Battle of Lepanto 1571
Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
Key facts
| Year | 1571 | Wikidata P585 (point in time) |
|---|---|---|
| Era | Early modern (1500–1799) | derived from year |
| Nearest landmass | At sea (nearest continent: Europe) | Natural Earth (modern borders) |
| Continent | Europe | Natural Earth |
| War / conflict | Ottoman–Spanish War, Ottoman–Venetian War of 1570–1573 | Wikidata P361 |
| Participants | Duchy of Parma and Piacenza, Duchy of Savoy, Grand Duchy of Tuscany, Hispanic Monarchy, Holy League, Knights Hospitaller, Ottoman Empire, Papal States, Regency of Algiers, Republic of Genoa, Republic of Venice | Wikidata P710 |
| Coordinates | 38.2000, 21.3000 | Wikidata P625 |
About the battle
The Battle of Lepanto was a naval engagement that took place on 7 October 1571 when a fleet of the Holy League, a coalition of Catholic states arranged by Pope Pius V and led by the navies of the Spanish Empire and the Republic of Venice, inflicted a major defeat on the fleet of the Ottoman Empire in the Gulf of Patras. The Ottoman forces were sailing westward from their naval station in Lepanto (the Venetian name of ancient Naupactus – Greek Ναύπακτος, Turkish İnebahtı) when they met the fleet of the Holy League which was sailing east from Messina, Sicily and used Kefalonia as its launching point.
Lepanto marks the last major engagement in the Western world to be fought almost entirely between rowing vessels, namely the galleys and galleasses, which were the direct descendants of ancient trireme warships. The battle was in essence an "infantry battle on floating platforms". It was the largest naval battle in Western history since classical antiquity, involving more than 450 warships. Over the following decades, the increasing importance of the galleon would displace the galley as the major warship of its era, marking the beginning of the "Age of Sail".
The victory of the Holy League is of great importance in the history of Europe and of the Ottoman Empire, with the Ottoman fleet almost completely destroyed.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Battle of Lepanto (revision 1380834796), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; shortened by selecting paragraphs and trimming at a sentence boundary; formatting and citations removed. No text added.
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Other battles of the Ottoman–Spanish War
- Battle of Formentera 1529
- Siege of Coron (1533–1534) 1534
- Conquest of Tunis (1535) 1535
- Siege of Castelnuovo 1539
- Battle of Alborán 1540
- Capture of Mahdia (1550) 1550
- Siege of Oran (1556) 1556
- Battle of Djerba 1560
- Sieges of Oran and Mers El Kébir 1563
- Conquest of Tunis (1574) 1574
All 11 battles of the Ottoman–Spanish War →
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