Centuries before the great sea battles of Trafalgar, Jutland, Midway and Leyte Gulf a momentous naval engagement temporarily united Christendom and ended Muslim domination of the Mediterranean Sea. A turning point in naval history, the 1571 Battle of Lepanto was waged across a 5-mile front in the Gulf of Patras, west of the Ottoman-held Greek port of Lepanto (present-day Nafpaktos). The furious and sanguineous encounter pitted the fleet of Pope Pius V’s Holy League against a superior Turkish armada under Ottoman Grand Admiral Ali Pasha. As decisive as it proved on a strategic level, Lepanto marked the swan song of the war galley, as the sailing vessels that fought alongside their oar-powered sisters were the wave of the future.
Late 16th century Europe was rent by political and religious divisions. With the dissolution of the Roman empire and the coming of the Reformation, Christendom—once centered on the Roman Catholic Church—had fractured into conflicting states and denominations. By contrast, the Islamic world was under the dominion of the Ottoman empire, then at the peak of its strength.
Early that century the Turks probed Europe’s eastern frontiers. After ransacking much of the Balkans, the Muslims threatened Vienna and seized then separate Buda and Pest. Ottoman galleys raided the coasts of Italy, Syria, Egypt and Tunisia, captured Rhodes, besieged Malta and invaded Cyprus. Finally, after an appeal by the Venetian Senate, Pius V started organizing resistance to the Muslim empire. On March 7, 1571, the pontiff sponsored creation of the Holy League, comprising the papal states, Spain, Venice, Genoa, Tuscany, Savoy, Urbino, Parma and the Knights of Malta. Though its formation came too late to forestall the Ottoman capture of Cyprus, that spring Pius ordered its combined fleet to sail for Greece and seek out the Turkish armada, reportedly holed up at Lepanto.
Following up on Ottoman gains in the Mediterranean, Sultan Selim II was assembling the men, ships and materiel necessary to sack Rome. The (“Eternal City”) was viewed as ripe for plunder. The pope feared that if Rome fell, the rest of Europe would surely follow. Regardless, Portugal and the Holy Roman empire (Germany, Italy, Burgundy and Bohemia) shunned the pontiff’s alliance, while distant England and France showed no interest in opposing the Turks. Though chronically
