. Even early in the battle the Moslems began to discover that they were overmatched. In many of the galleys the guns were at once silenced by the heavier artillery of the Christians, in whose hands the fire of the arquebus and the musket, when they came to close quarters, proved so withering that the enemy's deck was sometimes swept clean before they boarded, and the turbaned heads of the janizaries were seen crouching beneath the benches of the slaves. When the conflict was transferred to the Turkish decks, the Christians, however, found themselves fiercely met, and among other means of opposing their progress they perceived that the central gangway (corsia) had been torn up, or they slipped upon planking which had been smeared with butter, oil, or even, it is said, with honey, to render the footing insecure. So efficient were the nettings and other precautions with which Don John of Austria defended the bulwarks of his ships that he was able to inform Philip II that not a Turk had set foot upon a single deck belonging to his majesty.

Such were some of the chief causes of the success of the arms of the League. In the sixteenth century, in a vast concourse of men of the South, hot from battle and largely leavened with priests and friars, it was natural that the victory should be by many ascribed to a more mysterious agency. In the opinion of these persons the Almighty had evidently been fighting on the side of the Pope and the Cross, although they would perhaps have demurred to the logical deduction from that opinion that at Cyprus he had steadily adhered to the drunken Sultan and the Crescent. It was not only in the victory that they saw the finger of Omnipotence, but in many accidents and incidents of the day. The wind, which wafted the Turks swiftly to destruction, changed at the precise moment when it was needed to aid the onset of the Christians. The boisterous sea also sank to smoothness in the special interest of the League. Of the clergy and friars who ministered on the Spanish decks to the wounded and dying, although some of them were struck, not one was killed. The Venetians were less fortunate, having four chaplains killed and three wounded; and the Pope likewise lost one of his friars, who died of his wounds soon after the battle. The churchmen exposed themselves as freely as the combatants, whom they encouraged from conspicuous posts either on deck or in the rigging, and sometimes by example as well as precept. A Spanish Capuchin, an old soldier, had tied his crucifix to a halbert, and, crying that Christ would fight for his faith, led the boarders of his galley over the bulwarks of her antagonist; after using his weapon manfully, he returned victorious and untouched.

An Italian priest, with a great gilded crucifix in one hand and a sword in another, stood cheering on his spiritual sons, unharmed in the fiercest centre of the arrowy sleet and iron hail. A Roman Capuchin, finding his flock getting the worst of it, seized a boat-hook, and, pulling his peaked hood over his face, rushed into the fray, laid about him until he had slain seven Turks and driven the rest from the deck, and lived to call a smile to the thin lips of Pius V by telling the story of his prowess. The green banner of Mecca, brought from the Prophet's tomb, and unfurled from the main-top of Ali, was riddled with shot, which rendered illegible many of the sacred words with which it was embroidered. But the azure standard of the League, blessed by the supreme Pontiff and emblazoned with the image of the crucified Redeemer, remained untouched by bolt or bullet, although masts, spars, and shrouds around were torn and shattered from top to bottom.