Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power by Hanson Victor Davis

Author:Hanson, Victor Davis [Hanson, Victor Davis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Civilization, Politics, War, Military, Battles, History, Military History, General
ISBN: 9780385720380
Amazon: 0385720386
Goodreads: 177766
Publisher: Anchor
Published: 2001-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

LEGENDS OF LEPANTO

More than 15,000 Christian slaves were freed at Lepanto and more than two hundred galleys and nearly one hundred lesser craft were mostly destroyed or lost to the sultan. Italy itself was saved from Ottoman maritime invasion. In the battle’s aftermath Europe flirted with the idea of sailing right up the Golden Horn or freeing the Greek-speaking populations of the Morea, Cyprus, and Rhodes. The Christian fleet—the largest European armada in the Mediterranean until modern times—lost around 8,000 to 10,000 killed, 21,000 wounded, and ten galleys. In contrast, there were 30,000 Ottomans slain at Lepanto, many of them skilled bowmen who would not be replaced for years. Thousands were simply executed when their galleys were taken in tow, and even more were left to drown or to be finished off by scavengers. In the battle’s aftermath Christians in small boats shot and speared any Ottomans still alive in the water; plunderers hunted for private purses, clothes, and jewelry of the defeated Turkish elite. Christian annals report that only 3,458 Turkish prisoners were taken, an astoundingly low figure given the almost 100,000 of the enemy present before the battle. Most of the 6,000 Janissary shock troops also perished; the historian Gianpietro Contarini believed thousands of that elite corps had been killed. There are no records of the thousands of Ottoman wounded, many of whom must have suffered horrific gunshot wounds. One hundred eighty ships of all types—most of them later found to be beyond repair—were towed to Corfu. Dozens more washed up on the shores of Aetolia. A mere handful returned to Lepanto.

The losses were doubly grievous for the sultan, since unlike the Europeans he had neither the capacity to fabricate thousands of new harquebuses nor the ability to draft a new army of conscripts. Rowers—not to mention munitions fabricators and designers—had to be brought in as mercenaries, renegades, or slaves from European shores. Most quality-manufactured guns would need to be imported, given this singular European propensity to fabricate cheap, plentiful, and easily used firearms:

The main impact of the development of efficient small arms upon warfare at sea came not, as we would suppose, directly through an increase in fire power, but indirectly through a sharp reduction in training requirements. This gave the nations which depended upon the arquebus greater resilience in the face of heavy manpower losses than those which depended upon the composite recurved bow. While it was fairly easy to turn Spanish villagers into musketeers, it was virtually impossible to turn Anatolian peasants into masters of the composite recurved bow. (J. Guilmartin, Gunpowder and Galleys, 254)

The loss of 34 Ottoman admirals and 120 galley commanders ensured that even the sultan’s massive replacement program—150 ships of green timber and shoddily fabricated cannon built within the next twelve months—would be short of experienced seamen, archers, and seasoned galleys.

Non-Westerners rightly complain about Europe’s monopoly of commemoration, and its hold on the art of history itself. Nowhere was this imbalance more true than in the aftermath of Lepanto, a Western

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