The Holy League of 1538 was a short-lived alliance of Christian states arranged by Pope Paul III at the urging of the Republic of Venice.
In 1537 the Ottoman admiral Hayreddin Barbarossa, Pasha of Algiers, had captured the Venetian stronghold of Corfu and ravaged the coasts of Calabria. In the face of this threat Pope Paul succeeded in February 1538 in organizing the Holy League which consisted of the Papal States, the Republic of Venice, the Maltese Knights, the Spains and the Spanish ruled Naples and Sicily.
To confront Barbarossa and his roughly 120 galleys and fustas, the League assembled a fleet of 302 ships (162 galleys and 140 sailing ships) in September 1538 near Corfu. Its supreme commander was the Genoese admiral Andrea Doria, who was then in the service of Emperor Charles V.
The two fleets met on 28 September 1538 in the Battle of Preveza, and Barbarossa decisively defeated the numerically superior Christian alliance. Doria's leadership in the battle was less than vigorous and is widely believed to have been a major contributing cause to the League's defeat. His hesitation to bring his own ships into full action (he personally owned a number of them) and to sacrifice them for the good of Venice, the traditional rival of his home town of Genoa, are generally considered to explain his actions at Preveza.
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The Battle of Lepanto was a naval engagement that took place on 7 October 1571 when a fleet of the Holy League, a coalition of Catholic states arranged by Pope Pius V, inflicted a major defeat on the fleet of the Ottoman Empire in the Gulf of Patras. The Ottoman forces were sailing westward from their naval station in Lepanto when they met the fleet of the Holy League which was sailing east from Messina, Sicily.
The Battle of Preveza was a naval engagement that took place on 28 September 1538 near Preveza in the Ionian Sea in northwestern Greece between an Ottoman fleet and that of a Holy League. The battle was an Ottoman victory which occurred in the same area in the Ionian Sea as the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. It was one of the three largest sea battles that took place in the sixteenth century Mediterranean, along with the Battle of Djerba and the Battle of Lepanto.
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Hayreddin Barbarossa, also known as Hayreddin Pasha, Hızır Hayrettin Pasha, and simply Hızır Reis, was an Ottoman corsair and later admiral of the Ottoman Navy. Barbarossa's naval victories secured Ottoman dominance over the Mediterranean during the mid-16th century.
Giovanni Andrea Doria (1539–1606), also known as Gianandrea Doria, was an Italian admiral from Genoa.
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Salah Rais was the 7th King of Algiers, an Ottoman privateer and admiral. He is alternatively referred to as Sala Reis, Salih Rais, Salek Rais and Cale Arraez in several European sources, particularly in Spain, France and Italy.
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The siege of Corfu in 1537 was led by the Ottoman Emperor Suleiman the Magnificent, against the Republic of Venice-held island of Corfu. It is part of the Ottoman–Venetian War (1537–1540), one of the numerous Ottoman–Venetian Wars of the period.
The Third Ottoman Venetian War (1537–1540) was one of the Ottoman–Venetian wars which took place during the 16th century. The war arose out of the Franco-Ottoman alliance between Francis I of France and Süleyman I of the Ottoman Empire against the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. The initial plan between the two had been to jointly invade Italy, Francis through Lombardy in the North and Süleyman through Apulia to the South. However, the proposed invasion failed to take place.
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Vincenzo Cappello was a Venetian nobleman and statesman, best known as the admiral of the Venetian navy in the Battle of Preveza.