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,”