Posted on 10/05/2014 12:43:19 PM PDT by Varmint Al
If you want to hang out with this guy (below)- Don Juan of Austria (yes, THE Don Juan), hero of Christendom, then you need to listen to the Special Presentation of the Buck Sexton Show- "THE BATTLE OF LEPANTO"- this Tuesday, October 7th-- the anniversary of the battle in 1517 that changed the world.
It will be unlike any radio show you have ever heard before.
All you have to do is click theblaze.com/radio at 12 ET on Tuesday.
Here is a link to Buck Sexton's podcast page: Click Here
I will be downloading the podcast. It should be good. I really enjoy Buck Sexton's podcasts. They are very informative.
Good Hunting... from Varmint Al
Good Hunting... from Varmint Al
Is this next Tues? Eastern Time?
Sorry, I missed that you included the date. I’ve read about the Battle of Lepanto and can’t wait to hear this.
from the “Gates of Vienna”:
Same subject.
Saturday, October 07, 2006
—
The Battle of Lepanto
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2006/10/battle-of-lepanto.html
The year should be 1571, not 1517.
LEPANTO, THE BATTLE THAT SAVED THE CHRISTIAN WEST
By Mariano Navarro On October 11, 2011 Edition,Daily Mailer,FrontPag
What some call “the battle that saved the Christian West” took place 440 years ago October 7th. It is a historical event of such importance — and of such relevance to the struggles of today — that I would be remiss not to mention it. Sadly, a cursory look on-line indicates that few people — save military historians, some traditionalist Catholics and a few rarae aves — seem to know much about it.
At about 11:00 a.m. October 7th in 1571, 300 Ottoman ships from Turkey clashed with a scraggly alliance of European naval armies in the tranquil waters between the Albanian coast and the Peloponnesus. Under the command of the 25-year-old Don Juan of Austria, the illegitimate son of Charles V and half-brother of Philip II of Spain, some 212 Christian ships from Genoa, Venice and Spain — as well from the Papal States and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta — had formed the “Holy League” to stop the advance of the Ottoman Armada.
After it was over five hours later, 35,000 Moslem Turks were dead and about 15,000 Christian slaves had been freed from the bowels of their stinking galleons. Vastly outnumbered, the forces of Christendom had only lost 7,000 men.
The importance of this battle should not be overlooked. For years, fierce Ottoman forces had been raiding and terrorizing Christian communities around the Mediterranean, taking young men and women as slaves, and slaughtering those they had no use for. Under the red crescent of Allah’s armies, the Turks had terrorized the eastern outposts of European civilization. What happened that day in the Gulf of Lepanto (today known as the Gulf of Corinth) was nothing less than the defense of Europe against a 16th century Islamic jihad.
The parallels to today are obvious. The West — perhaps no longer publicly Christian but still built on the foundations and institutions that grew out of Christendom — now faces a similar threat. But, like before, when the rulers of England and France had refused to join the Holy League, many European powers today still refuse to take steps to protect their way of life. And, like before, some European states are even complicit in encouraging and financing Islamic states.
Lepanto’s importance arises not out of the simplistic “clash of civilizations” argument. Rather, the battle — and the atrocities and massacres carried out by the Ottomans, in the years preceding the battle — are solemn reminders that Islamic jihad does not respond to compromise or diplomatic efforts. Nor will it stop until the whole world is subjugated under the name of Allah.
On the 440th anniversary of such an important event in the history of the West, we should remember that the same forces that threatened us then, threaten us now.
Unfortunately, today they not only exist as external threats, but are internal as well.
That is why the Battle of Lepanto may be worth remembering every year, especially in this time of modern Islamic terrorism. It is not an ancient and irrelevant skirmish between long-forgotten armies, but a decisive event that saved European Christendom — and, thus, the West — from alien forces bent on its destruction.
Various events have taken place around the world to commemorate the anniversary. In Rome, for example, the non-profit Lepanto Center — headed by the erudite Roberto de Mattei — organized an evening roundtable. With presentations by Italian Admiral Ezio Ferrante and Professor Massimo de Leonardis, among others, the event emphasized the importance of the battle — and perhaps raised awareness of the threat we face today. There were also special Masses celebrated in Europe, the US and Australia.
We can also still read great accounts of the battle. G. K. Chesterton famously memorialized the battle in his 1911 poem, “Lepanto.” But that has been forgotten, too. And the Jesuit priest Luis Coloma wrote a short 1912 account, viewable here with images of famous paintings of the battle. There is also an excellent 12-page conference booklet titled Lepanto: A Category of the Spirit that can be viewed on-line. And the command ship of Don Juan of Austria can still be viewed, fully-restored, at the Naval Museum of Barcelona (Spain).
But, generally, it is a pity to realize how little has been written about the famous battle. Of the few articles that have been written about it, for example, only those by Michael Novak (2006) and Christopher Check (2007) are worth reading. A cumbersome, over-written account of the battle was also written by Harry W. Crocker III; but it is a slog.
In 2006, Count Niccoló Capponi, a military historian in Florence (Italy) published the eminently readable, if detailed, Victory of the West: The Great Christian-Muslim Clash at the Battle of Lepanto (De Capo Press), which was favorably reviewed by Victor Davis Hanson in First Things and Daniel Johnson in The New Criterion.
Save for these, and a few awkward posts at different Catholic websites, there is lamentably very little out there.
Western elites continue to downplay the threat of radical Islam and continue to seek “peaceful coexistence,” suggesting approaches that will avoid military conflict.
The suggestion is that dialogue, diplomacy and tolerance will somehow disarm radical Islamism.
Perhaps it might be worth recalling the words of the young Don Juan, who, in the final moments before the battle started on that fateful October 7th, was counseled that there was still time to avoid a full battle. As Christopher Check recounts:
“Gentlemen,” he said, looking around at his military commanders, “the time for counsel has passed. Now is the time for war.”
Good Hunting... from Varmint Al
Might as well link right to the original...
http://misskelly.typepad.com/miss_kelly_/2006/10/rosaries_and_le.html
This caught my eye..
“The pope of the day attributed the Christian victory to the rosaries said throughout Christendom on the day of the battle.”
Just like a priest to try to take credit from the warriors who actually did the fighting.
A footnote: There was a Spaniard wounded in the battle who was later to be of some note. His name was Miguel de Cervantes. A destructive windmill was tilted at and destroyed in this important battle.
Thank you for recalling that! The participation of Cervantes in the Battle of Lepanto was a very decisive event for him. Aside from leaving him crippled, it gave him a lot of imagery and in many ways, when you read Don Quixote, you also see him scoffing at people who had never been in battle.
Everybody prayed. Who are you to say that the prayers had no effect and that the men did not have more courage because people were praying for them?
I’m saying the credit goes to the hard men who fought the battle. Easy for priests assign credit afterward. Plenty of people have prayed and lost battles.
THE SIEGE OF FAMAGOSTA (1570)
Those who depict Islam as a “religion of peace” are ignoring History, and as Spanish philosopher, George Santayana said: “Those who do not learn from history are damned to repeat it.”
OBAMA: ISLAM IS A RELIGION OF PEACE
THE REAL FACE OF ISLAM
In the middle 1500’s Christian Europe was an embattled fortress. Riddled by the Protestant Revolt that swept the North and England from the fold of the Church, she faced, almost in despair, yet another threat—the mounting attack of a centuries-old enemy, the Turk.
Like an angry sea not to be denied, the Turkish menace licked and growled at the frontiers. On the eastern flank in 1529, a Moslem army stormed up from prostrate Hungary, to be turned back only at the gates of Vienna.
Increasingly, Turkish pirates boldly raided the shores of Spain and Italy, going so far as to sack Ostia, the port of Rome. In 1567, Spanish Moriscos, once subjugated by Ferdinand and Isabella, were in open revolt in the West and calling for a Turkish army to invade Spain.
The real threat, however, was the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, an island in the east Mediterranean long held by Venice. In 1570, the Turks barbarously conquered all Cyprus except for the city of Famagosta where the Venetians grimly held on. Cyprus in their hands, the Moslems would sweep the Mediterranean with their powerful fleet, thus exposing southern Europe, especially Italy, to invasion.
The Turkish fleet sailed out of Constatinople to find and destroy the Christian armies and to complete the conquest of Cyprus. Before Ali Pasha left the Bosphorus with forty galleys, four Christian prisoners were crucified, and others skinned alive, as sacrifices to Mohammed for victory.
While an army of 70,000 began to siege Dolcino, on the coast of Albania, the fleet proceeded to Chios (April 8) where it was joined by 40 more vessels under Mohammed-Bey, governor of Negroponte. A second armada was preparing to follow from Constantinople, and Aluch Ali was cruising from Algiers with 20 more.
Before the end of April the Grand Turk had amost 300 heavy warships, with ahuge army of Janizaries and Spahis on board., on the way to Cyprus, where, on May 19th, Mustaphá resumed the siege of Famagosta, which had held out heroically for near a year under the Venetian general Bragadino.
Mustaphá loosed all his fury upon this city for three months. The Italian women fought at the side of their men. The children carried dirt and ammunition. In August, forced by hunger, Bragadino agreed to surrender, if the Turks would spare their lives. Mustaphá agreed; but a soon as the Christians had laid down their arms, he had them tortured and butchered, woman, children and men. The valiant general Bragadino was skinned alive. There were other atrocities too horrible to mention. Mustaphá went sailing in quest of the Christian fleet with the stuffed skin of Bragadino swinging from his yardarm.
The barbaric torture & death of Marcantonio Bragadino
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=di4hhNy9Zpo
During a dialogue in the 14th-century between the Byzantine Christian emperor, Manuel II Paleologus, and a Persian scholar about the concept of violence in Islam, the Christian emperor dared to ask to the Islamist scholar.
“Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached,”
What is missing today are “real leaders”, men of action.
Men with vision and understand the “enemy”. The real enemy, the force of evil who always lurks in the background. Who thrives on chaos. Who is always vigilant to take advantage of ignorance and the weak. He relishes in destroying strong men.
Obama lies 24/7, and his actions indicate he serves the father-of-lies.
G.K.Chesterton, 1915
White founts falling in the Courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard;
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips;
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross.
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,
Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,
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.
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,
Don John of Austria is going to the war,
Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold
In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold,
Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,
Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.
Don John laughing in the brave beard curled,
Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world,
Holding his head up for a flag of all the free.
Love-light of Spain--hurrah!
Death-light of Africa!
Don John of Austria
Is riding to the sea.
Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri's knees,
His turban that is woven of the sunsets and the seas.
He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease,
And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees;
And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring
Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.
Giants and the Genii,
Multiplex of wing and eye,
Whose strong obedience broke the sky
When Solomon was king.
They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn,
From the temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn;
They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea
Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be,
On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl,
Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl;
They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,--
They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound.
And he saith, "Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can hide,
And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide,
And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest,
For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west.
We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun,
Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done.
But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know
The voice that shook our palaces--four hundred years ago:
It is he that saith not 'Kismet'; it is he that knows not Fate;
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey at the gate!
It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth,
Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth."
For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
Sudden and still--hurrah!
Bolt from Iberia!
Don John of Austria
Is gone by Alcalar.
St. Michaels on his Mountain in the sea-roads of the north
(Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.)
Where the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift
And the sea-folk labour and the red sails lift.
He shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone;
The noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone;
The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes,
And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise,
And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room,
And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom,
And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,--
But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea.
Don John calling through the blast and the eclipse
Crying with the trumpet, with the trumpet of his lips,
Trumpet that sayeth ha!
Domino gloria!
Don John of Austria
Is shouting to the ships.
King Philip's in his closet with the Fleece about his neck
(Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.)
The walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin,
And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in.
He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon,
He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon,
And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey
Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day,
And death is in the phial and the end of noble work,
But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk.
Don John's hunting, and his hounds have bayed--
Booms away past Italy the rumour of his raid.
Gun upon gun, ha! ha!
Gun upon gun, hurrah!
Don John of Austria
Has loosed the cannonade. (Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.)
The hidden room in man's house where God sits all the year,
The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.
He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea
The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery;
They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark,
They veil the plumèd lions on the galleys of St. Mark;
And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs,
And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs,
Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines
Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines.
They are lost like slaves that sweat, and in the skies of morning hung
The stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young.
They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on
Before the high Kings' horses in the granite of Babylon.
And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell
Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell,
And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign--
(But Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!)
Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,
Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate's sloop,
Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,
Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,
Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea
White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.
Vivat Hispania!
Domino Gloria!
Don John of Austria
Has set his people free!
Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,
Up which a lean and foolish knight for ever rides in vain,
And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade....
(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)
God gave those men who fought in battle life. A life they used in battle to defeat the Turks.
The credit goes to the individuals, but Our Lady was certainly supporting and encouraging them.
If you don’t believe that your cause is just and is supported by your people, can you fight? No. You can fight to survive (which will sometimes mean surrendering) but you won’t fight to win.
But if you believe in your cause and know you have support and trust and that people are praying for you, that’s a whole different thing. And that’s what this means.
One of the best books on subject of LEPANTO and SIEGE OF MALTA
is “EMPIRE OF THE SEAS” by Roger Crowley
http://www.amazon.com/Empires-Sea-Battle-Lepanto-Contest/dp/0812977645
That Don Juan of Austria (illegitimate brother of Phillip II of Spain) was one tought bastard .........
There’s nothing good or defensible about Islam.
It’s a syncretist cult based on bits of Arian or Donatist Christianity (very popular in the ME at that time), an extremist appropriation of Jewish law, and a few touches of fertility-directed moon worship to placate the moon-worshipping pagans of the area. (Look at the silver-rimmed vagina shaped hole in the moon rock in the Kaaba.)
Mohammed dreamed it up to consolidate the victories of his caravan-raiding Arabs against much more advanced but undefended societies in the area (for example, the Persians). With the collapse of the Roman Empire and the disputes between the Eastern and Western Church, the Middle East was completely undefended and vulnerable even to a total illiterate Arab savage like Mohammed.
He swore us all to secrecy but it turns out that he was a Marine infantryman in Korea before he joined the priesthood. Real morale booster - great to have a chaplain that knows his way around an M-1 carbine.
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