The day on which the famous Battle of Lepanto took place near the Curzolari Islands, located between Cephalonia and the mouth of the Gulf of Lepanto. The order of battle of the Christian League was defined as follows: the left wing would be commanded by the Venetian Provveditore Generale Agostino Barbarigo, the right wing by the Genoese Admiral Gianandrea Doria. The centre galleys will take their places with John of Austria as nominal Commander of the League and the two Supreme Commanders: for the Pontificals Marcantonio Colonna and for the Venetians Sebastiano Venier. In the rearguard, the Marquis of Santa Cruz. A mile ahead of the line-up were the six Venetian galleys, veritable floating fortresses, each armed with twenty-two cannons and three hundred arquebusiers. The three galleys of Malta will be placed in the front row of the line-up, ahead of all by a very ancient privilege. The fleet will consist of 208 galleys in all, of which 106 Venetian, 90 Spanish, 12 Papal, plus the six Venetian galleys mentioned above. The Turkish fleet, on the other hand, commanded by Ali Pasha, flanked by Sirdar Pertev Pasha, Berilerbey of Algiers Euldj Ali and a group of pirate admirals, seems to have numbered 230 galleys plus 70 smaller ships, with 90,000 men and 750 pieces of artillery on board. The battle was repeatedly described as a horrendous carnage that saw the severing of Ali Pasha's head after his death, the heroic death of Proveditor General Barbarigo and the horrific spectacle of the sea covered in blood, corpses and broken oars. The defeat suffered by the Turks was horrendous: 210 ships captured, burnt or sunk; about 30,000 dead against the 8,000 on the Christian side, of which about two-thirds were Venetians (the figures are approximate as there is a certain disparity between historians on the battle). At the end of the clash, Don Giovanni d'Austria, General Commander of the Christian Army, embraced Sebastiano Venier, Commander of the Venetians, telling him: ‘We have well seen what the Venetians have done, who have fought miraculously’. Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi wrote: ‘If Venice was not, the horses of the Turks would have eaten oats over the altars of Christ’.

History of Venice