King Philip’s in his closet with the Fleece about his neck, (Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.) Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines. (“_But Don John of Austria has burst the battle line!_”) Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop, Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate’s sloop. _Vivat Hispania! Domino gloria!_ Don John of Austria Has set his people free! This “last crusade” culminated in the great battle of Lepanto, in 1571, where the Turks lost about 35,000 men and their whole battle fleet except forty galleys which crawled home disabled. There was a good deal of discussion about the action of an Italian galley under Doria, but Cervantes, in _Don Quixote_, seems to have been quite satisfied with it. No such wonderful battle was fought at sea until the Nile itself, which is the most perfect of all sea-fights. The sensation throughout Europe was indescribable. Everything helped to make the victory romantic--the gallant young bastard admiral compared with the unattractive king under whom he served, the sudden relief from terrible danger, and the victory of Christ over Mahound, so dramatic and complete, all combined to stir the pulses of Christendom as they had never been stirred before--even in the earlier Crusades when the very tomb of Christ was the point under dispute. Men said that Mahound, when he heard the guns of Don John, wept upon the knees of his houris in his Paradise; black Azrael, the angel of death, had turned traitor upon his worshippers.