Catalan, Genoese German, none can tell who fought best that day; but the
Janissaries were beaten, and three thousand of their corpses cumbered the
ditch into which they were hurled by their foes; there were besides fifteen
thousand wounded in the Turkish camp.

The heart was out of that great army which had embarked to the sound of
trumpets and the blessings of the Mullahs but ten weeks before, and they
sailed away a beaten force. Mahomet II. swore to avenge his defeat, but his
days were numbered, and he died at Scutari on May 3rd, 1481, at the age of
fifty-two, and in the thirteenth year of his reign.

In the year 1499 Daoud Pasha, Admiralissimo to Bajazet, the successor to
Mahomet II., defeated Antonio Grimani the Venetian admiral in that combat
known to the Republic as "La deplorabile battaglia del Zonchio." The
populace of Venice demanded that Grimani should be instantly beheaded, but
he not only escaped their vengeance but lived to be nominated as Doge
on June 6th, 1521, at the age of eighty-seven: certainly a curious record
for an unsuccessful admiral of that date.

In 1500 was formed the "Alliance of Christian Princes" at the initiative of
the Borgia Pope Alexander VII. Louis XII., King of France, and Ferdinand V.
of Spain announced their adherence to this effort against the Turk, and
Pierre D'Aubusson, the veteran Grand Master of the Knights of Saint John,
was nominated as Captain-General of the Christian armies. For the purposes
of this war the admiral of the Papal galleys in the Mediterranean, Lodovico
del Mosca, purchased from Ferdinand, King of Naples, all his artillery, of
which a description is given by the Padre Alberto Guglielmotti, a Dominican
friar, author of a work entitled, "La Guerra dei Pirati e la Marina
Pontifica dal 1500 al 1560 A.D." "There were thirty-six great bombards,
with eighty carts pertaining to them; some drawn by horses, some drawn by