Battle of Lépante

The October 7th 1571, large a battles naval is held close to Lépante , near the Golfe of Patras in Greece. It was the occasion of the confrontation of the Othoman naval forces and the combined fleets of the Pape Pie V, the Spain and Venice with minor contributions of Genoa, other Italian States, States of Savoy which sent to it the three galères Nice, and the knights of Malta. This regrouping of forces takes the name of Sainte League. The European fleet was directed effectively by Don Juan of Austria, wire naturalness of Charles Quint. Ali Pasha, helped of the corsairs Scirrocco and Euldj Ali (which directs the left wing), ordered the Othomans.

Unfolding

This battle remained in the treaties of military history like a turning in the naval strategy. Indeed, it is the first time that the galères are seen opposite (with large scales) with a fleet more operating and armed with gun S. This technical combination, a strategy which consisted in locking up the Turks in the gulf of Lépante, a tactic consisting in making take with the Abordage the galères by the Spanish infantry, allied to fast defections in the Turkish fleet contributed largely to the reputation of this confrontation.

During the course of the battle, the ship of the Othoman commander was invaded by the men of the galère of Don Juan of Austria like by that of the Admiral of the Savoyard fleet André Provana de Leyni inter alia, and the decapitated Turkish admiral. When its head was placed at the end of the chechmate of the Spanish principal ship that contributed to destroy moral Turkish. The battle ended towards 16:00

Assessment

The battle was a complete defeat for the Othoman which lost 260 ships out of the 300 of their fleet. The disproportion of the confrontation made an amazing event of it: 7  was counted; 500 died at the Christians, 30  000 died or wounded and 8  000 prisoners among Turks, 15  000 released Christian convicts their irons; 117 navires, 450 guns and 39 standards were taken to the Turks.

It was the naval battle most important between that of Actium in 31 before J. - C. and that of Aboukir, in 1798, during the Napoleonean Guerres.

The victory of the Christian fleet to dominant Spanish confirmed hegemony Spanish on the the Mediterranean, especially Western, and stopped the Othoman progression towards Europe. The Othomans rebuilt their fleet quickly and took shortly after Cyprus and the forts around Tunis but did not venture any more in the Western part of the the Mediterranean. However, the paramount role of the sea the Mediterranean was gradually erased in the following years with the rise of the oceanic fleets which had begun a few decades earlier.

Even if more limited former battles had already announced it, even if the Christian fleet comprised a big number of galères (but the Turkish fleet did not have a Galéasse), and even if the use of the gun were less decisive than the legend wanted it, one regards the battle of Lépante as the end of the fleets of galères to the profit of the galleons armed with guns.

Anecdotes

One of the more known participants was the Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes, which there was wounded and lost the use of its left hand. “For the glory of the right-hand side! ” he will say consequently.

It should be noted that the Turkish fleet was notably made up of Janissaires (Christian children reduced in slavery, Islamized and raised to become soldiers of elite of Turkish Islam).

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