Don John collected at Barcelona all the veteran troops whom he had tried in the war against the Moriscos in Andalusia; and among others, the renowned tercios of don Miguel de Moncada and don Lope de Figueroa; and, sailing for Italy, cast anchor off Genoa on the 26th June with forty-seven galleys. Thence he proceeded to Messina, where the combined fleet met. In the distribution now made of the troops on board the various vessels, the two new companies of veterans, taken from the tercios of Moncada, those of Urbina and Rodrigo de Mora, were embarked on board the Italian galleys of Doria. Cervantes followed his captain on board the Marquesa, commanded by Francesco Santo Pietro.[57] The fleet of the confederates, after having succoured Corfu, went in pursuit of the enemy, and found the Turkish fleet, on the morning of the 7th October, in the entrance of the gulph of Lepanto. The battle began about noon: the confederates achieved a splendid victory; but it was a very sanguinary one, and, not being followed up by other successes, it remained a useless trophy of Christian valour. Cervantes was at this time suffering from an intermittent fever, and his captain and comrades would have persuaded him to abstain from mingling in the fight; but he spurned the idea, and requested, on the contrary, to be placed in the post of honour, where there was most danger. He was posted near the shallop with twelve chosen soldiers. The galley, on board of which he was, distinguished itself in the action: it boarded the Captain of Alexandria, killed near five hundred Turks with their commander, and took the royal standard of Egypt. In this bloody fray Cervantes received three arquebuse wounds; two in the chesty and one that broke and destroyed his left hand. He always, however, regarded this loss with pride, and says, in one of his works, that the honour of having been at the battle of Lepanto was cheaply bought by the wounds he there received.