rma, nephew to Don
John, Admiral of Savoy; Duke Urbino, Admiral of Genoa; the Admiral of
Naples, and the Commandeur of Castile. The reserve, under the command of
the Marquis of Santa Cruz, consisted of thirty-five galleys. Immediately in
rear of the _Real_, or royal galley of Don John, was that of the Grand
Commander Requesens. The number of seamen, soldiers, officers, and
galley-slaves in the fleet amounted to over eighty thousand persons;
twenty-nine thousand infantry had been embarked, of which number nineteen
thousand were Spaniards. Opposed to the Christians on this day was a
Turkish fleet which had on board no less than one hundred and twenty
thousand men embarked in two hundred and fifty galleys, without counting an
innumerable host of smaller vessels.

[Illustration: SEBASTIAN VENIERO. Inset, portraits of Don John and Pope
Pius V. Heroic statue of Don John dominating Christian and Turkish Fleets.
The breath of the Almighty destroying the Turkish fleet at Lepanto.]

The authorities on whose accounts of the battle this description is based
are Prescott, the famous historian; P. Daru, a member of the Academie
Francaise, who wrote an exhaustive _Histoire de Venise_ and Don Cayetano
Rosell, member of the Spanish Academy, who is responsible for an exposition
of the subject, known as _Historia del combate naval de Lepanto_. From a
comparison of the works of these eminent men one fact emerges with great
clearness, which is that the battle of Lepanto was an indiscriminate melee
which was decided by some of the most desperate fighting ever recorded, but
which depended hardly at all upon the tactical abilities of the men in
chief command. It is true that we are told Don John issued written
instructions to the commander of each ship, but we are left in the dark as
to what these instructions were, while at the same time we discover that in
his line of battle, which in the first instance appears to have been that
of "single line ahead," the galleys of all nationalities were inextricably
mixed up; making it thereby impossible for the Papal, Spanish, and Venetian
commanders to deal, as they should have done, exclusively with their own
men. On the other hand, Occhiali kept together the squadron of the
Sea-wolves; he outgeneralled and had all but defeated John Andrea Doria,
when the end came and he was obliged to retreat.

We are, however, anticipating. Don John passed down his own line in a light
"fregata" giving a few words of