Quote of the Day (G.K. Chesterton, on a Turning Point in Moslem-Christian Relations)

“Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath  
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)  
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain, 
Up which a lean and foolish knight for ever rides in vain,  
And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade....  
(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)”--G.K. Chesterton, “Lepanto” (1915)

Even in the snippet quoted here from the considerably longer work by G.K. Chesterton, you can sense that this is the kind of old-fashioned poetry that, as the cliché goes, they don’t write anymore. There’s the rhyme, for instance (increasingly, 20^th and 21^st century major poets don’t go in for this the way they used to). There’s the wider perspective, not exclusively on the poet and his troubles (whatever they might be) but on world players and the weight of history. And then there’s the completely unapologetic, politically incorrect designation of good and evil, including the acclamation of a hero.

The Battle of Lepanto, which Chesterton is commemorating, took place on this date in 1571. It was a double watershed moment in world history: not only the last major naval engagement involving galleys in the West, but the point at which the Christian European decisively checked the advance of militant Islam into its own territory.

It shocked me—though thinking about it now, in light of the last point, it shouldn’t have—that Britain’s WWI “Tommies” could recite this poem, and take it to heart as they entered battle. Did they think of these verses on the beaches at Gallipoli, another encounter with men from the Mideast professing a different faith?

I had heard of this poem previously, but had never encountered it until I read it online. I can’t think of any poetry anthology I ever came across that contained it, and I suspect that, with the passing years, it will be even harder to find.

Part of the problem, I think, is this old-fashioned element. In his essays and Father Brown detective stories, Chesterton’s religious certainties are complemented by a genial sense of paradox not unlike his friend and frequent debate foil, George Bernard Shaw.

Not here. It all sounds terribly inconvenient to think about: Moslem ships bearing down on Mediterranean coasts, engaging in mass enslavement, putting the men to work rowing in galleys. (In fact, many of the galley rowers straining at the oars of Moslem galleys at Lepanto were Christian slaves.)

The above lines come near the end of Chesterton’s poem. Many of us feel intense sympathy for the 24-year-old soldier Miguel de Cervantes, knowing that his searing experience of being wounded (losing the use of a his left hand) would lead him down the road of disillusion to create one of the masterpieces of Western literature, Don Quixote.

But Chesterton thinks there’s an important place, too, for the likes of Don John of Austria, who, at the time of battle, was the 25-year-old illegitimate son of the late Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, and half-brother of the present king of Spain, Philip II. Don John’s backing did not owe simply to his privileged position, however, as much as to his ardent backing of Pope Pius V’s call for a trans-European Holy League that would mount a last-ditch defense against the Ottoman Empire.

History depends more than a bit on contingency. In 1588, the Spanish Armada that met disaster in an encounter with the fleet of Queen Elizabeth I of England was without the services of Don John, who had died 10 years before. But in 1571, he was still around to command the fleet of the Holy League at Lepanto.

The history that got me interested in Don John was The Galleys at Lepanto, by Jack Beeching, in which the lead-ups and consequences of the battle got much more ink than the naval encounter itself. Over the last decade, however, several other histories have also considered the battle, including Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, The Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World, by Roger Crowley; Victory of the West: The Great Christian-Muslim Clash at the Battle of Lepanto, by Niccolò Capponi; and a chapter in Victor David Hanson’s Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power.

There is a reason for this, I suspect. I think it has much to do with the legacy of 9/11 and historians’ need to revisit the past to see how Western Europe once reacted to a prior wave of fear generated by Moslems who claimed to be doing Allah’s will in battling the West.

Lepanto, to be sure, did not end the Moslem threat, anymore than the overthrow of the Taliban, or even the death of Osama bin Laden, has done so now. But it is equally false to claim that the results of the 1571 encounter were negligible.

For years, Europeans were living amid the growing fear that Moslem navy might would sweep all before it. Lepanto punctured the myth of Moslem invincibility. That victory, owing heavily to the Holy League’s material advantage and training in gunpowder (the Turks’ advantage in number of men and ships was undermined by their reliance on bows rather than cannon), did not come without a price, however, just as the West’s War on Terror has not been filled with mistakes and casualties.

Though the Ottoman Empire was left with only a third of its original fleet and it lost 18,000 out of 30,000 men--as well as the battle--it still inflicted terrible losses on the West: 20 ships sunk, 7,000 dead out of 20,000. By the end of the day’s fighting, according to Crowley’s Empire of the Sea, the Holy League could barely sail away because the Ionian Sea was so filled with corpses from the battle.

There were also divisions among those who should have been allies. (The French, bitterly opposed to Spanish gains on the continent and elsewhere, not only refused to join the Holy League but helped finance the Turks.) Even at its best, the alliance could barely be held together.

Holding it all together was Don John, as charismatic as his half-brother Philip was ascetic. While detailing the climate of fear on the brink of this epic naval clash, Chesterton makes clear that help is on the way: “Don John of Austria is going to the war.”