William Napier: Blood Red Sea

Don Álvaro de Bazán, Marqués de Santa Cruz, died in February 1588. His death was fortuitous for the English, for this brilliant commander had been leading the Spanish Armada. He was replaced by the markedly less capable Duke of Medina Sidonia. Had Santa Cruz remained in command, English history might have been very different.

Miguel de Cervantes continued for a time to seek chivalrous adventure. He was captured by Muslim corsairs in 1575 and spent five years as a slave in Algiers. Later he spent too much money on a fine suit of armour, went bankrupt and was imprisoned. But by the time of his death in 1616, he had written his immortal Don Quixote — the most hilarious yet poignant mockery of chivalric ideals ever written.

Sultan Selim II, ‘the Sot’, died in 1574. It is said that he was drunk at the time, and slipped over in his bathhouse.

He was succeeded by the peace-loving Murat III, who agonized for eighteen hours before giving the traditional Ottoman order for all his brothers to be strangled by deaf mutes with silken ropes. He spent most of his reign in quiet seclusion in the provincial town of Manisa, where he particularly loved the teachings of a gentle Sufi mystic, who soothingly interpreted the Sultan’s nightmares and dreams.

Mehmet Sokollu, Grand Vizier, died in 1579. Many said that his death was arranged by his old enemy, Lala Mustafa Pasha, the butcher of Famagusta.

Joseph Nassi also died in 1579, and all his great wealth was seized by the Sublime Porte for its own use, a seizure also masterminded by Lala Mustafa.

In 1580, Lala Mustafa himself became Grand Vizier, but died after only four months in office.

As recently as 1965, Pope Paul VI returned the captured Ottoman banners of Lepanto to Turkey. In the naval museum in Istanbul can still be seen the standard of Ali Pasha Muezzinzade. Not all banners have been returned. More still hang in the church of Santo Stefano in Pisa.

Of the two Knights of St John, known as Stanley and Smith. nothing was ever certain. But in the harbourside taverns of the Mediterranean, from Cadiz to Aleppo, from Marseilles to Algiers, rumours abounded. Even in the warlike valleys of the Caucasus, it was said, and upon the frozen plains of Muscovy where the Tatar horsemen still threatened, in the burning Syrian desert, upon the emerald coast of Coromandel, and far away into the snow-capped mountains of Central Asia, their names and reputations were not unknown. .