By JAMES BARESEL
Lepanto 1571: The Madonna’s Victory by Nic Fields, Pen and Sword, 2020.
Readers of the most informative history books are often forced to discriminate between the facts they contain and their authors’ attitudes toward religious, moral, and political matters. Lepanto is among such books. Its author, Nic Fields, is a former Royal Marine and a professor of history and archaeology. His ability to research and understand most of the military and nautical facets of a sixteenth-century naval campaign is superb. His presentation is engaging. His book also makes clear that his beliefs about religion are not in accord with Catholic teaching.
That might be easy enough to ignore. So might inaccuracies in Fields’ digressions into matters ranging from the peripheral to the irrelevant. Claiming St. Pius V wanted French Protestants “exterminated” might be the most serious error, but at least that Pope’s character and goals are topical. Repeating the disproved “black legend” of Mary Queen of Scots exemplifies a penchant for wandering (if often interesting) tangents.
What is harder for the reader to overlook is a consequence of the paradoxical fact that Fields’ thorough grasp of the Lepanto campaign’s details is matched by his incomprehension of grand strategy. One of the views resulting from that incomprehension can cause readers to be dismissive of a book that contains a wealth of valuable information. That one incorrect view — when combined with Fields’ beliefs and his tangential errors — can give the impression of an exercise in discreditable “debunking.”
Fields’ error lies in believing that the Holy League fleet’s overwhelming success at Lepanto had little impact on the larger struggle of which it was a part, and was a mere “barren victory.” His grounds for this view are superficially plausible, so much so that his mistake can also too easily become accepted by readers impressed with his grasp of most of the campaign’s aspects.
Fields’ first argument is the fact that no transfer of territory from Ottoman to Holy League control resulted. But reconquest — though desirable — was not the basic objective of the Holy League fleet. The fleet was assembled for defensive purposes — relieving the besieged city of Famagusta. Famagusta’s fall changed the objective to halting further Ottoman expansion. Smashing the Ottoman fleet secured that objective. But no reconquest was made. In that sense the battle “changed nothing.” It prevented the Ottomans from “changing something” through expansion.
It is also true, as Fields stresses, that the Ottomans quickly assembled a new fleet of comparable size to the one virtually annihilated at Lepanto. But that had necessitated scraping together whatever resources could more or less be spared. Being able to build a new fleet wasn’t the same as being able to afford losing it. And while quantity was replaced, quality was not. The new ships were hastily constructed from inferior materials. Their crews were inexperienced. The expert archers on whom Ottoman fleets depended were in even shorter supply (while European gunners were easily trained and replaced).
The new fleet’s purpose was therefore defensive — presenting enough of a threat to make the Holy League fleet cautious. Fighting had to be a last resort for a fleet that survived only by avoiding battle.
Such purely numerical rebuilding is common among those decisively defeated. Almost as soon as Napoleon’s Grand Army had been destroyed in Russia, hastily trained conscripts replaced the hard-fighting veterans who had been lost. The Battle of Britain didn’t have sustained impact on the Luftwaffe’s size. It prevented German air superiority, diverted German resources to rebuilding, and left the Royal Air Force with a significantly higher proportion of its best pilots.
Lepanto didn’t stop the Ottomans from creating a stalemate in the Mediterranean. But after centuries of steady expansion through Mediterranean naval offensives, they were never again to launch another. Soon their naval forces were rendered obsolete by new European technology. Fields recognizes the significance of that change without realizing how Lepanto bought time for it.
Yet if there is much the reader must filter through in Lepanto, there is also much of considerable value. The construction and functioning of the galleys, daily life on them and in armies, and the organization, weapons, and tactics of the soldiers are all fully examined. So are the fighting capacities of the countries involved in the conflict. Fields’ account of the campaign and battle is detailed and compelling. His explanation of how the Holy League and the battle fit into the international politics of the age provides a good broad overview despite the sort of errors of detail already mentioned. He even includes some interesting facts about how the battle impacted European art and literature.
Provided one is neither too critical nor too credulous, Lepanto is an excellent read.
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