the ingenious
Doria perceived that he had outwitted only his own cause, and at last
turned back. The Marquis de Santa Cruz was already upon the enemy; Don
John was after him with twenty galleys; Ochiali was outnumbered, and
after a brilliant effort, made off in all haste for Santa Maura,
bearing with him the Standard of "the Religion" to be hung up in St.
Sophia. The battle of Lepanto is fought and won: the Turks have been
utterly vanquished.[49] Well might the good Pope cry, as the preacher
cried in St. Stephen's a century later when Sobieski saved Vienna,[50]
"_There was a man sent from GOD, whose name was JOHN_."

The Turkish fleet was almost annihilate: one hundred and ninety
galleys were captured, besides galleots, and fifteen more burnt or
sunk; probably twenty thousand men had perished, including an
appalling list of high dignitaries from all parts of the empire. The
Christians lost seven thousand five hundred men, including many of the
most illustrious houses of Italy and Spain. Cervantes, who commanded a
company of soldiers on board the _Marquesa_, fortunately escaped with
a wound in his left arm; and to many the Battle of Lepanto is familiar
only from the magical pages of _Don Quixote_. Seventeen Venetian
commanders were dead, and among them Vicenzo Quirini and the valiant,
chivalrous, and venerable Proveditore Barbarigo. Sixty Knights of the
diminished Order of St. John had given up the ghost. Twelve thousand
Christian slaves were freed from the Ottoman galleys.

The brilliant young conqueror did not wear his well-earned laurels
long. His statue was erected at Messina; his victory was the subject
of Tintoret and Titian; he was received with ovations wherever he
went. Two years later he recaptured Tunis. Then he was employed in the
melancholy task of carrying on Alva's detestable work in Flanders. He
inflicted a sanguinary defeat upon the Dutch at Gembloux, and then,
struck down by fever, the young hero died on October 1, 1578, in his
thirty-first year, the last of the great figures of medieval
chivalry--a knight worthy to have been commemorated in the Charlemagne
_gestes_ and to have sat at Arthur's Round Table with Sir Galahad
himself.

FOOTNOTES:

[46] H. de Grammont, _La course, l'esclavage, et la redemption_; _Un
pacha d'Alger_; _Hist. d'Algerie_.

[47] See _The Story of the Moors in Spain_, p. 278.

[48] See the complete list in Girolamo Catena, _Vita del gloriosissimo
Papa Pio Quinto_, 1587.