William Napier: Blood Red Sea

They picked up the last survivors they could find, and then made for shelter at Porta Patala.

‘And move fast!’ cried the captains. ‘The storm comes on apace!’

Darkness had fallen long before they rounded Cape Scropha, clouds thickened and the stars were extinguished. Half-shattered lanterns swung violently from their posts, and the north-east wind whistled in the rigging as they finally struggled into harbour,

In the darkness, rolling at anchor, the soldiers diced and drank and roared their filthy songs as the rain hammered down on the battened-down canvas awnings or on their bare glistening heads.

Meanwhile those remaining Turkish galleys that could still move themselves were doomed to struggle back in the teeth of the wind for Lepanto harbour in a heavy and rising swell. Galleys so gilded and magnificent when this day had dawned, now ravaged and humbled before the majesty of nature, tossed about by the almighty storm wind that blew down from the cold mountains. They prayed to Allah the merciful, little creatures clinging to their little wooden toys, as the thunder rolled overhead like the horses of heaven.

Don John of Austria leaned back and closed his eyes. He dreamt he was playing Moros y Cristianos again in the dusty streets of Leganés, as he had when a little boy.

‘Well, sire,’ said a voice. He opened his eyes. It was the big Knight Hospitaller, Eduardo Stanley. ‘You did it.’

‘Aye.’ He closed his eyes again. ‘Aye, I suppose I did.’

The rain came down harder than ever, cold but clean, and washed the blood away. Men went out on deck, shivering but exhilarated, and raised their faces to the black wind-torn sky. The wind roared and bellowed all along the Greek coast. They held their arms wide, some danced on the deck. Out to sea, the wind lashed the waves wildly, scattering and sinking the last remnants of the ruined Ottoman fleet.

At dawn, Don John held a review.

There had been so many deaths. Both the Bragadino brothers had died of their innumerable wounds in the night, received in the desperate fighting along the shore. A lineage was extinct. Pietro Giustiniani of the knights was dead, and that gallant young knight so full of dreams of martial glory and fair ladies, Mazzinghi the Florentine. The great Chevalier Romegas was also dead.

Sebastiano Veniero was badly wounded, though he hid it, and Don John himself had been stabbed in the thigh. He said it would mend. And that mad, rake-thin poet of the Spanish ships, that Miguel de Cervantes, had been hit in the chest twice by bullets and his left hand was also maimed. He was intensely proud of his wounds.

‘Wounds are like stars in the sky, to guide others along the great highway to honour!’ he cried. Even now, he seemed determined to believe that he lived in an age of high chivalry rather than brute gun power. ‘Besides, I can still write my great epic with my other hand.’

‘What sort of epic?’ they asked him. ‘Of this great battle?’

He looked thoughtful. ‘I shall have to think about it,’ he said.

On the Turkish side, both Sulik Pasha and Muezzinzade had been captured and executed aboard ship. Kara Hodja had made good his escape. Deserters and captives gave Don John a fuller picture of the Turkish losses, and he looked grave as befits a military commander after battle.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Our losses were not small. Both our left and centre were badly mauled. But the squadrons of Andrea Doria on the right, and Santa Cruz’s reserve, escaped better, though both played a brave and vital role.

‘Furthermore, it seems the opening salvos from our Venetian galliasses did more damage than we thought. Perhaps a quarter of the Turkish fleet was damaged right at the start. In all, we estimate some fifteen thousand Christian dead, and at least thirty thousand Turk. Perhaps as many as forty thousand, with significant additional losses in the storm, which was hard against them, by the grace of God. Of our one hundred and fifty galleys, we lost some fifty. Of the Turks’ three hundred galleys, as best we can judge, they lost at least one hundred and fifty. Perhaps two hundred.’

There was relief but no cheering. You could not cheer the death of fifteen thousand Christians, nor that of some fifty thousand men. In a single day. Had there ever been such a rate of slaughter in the history of the world?

Don John finished a glass of wine that evening, set it down and then said, ‘I think this great battle of the galleys may be the last in this ancient red sea for a long time. Already, I begin to wonder if it was not a greater battle than even we realised. We have so decimated the Turk that Islam’s age-old dream of conquering Europe is surely finished. I say Christendom will turn its back now on the ancient Levant. We must look out instead across the wide Atlantic. The future is sailing west.’

All pondered and said nothing. But they all felt they had indeed witnessed something terrible, yet something of destiny.

Then Don John smiled to see them all so exhausted and solemn, and said, ‘My dagger wound shows how close I was in the fight, does it not, Sir Eduardo Stanley?’

‘Indeed it does, sire.’

‘Close enough to smell a Turk’s breath, I was. Worse than an onion-eating whore. And a mercy it was not four inches higher, or my amorous exploits would have been severely curtailed.’

‘You will be the hero of all Europe,’ Stanley assured him.

‘A passing worship,’ said Don John drily. ‘And a dangerous position. My brother Philip will be so delighted. And those hailing me today will be demanding my head on a plate tomorrow. That is how it is with men. Hosanna one day, crucify the next. Why this change, men themselves hardly know.’

He stretched back his hands, his fingers. They still ached from where he had gripped his sword hilt, hour after desperate hour. Then he clenched his teeth as the wound in his thigh suddenly made itself known again, but he made not a sound. His courtly code forbade it, and he quickly regained his expression of calm composure, even as his eyes were still watering.

‘A hero for a day, then, and still no crown.’

‘The cowl does not make a monk, nor the crown a king,’ said Smith.

‘I would have made a great king, and proved most royal, would I not? See how I commanded and inspired! A great lord of men, wise and well beloved. I would have chosen a queen of both beauty and virtue — a rare combination in women, I admit — had fine sons, ruled a happy and peaceful kingdom. But my father Charles tupped a German whore and there I was, a squawling base-born brat, and that is all my story. My single life upon this earth. I will never sit on a throne.’

The ironic lilt was gone from his voice.

‘Yet for a day, 7th October, 1571, I ruled over my watery kingdom well, and guided my men wisely. Was I not king for a day?’

‘You were, my lord,’ said Stanley. ‘You were.’

It was said that even before the battered but victorious fleet arrived back at Messina, Pope Pius V knew. He was with his treasurer when he stopped and said, quoting the Gospel, ‘There was a man sent by God, whose name was John.’

‘Father?’

He stood, his face radiant. ‘Come, this is no time for books of accounts. Let us go and give thanks in the Basilica of the Apostles!’

And he named the 7th of October as the Feast of Our Lady of Victories.

The fleet sailed into Messina on 21st October, having battled contrary winds for days. Then the news spread through Italy, across to Sardinia and Spain, over the Alps and through all of Europe as fast as a horse can gallop.

Sicily celebrated until Christmas and beyond.

Don John entered Rome in a triumphal procession such as had not been seen since the days of the Caesars. Captured, gun-shot banners of the Ottomans were displayed on the northern hills of the city.