http://www.ordo-militiae-templi.org/
In hoc signo vinces
IHS+
Posted on 10/06/2004 7:49:18 PM PDT by Land of the Irish
Ping
Pius V messed up big time. he should have known that Islam was "a religion of peace" and he should have had to "pass a global test" before he went into battle.
Past threads on Lepanto:
The Battle of Lepanto (thread from 2001, containing text of G.K. Chesterton poem on Lepanto)
The Naval Battle of Lepanto (2001 thread on the history of the battle)
The Miracle at Lepanto (2002 thread on the religious aspect to the Battle)
Chesterton's Lepanto (2003 thread on the poem)
The Battle of Lepanto (2003 thread, same article as 2001 article on history of the battle, different thread participants)
On This Day In History, The Battle of Lepanto (2003 thread on the history of the battle, from Alex's Military History)
The Battle of Lepanto (2004 thread, article written by Joe Palmwer)
Ping to post #5.
bumpus ad summum
In addendum to the story of Lepanto.
The pope subsequently designated October 7 as the feast of Our Lady of Victory, later renamed the Feast of the Most Holy Rosary, to honor the Blessed Mother in her role as intercessor in Lepanto.
Excellent post. I watched a show about this a couple months ago on EWTN.
It is tragic that Europe has abandoned everything that once made it great.
Lepanto ended the dominance of Islam for 400 years. We need another Lepanto NOW. After Iraq on to Iran.
Death to Islam. Conversion to the Muslims.
Impressive list of FR threads.
BTTT !!
Bump.
"ahem. Or ended it until 1683."
Huh? Before Lepanto the West lived in constant fear of Islamic invasion. The Moslems had promised to "turn the Vatican into a horse stable". The shattering Catholic victory over the Moslem fleet at Lepanto ended Islamic military and naval supremecy forever. The Ottoman Empire continued on, but Islam was never again the threat it was to the West prior to Lepanto.
This doesn't relate directly to the great battle of Lepanto, but it does give some more information on the Holy Crusades (and in particular the First Holy Crusade under Blessed Pope Urban the 2nd)...
http://www.traditioninaction.org/SOD/j031sdUrbanII7-29.htm
Compare the approach of our forefathers in the Faith with the modernist pacifist, UN-supporters now in control.
I'm arguing that the Moslem military - particularly naval - superiority over Christendom was forever diminished after Lepanto, and it never regained its former capabilities and military supremacy.
According the great historian Hillaire Belloc, "whenever the Turks went on the march, all of Western Europe shuddered". Prior to Lepanto the Turks ruled the seas, and Moslem corsairs terrorized Catholic ships along the Mediterranean. The Turkish fleet had just crushed the Christian fortress in Cypress. They then threatened to enter Western Europe and 'turn the Vatican into a horse stable'. If Lepanto had been lost to the Turks, what would have stopped them from carrying out their threat? Probably nothing!
The Christian fleet at Lepanto sank or damaged nearly the entire Turkish fleet, and the rout came at a relatively small cost to Don Juan's armada. It was, in fact, considered to be a miracle. The Turks never re-established their pre-Lepanto naval supremacy. You're correct in saying the victory at Lepanto didn't end the Ottoman Empire, they remained a power on the land and did eventually rebuild their navy. They also attacked Vienna several more times. But had the Ottomans been victorious at Lepanto, (and they believed it would be easy for them), it would have made them supreme in the Mediterranean and placed them in a great position to attack all of Europe.
There were 80,000 Christian fighters and rowers on the Christian fleet, supposedly the best of the best. Also, when they routed the Turkish fleet they rescued more than 10,000 Christian slaves, (some of them soldiers), who had been forced to row the Turkish fleet. That's a total of 95,000 Christian fighters and rowers who would have been lost had the battle gone the other way, and the Christian fleet would have been lost as well.
I know that there were several more naval battles after Lepanto, and that Viena came under attack several times. It took several more centuries after Lepanto before the final demise of the Ottoman Empire, but from the perspective of the threat they were before Lepanto, the Ottomans were no longer considered invincible, and they no longer had the power or confidence to take Western Europe. Lepanto was the beginning of the end of the Ottoman Empire.
The obligatory poem:
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.
The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke,
(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 plume graved 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.)
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