Pope Pius the Fifth, and Philip the Second, joined their fleets with that of the republic. The confederate fleet assembled at Messina. The celebrated Don John of Austria, natural son to Charles the Fifth, was Generalissimo; Mark Antonio Colonna commanded the Pope’s division, and Sebastian Veniero the Venetian. The Turkish fleet was greatly superior in the number of vessels. The two fleets meet in the Gulph of Lapanta: it is said, that the Turkish gallies were entirely worked by Christian slaves, and the gallies of the Christians by Turkish; a shocking proof of the barbarous manner in which prisoners of war were treated in that age; and, in this instance, as absurd as it was barbarous; for a cartel for an exchange of prisoners would have given freedom to the greater number of those unhappy men, without diminishing the strength of either navy. The fleets engage, and the Turks are entirely defeated. Historians assert, that twenty thousand Turks were killed in the engagement, and one half of their fleet destroyed. This is a prodigious number to be killed on one side, and in a sea fight; it ought to be remembered, that there is no Turkish writer on the subject. Pius the Fifth died soon after the battle of Lapanta. Upon his death the war languished on the side of the Allies; Philip became tired of the expence, and the Venetians were obliged to purchase a peace, by yielding the island of Cyprus to the Turks, and agreeing to pay them, for three years, an annual tribute of one hundred thousand ducats. Those circumstances have no tendency to confirm the accounts which Christian writers have given, of the immense loss which the Turks met with at the battle of Lapanta. In the beginning of the seventeenth century, the republic had a dispute with the Pope, which, in that age, was thought a matter of importance, and engaged the attention of all Christendom. Paul the Fifth shewed as eager a disposition as any of his predecessors, to extend the Papal authority. He had an inveterate prejudice against the Venetian republic, on account of her having, on every occasion, resisted all ecclesiastical encroachments.