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Radio War Nerd EP #111 — The Battle of Lepanto (Patreon)

Published:
2017-11-30 20:34:02
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

The War Nerd brings some belated justice to long-maligned southern Europeans for their forgotten heroic battles against the fearsome Ottoman Empire war machine. We look at some of the major Ottoman-Hapsburg battles of the mid-late 16th c. with a special focus on one of the most incredible naval battles in history: The Battle of Lepanto. If we were to see the North/South divide in Europe from a perspective of something like historical justice, all this talk about the North supporting the lazy South and East would be reversed. There's a reason British and French fleets were free to sail for easier, more lucrative conquests: because the people of the Eastern Mediterranean fought through centuries of raiding, enslavement, pillage, and sheer terror to hold the great Ottoman Empire at bay. Think of those EU fees as reparations. 

At 1:34:00 the Nerd and Ames discuss today's war news: the latest North Korea ICBM; Sinai mosque attack that killed over 300; Israel military think-tank talking up alliance with Islamic State, again; Saudis whipping up anti-Iran war fever; weird "coup" in breakaway pro-Russian Luhansk People's Republic in eastern Ukraine; Chechen IS commander Akhmed Chatayev killed in Georgia...

Battle of Lepanto Maps: 

* Map of Ottoman Empire & Europe in 1580

* Map of Battle of Lepanto site 

* Close-up map of Battle of Lepanto

Total time: 2:12:02

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here 

Files

Comments

Jon Wells

I just finished reading Altai by Wu Ming, and the story revolves around Cyprus and Lepanto. Brutal butchering of Bragandin and all. It's a sequel to Q, but you could probably read it on its own without missing much.

Kevin Walsh

It's kind of weird the way Renaissance fleets were powered by galley slaves, because up to the later Middle Ages galleys were powered by free professionals.

Kevin Walsh

Just a note on Spanish infantry: I don't know what arms or formation they used at Lepanto, but the standard land unit, the Tercio, was a mixed force of pikemen, handgunners and sword-and-buckler men. Pikemen were not new or unusual in European warfare - the Swiss and the Scots had been kicking ass for centuries with pikes, but pure pike blocks couldn't stand up to the Tercios.

Richard Kim

The whole historiographical debate over Lepanto’s significance is quite interesting. One can’t deny that even after Lepanto, the Ottomans quickly rebuild their navy, North African Muslim piracy continues, the Holy League crumbles, with neither Spain nor Venice becoming truly dominant in the Mediterranean, and ultimately, the whole Mediterranean world becomes relegated to a historical sideshow in consequence to Northwestern Europe, which is revolutionized by new transatlantic and transpacific trade routes. But at the same time, it is always hard to judge the psychological effect of something like the spell of Turkish supremacy being broken for many early modern Europeans (that is, if the Siege of Vienna hadn’t already done so). There’s also the fact that the Ottomans extended capitulary privileges to European powers hostile to Spain or Venice in the wake of Lepanto, which would lead a whole slippery slope by the modern era. And who knows, maybe if the Siege of Malta or the Battle of Lepanto had ended as a disaster for Christians, maybe there is some possibility that the Ottomans could have turned the Mediterranean into an Islamic “Mare Nostrum” as the Romans once did. That being said, I personally lean towards Lepanto not being of much significance, if only because of how important the transatlantic/transpacific trade routes were. For anybody who wants a fun narrative history of the Ottoman siege of Malta briefly covered in this episode, I highly recommend Bradford’s The Great Siege: Malta 1565. Also, if Carl Zha reads this comment, how feasible do you think Timur’s planned campaign against Ming China would have been?

Carl Zha

If Timur could magically beam up his army next to the wall of Beijing, then Ming would be in serious trouble. But his great army has to cover a huge expanse of distance across Gobi deserts to reach any major Chinese population centers. I have no doubt he could easily take oasis cities of Tarim Basin, but those are poor logistic bases for launch an attack on China proper, because he still have to traverse the Hexi Corridor. His other option is to conquer Mongolia and bring various Mongol tribes under his banner and mobilize them to attack Beijing. Then again, the distance is a big issue. Qing empire had great difficulty to mobilize resources and project military power into Dzungaria in 18th century, and it already had the resources of of entire inner China. My impression is that Timur's force consist of large infantry with gunpower weapons. Supply and logistics is going to be a major problem. Then again somebody has pointed out Timur carry out an equally long-distance campaign to destroy the Golden Horde on Volga. I haven't brush up on details of that campaign so I can't say for sure.

xnfec

Lepanto isn't well known but J.F C. Fuller (every ones favourite occult general) covered it in his book Decisive Battles of the Western World. Recently, the BBC did a drama about the Gun Powder Plot and the Daily Mail/Telegraph wing of the establishment press had a mini-fit because the catholics were too 'cool' and the author of the drama was alleged to be an IRA sympathasizer.

xnfec

I've read Bradfords book and it is very good. The Knight's original commander on Rhodes (Adam de L'Isle) had spent 6-8 years as a captive on the Turkish galleys and survived. He was succeeded by de Vallete (after whom the Maltese capital is named). There were only about 200 actual knights of Malta at the time but they were so heavily armoured as to be almost invincible. By the end, there were only two left and the walls they defended had been reduced to mounds of rubble. I read the book years ago so I can't guarantee the numbers I'm afraid, but it is a good read.

Larry Dimes

This is a tangential question for Mr. Dolan; your quoting oc Chesterton got me thinking. Chesterton, while also being a Catholic was one of the leading theorists of something called Distributism, which was this alternative to state socialism and corporate capitalism, that advocated for some pretty radical decentralization with society based around worker owned co-operatives and small businesses. It always sort of reminded me of the much later economist E.F. Schumacher's ideas about large scale economic consolidation and his advocacy for a similar decentralization and localization program. I later found out that Schumacher too was a Catholic convert and I always wondered where the link was; Catholicism always seemed like a pretty centralized and hierarchical system, and I was wondering where in Catholic doctrine that decentralization impetus came from.

Kevin Walsh

Well, Catholicism, or at leas the Papacy, has often been sceptical of big business, and various Popes have tried to put forward theories of economic organisation that would be simultaneously anti-socialist and social reformist.

Michael Kelly

Good episode. Lepanto might not be taught in the US but it’s taught in Britain (or at least it was). Presumably because of the Spanish Armada, Philip II is a pretty traditional history topic here. What you don't get is much context beyond the battle itself.

Antoni Gumbau

Hi, just two things: 1- Malta didn’t belong to the Pope. It was a possesion of the Spanish King, who was paid for it with a yearly Maltese Falcon. 2- The Spanish delay to help Malta wasn’t because Spain was interested to get rid of the Knights of St. John. It would have been a catastrophe, but a Greater One if the relief army was destroyed. And a tragedy of the Fleet was destroyed too. Thanks for the show.

Russell Meyer

Pre-Renaissance Europe didn't have access to thousands of slaves, and Renaissance Europe seemed to have plenty of access to them via the criminalisation of unemployment/refusal to perform wage labour (in the context of the mass enclosures and destruction of commons happening at this time), plus slaves from colonial adventures in the Americas.

Lucas Seivane

And in the case of Spain, it was well known the use of this conviction to punish social and ethnical groups (the most common the gypsies).