The head of Ali was struck off by a Spanish soldier, the banner of
the Moslems was replaced by the flag of the Cross, the head of Ali on a
pike being exhibited in derision above it. The conquerors seem to have seen
no incongruity in this performance. The lowering of the sacred standard of
the Capitan-Basha had a disheartening effect upon the Turks; they knew by
this that their Commander-in-Chief was dead and his ship captured, the
result being that the resistance of the Ottomans began to weaken. Then
thirty galleys took to flight from the neighbourhood of the Christian
flagship; so hotly were they pursued that they ran on shore, the crews
swimming or wading to the beach and making off inland.
On the right of the Christian line things had not been going so
propitiously for them. Here Occhiali had managed, by his apparently
persistent attempts to outflank John Andrea Doria, to decoy that commander
away from his supports and from the main body of the Christians. This
tactical manoeuvre of the corsair was successful; having drawn off some
fifteen of the Christian galleys, he suddenly flung the whole of his
greatly superior force into the gap and surrounded them. These galleys were
Spanish, Venetian, and Maltese, and, although they offered a most vigorous
resistance, they were mostly destroyed or captured. Doria, in spite of all
his efforts, was on this day both outgeneralled and outfought: the
Sea-wolves, under their grim leader, manoeuvring for position, obtaining
it, and then falling like a thunderbolt on the foe.
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