They thought they were cargo ships, it was their last mistake | Battle of Lepanto

Описание: At dawn on the seventh of October in the year fifteen seventy-one, the waters off Greece were blue and deep.

By noon they were a thick soup of splintered wood, floating turbans, and blood.

So much blood that the waves broke red against the hulls of the galleys. It was a tectonic clash. Islam against Christendom,

the Ottoman Empire against a desperate and fragile alliance called the Holy League.

Two hundred Christian galleys against nearly three hundred Turkish ships. If the Christian line breaks today, there will be no tomorrow for Rome,

nor for Venice, nor for Vienna. The Mediterranean will become an Ottoman lake and the cross will be torn from the domes of Europe.

But before the first cannon fires, before the water boils from the artillery,

one must understand why these men are here ready to kill each other with a ferocity the ancient world had never seen.

The rage that drives the Christian rowers does not come from patriotism, it comes from terror. And that terror has a name, Famagusta.

Months before this dawn, on the island of Cyprus, the Venetian fortress of Famagusta fell after a brutal siege.

The Venetians surrendered under the promise of safe passage, a code of military honor respected for centuries.

But the Ottoman commander Lala Mustafa wanted no honor, he wanted to send a message. The Venetian commander Marcantonio Bragadin was mutilated.

They cut off his ears and nose while he was still alive. But that was not enough to quench the hatred. They flayed him alive,