Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean: The grand period of the Moslem corsairsCurrey, E. Hamilton (Edward Hamilton)
History
Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean: The grand period of the Moslem corsairs
Currey, E. Hamilton (Edward Hamilton)
Africa, North -- History; Pirates
On the right of the Christian line things had not been going so
propitiously for them. Here Occhiali had managed, by his apparently
persistent attempts to outflank John Andrea Doria, to decoy that
commander away from his supports and from the main body of the
Christians. This tactical manoeuvre of the corsair was successful;
having drawn off some fifteen of the Christian galleys, he suddenly
flung the whole of his greatly superior force into the gap and
surrounded them. These galleys were Spanish, Venetian, and Maltese,
and, although they offered a most vigorous resistance, they were mostly
destroyed or captured. Doria, in spite of all his efforts, was on this
day both outgeneralled and outfought: the Sea-wolves, under their
grim leader, manoeuvring for position, obtaining it, and then falling
like a thunderbolt on the foe. They were all brave men at Lepanto on
this memorable October day; but few there were like the corsair king,
in whom a heart of fire was kept in check by a brain of ice, who,
during the whole combat, never gave away a chance, or failed to swoop
like an eagle from his eyry when the blunders of his enemy gave him
the opportunity for which he watched. It was the old story of “the
veritable man of the sea” pitted against gallant soldiers fighting on
an unfamiliar element. And yet it was against the best seaman on the
Christian side that Occhiali pitted himself on this stricken field;
and none can deny that with him rested such honour as was gained by
the Turks on this day, the day which broke up for ever the idea of the
invincibility of the Ottomans on the water. It needs not to say, to
those who have read the story of the siege of Malta, how the Knights
comported themselves in the battle; and yet Occhiali captured the
_Capitana_, or principal galley of the Order, He was towing her out of
action, a prize, when the Marquis of Santa Cruz bore down upon him with
the reserve. By this time the battle was lost; the Moslems were in full
retreat.
The corsair recognised that he could do no more: sullenly he cast
off the tow, and, forming up some thirty of his galleys, still in a
condition to navigate, stood boldly through the centre of where the
battle had once raged, and escaped. The _Capitana_ of Malta had been
taken; and to the Sultan did Occhiali present the great standard of
Saint John, as an earnest of his achievement.
Bernardino de Escalente, in his work _Diálogos del arte militar_, printed
in Seville in 1583, says that the Captain Ojeda, of the galley _Guzmana_,
recaptured the _Capitana_ of Malta; and that, in recognition thereof,
“the Religion” pensioned him for life. Ojeda, it is to be presumed, was
under the orders of the Marquis of Santa Cruz during the battle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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