The Galleys at Lepanto: Jack Beeching

Rating:
Summary: Saving Europe
Review: Cervantes is remembered as the author of "Don Quixote" and the father of the novel. The accomplishment of which he was most proud was his service at the Battle of Lepanto. He felt, as do many historians, that the battle saved Europe from conquest by the Turks. The battle may not have been quite as decisive as all that, but European history would have been quite different had the Spanish lost.

This book gives a readable account of this turning point in history, as well as a rousing account of, not only the battle itself, but the Seige of Malta, which served as a prelude to the battle.

That Lepanto was the high water mark of Spanish naval accomplishment is all the more remarkable in that it preceded by only a few years the debacle of the Invincible Armada.

Rating:
Summary: Saving Europe
Review: Cervantes is remembered as the author of "Don Quixote" and the father of the novel. The accomplishment of which he was most proud was his service at the Battle of Lepanto. He felt, as do many historians, that the battle saved Europe from conquest by the Turks. The battle may not have been quite as decisive as all that, but European history would have been quite different had the Spanish lost.

This book gives a readable account of this turning point in history, as well as a rousing account of, not only the battle itself, but the Seige of Malta, which served as a prelude to the battle.

That Lepanto was the high water mark of Spanish naval accomplishment is all the more remarkable in that it preceded by only a few years the debacle of the Invincible Armada.

Rating:
Summary: superb book
Review: I really enjoyed this book. It provides a background of the Arab Military machine in the 1500's and a portrayal of the world back then. It is also fast paced and exciting (at least to me) and provided a lot of details about politics as well as the ships. I can't imagine why Hollywood doesn't make a major motion picture out of it: it'd be better than 90% of the films they do produce.

Rating:
Summary: The Galleys at Lepanto
Review: Lepanto was one of the most important battles in European history. Jack Beeching tells the story of the Battle of Lepanto through the life story of Don Juan as he is popularly known. Be it putting down a rebellion of Muslims, leading the Holy League at sea against the Ottoman fleet, or fighting for his half-brother the King of Spain, Don Juan's life becomes the focus point for life in the 16th century.

Beeching writes in a clear style that flows immaculately. His insight at various times is astounding. Unfortunately, I do have one complaint, while there is a good bibliography in the back, Beeching left out source attributions for all of his quotes. I know this is not an important point for most readers, but for those interested reading further on the topic it would be quite helpful.

Rating:
Summary: Europe's last knight and last troubadour
Review: On 7 October 1571, a fleet of the Catholic Holy League--primarily ships from Spain, Venice, and the Papal states--destroyed the Turkish Sultan's fleet outside its base at Lepanto on the Western side of the Greek peninsula. In this excellent book, the battle itself covers only a few pages. The bulk of the book describes the people and societies of the Mediterranean in the mid-16th C., and the historical currents in which they moved. Beeching takes up the tale nearly three decades before Lepanto, with the reign of the Holy Roman emperor Charles V and the birth of the Catholic commander, Don John of Austria, the emperor's bastard son and half-brother of King Philip II of Spain. Don John's life reads like a romance, and the events in the 16th C. have some amusing parallels with current events.

Beeching covers the Ottoman politics even more thoroughly than European relations. He doesn't talk much about white founts falling and dim drums throbbing, but otherwise Chesterton's coloring of the actors was if anything not as vivid as real life. And Don John can fairly be called Europe's last knight and last troubadour.

Background
Almost to the end, neither Spain nor Venice wanted to join the other in the Holy League, Venice in particular being tempted by clever hints from Constantinople that some accommodation was possible. Only the persistence of Pope Pius V and the undeniable threat from Turkey persuaded the rivals to cooperate. In the preceding years, the Turks had taken Cyprus from Venice and and Tunis from Spain. Major efforts against the Knoghts of St. John on Malta and against the Holy Roman Empire on the frontier in Hungary had been repulsed. Besides the major Turkish campaigns, the Western Mediterranean was under persistent attack by Turkish-backed corsairs, who raided shipping and coast for treasure and slaves. Having moved its fleet--the largest in the world--to the forward base at Lepanto, the Turks were in a position to achieve their goal of taking possession of Italy (just across the Adriatic from Lepanto and largely divided between Spanish holdings and the Papal states) and dominating the Western Mediterranean as they did the East.

Parallels
The degeneration of Islam into sterility was well advanced by the 16th C. Here Beeching describes how Turkey was dependent upon naval technology developed by the Venetians:

"The Turkish Arsenal of Kasim Pasha, on the Galata shore beyond the Golden Horn, with its 'hundred vaulted arches, each long enough for a galley to be built under cover', was one of the two great manufacturing centres in the known world. The building of war galleys for the Sultan was carried on there principally by renegades who had served their time as shipwrights in Venice or Naples. The methods of construction in daily use at the Arsenal of Kasim Pasha were sedulously copied - just as the Turkish fleet itself had been copied, detail by detail - from Venice. The world's other great industrial centre at that time, where all those methods had been invented and perfected, was the Arsenal at Venice."

England, under the Protestant Elizabeth, of course had no part in the Holy League, although her Catholic half-brother (another of Henry's bastards) commanded three ships. France not only refused to join the coalition of the willing (ahem), but tried to sabotage it, for familiar reasons. When the Pope appealed to him in a personal letter,

"King Charles IX of France sent a cold, brief and negative reply. To offset this, the Knights of Malta - so many of whom were Frenchmen - were in the League heart and soul.
Geographically France of all the Mediterranean powers was the least menaced by Turkish aggression, and had seized the opportunity of trading with some of the markets in the Levant temporarily lost to Venice. The Sultan's principal European enemies-Spain and the [Holy Roman] Empire-were the two of France's neighbours which she thought of as standing in the way of her territorial expansion. The Spanish ambassador in Paris sent a warning to King Philip that 'here in France, everyone is doing his best to prevent the League from taking place. I would not be surprised if next year they do not offer Toulon to the Turks.'"

As the Duke of Alva told King Phillip of Spain, the French "would be happy to lose one eye, if we lost two." Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

After the battle, "The response of the nominally Catholic King of France to the great victory was secretly to offer [Turkish Grand Vizier] Sokolli a firm alliance against Spain...

"In besieged Leyden, Dutch Calvinists there who followed the Prince of Orange wore little brass crescents in their caps. But though excommunicated by the old Pope as a heretic and treated by him as a usurper, Elizabeth of England showed greater political penetration. For her, Lepanto was not so much a victory for Spain or the Pope as a triumph for all Christendom - a guarantee that the values upon which Western Europe had been established would survive. To show exactly what she thought, the Church of England which she had established by law was ordered to hold services of thanksgiving."

The French and Dutch also sold supplies to the Sultan for rebuilding his fleet. Venice signed a disadvantageous treaty with Constantinople and agreed to pay tribute in return for being allowed to resume its Eastern trade. In fact, the tribute was far less than the cost of maintaining its fleet on a war footing. Turkey, too, was short of cash. The ships of its rebuilt fleet were too gimcrack to face the Western galleys. And Spain could not afford to send its fleet to sea; it was literally bankrupt.