Product Description

In the morning of 7 October 1571, at the mouth of the gulf between mainland Greece and the Peloponnese, the fleets of the Ottoman Empire and the Holy League clashed in the last great battle between oared fighting ships. By four o'clock that afternoon the sea was red with blood. The Muslims lost 230 out of their 277 warships and about 20,000 men. It was the first time in over a century that Christians had successfully taken the offensive against them. In this important new history, Hugh Bicheno describes the clash of cultures that led to one of the greatest turning-point battles in history. 'As a narrative of the battle, Crescent and Cross is unlikely to be surpassed. Hugh Bicheno brings to his subject not only deep knowledge, but also an enviable ability to convey both the glamour and horror of sixteenth-century war' John Adamson, Literary Review

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #583730 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

About the Author
Hugh Bicheno has had careers as an academic, an intelligence officer and a freelance kidnap and ransom negotiator in South America. He now devotes himself to writing about men at war. His previous books include volumes on the battles of Midway and Gettysburg in Richard Holmes's FIELDS OF BATTLES series.

Customer Reviews

Old mistakes repeated.
In order to write a new, acceptable book on Lepanto an author should do something more than distillate facts and ideas from older works. Unfortunately this is exactly what Mr. Bicheno did and, more unfortunately, he was not able to choose the better sources in the vast bibliography he lists.
Deprived of any new archival research, this book is historically misleading and completely useless for the serious scholar.

Dreadful, absolutely dreadful...
A truly awful book - poorly researched and dreadfully written. The author is clearly out of depth in trying to understand his subject and merely manages to confuse and contradict himself throughout the book.

The chapter dealing with the art of Lepanto is obviously a 'filler' and is, unbelievably, even more turgid and facile than the rest of the book.

To anyone looking for a comprehensive account of the battle, the background, the men, the tactics and vessels employed - don't bother with this book.

It is truly, truly dreadful.

Fine overview of major campaign
Historically, Lepanto holds a similar position to Salamis and Plataea, Waterloo, Stalingrad and Midway; in other words, a victory which prevented a seemingly overwhelming force from sweeping all before it. It is the sea equivalent of the Relief of the Siege of Vienna, in that, from that day onwards, the Ottoman threat was never quite perceived at the same level. There were still scares for the next 200 years, but, from then on, the Ottoman Empire could be seen as being mortal.

The author has used the same methods as he used in his previous books on Gettysburg and Midway; first of all assess the opposing forces and their capabilities, and then go back to original sources to see what the combatants on either side thought at any given time, as far as is possible over 430 years later.

Obviously, the battle itself cannot be treated as being in a "vacuum", and the author spends much of the book in detailing the background to the conflict between Christianity and Islam, and, thereby "setting the scene" for the climactic battle between the huge galley fleets.

The battle itself is brilliantly described, and, as with the author's previous books, he greatly helps his style of writing by utilising appendices full of relevant , and, at times almost overwhelming, information on the contending fleets.

It is many years since a full-scale campaign and battle history of what was considered in the 16th Century to be an earth-shattering event has been written in English, and it is a pleasure to read such a book which should remain a prime source on the subject.