Victory of the West

On 7 October 1571, on the gulf between mainland Greece and the Peloponnese, the fleets of the Ottoman Empire and the Christian Holy League met in a battle that would prove the crux of that century's war between Christianity and Islam. No naval battle until Jutland in 1916 - not even Trafalgar - involved such numerous forces, and in no previous encounter with the Ottomans had the Christians met with success. In this compelling piece of narrative history, Niccolo Capponi takes a fresh look at the last great, bloody, and crucial showdown between oared fighting galleys, which - like the legendary battles of Salamis, Waterloo and Stalingrad - halted the progress of a force that had hitherto seemed unstoppable.