Mel’s next film? Lepanto 1571 – The Sea Battle that Saved Europe

There have been a number of movies lately about Elizabeth I, but none of them mentions a momentous occurence during her reign – the climatic battle between the Turks and the West for control of the Mediterranean.   The Turkish Navy had been attacking Sicily and seaports all up and down the  Italian coast.   They made commerce for Venice and Genoa very risky.  The Turks were threatening the Austrian empire through the Balkans and they controlled the Southern rim of the Mediterranean.   A large part of Cyprus had just fallen after the Turks gave up on their unsuccessful seige of the knights at Malta.  It was time for the West to rally. 

But England wasn’t interested in following the example of Richard the Lion-Hearted,  the perfidious French didn’t want to get involved,  the Holy Roman Emperor had cut a deal with the Muslims, etc. etc.  So, the Pope, who seemed to be the only person to recognize the dire nature of the situation, put together a fleet courtesy of the Venetians with individual knights and freebooters as fighters with the bastard 24 year old half-brother of the reluctant HR Emperor leading the rag tag group to meet the Turks head-on. This armada was way outmatched by the Turkish fleet which had many Christian slaves as oarsmen.  This article from Crisis magazine is a rip-roaring description of what happened at Lepanto.  Somebody needs to make a movie out of this story;  there’s even a monkey like the one who bedevilled Jack Sparrow -  it hurls grenades back at the Turks!  I’ll bet nobody in Hollywood is interested.    

Famous painting of the battle

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Lepanto, 1571: The Battle That Saved Europe
By H. W. Crocker III

The clash of civilizations is as old as history, and equally as old is the blindness of those who wish such clashes away; but they are the hinges, the turning points of history. In the latter half of the 16th century, Muslim war drums sounded and the mufti of the Ottoman sultan proclaimed jihad, but only the pope fully appreciated the threat. As Brandon Rogers notes in the Ignatius Press edition of G. K. Chesterton’s poem “Lepanto”: Pope Pius V “understood the tremendous importance of resisting the aggressive expansion of the Turks better than any of his contemporaries appear to have. He understood that the real battle being fought was spiritual; a clash of creeds was at hand, and the stakes were the very existence of the Christian West.” But then, as now, the unity of Christendom was shattered; and in the aftermath of the Protestant revolt, Islam saw its opportunity.

The Ottoman Empire, the seat of Islamic power, looked to control the Mediterranean. Corsairs raided from North Africa; the Sultan’s massive fleet anchored the eastern Mediterranean; and Islamic armies ranged along the coasts of Africa, the Middle and Near East, and pressed against the Adriatic; Muslim armies threatened the Habsburg Empire through the Balkans.

The Ottoman Turks yearned to bring all Europe within the dar al-Islam, the “House of Submission”—submissive to the sharia law. Europe, as the land of the infidels, was the dar al-Harb, the “House of War.”

But the House of War was a house divided against itself. The Habsburg Empire was Europe’s bulwark against Islamic jihad, but its timbers were being eaten away by the Protestants who diverted Catholic armies and even cheered on the Mussulmen, whom they saw as fellow enemies of the pope in Rome.

In 1568, the emperor Maximilian, of the Austrian half of the Habsburg Empire, had agreed to a peace treaty with the Turk; and the Danube was reasonably, temporarily, quiet.

In Spain, the other great pillar of the Habsburg Empire was Philip II. And for him, things were not quiet at all. We think of Philip II as dark and brooding, and so he was—to the degree that it is surprising to remember that he was blue-eyed and fair-haired. [snip]

If Christendom was split asunder— . . . the pope nevertheless had the spiritual and temporal authority, the presence of a future saint, to assemble a Holy League, a fighting force that included Catholic knights not only from the papal states and the Knights of Malta, but from Italy, Germany, and Spain; and even from England, Scotland, and Scandinavia, Catholics and freebooters, gentleman adventurers and convicts condemned to row the galleys.

France, la belle France, would be present in the Knights, but not as a party itself. The great period of the fleur de lis had passed away with the end of the Crusader kingdoms. Now the king of France could support no venture in league with the Habsburgs, whose dominions surrounded him. Worse, he was quite willing to cut deals with the Mohammedans in order to turn Muslim corsairs against Genoese and Spaniards and away from Frenchmen (unless they were Knights of Malta, where Frenchmen of the old school continued to thrive). So the French king, from the line of Valois, Charles IX, pleaded exhaustion from having to fight the Huguenots. Even less willing to cooperate with the pope was Protestant England, whose Virgin Queen was establishing a cult around herself and a church subordinate to her will. The sad result of French realpolitik and English apostasy was that the sons of Richard Coeur-de-Lion sat this one out. [snip]

The Venetians, however, had been forced to come to some sober conclusions about Islamic aggression in the eastern Mediterranean. In 1565, the Ottomans had laid siege to the island of Malta, which was defended by the Knights Hospitallers (also known as the Knights of St. John; or, given their new home, the Knights of Malta). For four months the gallant Knights threw back the besieging Turks, inflicting massive losses on the enemy, who finally called it quits after the Knights were reinforced by Spain.

The Ottomans hated the Knights, but reckoned that Venetian-held Cyprus was easier pickings, and five years later it was Cyprus that was besieged. Now Venice, which had ignored previous papal calls to defend the Mediterranean against Mohammedan raiders, was itself in the firing line. As was good business practice, the Venetians were not caught unprepared. Their insurance policy was the Venetian Arsenal, which built and held the merchant republic’s mighty naval forces. The arsenal, however, had caught fire in late 1569; and in February 1570 the Ottoman mufti Ebn Said, on behalf of Sultan Selim II, declared a jihad against the Christians on Cyprus. Selim was known as “the Sot” for his rather un-Islamic drinking habits. He also had the distinction of having blond hair. . .  With his harem, free-flowing alcohol, and access to all the pleasures that the devout expected only to find in paradise, he tramped his palace in depression and rage against the infidel and Western decadence. While no soldier or sailor himself, he lent his full support to every corsair who would attack Western shipping, to every expansion of the Ottoman navy, and to the siege of Cyprus.

The Muslim Onslaught
The Turks came on with 70,000 men, including their shock troops, the praetorian guard of the sultan, the Janissaries—Christian youths taken as taxation from their families, trained up in the art of war, converted to Islam, and given the power of the sword and the possibility of advancement. 

The Catholic defenders of Cyprus were frightfully outnumbered—by about 7 to 1—but then again, the Knights of Malta had faced even stiffer odds. The two key points in Cyprus were Nicosia and Famagusta. The city of Nicosia held out for nearly seven weeks. Finally, reduced to 500 soldiers, it surrendered, expecting the civilians to be spared, even as the Christian troops were enslaved. Instead, the Muslim attackers butchered every Christian they could find—20,000 victims, murdered regardless of rank, sex, or age, save perhaps for 1,000 women and children who would be sold as slaves. The Mussulmen knew something about commerce, too, and those with an eye for harem-flesh tried to spare the most valuable Europeans. 

That left the former Crusader fortress of Famagusta as the only defensible point on the island. Inspired by the Turks’ display of severed Venetian heads from Nicosia, the Christian soldiers put up a stiff defense and were at one point resupplied by gallant Venetian sailors. 

But the man most devoted to the relief of Famagusta was Pope Pius V. It was his incessant diplomacy that finally brought together the forces of the papal states, the Knights of Malta, Venice, its smaller rival Genoa, the Savoyards, and, most important, Spain and its possessions Naples and Sicily to form the Holy League. . . .  He knew, however, that there were national and personal rivalries and hatreds aplenty within his League, and it would take enormous tact to hold the League together and lead it to victory against the Turk and to the relief of Cyprus.   

For the brave defenders of Famagusta, it was too late. In August 1571, after ten months of resistance, the Venetian commander Marco Antonio Bragadino gave in to civilian pressure and opened negotiations with the Turks. Terms were agreed: The garrison would be exiled, the people spared. The troops were disarmed and boarded transports—and then they and their commanders were slaughtered. But for Marco Antonio, the Mohammedans reserved a special torture. He was not killed immediately. Instead, his nose and ears were severed, and, as T. C. F. Hopkins has it in Confrontation at Lepanto:

He was pilloried in Famagusta and dragged around the Ottoman camp in nothing but a loincloth and a donkey’s saddle and made to kiss the ground in front of Lala Mustapha’s tent. The Ottoman soldiers were encouraged to throw garbage and excrement on him, and to mock his misery, and to pull hairs from his
beard . . . . Lala Mustapha himself came out to spit on the Venetian and to empty his chamber pot over the old man’s head . . . .

And even that was not the end of it. Marco Antonio—still, for the moment, alive—was flayed, skinned like a trophy, and then his corpse was stuffed and sent to the sultan, who had the prize stored in a warehouse of other human trophies—a slave prison.

Don Juan Takes to the Sea
But for this outrage, the pope had an answer, and he had found the man to deliver it. Among all the courageous, experienced, jostling commanders in his unruly Holy League, he chose a handsome 24-year-old. The young man, raised on tales of chivalry, was a student of war and an experienced commander, with a track record of victory against the Moriscos. He was also the bastard son of the late, great Charles V, which gave him good bloodlines as bastards go. He was Don Juan of Austria.

Don Juan was also the half-brother of Philip II, who treated him with the cold, brooding calculation one might expect, and an apparent jealousy that one might not. Philip was pleased that Don Juan’s elevation affirmed Spain’s leading role in the Holy League. But he did everything he could to tie Don Juan’s authority to his other Spanish commanders and thus to himself. When the decks were readied for action, however, such constraints had of necessity fallen away, and Don Juan the swashbuckler took full command.

Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half-attainted stall,
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,
The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,
That once went singing southward when all the world was young,
In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.

His first victory was keeping the Venetians, the Genoese, and the Spaniards from killing each other. His second was more important: Against urgings of caution from some of his commanders—most especially the Genoese Admiral Giovanni Andrea Doria—Don Juan of Austria pressed his fleet forward to the attack.

You should recognize the name of "Andrea Doria", there was a famous ship named after him which sunk when I was in grade school.  It was a big deal.  You’ll have to go to the article itself to see what happened at the Battle of Lepanto.  (psst the good guys won)  One of the soldiers who was wounded in the fierce sword fighting was  Miguel de Cervantes, who was captured by the Barbary pirates on his way home to Spain.  While sitting in jail in North Africa, waiting to be ransomed, he passed the time writing a little book called "The Adventures of Don Quixote".

Let’s call Mel.  Sounds like something he could be interested in doing!!!  Lots of blood and brave men, the bad guys with the advatage of numbers and arms, topical religious themes,  and a dashing 24 year old hero who dies young, etc.   Read the whole thing. In addition to being informative, it’s a fun read. It’s made to order for a Gibson masterpiece.  Who’s got Mel’s cell number?   

http://www.crisismagazine.com/printerfriendly/print.php

Who should play the 24 yr old Don Juan of Austria?  Jake Gyllenhaal?   Is Johhny Depp too old?

      

      

This is the Don’s flagship, a galleon.  During the battle many of the captured Christian slaves who rowed the Turks’ galleons turned on their masters. 

And here is the young Don Juan’s  tomb at the Escorial in Spain.  He is wearing 15 rings, one for each girlfriend he left behind when he died.  Or at least that’s what the tourguide says.

What a story; what characters; what a chance to educate our ill-informed compatriots about the West’s history with the Muslim world.   Mel’s gotta make it.

Julia