On the Gulf of Patras, over 200 galleys of the Christian Holy League—Spain, Venice, and the Papacy—engaged the Ottoman fleet in the last major battle fought primarily with rowed vessels. The League sank or captured most of the Ottoman fleet, killing an estimated 20,000 Turks. Miguel de Cervantes, later author of Don Quixote, lost the use of his left hand in the fighting.
The battle pitted roughly 212 Christian galleys against 251 Ottoman ships in a chaotic, close-quarters melee of boarding actions and cannon fire that lasted less than five hours. Don Juan of Austria, the illegitimate half-brother of King Philip II of Spain, commanded the Holy League fleet, personally leading the center squadron directly at the Ottoman flagship.
The carnage was staggering even by the standards of the age: roughly 20,000 Ottoman sailors and soldiers died, along with perhaps 7,500 Christians, in a few hours of fighting. Freed Christian galley slaves who had been chained to Ottoman oars turned on their captors mid-battle. Among the wounded was a 24-year-old Spanish infantryman named Miguel de Cervantes, who took two gunshot wounds to the chest and a third that permanently maimed his left hand—he would later boast of the scars as the greatest honor of his life.
Though the Ottomans rebuilt their fleet within a year, Lepanto shattered the myth of Ottoman naval invincibility and marked the last time galley fleets decided a major European war. Painters from Titian to Veronese commemorated it, and Pope Pius V credited the Virgin Mary with the victory, instituting the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary.