Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/361

Rh CERVANTES 349 bears witness. The issue was highly honourable to the allied arms The victory at Lepanto, though barren of results, and spoilt by the contentions among the Christian leaders, broke the spell of Turkish invincibility at sea, and is to be reckoned among the most glorious feats of arms ever performed by Spain when at the zenith of her greatness. In this battle, to the remembrance of which he ever fondly clung, which he loved to speak of as the proudest event of his life, Cervantes was severely wounded receiving two gun-shot wounds in the chest and one in the ictt hand, which was maimed and rendered useless &quot; for the greater glory of the right,&quot; as its owner said, holding this defect ever after to be his greatest ornament. Lepanto was to Spain what Salamis was to Athens. All Europe rang with the fame of &quot; the man uent from God whose name was John,&quot; accord ing to the fervent exclamation of the grateful Pope when he heard the news of the victory; and the exploits of Doria, Colonna, and Sauta Cruz were on all men s tongues. But while generals and admirals are now forgotten, it is a striking evidence of the power of genius to override even the traditions of patriotism and of warlike glory that of all the memories which survive of this once renowned day, that which remains green and nourishing is of the private soldier who fought in the &quot; Marquesa,&quot; of him whom his countrymen love to designate as El Manco de Lepanto. It would be absurd to attribute to the single arm of Miguel de Cervantes any appreciable share in the event of that day, but making all allowances for the partiality of his biographers, there can be no reason to doubt that Cervantes did earn a very extraordinary amount of renown for his behaviour in the battle. As a private soldier he was not debarred, according to the fashion of the times, from receiving from his superiors those marks of consideration due to men of good birth and breeding ; yet the extra ordinary favours bestowed on him by Don John and the other leaders, the letters of credit which they gave him on his return to Spain, the numerous references to him by his contemporaries, and the influence he afterwards exercised among his fellow-captives at Algiers, are sufficient to prove that at this early period of his life Cervantes had attained to much distinction over and above what he had won as a man of letters. After the battle of Lepanto the lateness of the season compelled Don John to return to Sicily, leaving the Turks leisure to recover from their losses and to recruit their strength. The wounded were tended at Messina, among whom Cervantes was visited in the hospital by Don John in person, receiving upon his recovery a special increase of pay to the amount of three crowns a month. From the company of Moncada our soldier was now transferred to that of Don Ponce de Leon, in the Tfrcio de Fiijueroa, the most distinguished of all the Spanish regiments of that period of that famous infantry which sustained the Spanish dominion over half Europe, making, in the words of the chronicler, &quot; the earth tremble with their mus kets.&quot; The further enterprizes of the League at sea were checked by the growing dissensions between Spain and Venice, and also by the quarrel now on foot between the former nation and its old rival France. The jealousies between the .confederate princes extended to their com manders, and it was in vain that Don John urged upon his allies the necessity of striking another blow at the Turk Service before he had time to repair his shattered forces. It was against the no t un til the 9th of August 1572, that the Christian fleet again set sail for the scene of its great exploit of the year previous. In this second campaign, through the supine- ness of the leaders, perhaps from some incapacity of the generalissimo, scarcely fitted by age or force of character to control so vast and incongruous a host, but chiefly from the superior skill and vigilance of the Turkish commander- in-chief, a post now held by Uluch Ali, the armada did nothing more than make a feeble demonstration against the enemy s fleet, which was found at anchor in Navarino Bay. Cervantes, who has given a minute account of this inglorious affair in his story of the captive in Don Quixote, served in this expedition in the squadron commanded by Antonio Colonna. Returning to Messina to winter, the armadu was next year dispersed in consequence of the dissolution of the Holy League, the Venetians having concluded a separate peace with the Turks. In 1573 Cervantes took part in the expedition of Don John against Tunis and in the capture of the Goleta his wounds being still unhealed, as we learn from his letter to Mateo Vasquez. That winter he was in. garrison in Sardinia, and in the next spring in Lombardy, being ordered to Messina in August 1574, and thence to Naples. On the 15th of June 1575 he obtained leave of the viceroy, the Duke de Sesa, to visit Spain, and thus ended the first portion of his military career, with small profit but with much honour. During his five years active service by land and sea, however, Cervantes had acquired that knowledge of men and life which was so useful to him in after years. He had visited the most famous cities of Italy, and had stored his mind with impressions of her art and literary culture, traces of which are to be found in all his writings, even to the extent of making him liable to the charge of introducing Italian idioms into his style. Of his intercourse with Italian men of letters there is no evidence, though his works furnish abundant testimony of his familiarity with the best models of Italian literature. That he had won the respect and esteem of his commanders as a good soldier is proved by the highly flattering letters which he received from Don John, re commending him to the king for promotion as a man of singular merit and of great services ; also from the viceroy of Naples, speaking of him as a worthy but unfortunate soldier who, &quot; by his noble virtue and temper, had secured the good will of his comrades and officers.&quot; Furnished with these letters, which in the event were to prove to him so fatal a possession, Cervantes, with his brother Rodrigo, embarked at Naples in the galley &quot; El Sol.&quot; On the 26th of September, when off the coast of Minorca, his vessel fell in with a squadron of Algerine cruizers under the command of the dreaded pirate captain, Arnaut Mami. Attacked by three of the enemy s ships, the Spanish galley, after an obstinate resistance, in which Cervantes bore a conspicuous part, was forced to surrender Capture to overwhelming odds, and was brought in a prize to by the Algiers. On the division of the prisoners Cervantes fell to A1 g ena e the lot of Deli Mami, a Greek renegade, noted for his ferocity and greed among the Algeriues. The letters of Don John and the viceroy of Naples found on this Spanish soldier served but to mislead his captors as to his true rank, and therefore to stimulate their cupidity and to aggravate his sufferings. Being supposed to be able to purchase his liberty at a high price, Cervantes was guarded with special care, and that he might be induced the more quickly to ransom himself, he was loaded with chains and treated with extraordinary rigour. According to the testimony of Father Hzedo, in whose curious and impor tant work on the Topography of Algiers, published in 1612, we have the most valuable authority for this period of Cervantes s life, and who was an eye-witness of the cruelties practised in this pirates den upon the Christian slaves, the captivity of Cervantes was one of the hardest ever known in Algiers. It was borne with a courage and constancy which, had there been nothing else to make his name memorable, must have sufficed to rank Cervantes among the heroes of his age and country. No episode more romantic is contained in the books of chivalry. No adventures more stranee were encountered by any knight-