Lepanto, the Battle that Saved the West from Islam!

On October 7, 1571, the most important sea battle in the history of Western Civilization was fought near the mouth of what is today called the Gulf of Patras, then the Gulf of Lepanto. On one side were the war galleys of the Holy League and on the other, those of the Ottoman Turks, rowed by tens of thousands of Christian galley slaves. Although the battle decided the future of Europe, few Europeans, and even fewer European Americans, know the story, much less how close Western Europe came to suffering an Islamic conquest.

Sultan Selim II gathered together an enormous armada of 280 ships with which to invade Italy, a long held Ottoman dream seemed within reach —a dream toasted to before every military campaign— the dream of conquering Rome and transforming St. Peter’s into a mosque.

Thanks to the intervention of the Blessed Mother, [Don John handed each of his men a rosary on the eve of battle], when the smoke cleared, it was the Ottoman fleet that lay on the ocean’s bottom. The Ottoman Empire’s imperialistic ambitions were ruined, and the West was saved from the threat of Islam.

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Lepanto: the Battle that Saved the West
by Christopher Check