Lepanto’s outcome sealed the Moriscos’ fate by merely pausing Ottoman expansion

Evidence

What is relevant about that battle for our present purposes was that it caused the Ottoman westward advance to pause, and a pause was at that juncture enough to settle the fate of the Moriscos. The outcome of Lepanto could thus hardly have been more disastrous for the Moriscos if the Turks had lost outright. Since help of any sort was not going to come in time, events at Lepanto spelled the end for them. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1571

Categorization

• XREF: Chimes with the ‘decisive battles only validate already probable outcomes’ idea from The Defeat of the Spanish Armada — here the inverse: even without a clear defeat, the strategic pause was decisive.