Lepanto: October 7, 1571

449 years ago tomorrow, the fleet of the Holy League, mostly warships from Venice and the Spanish Empire, met and crushed a large Ottoman fleet off the Western coast of Greece in the Battle of Lepanto. This victory decisively checked the expansion of the Ottoman Empire and, maybe, saved the Christian West and the achievements of the Renaissance.

Americans know of this battle, if at all, mostly from G.K. Chesterton's marvelous poem Lepanto, which was a staple in English Lit textbooks for many decades. It's a great piece of work, full of dazzling and memorable lines, from beginning:

               White founts falling in the courts of the sun,
               And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;

to end:

               Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea
               White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.

Among the soldiers who fought at Lepanto was one Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, who suffered three wounds. The envoi of Chesterton's poem reads:

               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 forever 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.)

These days, the mere idea of teaching Chesterton's Lepanto to schoolchildren would have entire School Boards cowering under their desks. Just the word "Crusade" would make their teeth chatter.