Blood Red Sea

EPILOGUE

The Battle of Lepanto was hailed by Cervantes himself as the greatest event in the history of the world. Certainly it seemed to win a general peace, though with occasional skirmishes, and establish the bounds between the Christian world and the Muslim for generations.

Yet there followed some strange occurrences.

Only six months later, in a small back room in a house in Algiers, Kara Hodja was gunned down by two mysterious, hulking masked men carrying four pistols apiece. The assassins were never caught.

The captured banner of the knights in Hagia Sophia vanished from under the very noses of the Turks, and reappeared in the Chapel of St John in Valletta, Malta, only a few weeks later.

Most astounding of all, the stuffed skin of the gallant Marc’antonio Bragadino, still cruelly displayed in the Topkapi Palace, also disappeared. Such a feat seemed almost impossible, and the Ottoman court wrote long letters demanding to know who was responsible.

No Christian prince or prelate could advise on it.

But in 1572, the last mortal remains of Marc’antonio Bragadino were buried with full honours in the magnificent Basilica of San Giovanni e Paolo, in Venice, where they remain to this day.

Pope Pius died in 1572.

Don John enjoyed his hour of fame and had many more beautiful mistresses, including Diana di Falangola, Zenobia Saratosia and Ana de Toledo. There were plans for him to marry Mary, Queen of Scots, or even an invasion to make him King of Ireland. They came to nothing.

His brother Philip sent him to Flanders to fight the unwinnable war there against the Protestant rebels. He died of typhoid in 1578, only seven years after his great victory of Lepanto, aged just thirty-one. In his last year he wrote, ‘I spend my time building castles in the air but in the end, my castles and I alike blow away in the wind.’

His brother Philip lived on until 1598, racked with gout and suffocated by asthma.

Sebastiano Veniero recovered from his severe wounds, and in 1577 was given the ultimate accolade of being made Doge of Venice. It is said that in his very last years he mellowed a little. He now rests in the Basilica of San Giovanni e Paolo, along with Bragadino.

Andrea Doria lived on until 1606. He was suspected by some of cowardice at Lepanto for not having engaged more closely. But those who had been there knew the truth.

Don Álvaro de Bazán, Marqués de Santa Cruz, died in February 1588. His death was fortuitous for the English, for this brilliant commander had been leading the Spanish Armada. He was replaced by the markedly less capable Duke of Medina Sidonia. Had Santa Cruz remained in command, English history might have been very different.

Miguel de Cervantes continued for a time to seek chivalrous adventure. He was captured by Muslim corsairs in 1575 and spent five years as a slave in Algiers. Later he spent too much money on a fine suit of armour, went bankrupt and was imprisoned. But by the time of his death in 1616, he had written his immortal Don Quixote — the most hilarious yet poignant mockery of chivalric ideals ever written.

Sultan Selim II, ‘the Sot’, died in 1574. It is said that he was drunk at the time, and slipped over in his bathhouse.

He was succeeded by the peace-loving Murat III, who agonized for eighteen hours before giving the traditional Ottoman order for all his brothers to be strangled by deaf mutes with silken ropes. He spent most of his reign in quiet seclusion in the provincial town of Manisa, where he particularly loved the teachings of a gentle Sufi mystic, who soothingly interpreted the Sultan’s nightmares and dreams.

Mehmet Sokollu, Grand Vizier, died in 1579. Many said that his death was arranged by his old enemy, Lala Mustafa Pasha, the butcher of Famagusta.

Joseph Nassi also died in 1579, and all his great wealth was seized by the Sublime Porte for its own use, a seizure also masterminded by Lala Mustafa.

In 1580, Lala Mustafa himself became Grand Vizier, but died after only four months in office.

As recently as 1965, Pope Paul VI returned the captured Ottoman banners of Lepanto to Turkey. In the naval museum in Istanbul can still be seen the standard of Ali Pasha Muezzinzade. Not all banners have been returned. More still hang in the church of Santo Stefano in Pisa.

Of the two Knights of St John, known as Stanley and Smith. nothing was ever certain. But in the harbourside taverns of the Mediterranean, from Cadiz to Aleppo, from Marseilles to Algiers, rumours abounded. Even in the warlike valleys of the Caucasus, it was said, and upon the frozen plains of Muscovy where the Tatar horsemen still threatened, in the burning Syrian desert, upon the emerald coast of Coromandel, and far away into the snow-capped mountains of Central Asia, their names and reputations were not unknown. .