Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
NapoleonInSpace wrote:I think we're more in agreement than not, certainly about Don Juan, who managed to keep a bunch of quarreling old Dons together long enough to win the battle. That Pius V agreed to appoint him overall commander -let alone the old pontiff's ability to make it stick- is one of the neck-snapping twists of history. Juan was known for the pacification of the rebellion of the Moriscos in Spain, but nothing else above a personal level.
In fairness, it largely was a result of Juan's boldness in the use of his gun ships, and the fact that the Christian galley slaves aboard the Turkish ships were more than happy to help put their captors to the sword when the opportunity arose, but it was the exploitation of these things -and just pure guts- for which he is mostly remembered.
He had some serious juice through his connection to the throne, which Pius appreciated. In terms of the campaign, he knew he needed to seek a decisive engagement, and so he focused on how to do that. He did have some decent advisors as well, and often that's more important that personal skill.
How the heck did I miss this? Sigh. Gettin' old.
Yeah. Somehow, just about everything in that battle seemed to "click" from the political to the strategic to the tactical level, right down to the romantic level.
People tend to forget that Cervantes was present at Lepanto, and served alongside Don Juan on the flagship. He lost part of a hand in doing it.
It was only many years later that he would go on toe write
Don Quixote.
It also tends to be forgotten that it could easily have gone the other way, and might well have but for Don Juan's novel use of putting the heavy gunships front and center, rather than using them for support. The Turks had never experienced anything like that meatgrinder, and for all their prime minister's talk about "in taking our fleet, you have cut off our beard, but in taking Cyprus we have cut off your head..." Uh. So much baloney, and he knew it. The Turks won some naval battles thereafter, including Tunis, which was impressive, but they were simply never again the naval terror that they had been.
From that point on, the Spaniards, Venetians and Genoese could combine and strike the Turks where they wanted in the Mediterranean, and the Ottoman response was generally painfully slow.
They didn't do this perfectly, of course, and Catholic infighting remained what it had been One of the miracles of the thing was that they had managed to maintain a functioning OFFENSIVE alliance as long as they did.
