Admiral Andrea Doria was aware of all the drawbacks of ancient galley warfare. Which is why he planned to avoid as many of them as possible. He was a technologist--willing to use the latest technology and science of his day to the greatest advantage possible. He was a veteran of brutal galley warfare and knew it inside out. He realized that advances in gun powder and cannon made the ancient tactics obsolete. Iron ramming prows only impeded the use of forward pointing cannon, so the iron ramming prows were removed from the ships of the Holy League and replaced with forward looking batteries of the most advanced cannon available. They outranged the Turk by several hundred yards, and Doria's men knew how to use them.

If the Janissary excelled in close quarter combat, he wasn't going to get the chance to use it. Doria rigged boarding nets to port and starboard, bow to aft, on the galleys, beginning at the gunnels and arching up and out obliquely from the sides to a height of 15 feet. The Janissary would have to climb at a thirty degree angle to the top of the net to get on board one of Doria's galleys. But, even then, if he made it over the net, he would have to deal with what was on the other side.

On the other side of the net, on the deck of Doria's galley, was Christendom's primary and best weapon--the Spanish foot soldier, 200 of whom had overcome 50,000 blood crazed, warrior-bred Aztecs, 30,000 Inca warriors, and, with a slightly larger force, destroyed the Schmalkaldic league of a united Protestant Germany. Each soldier was an armored automaton with a five foot long two handed meat cleaver euphemistically called a sword, or a four foot butcher's axe on the end of a 12 foot pole, but they were secondary weapons. The primary weapon that Doria put into their hands was new technology--a 15 pound muzzle loader of either the snap-haunce or match lock variety. These were generically referred to as "arquebuses." To back this up, approximately half of Doria's marines were armed with the cross bow, a shoulder stocked bow whose flexible steel bow-bridge could propel an iron dart through chain mail at 30 yards and outranged the Janissary's bow by at least twice the distance. The Spaniard was hardened by fighting the savages of New Spain, the Evangelical fanatics of Germany and the Netherlands, and the effete fornicators of France and Italy. His father and grandfather had spent two generations throwing the Moslem thug out of the Iberian peninsula. Warfare was his constant state and his vocabulary had no word for peacetime. There never has been heavier infantry in any sense of the word.

By contrast, the Janissary was lightly clothed in cloth, linen or silk with some quilted padding. He sported a curved scimitar and some smaller dirks. His bow didn't even have the range of a good Pennsylvania hunting bow, which is about 40 yards at its utmost. But he had a ferocity and was more than willing to die in the service of Allah and attain paradise, more willing than he was to live, while the Spaniard fought ferociously but to live rather than to die. And he was more than ready to help the Janissary find paradise.

Selim's ships were lined across the bay of Patras as the Holy League approached. It was a struggle for the ships of Pius V to keep formation as they rowed against the wind. There was a mist that morning that made visibility poor. As the fleet of the Holy League entered the bay, the fog began to lift. And then, before them they saw Selim's fleet in full battle array stretched across the golf-completely shore to shore--and coming on at full speed with the life giving wind at its back. The Moslem galley slave could rest and conserve himself at the oar. What's more, he could be freed to fight on deck and increase the number of marines sent into close quarter foray. The Christian had to struggle at his oar and spend his strength. As Christian seaman, soldier and commander prayed (Pius V had supplied every man with a rosary), the din of the Moslem's fanatic screams and pounding drums floated over morning water, serving to further rattle the combined nerve of the Holy League.

Then something happened that my students would call "Hollywood-esque," but the 16th century mind would call it by its real name--a miracle. The wind shifted in favor of the Holy League and against the Moslem.

Christian galley slaves were freed and handed pikes and swords. Moslem slaves were chained to their benches. The man-power balance shifted instantly. The lead ships in Selim's fleet now came in contact with the leading galley's of the Holy League. Here the genius of Doria took full effect. The heavily armed galley's sported 54 guns sprouting up and down their high sides. 400 arquebusiers crammed each deck. Death was reigned mercilessly into the lower walled Moslem vessels. Janissaries trying to board Christian galleys were caught in the boarding nets like aphids and blown to kingdom come by Spanish musketeers. The Janissary could fire 30 arrows a minute while the Spaniard might get off only two rounds in the unwieldy arquebus in the same time. But it didn't matter. The Spaniard had the armor, the range, and the fire power. The boarding nets bought him time. He could look upon the Janissary's arrows as splinters while he blew the Janissary out of the boarding net. More often than not, one broadside from one of Doria's modified galleys was all it took to totally destroy a Moslem vessel. Doria's innovations would insure that Lepanto would be the last galley battle ever fought. From this point on, naval warfare was forever changed.

Don Juan of Austria, in his flag ship the Real, met Selim's flag ship, the Sultana, commanded by the admiral Ali Pasha. Spanish arquebusiers plastered the decks of the Sultana with Moslem blood. Ali Pasha took a lead ball in the forehead. The ancient green flag of the Prophet, embroidered with verses of the Koran and the name of Allah written 29,000 times, was captured and victory cheers went up and down the Christian fleet.

By sundown, only 13 of the Turk's galleys had escaped destruction or capture. By official count, 30,000 Moslems went to meet their virgins in paradise. Only 3,500 Turks were captured out of the original force of 100,000. Unofficially, Turkish casulties probably approached 90 percent. The Holy League, on the other hand lost only 7000 seamen. The Turk had paid a horrible price. Most Turkish vessels lost not only their entire complement of crew, but every officer on board as well. It would take years to replace the highly trained men killed, especially the Janissaries. The entire Moslem admiralty was exterminated. From this point on, the decline of Islam set in.

Now you know the importance of October 7th, 1571. It was the day our civilization, our culture, Christian culture, was literally saved from annihilation. It didn't matter to Pius V that he didn't have a consensus of all Europe or the major powers at his back. It didn't matter that he didn't have everyone's approval, or that the Turk should make the first move. He knew his enemy and had no pansy left-wing illusions about the state of the world or his enemy's intent. He knew he would loose soldiers, that there would be casualties. And he was willing to be wrong about the size and intent of the Turkish fleet. He also knew what the alternative would be if he didn't act. He weighed the consequences, he had a coalition of the willing, and he acted. And because he acted there are no minarets on St. Peter's Basilica today; we live in a country where we are free to read the Bible, or even the Koran if we so wish. Anglo-Saxon law was allowed to develop and with it democratic and republican forms of government which would have never developed under Islam and never will without the outside impetus of Anglo-Saxon countries.

The Battle of Lepanto divides the ages at their sinews even more thoroughly than the Reformation, the Renaissance, or the fall of Rome. If Christendom had lost at Lepanto, neither the Reformation nor the Renaissance would have counted for anything. Neither would the nations that replaced ancient Rome. The Battle of Britain would not have occurred in the twentieth century, but more than likely the 16th. There would be no modern Europe nor the offspring of Europe's civilizations as we know them now, not the art, not the literature, not the science. There would only be the deathly chill of the Madrasa and the birka.

As Paul Harvey would say, "And now you know the rest of the story." But in actuality, you don't, not quite yet. You know why the world is the way it is in the aftermath of Lepanto, you know what would more than likely have happened had Christendom lost at Lepanto. But you don't know why it's worth re-telling this story over and over, even ad nauseam. Some of you, I think, can see why. There's a parallel, a very strict one, between the events of the 16th century and today. There may not be as many Moslems today who believe it's their destiny to achieve military conquest of the world, as there were 500 years ago, but there are certainly enough of them around. The essential character of Islam is there for anyone who wills to read it. It was the example of the Prophet and his bequest to his Caliphs. All Islam lacks, at present, is a leader, a Caliph, who will unite it, and then our own Lepanto will come sailing up our shore. This was precisely the sentiment of Hilaire Belloc, British historian and sometimes radical politician, in his The Great Heresies, and I can express it no better than he did:

Millions of modern people of the white civilization that is, the civilization of Europe and America have forgotten all about Islam. They have never come in contact with it. they take for granted that it is decaying, and that, anyway, it is just a foreign religion which will not concern them. It is, as a fact, the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilization has had, and may at any moment become as large a menace in the future as it has been in the past. … Now it is probable enough that on these lines unity under a leader the return of Islam may arrive. There is no leader as yet, but enthusiasm might bring one and there are signs enough in the political heavens today of what we may have to expect from the revolt of Islam at some future date perhaps not far distant.

Indeed, we have forgotten all about Islam. We were reminded on September 11th, but I'm afraid even that was viewed as some kind of anomaly by most Americans, and even less so by Europeans. If one looks up "Lepanto, Battle of" in one of Microsoft's quickie on line encyclopedias, you'll be lucky to find six complete sentences devoted to it. Sadly, you will find the battle passed off as "inconsequential" or as "indecisive" and even "inconclusive." Yet this inconclusive battle so crippled the Moslem that he was unable to attempt any further major aggression in Europe until the final and last siege of Vienna in 1683. And, in that, too, he failed.

William Cinfici, writing in a commentary found in the American Chesterton Society's edition of Chesterton's poem, Lepanto (Minneapolis, 2003) reminds us that history ancient to us is still part of the specious present in the Moslem world, whose historical memory and sense of history is much longer than our own-and certainly more thorough than Bill Gate's. The Moslem world still awaits to redress the ignominy of a defeat it can't, as Allah's chosen, accept. That future date in which we may have to fight our own Lepanto is surely much less distant now than when Belloc wrote. I wonder if we can count on George Bush, or his successor, to be our Pius V, or even our Don Juan of Austria. You see, I have a feeling we're going to need one simply because none of my students, or their parents, read history … or anything else.

Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,
Up which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain,
And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade …
(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)

           --from Lepanto by G.K. Chesterton

(Hilaire Belloc, editor of the Eye-Witness, published Chesterton's Lepanto on October 12, 1911.)