Today marks the anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto, a fight between the allied Spanish and Italian navies and the Ottoman Empire. It took place in 1571, at the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth in Greece, and was the last great naval battle fought by oared galleys.

The battle was a surprise upset — the Ottoman fleet was bigger, they were operating in home waters, they had skilled crews and commanders, and for the past three centuries nothing but Tamerlane could stop them; while the fleet of the Holy League suffered from divided leadership and internal rivalries. But on the day, the combined Catholic fleet outmaneuvered and outfought the Turks, and the result electrified all Europe.

Once the unstoppable Ottomans proved stoppable, the Christian Europeans went back to fighting and betraying each other for a century, until the next terrifying assault from the Turks brought them together — briefly — at the Siege of Vienna.

Fred Saberhagen used the battle as the model for his short story “Stone Place” (part of his “Berserker” series), and G.K. Chesterton wrote one of his best poems about it.