...advances on October 7 in four squadrons against the Ottoman fleet.
Some galleys carry over two hundred oarsmen in what will prove to be the final naval engagement in which galleys are the principal vessels used.
Spanish admiral Don Álvaro de Bazán, marquis de Santa Cruz and the son of a naval officer, had in 1564 aided in the capture of Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera in Morocco and commanded the division of galleys employed to blockade Tetuan, and to suppress the piracy carried on from that port.
Bazán had earned the confidence of Philip II, who had appointed him to command the galleys of Naples in 1568 and in 1569 created him the Marqués de Santa Cruz in 1569.
During the Lepanto operations, Santa Cruz, always favoring the more energetic course, commands the reserve division, and his prompt energy averts a disaster when Uluj Ali, who commands the Turks’ left wing, outmaneuvers the commander of the Christian right, Giovanni Andrea Doria, and breaks the allied line.
Alessandro Farnese, raised at the Spanish court as the son of Ottavio Farnese, second duke of Parma, and Margaret of Austria, fights at Lepanto, as does twenty-four-year-old Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes, who, born to a poor family in the university town of Alcalá de Henares and lacking the means for much formal education, has become a soldier: he loses the use of his left hand in the battle.
After about four hours of bloody fighting, the allies are victorious, capturing 117 galleys and thousands of men, and handing the Ottoman empire its first major defeat.
Although of little practical value, the battle has a great impact on Western European morale (and will become the subject of paintings by Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese).
It confirms the Spaniards in their chosen role as champions of Christendom and explains much of their continued willingness to support their king's religious and imperial policies, even in the face of ruinous costs and mounting disasters.
