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:
(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.
1 comment:
Ah, now I see why I never heard of that battle - I read mainly American literature. What was it Mark Twain said?
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