EMPIRES OF THE SEA - THE SIEGE OF MALTA, THE BATTLE OF LEPANTO

Europe has witnessed some bitter conflicts in its time, but for sheer savagery and blind religious fervour, few can match the 16th-century struggle for the mastery of the Mediterranean between the Ottoman Turks and the loose association of Christianstates sheltering under the Hapsburg flag. For nearly 60 years, between 1521 and 1580, these two implacable enemies, fired by the certainty of their spiritual calling and driven by the absolute otherness of their foes, slugged it out for strategic supremacy of the sea, matching atrocity with atrocity as they searched for the blow that would floor their opponent.