In Our Time - The Battle of Lepanto

Episode Date: November 12, 2015

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The Battle of Lepanto, 1571, the last great sea battle between galleys, in which the Catholic fleet of the Holy League of principally Venice, Spain, the Papal States, Malta, Genoa, and Savoy defeated the Ottoman forces of Selim II. When much of Europe was divided over the Reformation, this was the first major victory of a Christian force over a Turkish fleet. The battle followed the Ottoman invasion of Venetian Cyprus and decades in which the Venetians had been trying to stop the broader westward expansion of the Ottomans into the Mediterranean. The outcome had a great impact on morale in Europe and Pope Pius V established a feast day of Our Lady of Victory. Some historians call it the most significant sea battle since Actium (31 BC). However, the Ottomans viewed the loss as less significant than their victory in Cyprus and, within two years, the Holy League had broken up.WithDiarmaid MacCulloch Professor of the History of the Church at the University of OxfordKate Fleet Director of the Skilliter Centre for Ottoman Studies and Fellow of Newnham College, University of CambridgeAndNoel Malcolm A Senior Research Fellow in History at All Soul's College, University of Oxford Producer: Simon Tillotson.

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Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time. For more details about in our time, and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com. UK slash Radio 4. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, in 1571, the fleets of the Holy League and the Ottomans went in about that Lepanto in the Gulf of Patras on the western side. of Greece. It was one of the largest naval battles in history and the greatest sea battle in the Mediterranean since ancient times, and the last mighty clash between galley ships which had fought

in those seas for about 2,000 years. It was a decisive victory for the Holy League of Venice, Spain and the Papal States, Genoa and Malta, which captured or sunk most of the Ottoman fleet. There were triumphal processions in Rome and celebrations throughout Europe, and Ottoman described it as the worst disaster at sea since Noah's flood. While the Pope claimed divine aid for the victory, the Ottomans blame the incompetence of their Admiral who they said should never have attacked. The battle's significance, though, is debated to this day.

The Ottomans went on to rebuild their fleet in a year. The Venetians lost their treasured at possession of Cyprus, and less than two years after the battle, the Holy League, collapsed. With me to discuss the Battle of Lepanto are Dermann McCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford, Kate Fleet, director of the

Schilleter Centre for Ottoman Studies and Fellow of Newham College, Cambridge, and Noel Malcolm, a senior research fellow in history, but also as College University of Oxford. Devin McCleck, how divided was Europe over religion at this time, around 1571? Well, it's very divided because the Reformation

had happened. There was no longer something you could call Christendom, which was a big idea, embracing an entire unity. No, the Reformation had not just split Catholicism and Protestantism in the West, it had created at least two Protestantisms. There was Lutheranism

on the one hand, and the rest who weren't Lutheran. So you've got reformed Protestantism, Lutheranism, and Roman Catholicism. So it's a very divided Christian Europe which faced the Ottomans at this time. The fact that, as you say, let's say it wasn't Christendom, did that make it difficult to engage in foreign policies which were partly depending on religious differences? Very difficult indeed, because you've got the principle of my enemy's enemy is my friend at work,

And so you get the Protestant England, Queen Elizabeth I, thinking, well, the sultan in Constantinople is the enemy of the Pope. So we might do a deal. And so from the middle of her reign, she's sending ambassadors to Constantinople. And there is a certain sense in this is someone I can do business with. So it isn't just simply a clash between two Titanic forces, both in its own area, monolithic. No, we've got to be very clear about. that there is not the sense everywhere in Europe of a great

ideological struggle but that's always contending with the fact that this divided set of Christians can think of themselves as Christendom on occasions and they are really threatened from the 14th and 15th century with the thought that Christian Europe might be overwhelmed

by this terrifying new force and the Ottoman Empire had been spreading westwards and westwards had been conquering it had a destroyed the Byzantine Empire. So a sense of crisis, the fact that Christ might come again in the last days because the world is falling apart. That's a sort of contending element with the fact that the Reformation had split Europe. So who wanted to put the Holy League together?

Everyone in Southern Europe who's on the front line. And they're all Catholic powers, actually. So he's talking about? Well, the Pope to start with. But also Venice, which was the imperial power on the front. here par excellence. You don't get this extremely exposed colonial possession, Cyprus, under deep threat. But the Spanish, the Habsburg Emperor, that's the Holy Roman Emperor, who is Habsburg and the Habsburgs in Spain. So you've got all these various powers on the southern Mediterranean who are really fighting for their existence.

But not France? France, difficult one. France was in crisis at the time, precisely because of the Reformation. It was deeply split between a Catholic monarchy and ultra-Catholics who wanted an even more Catholic monarchy and Protestants. Is it possible to say simply, if it isn't, we'll skip it? Is it possible to say simply that somebody, some persons put this league together and made it work, sealed it as a unit? Oh, it is. It's the Pope, backed by the other leaders of Catholic Southern Europe.

They know that something has to be done. What led him on? Why was he so urgent to do it? Well, here was a real threat to Christendom. People did think in those terms in crisis, and who better than the Holy Father in Rome to gather together a set of people to oppose this vast threat from the East.

And he still had the plough to get them all to come together? The Pope would want to have the clout, and on occasions it would be the case that he did. And in this occasion he did? Yeah, kings might not listen to the Pope if it didn't suit them. Emperors might not listen to the Pope, but when it did, then the Pope was the man, the man you could look to. Kate Fleed, this was, we've taught of as a golden age for the Ottomans.

Who were they, first of all? And how did they get to be so powerful by 1571? Right, the beginnings of the Ottomans are actually particularly interesting. They started in what is now northwest modern Turkey. A very small state, very small Turkish states, surrounded by other small Turkish states. Nothing at this point to indicate that the Ottomans were going to be the ones that would rise and become such a great power in the 16th century. But they spread quickly. So they spread across, going eastwards across what is modern Turkey.

They spread as a sort of warrior force, where they're sort of meaning Genghis Khan's, that sort of thing. Well, that's another interesting question. Quite why the Ottomans come out rather than some of the other states is quite difficult to explain. There is the theory that puts religion in there regards them as being very much religious, holy, warriors fighting a holy war. So you have a group of scholars who very much use that as an underlying motivation for that great advance and quick advance. Others say not in this early period that the religion wasn't such a big factor. I think there's another problem with it, even if you put religion in as a motivating factor for the extraordinarily quick Ottoman rise, the same thing

applies to the other Turkish states. So you have various difficulties with trying to understand how the Ottomans rose. One, I think, is related to a simple fact that they had leaders who lasted a long time, whereas a lot of the others didn't. So that gave them a stability. They then pushed up against the Byzantine Frontier quickly. So they had a clear enemy, if you might say. They were successful. Because they were successful, they drew in more support because they got a lot of booty.

So that, of course, success led to more success. And they were already in Europe. By successful, can you just be more detail about that? Because of their expansion, they were over into Europe by the middle of. of the 14th century. So they had already conquered European territory. And then, of course, they were into modern Bulgaria and across the Balkans.

So they expanded quickly, which brought in a lot of wealth. And there was a fall of Byzantium there? Then, but just before that, the Ottomans had done very well, very quick, perhaps too quick, because they then collapsed at the beginning of the next century. They were at their major defeat at the beginning. And again, though, they regrouped very quickly, partly helped by a lack of united opposition.

So they then burst forth again, and that's when they take Constantinople. So 1453, and that, of course, was a major, regarded as a major catastrophe in the West. This was the destruction of one of the eyes of the church, and a huge catastrophe. From an Ottoman point of view, perhaps not so important, because Byzantium really had been much reduced. It's only the city. But from that point on, they expanded. And we find them pushing west in the Mediterranean. What were their interests there?

Was it land grab? or more? I mean, I think obviously land grab comes into it, but they have strategic interests, they have commercial interests. And one of the factors behind Ottoman advance was to take over areas of economic interest. And in fact, what lay behind and part behind the conquest of Constantinople itself was commercial, this huge, or potentially huge commercial hub, somewhat reduced by this stage, but also location-wise. So they had commercial interests taking them out across the Mediterranean. They also, of course, had strategic interest in that they needed to protect, as they advanced,

they needed to protect their own conquests. So if you think as the empire grew, you've got a lot of Mediterranean coastline under Ottoman control. So they needed to protect that and to protect commercial shipping. Were they regarded, or were they, in fact, very fearsome warriors, sailors, soldiers, and they seemed to have swept across, but not effortlessly, of course, they had defeats and setbacks, but they came back again. Yes, they were very efficient militarily, I think, and they struck terror into the hearts further to the west.

And, of course, the centre part of their army was the Janistry force, the infantry troops. And they were very, very well-trained and very efficient as a military force. Noel Malcolm, what's been the most significant, what had been the most significant, conflict between the Ottomans, and let's call it Christendom in the years leading to LePanda. Well, if we're talking about Mediterranean conflicts,

there'd been quite a lot of military activity in the last 50 years, but most of it was to do with dealing with the problem of corsairs. Corsairs being quasi-pirates, but acting under some political authorization, raiding shipping, raiding coastal territory for booty and for people to take as slaves. Now, when we use the word Corsairs, people think of the famous. as Barbary Corsairs, the ones of the North African ports, Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli. And certainly this was a major headache, particularly for the Spanish rulers, because since they also ruled the southern half of Italy, they really needed clear lines of shipping between

those two territories in the Western Mediterranean. So there had been major attacks on Tunis, successful, Algiers, unsuccessful, an attempt to take a large island off the coast of Tunisia and used it as a base, completely unsuccessful. Those were big operations. But of course, corsairs were not only on the Ottoman side. I mean, these North African corsairs were sort of became protected by the Ottomans and accepted their sovereignty. The biggest corsairs in some ways were the Knights of Malta.

And these were the ones who were sponsored by their own temporal sovereign, the king of Spain and by the Pope under whom they served as a religious order. They were corsairing away with tremendous effect in the eastern Mediterranean, causing huge harm to Ottoman shipping and also to pilgrimships going to Egypt to take people to start the Hajj, to Mecca. So the Ottomans had strong motives for stopping that kind of corsairing. So first of all, before they got to Malta, the knights had been on roads. There was a very successful big Ottoman campaign to crush them there in 1522.

After that, they moved to Malta. And then in 1565, there was a major amphibious assault by the Ottomans on the island of Malta. And this led to the famous siege, which lasted for four months, all through the summer of that year. The knights held out against overwhelming odds, but they had a good defensive position. And the Ottomans were whittled down not only by combat, but also by disease. So eventually they went back to Istanbul with their tail between their legs. That was the biggest single operation in the Mediterranean in the years before Lepanto. And it was a very significant and telling one, wasn't it?

I mean, it did intimate that the Ottomans could be defeated. They could be defeated. Yes, I mean, there had been other defeats and certainly major failures. There had been important ones on land in this century. They besieged Vienna in 1529 and were driven back. But certainly this was an important. important moment for the Western powers. They saw that the Ottomans were not invincible when they launched a major assault on a specific target, such as Malta.

But does it happen in the past and what happened in the future? They regrouped quite quickly and back they come, and in 1570, on the sweeping up the coast, the air, sweeping around the Mediterranean. What are they doing? Are they doing any specific or just looking for trouble? Well, the key point here is that in 1570, they have invaded Cyprus. It's sent an ultimate And I think it's significant that one of the points in that ultimatum was they complained that it had been used as a base for Western corsairs. Of course, Venice, which owned Cyprus, didn't encourage the Knights of Morton, didn't encourage corsairs, but nevertheless it was true that sometimes they did use Cyprus. So it was part of the explanation, and in that sense, the attack on Cyprus fits that pattern. And it's because they're besieging the key strongholds in Cyprus.

First of all, Nicosia, the fortified capital, which falls quite quickly, and then Famagusta, the main port, which holds out much longer. It's because this is still up in the air, are they going to succeed in taking Cyprus or not, that they realise they have to send out a large fleet because they're afraid of a relief force being sent by the Western powers. So in 1570, the relief force gets nowhere and fizzles out, but it all is due to start again in 1571. And for that reason, the Ottomans send out a larger fleet, and they go slightly onto the offensive. they're not necessarily looking for a direct naval conflict with the Western fleet, but it's certainly a massive diversionary operation. So they go on the offensive, they attack Crete,

which is another Venetian possession, and then they move northwestwards up to the Ionian Islands, off the West Coast of Greece, which belong to Venice, and it's psychological warfare. They're causing havoc. It's also pinning down Venetian forces, who might otherwise be sent to the relief of Cyprus. So it has multiple purposes.

So we're getting ready for this great, battle, Devin McCleock, really. Cyprus is the flashpoint. Now, Venice comes in very strongly here, well it's always very strongly here, and also rather pool because they have in certain ways good relations with the Ottoman Empire, trade relations, as you would like.

Can you just tell us a bit more about the complexity of Venice and the Ottomans before we come to the battle itself? The Ottomans are moving around, moving up towards what will be a battle and they've got a big fleet there carrying a lot of soldiers. Where's Venice? Well, Venice, of course,

is literally all over the place. There it is at the top of the Adriatic, but its possessions scattered through the eastern Mediterranean. Cyprus incredibly exposed. We have to remember that Crete is also a Venetian possession at this time. So the Venetians have got

more investment in the Eastern Mediterranean than anyone else. And their relationship with that set of possessions is quite delicate because it's not just a question of antagonism with the Ottomans, but it is also with Eastern Christians, the Orthodox Church.

Venice is a Catholic power. In other words, it's Western Latin Christianity. But in Cyprus and in Crete, they're ruling Orthodox Christians, Greek Orthodox Christians, who actually hate, for very good reasons, hate Latin Christianity. So when the Ottomans took over Cyprus, the Orthodox were not that displeased. I mean, it's fascinating if you go to Cyprus now, go to Famogusta, which we've just talked about, and Niquisia, the two places which were besieged. There are two

whacking great French Gothic cathedrals, one in ruins. And the Orthodox had regarded those as symbols of Western Christian tyranny. And they were not taken over by the Orthodox, one became a mosque, and the others just left in ruins. So there is a sense in which, again,

Christendom doesn't exist in this equation. Venetians can be seen as Christian Western oppressor. by other Christians just as much as the enemy of the Ottomans. Kate Fleet, the Ottoman flees

who were at large in the Adriatic, I'm trying to go to No Mutant at the moment, and the Adriatic and the Aonian seas. That's controlled from Istanbul.

But let's talk about how cosmopolitan the Ottoman fleet, the Ottoman forces were compared with the Holy League. Yes, they were. And I think this also is very much a reflection

of the nature of the Ottoman state itself, which was very cosmopolitan. So the Grand Vizier, so the person who was the head of the government under the Sultan, Sokol and Mehmet Pasha, had been the Grand Admiral beforehand, and he was himself from Bosnia.

He had been rounded up in the Dev Shireme, which was the Ottoman collection of Christian boys from the Balkans, gathered boys and young men, took them to Istanbul, obviously enslaved, and there they were converted. They learned Turkish. If they were promising, they developed through the palace service, and they could rise to the top echelons of government. They could, in fact, as with the case, Sokul of Mehmet Pasha, become Grand Vizier.

So he was from Bosnia. The current, the commander, Grand Admiral, at the Battle of Lepanto, was actually, had been the governor of Egypt. He was married to one of the daughters of the Sultan al-Slim the second. This is Nwazin Zadiy Ali Pasha. The one of the commander underneath him, a second commander, Perthev Pasha, had originally come from Albania, and the other major commander at the Battle of Lepanto, Ulujali Pasha, was from Calabria,

and he had been captured in 1520 on his way to Naples. He then ended up in the Corsair force, rose to become a captain in the Imperial Navy, and after the Battle of Lepanto, Ulluchali Pasha becomes Grand Admiral. What did this cosmopolitanism give? What advantage did he have? I think that to understand the Ottoman state in general, it's actually a very important point because if you think who is actually running that state, and you have a very large force of people who were originally from states to the West. So they had a very good first-hand knowledge

of the enemy that the Ottoman Empire was dealing with. This was also acknowledged by states to the West who liked dealing with these officials, people in Dubrovnik, for example, in the middle of the 16th century, like the Grand Vizier, because we can talk to him in our own language. So the Ottoman government actually had a whole pool of real experts on the areas with which they had diplomatic relations. This is a contrast, I think, if you look to the West, with the states in the West didn't have that kind of internal knowledge about the Ottomans to the East. And the Ottomans paid well for the services. But I'm still quite keen to know.

Was there always an Ottoman core somewhere in the cells of Istanbul, in the Dhaka? Was there the core of we Ottomans really pull the strings? We originals. We Ottomans are these people, because that again comes down to what is your question? It's like an Ottoman citizens. Yes, an Ottoman is not necessarily Muslim and is not necessarily Turkish. So it's like the Romans went over and they made people, citizens who then could be... So you become an Ottoman.

Absolutely. And also if I could just pick up one point about the fleet, that also had a lot of Venetians working in it. So the Ottoman fleet at Le Panto also had a large Venetian force. And now, Malcolm, we're going to talk about Galley warfare, which I must say I'm really looking forward to. What was it like? Well, first of all, you have to picture a galley, which is a long, thin ship, more than 40 metres or yards long and five to six wide. It's a very versatile ship because it has sails and oars. Two big sails, which it uses for long distance travel,

but they're not obviously used in a battle. But it has a lot of oars. Typically about 24, 25 benches of oars on each side, and each big ore typically is held by three rowers, sometimes four or even five. So these ships can go fast when they need to. They can go up to 12 knots to pursue or to evade, pursuit. They're also extremely maneuverable. Now, their armament is fairly limited in terms of

artillery. They have one big, powerful cannon at the right at the front, a handful of medium-calibre cannons, and then a small number of things that are essentially anti-personnel guns. But you've got to put out of your mind all the ideas you have of naval warfare that come from classic histories of naval warfare, Trafalgar, Jutland and so on, because we think in terms of naval battles as trying to sink the enemy's ship with artillery broadsides. And that wasn't what Galley Warfare was about, not least because these ships were extremely expensive. Ideally, you would end the battle by towing back your enemy's ships as prizes. You used your artillery primarily to, if you could disable an enemy ship by smashing its oars, its rudder, but above all, they were anti-personnel

devices. They were for mowing down men on deck. Because The surprising thing about galley warfare in this period is that the galleys are really floating platforms for soldiers. And although they're extremely crowded on deck with all these rowers, they still put on typically 100 infantrymen per galley. On the bigger gallows that were used as flagships, you could have 200 or even 300. Many of these were armed with handguns, the big proto-rifles that were called aquibuses. But they also used crossbows, which were powerful and effective. So you approach the enemy ship.

You try to mow down as many people as possible on board. You give repeated withering volleys of shot and crossbow bolts and so on. And then there's a moment when you have to throw the gang plant across, usually at the front of the ship, and you charge. And then it's an infantry battle. And you have a beak at the front, don't you? A ramming device. Yes, there's a beak at the front which rams the other ship,

and it's essentially not in order to sink the enemy ship, it's in order to make the connection, and then you can throw planks down and run across. There's a wonderful description of this, of how terrifying it is, to be running across when all the people on the other ship can get you in their sights, by Cervantes in Don Quixote,

and he certainly knew what he was talking about because he actually served as a Spanish soldier in this battle. And lost his left hand? Yes. Thank goodness it wasn't his right hand. Absolutely. It's not directly why he became, decided to become a novelist

because in fact he continued with his military career for a while thereafter and that's why he was captured at sea a few years later and spent time as a slave in Algiers but that's another story. So we have this melee they're ramming each... What you get is a feeling of because

you're talking about two or three hundred ships on one side and maybe over 300 on the other, the galleys plus the support ships. So it's an enormous froth and melee and how does anyone know what's going on? That's a very good question. I mean, the overall commanders will have had their Council of War beforehand and set out the general strategy. But beyond a certain point,

much depends on the initiative and good sense of the sort of local commanders. The commanders are particular blocks of the forces. And the normal way to arrange these battles is in long lines. You stretch out your fleet into a long line that's only one galley deep. So you can't just suddenly send off somebody, as you might in a land battle, send off a man on a horse to talk to the people at the far end. That's simply not physically possible. So you're very dependent on the people at the far end, which might be two miles away, having their own initiative. Dervyn McConaugh, who were the leaders on the Holy League side of the Penteau? What sort of calibre of person were they? Who were they? What was their forces and so on? Well, leading the whole operation for the Holy League was the illegitimate son of the Holy Roman Emperor. His name is Donne. John of Austria, Don Juan. Not that Don Juan,

but just a Don Juan. And there is a very capable commander who'd proved himself already in North Africa. Young man? Youngish. Youngish. And so some of the Habsburgs really trusted a great deal.

And so he was there? Were there others? I mean, did he have people around him? Oh, well, lots of others. There's a papal commander, Mark Antonio Colonna, who's from an old papal family. So it genuinely is a very varied set of leaders from this Holy League. I've rushed through the figures involved in Ships, Gulles, can you give us some clearer idea?

Because we seem to have good records of it. How many were involved on each side? Well, I think there we've got Noel as the expert here. He's got the command of figures more than me, I think. Well, we have pretty good details on the Holy League side. we know that they had 208 galleys and that a handful of those were held back from the actual battle so probably 204 galleys in the battle

plus six galleases which were extra large galleys that had been modified and built up into sort of artillery platforms and a small number of smaller ships. The difficulty is getting exact figures for the Ottoman side because we don't have such clear archival records of that but the best recent estimate is that they had around 180 gallows. So there's a significant shortfall there. But on the other hand, they had a much larger number of the smaller vessels. There are things called galliots that are like a

galley but sort of one stage lower down the scale with typically 20 rowers instead of 25. There are things called foists which might have 15. Now even on a small foist, you could still put 40 soldiers there and they could move around and back up other galleys that were in trouble. So in terms of the overall naval strength, they were actually quite evenly matched. So they heave up against each other, fleet, how do they heave up against each other? When they, how do they decide that they're going to have a battle? Let's talk about the

Ottoman side first, because they couldn't make up their minds or whether or not to have a battle. Because winter was approaching, might have been better not to fight, Anson, you tell me. Yes, and there was quite a dispute among the Ottoman commanders. As you say, in the first place, should there be a battle, which actually probably was not

a very intelligent decision. I mean, they could have stayed put. They didn't actually need to engage the enemy at that point. So, of the commanders... Where was put? they were just because the battle is just off lepanto so they could have stayed in the Gulf rather than coming sailing outwards so

the chances are had they stayed put I think Noel would agree that they could actually have been much safer doing so that perhaps the Christian forces wouldn't have advanced against them it would have been too dangerous a location so it took a decision on the Ottoman part to actually engage in the battle and off the commanders

Uluchalipasha said no he was opposed to any engagement he argued that the fleet had been out at sea for far too long and therefore the ships weren't battle ready that it was a dangerous manoeuvre. Perthav Pasha, the other commander, also was concerned, was opposed to engaging the enemy forces

and he argued the galleys had insufficient numbers. The person who was very keen on having the battle was the Grand Admiral Mwerin Zardiali Pasha who... The one who married the Sultan's daughter. The one who's married to the Sultan's daughter. He seems to have misunderstood the situation. He felt that the enemy was not, he was positively contemptible, wasn't going to be a problem.

He regarded the shortage of men on the ships as not a problem either. He said that five to ten men missing Pergali didn't matter one way or the other. And he also had a slight problem with the Sultan's order, because an earlier order had arrived from Istanbul saying that they should engage the enemy. The problem with the Sultan's orders is the time lag, obviously what comes from Istanbul takes time to get to the commanders. Commanders reporting takes time to get back to Istanbul. So the order wasn't actually based on the really relevant up-to-date information.

However, Muzan Zadiyalipasha felt that that order should be followed and therefore swept into battle. The second dispute was tactics. Okay, if we're going to have this battle, how do we fight it? Yet again, Uluch Ali Pasha was concerned that they shouldn't be too close to land because if too close to land means your troops can run away onto the shore. Can you tell us, Damien, how different that was from the Holy League, that organization, that decision about the battle? They set out to, they knew they had intelligence the Ottoman fleet was there, going up the coast, raiding, enslaving, destroying infrastructure, as Nell said earlier on, and they set out to confront them.

And how were they organized? You do have at least one clear commander to whom everyone could look, and he's a Habsburg. So there is a sense in which one person can make a decision, but it's still very untidy. These are powers which don't normally cooperate with each other. Venice, the papacy, Spain. They don't actually trust each other very much. So there's a real problem in coordination here. At least on the Ottoman side, you've got a single ruler who, you know.

ultimately, everyone has to look, but there's something very different about a cobbled-together alliance here. But did they, no, Markham, did they manage to put together a coherent battle plan when they got into battle? Let's go into battle now, so they're going to battle. Do they have a coherent battle plan, the Holy League? Well, the basic plan is to engage with the other ships and kill them in on board.

And that's the plan that you're going to have for whatever. I mean, you could tell me much more than that. that. Well, they were expecting the Ottomans to advance and they were expecting the Ottomans to use a tactic that they had used previously, which was a sort of crescent formation, the symbolism is entirely coincidental, where the wings would creep round and attempt an encirclement.

But that's a pretty basic tactic that you might find in almost any conditions on land and sea. They probably did choose, we don't have very clear accounts of the reasoning that went into their final arrangement of their ships, but they probably did choose to keep the northern end of these great long lines close to land, close to the islands at the northern side of the Gulf, because they realised that Ottoman troops might desert,

and Ottoman ships might just beach themselves in order to get away from the battle. So that was one point in their favour. So how did the battle go briefly? It wasn't really three out. How did it go? So the two lines, these huge lines, north-south, one galley deep, four miles long, approach each other. It's nearly midday. It's taken hours for them to get into position.

I say one galley deep. There's one exception to that, which is behind the central section, you have a reserve. And the reserve on the Holy League side is bigger. It's around 30 ships, and that's important. The Ottomans only have a very minimal reserve behind ours. And then the Ottomans attack. Now, the one significant difference between the fleets is that the Holy League has galleases,

these extra large ships that have been built up and converted into floating fortresses for artillery, and they wreak havoc on the Ottoman advance. The Ottomans weren't really expecting. They didn't quite know what these ships were until it was too late to do anything about it. But still a ragged Ottoman line gets through and engages with the other side.

And from that moment, there is intensive fighting pretty much at every part of the... this four mile long line of ships. It's extremely intensive in the centre because there you have the flagships and the prestige ships, the aristocratic volunteers who've come from all over Italy on the Holy League side, the elite Janissary's the best trained troops on the Ottoman side.

So it's extremely intensive there. At the northern end, where it's close to land, that wing of the Holy League fleet is mainly Venetian and it's under a very good Venetian commander Barbarigo, who is actually outmanned. He doesn't have enough soldiers on his ships, and he's against quite an experienced commander on the Ottoman side, who's brought the fleet from Alexandria and Egypt,

and they almost get through those coastal shallows, but by tremendous efforts the Venetian stopped them, and one of the galleases eventually goes lumbering up and trains its artillery on the Ottoman ships there. So that is a crucial moment when the Ottomans fail to get through at the northern end, and then they start beaching ships and running away. What was riding on this, Dermand? What was riding on the outcome of this?

I think what was riding was the thought that the Ottomans would just keep that inexorable drive westwards as they had done with these various fits and starts for the previous 150 years. And so there is, I think, a real sense of relief in Europe and not just Catholic Europe. Catholic's made a great deal of this, but Protestants had a sort of uneasy relationship to it.

Was this a Christian victory or a Catholic victory? And so the resonances of the victory did actually spread right across Europe. The most fascinating example, I think, is an epic poem written by the King of Scotland, no less. King James the 6th, excitable young man. Who was to become? Who was to become James I of England? But he's James the 6th of Scotland at the stage. a young man in his 20s and he wrote

his epic poem on Lepanto and very proud of this victory but was it a Christian victory? Because he was a reformed Protestant and so he actually published this poem in Edinburgh in the 1590s and had to write a sort of

apologetic preface saying why he was praising Don John of Austria who he called a foreign papist bastard and in the poem itself you've got a sort of health warning at the end about God's reaction to this Christian victory which says,

God doth love his name so well that so he did the maid that served not right his name. These Catholics were not really proper Christians, at least God condescended to give them the victory. Kate Fried, why,

do you think we know enough about why the Ottomans lose or is there something else to say? They seem to have been underprepared. They seem to have been outmaneuven by this great Galliasses. Is there anything more to say? Well, from an Ottoman point of view, the Ottoman sources all through the blame pretty much on the Grand Admiral

on Mwazin Zadiyalipasha who was blamed because he was regarded as not having enough experience, not enough naval experience and he therefore adopted a rather too gun-ho approach about sailing out and attacking. So a lot of Ottoman sources

simply blame more than Zadiali Persia. Certainly the Ottomans weren't expecting, as you say, they're not expecting a major battle at this point. It's towards the end of the season and they weren't planning to get involved

in some kind of battle like this. A lot of troops had already been sent home. So that certainly came into the reasons for the Ottoman defeat. They weren't prepared for this. They also, of course, the factors had been pointed out by Perthep Pasha and Uluchali Pasha, the two commanders

that they didn't have enough men on the galleys. and the ships were, had been out at sea for too long. But the major factor, I think one of the major factors is the Galeas, is the Venetian firepower, which, as Nol says, they weren't prepared for, or they didn't know how to deal with, and was incredibly destructive. No, Malcolm, two questions. What was the immediate impact of their defeat on the Ottomans? And then what happened a year later?

Well, the news of the defeat gets to Istanbul just over two weeks. later and it causes panic. Public opinion is devastated and dismayed. People start packing their belongings thinking they should flee to Asia Minor, assuming some great Christian war fleet is about to arrive. Now that's absurd. There was no possibility of sending a fleet immediately to attack the Holy League fleet was itself completely exhausted. But the mood among the ordinary population remains very tense until beginning of December, when Uluch Ali, who's the one commander who's escaped with a small body of ships, he's taken about 40 ships away from the battle at the end, he's rounded up some more ships in the Greek archipelago, and he makes a reassuring grand entrance into Istanbul

with more than 80. So at that moment the panic stops. But I read in your notes, if I may interrupt it, that the Holy Rehocatio captured about 170 gales. About 117, yes. 17, sorry, 117 galleers and 12, they took 12,000 prisoners and they released about 20,000 of Christian slaves from the ores? Yes, I mean, they released 12,000 Christians, many of whom had been captured in those recent raiding expeditions. They claimed to have only 3,500 Ottoman prisoners, but one suspects that a lot of people were bundled below decks. You know, prisoners, if they were able-bodied, there was a good price.

on an individual. You could get 60, 70 ducats per person. That was a lot. That was three times of somebody's annual wage. So I think they captured more people than they were letting on. So it was devastating with the Ottomans. They'd lost a lot of people killed.

They'd probably lost 20,000 people killed, whereas on the Christian side, only about 8,000 to begin with, a few more died of their wounds. But also, they'd lost a lot of skilled manpower. They'd lost sailors, they'd lost military people, they'd lost their expert bowmen and so on. This was something that was not easily replaced.

But a year later, they'd rebuilt, or they'd built, 180 new gallows, and they were ready to come back or were they? What happened, Kateville? Yes, they were. And I think that related to the great power of the empire, they were, in fact, able to rebuild a fleet pretty quickly afterwards. And there, of course, is the famous saying that the Grand Vizier, the head of the government said to Ulachali Pasha,

if the sultan wants the sale to be made of silk and the anchors to be made of silver, that is not a problem for the empire. So the empire was so rich and so powerful, they could easily put together a new fleet, which they did. And then they sailed out again. I mean, careful not to engage in major battles, but they certainly were back up running very quickly afterwards,

and of course they took Cyprus. They took Cyprus. So what would have heard? happened, did it at that stage, David, we're coming to the end now, unfortunately. It didn't look as if the Ottomans were coming back for a second bite and they could win. Well, yes, to lose Cyprus is a grievous blow. And it had been part of the Western Latin portfolio since the early Crusades. And there's always that feeling that the Ottomans might go on, as of course they did.

A hundred years later, the Ottomans were at the gates of Vienna. again. So this was not a spent force. Briefly, each of you, I'm sorry, my fault, miscalculated the timing. Was it very significant? Was it a stopper this, Noel? Well, I think it was very significant if you think of what would have happened if it had gone the other way. If the Ottomans had won the Battle of Lepanto and had inflicted equal damage on the Holy League fleet, then I think the Ottomans would have been in a powerful position. Their next target, I think, would have been Corfu, which mattered not just as a linchpin for Venice's maritime empire, but also as a stepping stone for conquering southern Italy. And that would have been a huge, huge new

development. What about your, Dermann? A huge psychological effect. Catholic spin doctors, the Pope included, presented this as the victory. And they even created a new devotion, Our Lady of Victory. And she'd been pleased by the use of the rosary. So there's a very Catholic interpretation. And finally? I would say, no. I think that the battle of Lepantel was not so significant and had the Ottomans won, I don't think, I don't agree with Noel. I think that they wouldn't have gone on.

What was significant was not taking Walter. Thank you very much to Derman McCulloch, Kate Fleet and Noel Malcolm. Next week I'll be talking about Jane Austen's Emma. Thanks for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. You want to say? I mean, I've sort of set up my cards

in the book I wrote recently. It's not just speculation on my part. I have some evidence. After the fall of Nicosea, the Sultan sent a message to one of his vassal rulers, the ruler of Wallachia, saying, now get ready to supply me with what I need for a campaign to conquer Corfu.

In 1573, the Sultan wrote a letter to the King of France, his quasi-ally ally, saying that he was planning for the following year to invade southern Italy, over 200,000 men, that's more than raiding, that is conquest. But in order to take southern Italy, you had to have Corfu first. It's just so important.

I mean, the Ottomans have bases on the Balkan side of that sea, but Corfu is such a stronghold held by Venice that no attempt to project force across from east to west, across the Straits of Tranto, is safe, so long as the Venetians have Corfu. but if the Ottomans had taken Corfu, then the path would have been opened to them to a much larger operation against southern Italy.

And there are several cases in this period where we have evidence that this was one of the things that they were planning to do. There were Paul East, weren't they, Damon or something? Well, of course there is a problem all the time for the Ottoman Empire, which had been the problem for the Roman Empire, which is a huge power to the east of them, and it's Iran, Persia.

And so there is always a problem with that frontier. and any ruler in Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul is always going to look east as much as west. And so the Sultan would have that problem, and that problem I think will know much more about this than me. That problem arose at the time, didn't it? They do embark on a colossal long-lasting land war against Persia in 1578, but that's a little bit further down the line.

But I think I do take your point about Kofu, obviously, extremely important. But the question really, from my mind, is whether strategically the Ottomans would really have contemplated at this point taking Italy. Obviously, they had enormous ambitions. They had already taken the century before. They landed in Otrant in 1480, and that was, I think, the beginning, would have potentially been the beginning of a major conquest and was perceived that way. And the reason that the troops were withdrawn in 1481 was the death of Mehmet II. and therefore he left two sons unfortunately rather than just the one. And one of those sons made it to the throne,

but one didn't gem. And Gem ended up in the hands of the hospitlers and was taken to France. So that gave an enormously useful diplomatic card, and that put a stop to ambitions in the West at that particular point. But when we come to this point towards the end of the 16th century, I think, as you say, as the Dermot was saying, we've got Iran, you've got Hungary. But you've also, I think, entering in a new phase for the empire, which is all about consolidation, not conquest.

The Ottoman Empire. Yes, sorry, the Ottoman Empire. And so that what, it was moving from an empire that was constantly advancing and dealing with conquest to an empire that was dealing with the consequences of conquest. It's the same as the Roman Empire, isn't it? It's exactly the same pattern. You expand, then you have to consolidate.

You may think of expanding again, and hence the various moves forward, but... Yes. But the expansion against Iran is... There is real expansion. They're not consolidating there. In that campaign, which lasts for 12 years, they're trying to take a big, big new swath of territory away from the Iranian.

But of course, sorry, the ideological impact of that as well as. I mean, there's another angle to the battle with Iran, which of course is the religious element. So it makes the eastern fronty that much more dangerous, and therefore expansion is in a sense related to security. Do you think that that's a religious element? But of course we've been talking about a religious element, have we? So you think that Sunni and Shia,

is a more serious ideological conflict than Islam and Christianity. That's very interesting. I would say for the Ottomans, yes. I don't know if Noel would agree, but it's much more instantly threatening. Iran has the ability to infiltrate among the Ottoman population to the east in a way that is not the case in the West. So the attack ideologically exists there but not in the West.

You're talking about Christendom against Islam. It's different from Shi'i, Sunni Islam. I'm not an expert on this particular. issue, but I would make two points. You go back to the early decades of the 16th century. There are two important things. First, there are big revolts against the Ottomans in Asia Minor by people who are Shia and not directly working for Persia, but that's where their sympathists lie. So it's a serious issue for the Ottoman rulers. But my second point is in 1516 to 17, the Ottomans conquer the Mamluk Sultanate, Egypt, Syria and so on.

But thanks to this, they become the protectors of Mecca, Mecca and Medina. And this is a bit of a game changer ideologically for them, I think, because they then do feel that they are the leaders of Orthodox Islam. Before we're interrupted by offers of tea, coffee, and all the riches that the BBC has to bestow. Finally, I know it's like a program, isn't it? Not a podcast. What about Christendom?

It took a huge Philip, didn't it? Oh, sorry to say. I mean, from not only Spain. the morale was boosted, great celebrations in Rome and in other cities. Did this make Christianity feel stronger about itself? Well, yes and no.

It's Catholic Christianity. And what do Protestants think? They're still very, very worried about papistry, as in that quotation from James 6th. And you've still got Elizabeth I first sending ambassadors to Constantinople, possible alliance with the king of Morocco. So there's a sense in which

There isn't a single Christian attitude here. And reform Protestants can maybe think that Islam is not so bad after all. After all, they don't like images, and we don't like images in sacred buildings. And they didn't like Philip Building and Armada to come and knock us off the map. Precisely, yes. Okay. I think we're back. Here we are, Simon, the producer with this offer.

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