"Lepanto" is not an easy read, but the story it tells about the Battle of Lepanto is important:



In 1571, the Christian west was in disarray. Islam was on the march, unstoppable, reclaiming and expanding the black hand of its domination.

A mighty fleet of 250 slave galleys was on its way to further conquest in the west. The rulers and noblemen of Europe could not and would not unite; not even the Pope.

But, there was the bastard half brother of King Philip of Spain, about whom this poem is written.

He raised and army, marched it to the sea, and with 200 galleys (and 25 galleases: super-galleys) sailed from Sicily to take on the superior Islamic fleet of the Ottoman Empire off the coast of Lepanto.

It was a decisive victory for the Christian fleet; and tens of thousands of Christian galley slaves were freed, and the expansion of Islam to the west was stopped butt-cold.

The story is memorable because of one 18-year-old participant.
This young man was ordered below deck due to being ill. But, when the battle broke out, he joined in the fighting. He lost his left hand to a cannon ball in the battle.

He continued fighting against Islam, and was eventually captured. As his family couldn't raise the ransom for him, he was kept alive by writing ransom letters for other prisoners.
Twice he tried to escape, and went unpunished by his Islamic captors due to the nobility and honesty of his character. Eventually he was liberated.

He went on to write a famous novel, from which he received perhaps a pittance, a novel which was plagiarized and sold very well in other countries than his native Spain.
He had to take a job as a tax collector, but wasn't very good at taking funds from his neighbors. In those days, a tax collector had to make up any unpaid taxes out of his own pocket. The impoverished no-longer-young man found himself in debtor's prison for this.

He spent the waning days of his life in poverty supporting his mother and sister...

But Miguel Cervantes gave the world "Don Quixote de la Mancha". Just as Don John of Austria (indirectly, by saving the west from Islam) gave us the United States of America, which, in spite of Obama's vile lies, could not have been created under any Islamic culture.