American Minute with Bill Federer Battle of Lepanto and Miguel de Cervantes’ Man of La Mancha

News arrived in Europe that in 1570, Ottoman Turks under the command of Lala Kara Mustafa Pasha, captured Nicosia, Cyprus, after a 50-day siege.

20,000 captured Nicosians were executed.

Women and boys were sold as slaves.

The Cathedral of St. Sophia was turned into the Selimiye Mosque. … continue reading …

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He promised the defenders of Cyprus that if they surrendered, they would be allowed to leave.

Lala Kara Mustafa Pasha broke his promise.

He flayed alive Venetian commander, Marco Antonio Bragadin, and ordered the execution of all 6,000 Christian prisoners.

The beautiful St. Nicholas Church was turned into the Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque.

The Church of Saints Peter and Paul was converted into the Sinan Pasha Mosque.

After this, the Sultan planned on attacking Rome, and from there conquer the rest of western Europe.

The Sultan’s threat was taken serious, as centuries earlier, in 846 AD, Rome was attacked by 11,000 Muslim pirates.

They sacked the city, looted the old St. Peter’s basilica, and the church St. Paul Outside the Wall, and desecrated the graves of both St. Peter and St. Paul.

In response, Pope Leo the Fourth built a 39 foot high wall around the Vatican.

In 1571, with the Sultan again threatening Rome, Pope Pius the Fifth used all his influence to get the Christian states of Spain, Naples, Sicily, Venice, Genoa, Sardinia, Savoy, Urbino, Papal States, Germans, and Croatians to assemble into the Holy League.

The Holy League insisted that their fleet be led by the 24-year-old son of King Charles the Fifth of Spain – Don John of Austria.

Spain used gold from the New World to fit out its navy to keep the Muslim Ottomans from taking over the Mediterranean.

On October 7, 1571, the largest and most decisive sea battle on the Mediterranean took place — the Battle of Lepanto off the western coast of Greece.

Don John of Austria led the 212 ships with nearly 68,000 soldiers and sailors of the Holy League.

A danger for soldiers fighting at sea, was that if they fell overboard, their armor would cause them to immediately sink.

Ali Pasha led the Muslim Ottoman Turks, consisting of 82,000 soldiers and sailors on 251 ships powered by thousands of Christian galley slaves rowing under the decks.

This was the last major battle with rowing vessels.

As the sun rose on the day of battle, the Holy League found itself at a great disadvantage, having to row against a strong wind.

Don John led his men on deck in a prayer, then suddenly the wind changed 180 degrees to favor the Holy League.

The Holy League’s ships collided into Ali Pasha’s ships. Fierce fighting went on for hours.

Don John sailed his flagship Real crashing into Ali Pasha’s ship.

Ali Pasha was soon killed, his vessel’s crescent flag was lowered and his head was hung high in its place.

This cause Ottoman warriors to lose heart.

The Ottomans lost 200 of their 230 ships.

Some 12,000 Christian galley slaves were released from under the decks.

Had the Ottomans not been defeated, they would have invaded Italy and possibly conquered Europe.

Telling the story of the freeing of the Christian galley slaves, G.K. Chesterton wrote in his epic poem, “Lepanto”:

“… Above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs,

And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs,

Christian captives sick and sunless, all a laboring race repines

Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines …

They are lost like slaves that swat, and in the skies of morning hung

The stairways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young.

They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on

Before the high Kings’ horses in the granite of Babylon …

And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell

Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell,

And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign —

But Don John of Austria has burst the battle line! …

Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop (the rear stern deck),

Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate’s sloop,

Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,

Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,

Thronging of the thousands up that labor under sea

White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.

Vivat Hispania! Domino Gloria!

Don John of Austria has set his people free!”

Hilaire Belloc described the significance of the battle in The Great Heresies, 1938:

“This violent Mohammedan pressure on Christendom from the East made a bid for success by sea as well as by land …

The last great Turkish organization working now from the conquered capital of Constantinople, proposed to cross the Adriatic, to attack Italy by sea and ultimately to recover all that had been lost in the Western Mediterranean …”

Belloc continued:

“There was one critical moment when it looked as though the scheme would succeed.

A huge Mohammedan armada fought at the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth against the Christian fleet at Lepanto …

The Christians won that naval action and the Western Mediterranean was saved.

But it was a very close thing, and the name of Lepanto should remain in the minds of all men with a sense of history as one of the half dozen great names in the history of the Christian world.”

One of the Spanish sailors in the Battle of Lepanto was Miguel de Cervantes. He was later captured and made a slave in Algiers, North Africa.

After 5 years, he ransomed by Trinitarian Order, returned to Madrid, Spain, and there he wrote Don Quixote, Man of La Mancha, 1605, considered Europe’s first modern novel.

In an autobiographical passage, Cervantes wrote:

“They put a chain on me … with several others … marked out as held to ransom … We suffered from hunger and scanty clothing … seeing at every turn the unexampled and unheard–of cruelties my master inflicted upon the Christians …

Every day he hanged a man, impaled one, cut off the ears of another … all with so little provocation …

Turks acknowledged he did it merely for the sake of doing it … because he was by nature murderously disposed towards the whole human race.”

U.S. Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts wrote in White Slavery in the Barbary States, 1853:

“Algiers, for a long time the most obnoxious place in the Barbary States of Africa, the chief seat of Christian slavery … the wall of the barbarian world …

And Cervantes, in the story of Don Quixote … give(s) the narrative of a Spanish captive who had escaped from Algiers …

The author is supposed to have drawn from his own experience; for during five and a half years he endured the horrors of Algerine slavery, from which he was finally liberated by a ransom of about six hundred dollars.”

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