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It was not a soldier that was then required for Philip's exigency, but a scribe. Instead of the famous sword of Lepanto, the "barbarous pen" of Hopperus had been much more suitable for the work required. Scribbling Joachim in a war-galley, yard-arm and yard-arm with the Turkish capitan pacha, could have hardly felt less at ease than did the brilliant warrior thus condemned to scrawl and dissemble.
The Blood Council which, if set up in that country, would have executed every living creature of its population, could only gaze from a distance at those who would have been its victims. Requesens had been previously distinguished in two fields of action: the Granada massacres and the carnage of Lepanto.
The 'confiteor' had just commenced, but Fray Antonio motioned to the priests, who interrupted the Mass, and Ulrich, holding the prophet's standard high aloft, exclaimed: "An unparalleled victory! Don Juan . . . October 7th . . . ! at Lepanto the Ottoman navy totally destroyed . . . !"
XIX. Here also are good but not transcendent portraits by Titian, Tintoretto, and Lotto, and the Battle of Lepanto, with heavenly interference, by Veronese. Finally, we come to the room set apart for Titian's charming conception of "The Presentation of the Virgin," which fills all one wall of it. I give a reproduction opposite page 36.
The splendid victory of Heemskerk had struck the government with dismay and diffused a panic along the coast. The mercantile fleets, destined for either India, dared not venture forth so long as the terrible Dutch cruisers, which had just annihilated a splendid Spanish fleet, commanded by a veteran of Lepanto, and under the very guns of Gibraltar, were supposed to be hovering off the Peninsula.
This assurance of a ready market and large profits, combined with the capture of Constantinople by the Turks , their piratical attacks in the Mediterranean which continued unchecked until Lepanto, and their final barring of all trade routes through the Levant, revived among nations of western Europe the old legends of all-water routes to Asia, either around Africa or directly westward across the unknown sea.
Brave they were, as they proved in 1541, against Charles the Fifth, whose forces they defeated and nearly destroyed at Haratsch, in 1565, at the siege of Malta, in 1572, in the seafight of Lepanto, in many smaller combats at different times, defending their land triumphantly in 1775 against the Spaniards under O'Reilly and Castejon.
Ali, the Basha of Algiers, succeeds to Dragut He conquers the Kingdom of Tunis, captures four galleys from the Knights of Malta, joins Piali Basha in his raidings preliminary to the battle of Lepanto The gathering of the Christian hosts and the arrival of Don John of Austria in the Mediterranean to take command.
Thus at Lepanto, the Christian slaves, seeing the right wing of the Turkish fleet thrown into disorder by the galleys of the Allies, broke out into furious mutiny, succeeded in shattering their fetters and chains, attacked their masters the Turks in the rear with incredible energy with any weapons upon which they could lay their hands, and thus contributed in no small measure to the ultimate triumph of the Christian arms.
Not in romantic fiction was there ever created a more attractive incarnation of martial valour, poetic genius, and purity of heart. If the mocking spirit of the soldier of Lepanto could "smile chivalry away," the name alone of his English contemporary is potent enough to conjure it back again, so long as humanity is alive to the nobler impulses.
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