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Worth a Second Look Victory of the West: The Story of the Battle of Lepanto. By Niccolò Capponi. New York: Pan Macmillan, 2006. ISBN 1-4050-4588-4. Maps. Illustrations. Tables. Glossary. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xxxvi, 411. $27.50.
Niccolò Capponi has written an excellent book on the battle of Lepanto, the last major naval combat of rowing fleets in the Mediterranean, fought on October 7, 1571, in the Gulf of Patras between the Ottomans and the alliance of Christian powers, known as the Holy League, who aimed at recapturing Cyprus, conquered by the Ottomans the previous year. The fight-called the battle of Curzolaris by contemporaneous Venetians and Niccolò Capponi, since it took place some forty nautical miles west of Lepanto around the Curzolaris islands-ended with the stunning victory of the Holy League fleet and the almost total destruction of the Ottoman navy. However, it seemed as though Lepanto had altered the balance of power in the Mediterranean little. By the spring of 1572, the Ottomans had built 134 new vessels, complete with artillery, and had a navy of some 250 galleys and several smaller ships at their disposal. They continued to hold Cyprus, and the Holy League collapsed as Venice concluded a treaty with the Ottomans in March 1573 and as Spanish resources were redirected to meet new challenges in the Netherlands. Yet, Niccolò Capponi, following earlier historians (notably Fernand Braudel), is right to underline that the battle stopped further Ottoman expansion in the Mediterranean, and that the Ottomans' "rebuilt fleet was unable to dominate the Mediterranean as before" (p. 320), despite their recapture of Tunis in 1574.
The bulk of Capponi's monograph (pp. 1-253, 287-320) deals with the diplomatic and military context of the confrontation, the intricacies of the Christian alliance, the Cyprus war, and the aftermath of the combat, whereas the battle gets only some 30 pages (pp. 253-86). While the strength of this book is...