Lepanto tactics

[dandan_noodles]

So reading about the battle of Lepanto, one of the things that stood out to me was the importance of reserves; the Christians were able to hold off the Ottoman left's attempted envelopment long enough for their right to return to action thanks to their reserve. By contrast, the Ottomans had pre-committed their reserve to the center, which was eventually just overpowered by John of Austria's squadron.

The Ottomans wanted the battle to descend into a chaotic pell-mell, instead of a direct head on clash, where their superior speed and maneuverability would even the odds against the Christians' weight and firepower. They tried to envelop the Christian inshore flank with their shallower drafts, forcing the Venetians to wheel into position, to the point of backwatering.

With this in mind, would they have been better off keeping their reserve in reserve to exploit the gap this opened in the Christian line, allowing them to attack the now open right of the inshore squadron and unfixed left of the Center? Admittedly, it's a gamble based on the Ottoman center holding the Christians back long enough for the wings to make their presence felt, but I think it's more likely to succeed than throwing the light galiots and fustas into a head-on fight with the Christian center.

Am I totally misreading the tactics here, or did the Ottomans have good chance of winning this?

edit: WHOOPS, thought i was in pre-1900, can this get moved?

 

[SwampTiger]

The tactics employed by both sides were essentially boarding tactics. The Ottomans used the reserve to reinforce the infantry battle in the center. In hindsight, the Ottoman reserve would have been better used to reinforce the right where the Venetians would have been trapped between two forces. The Venetians had pushed the Ottoman right wing against the shore. An attack on the Venetian rear was a better option.

 

[dandan_noodles]

The tactics employed by both sides were essentially boarding tactics. The Ottomans used the reserve to reinforce the infantry battle in the center. In hindsight, the Ottoman reserve would have been better used to reinforce the right where the Venetians would have been trapped between two forces. The Venetians had pushed the Ottoman right wing against the shore. An attack on the Venetian rear was a better option.

The Christian reserve would probably get deployed to counter the Ottomans if they deploy theirs against the Christian left; this means that they wouldn't have reserves to counter the Ottoman left when it shoots the gap between Doria's squadron on the right and John of Austria's center. From there, it's a question of if A: this can prevent the Christians from overpowering the Ottoman center, weaker than OTL and B: if Doria getting his wing back into the fight can counter the Ottoman left even once it's attacked the Christian center from the flank.

Could the Ottomans still win the battle if their center was completely crushed? Theirs were supposedly the more maneuverable ships, so they could quite possibly close in on the flanks of the Christian center and engage that squadron in a chaotic melee, but it looks like the Christians have the tools to at least neutralize the Ottomans' tools long enough for a big victory in the center.

 

[LordKalvan]

The winning strategy would have been to refuse battle.
The season was already quite advanced, and the Christian navies would have been forced to abandon the blockade. Mehmet Ali Pasha wanted a victory for personal and political reasons, and rolled the dice, but if the Ottoman fleet had been kept intact (and here I refer to the crews and the soldiers trained to fight in naval battles), the next year things might have been very different: for one thing, neither Spain nor Venice would have considered extending the Holy League, and most likely Venice would have sued for peace with the Ottomans; for another, the defeat at Lepanto, coming just a few years after the disaster of Malta, was the last Ottoman attempt to contest the domination of central and western Mediterranean.
As things were, the likelihood of an Ottoman victory at Lepanto is not very high. The Christian galleys were in general higher and heavier than the Ottoman ones, the Venetian galeasses performed even better than it was expected and the Spanish tercio of Sardinia showed the impact of trained arquebusiers in a naval battle.