Shortly before the battle of Lepanto the Turks raided Kythera, Zante, and Cephalonia, and again landed in Corfù. But the memory of their previous failure and the fact that the garrison was prepared for resistance deterred them from undertaking a fresh siege. They accordingly contented themselves with plundering the defenceless villages, but this time did not carry off their booty with impunity. Their ships were routed; as they were departing many of them sank, and in Marmora’s time the sunken wrecks could still be seen when the sea was calm[260]. In the battle of Lepanto 1500 Corfiote seamen took part on the Christian side, and four ships were contributed by the island and commanded by natives. One of these Corfiote captains was captured during the engagement and skinned alive, his skin being then fastened as a trophy to the rigging of one of the Turkish vessels. Another, Cristofalo Condocalli, captured the Turkish admiral’s ship, which was long preserved in the arsenal at Venice, and he received as his reward a grant of land near Butrinto, together with the then rare title of _cavaliere_. The criticisms which Finlay, after his wont, has passed upon the Greeks at Lepanto, and which do not agree with the testimony of a contemporary Venetian historian, certainly do not affect the conduct of the Ionians[261]. A little later, when the Turks again descended upon Corfù, they were easily repulsed, and the long peace which then ensued between Venice and the Porte put an end to these anxieties. Both the Corfiotes and the local militia of Zante did service about this time under the banner of St Mark in Crete; but the fearful losses of the Zantiotes, of whom eighty only out of 800 returned home alive from the Cretan mountains, made the peasants reluctant to serve again. There are few facts to relate of the Ionian islands during the peaceful period between the battle of Lepanto and the war of Candia. At Corfù the peace was utilised for the erection of new buildings; the church of St Spiridion was finished, and the body of the saint transferred to it[262]. But the town did not strike the Venetian traveller Pietro della Valle, who visited it early in the seventeenth century, as a desirable residence. Both there and at Zante he thought the buildings were more like huts than houses, and he considered the latter island barren and no longer deserving of its classical epithet of “woody[263].” It was about this time that the Venetians introduced the practice of tournaments, which were held on the esplanade, and at which the Corfiote nobles showed considerable skill. Rather later the island was visited by the plague, which was stayed, according to the local belief, through the agency of their patron saint, who had on a previous occasion saved his good Corfiotes from famine by inspiring the captains of some corn ships to steer straight for their port. The first two of the four annual processions were the token of the people’s gratitude for these services[264].