13. Appendix
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, the most universal Spanish writer and an admirable man. On him the greatness and misery of the XVI century Spanish empire are represented. Men of war and peace, of slavery and fame, of prisons and letters. On ocassion of the fourth centenary of the publication of El Quixote, I dedicate to him this small effort with the hope of contributing to a better understanding of his figure.
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Miguel de Cervantes, a simple soldier, was visited by Don Juan de Austria during his recovery, as were all the Spanish soldiers wounded at the battle. He was promoted to first class soldier and had his salary increased in 3 ducats per month. Despite having lost the use of his left hand, he continued at the service of his king and participated in the campaigns of Don Juan in Navarino, Tunis and Corfu. After 5 years of service, in 1575 he returned to Spain, but his ship was captured by Algerian corsairs. The letters of recommendation that he carried from Don Juan had the effect of giving him a ransom price beyond the means of his modest family. He was to spend 5 years as a slave, being tortured several times for his continuous attempts to escape. He was finally ransomed by a Trinitarian monk, one of the mendicant orders that in Spain went from place to place raising money to rescue destitute Christians from the hands of the corsairs.
Miguel de Cervantes spent five long and hard years as a slave of the muslim pirates in the infamous baths of Alger. Despite having enough reasons, Miguel de Cervantes does not seem to have hated his enemies, and it is possible to apreciate his respect for them in his work.
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His experiences transpire in his works. For example, he was so impressed by the hardness of the life of the galley convicts that Don Quixote will rescue a group of convicts that were taken to galleys for petty crimes. Don Quixote depicts so well human nature that it became an instant success when published in 1605. By then Cervantes was 50 years old, still poor, and had known every misery in life, including the jails of Spain and the Inquisition. Don Quixote is the first novel in the world in the sense that we give now to that word. It is without doubt the zenith of Spanish literature, and one of the best books ever written. One wonders if without Miguel de Cervantes' participation in Lepanto, Don Quixote would have ever been written.
The liberation of galley convicts by Don Quixote, in an illustration by August Doré for the French edition of Don Quixote. Doré's illustrations are the most famous, and can be found in many modern editions in all languages.
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In the little village of Spelonga, in Marche (Italy), 150 villagers participated in the battle of Lepanto under Papal banner. They brought home the banner from one of the Turkish galleys that they conquered and keep it since then in the church of St. Agatha of Spelonga. Every 3 years they celebrate the "Festa bella" and commemorate the event by capturing a replica of the banner from a mast, under command of a villager taking the place of Marcantonio Colonna. A few years ago a Turkish delegation showed up in the village to request the return of the banner. Apparently they had to leave the village very quickly to avoid the fate their ancestors met at Lepanto, given the indignation that the villagers showed.
Left, villagers from Spelonga cutting a mast that would be transported to main square, where the village braves will assault it to capture the flag. Right, the original Turkish flag kept in the church of St. Agatha of Spelonga.
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Only one thing is missing for Lepanto, and that is a good movie from Hollywood with tons of money and special effects. There is even a role for a leading actress, because it is said that one of the Spanish soldiers that fought valiantly on the deck of the Sultana was a woman dressed as a man, that only revealed her nature after the battle. This anecdote could be for real, because she appears in a painting of the battle that is now at the National Maritime Museum of London (Greenwich), holding the head of a Turk in one hand and a sword in the other. You can read the description of the painting where she is mentioned. This picture appears to be copied from an older one that is currently at the Museo Correr in Venice. The original that inspired this paintings was an engraving made in 1572 by the Croatian Martin Roca Kolunic for Venice. This would indicate that the source is from the time of the battle. She is also mentioned in some Spanish chronicles, as someone named María la Bailaora (the dancer), that would had dissobeyed the order to all women to dissembark in Messina to stay with her lover.
Paintings of the battle of Lepanto. The older is a Venetian table from late XVI century, and is based of an engraving from 1572. The more recent one is from the Dutch school, and is based on the Venetian. It is signed with the letter H. In both many of the participant ships from both sides are identified, like those from Caracoz (Kara Hodja) and Ochialli (Uluj Alí). One can see the participation of the galeasses at the right side of the image. In both paintings a woman is shown in the third ship of the Christian side, although it is not possible to apreciate in these low resolution images.
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Finally here is the poem "Lepanto" by G. K. Chesterton (1911):
White founts falling in the Courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard;
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips;
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross.
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,
Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,
Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,
The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,
That once went singing southward when all the world was young.
In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,
Don John of Austria is going to the war,
Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold
In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold,
Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,
Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.
Don John laughing in the brave beard curled,
Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world,
Holding his head up for a flag of all the free.
Love-light of Spain—hurrah!
Death-light of Africa!
Don John of Austria
Is riding to the sea.
Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri's knees,
His turban that is woven of the sunsets and the seas.
He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease,
And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees;
And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring
Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.
Giants and the Genii,
Multiplex of wing and eye,
Whose strong obedience broke the sky
When Solomon was king.
They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn,
From the temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn;
They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea
Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be,
On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl,
Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl;
They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,—
They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound.
And he saith, "Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can hide,
And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide,
And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest,
For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west.
We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun,
Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done.
But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know
The voice that shook our palaces—four hundred years ago:
It is he that saith not 'Kismet'; it is he that knows not Fate;
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey at the gate!
It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth,
Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth."
For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
Sudden and still—hurrah!
Bolt from Iberia!
Don John of Austria
Is gone by Alcalar.
St. Michaels on his Mountain in the sea-roads of the north
(Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.)
Where the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift
And the sea-folk labour and the red sails lift.
He shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone;
The noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone;
The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes,
And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise,
And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room,
And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom,
And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,—
But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea.
Don John calling through the blast and the eclipse
Crying with the trumpet, with the trumpet of his lips,
Trumpet that sayeth ha![/i]
****Domino gloria!
Don John of Austria
Is shouting to the ships.
King Philip's in his closet with the Fleece about his neck
(Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.)
The walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin,
And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in.
He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon,
He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon,
And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey
Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day,
And death is in the phial and the end of noble work,
But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk.
Don John's hunting, and his hounds have bayed—
Booms away past Italy the rumour of his raid.
Gun upon gun, ha! ha!
Gun upon gun, hurrah!
Don John of Austria
Has loosed the cannonade.
The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke,
(Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.)
The hidden room in man's house where God sits all the year,
The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.
He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea
The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery;
They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark,
They veil the plumèd lions on the galleys of St. Mark;
And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs,
And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs,
Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines
Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines.
They are lost like slaves that sweat, and in the skies of morning hung
The stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young.
They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on
Before the high Kings' horses in the granite of Babylon.
And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell
Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell,
And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign—
(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,
Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,
Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,
Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea
White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.
Vivat Hispania!
Domino Gloria!
Don John of Austria
Has set his people free!
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.)
Fodoron.
