to have been successfully performed. The younger Bazán earned the confidence of Philip II, by whom he was appointed in 1568 to command the galleys of Naples. This post brought him into close relations with John of Austria, when the Holy League was formed against the Turks in 1570. He was given the title of Marquis of Santa Cruz in 1569, in light of his role in the suffocation of the Morisco Revolt and previous services. The title was named after Santa Cruz de Mudela, acquired from the Crown by his father back in 1539. During the operations which preceded and followed the Battle of Lepanto (7 October 1571), Bazán was always in favor of the more energetic course. In the battle he commanded the reserve division, and his prompt energy averted a disaster when Uluj Ali, who commanded the left wing of the Turks, outmaneuvered the commander of the Christian right, Gian Andrea Doria, the nephew of his old comrade Andrea Doria, and broke the Allied line. He accompanied Don John of Austria at the taking of Tunis in the following year. When Philip II enforced his claim as heir to the crown of Portugal in 1580–1581, Santa Cruz held a naval command. But António, Prior of Crato, an illegitimate representative of the former Portuguese royal family, who conducted some popular resistance to the crowning of what was seen as a foreign king, continued to hold the islands of the Azores. António was supported by a number of French adventurers under Philip Strozzi, a Florentine exile in the service of France. Santa Cruz was sent as "Admiral of the Ocean" to drive the pretender and his friends away in 1582. Badly outnumbered, he won the Battle of Ponta Delgada off Terceira Island against a loose confederation of Portuguese, French, English and Dutch adventurers and privateers, which decided the struggle for the Azores in favor of the Spanish Habsburgs. Santa Cruz, who recognized that England presented a grave threat to Spain's empire, became a zealous advocate of war. A letter written by him to King Philip from Angra do Heroísmo in Terceira, on 9 August 1583, contains the first definite suggestion of the Spanish Armada. Santa Cruz was to have commanded the fleet. His plans, schemes and estimates occupy a conspicuous place in the documents concerning the Armada collected by Cesáreo Fernández Duro. The hesitant character of the king, and