"Third, Lepanto showed the Christian universe, mired in internal political squabbles, that diversity was not detrimental to its potential world leadership." I'

"Third, Lepanto showed the Christian universe, mired in internal political squabbles, that diversity was not detrimental to its potential world leadership." I'm not sure about that. The Christian coalition (Venice, Spain, and the Roman Catholic Church (Note: this is during the Reformation)) had a history of backstabbing and repeatedly fell apart, including the year before when they might have been in a position to prevent the fall of Cyprus. In fact, as I understand it, the reason the battle of Lepanto occurred so late in the year was because the Coalition couldn't get their fleets together any earlier---which meant that even if they wanted to follow up, they could not until the next year. "The economic damage of galley warfare had been considerable. Philip defaulted on his debts in 1575; the tax gradient in the Ottoman Empire rose. Lepanto revealed the first cracks in its system and signalled the start of a long, slow decline." Got a bit of a problem with that, too. The economic damage of galley warfare was a drop in the bucket (for Spain and the Ottoman Empire; the loss of Cyprus was another is a list of major costs to Venice). I can't really speak to the Ottomans, but Spain was pretty near broke to start with, even with the revenues from the New World; Philip II wasn't getting his cut of the revenues due to corruption and those very revenues had caused hideous inflation. On the other hand, the Battle of Lepanto, along with the defeat of the Spanish Armada by the English, did kind of put an exclamation point on the end of the power of galleys and the beginning of the age of sail.