At the beginning of July Antony apparently proposed a naval battle. Instantly the suspicions of the Roman party were awakened. They cried out that Antony was evidently going back to Egypt without having won the decisive battle against Octavius on land, which would really break the enemy's power, and without paying any heed to the political problems at Rome. Such a furor was raised between the two parties that Antony abandoned his plan and made a feint toward the land battle in Epirus that the Romans wanted. Meanwhile two of his adherents, one a Roman, the other a king from Asia Minor, exasperated by the insolence of Cleopatra, deserted to Octavius.

August came and went without action or change in the situation. Meanwhile as Antony's camp had been placed in a pestilential spot for midsummer heat, he suffered great losses from disease. By this time Cleopatra was interested in nothing but a return to Egypt. Accordingly she persuaded Antony to order a naval battle without asking anybody's advice, and he set the date August 29 for the sally of his fleet. The Romans were amazed and protested, but in vain. Preparations went on in such a way as to make it clear to the observing that what Antony was planning was not so much a battle as a return to Egypt. Vessels which he did not need outside for battle he ordered burned, although such ships would usually be kept as reserves to make up losses in fighting. Moreover, he astonished the captains by ordering them to take out into action the big sails which were always left ashore before a battle. Nor did his explanation that they would be needed in pursuit satisfy them. It appeared also that he was employing trusted slaves at night to load the Egyptian galleys with all of Cleopatra's treasure. Two more Roman leaders, satisfied as to Antony's real intention, deserted to Octavius and informed him of Antony's plans.

Meanwhile a heavy storm had made it impossible to attempt the action on August 29 or several days after. On the 2d of September (31 B.C.) the sea became smooth again. Octavius and Agrippa drew out their fleet into open water, about three-quarters of a mile from the mouth of the gulf, forming line in three divisions. They waited till nearly noon before Antony's fleet began to make its expected appearance to offer battle. This also was formed in three divisions corresponding to those of their enemy. The Egyptian division of sixty ships under Cleopatra took up a safe position in the rear of the center.



There was a striking contrast in the types of ships in the opposing ranks. The galleys of Octavius were low in the water, and nimble in their handling; those of Antony were bulky and high, with five to ten banks of oars, and their natural unhandiness was made worse by a device intended to protect them against ramming. This consisted of a kind of boom of heavy timbers rigged out on all sides of the hull. In addition to the higher sides these ships supported towers and citadels built upon their decks, equipped with every form of the artillery of that day, especially catapults capable of hurling heavy stones upon the enemy's deck.

Against such formidable floating castles, the light ships of Agrippa and Octavius could adopt only skirmishing tactics. They rushed in where they could shear away the oar blades of an enemy without getting caught by the great grappling irons swung out from his decks. They kept clear of the heavy stones from the catapults through superior speed and ability to maneuver quickly, but they were unable to strike their ponderous adversaries any vital blow. On the other hand the great hulks of Antony were unable to close with them, and though the air was filled with a storm of arrows, stones and javelins, neither side was able to strike decisively at the other. As at Salamis the opposite shores were lined with the opposing armies, and every small success was hailed by shouts from a hundred thousand throats on the one side and long drawn murmurs of dismay from an equal host on the other.

In these waters a north wind springs up every afternoon—a fact that Antony and Cleopatra had counted on—and as soon as the breeze shifted the royal galley of Cleopatra spread its crimson sail and, followed by the entire Egyptian division, sailed through the lines and headed south. Antony immediately left his flagship, boarded a quinquereme and followed. This contemptible desertion of the commander in chief was not generally known in his fleet; as for the disappearance of the Egyptian squadron, it was doubtless regarded as a good riddance. The battle, therefore, went on as stubbornly as ever.

Late in the afternoon Agrippa, despairing of harming his enemy by ordinary tactics, achieved considerable success by the use of javelins wrapped in burning tow, and fire rafts that were set drifting upon the clumsy hulks which could not get out of their way. By this means a number of Antony's ships were destroyed, but the contest remained indecisive. At sunset Antony's fleet retired in some disorder to their anchorage in the gulf. Octavius attempted no pursuit but kept the sea all night, fearing a surprise attack or an attempted flight from the gulf.

Meanwhile a flying wing of Octavius's fleet had been sent in pursuit of Antony and Cleopatra, who escaped only after a rear guard action had been fought in which two of Cleopatra's ships were captured. The fugitives put ashore at Cape Taenarus, to enable Antony to send a message to his general, Canidius, ordering him to take his army through Macedonia into Asia. Then the flight was resumed to Alexandria.

On the morning of the 3d Octavius sent a message to the enemy's camp announcing the fact of Antony's desertion and calling on the fleet and army to surrender. The Roman soldiers were unwilling to believe that their commander had been guilty of desertion, and were confident that he had been summoned away on important business connected with the campaign. Their general, however, did not dare convey to them Antony's orders because they would betray the truth and provoke mutiny. Consequently he did nothing. Certain Roman senators and eastern princes saw the light and quietly went over to the camp of Octavius. Several days of inaction followed, during which the desertions continued and the rumor of Antony's flight found increasing belief. On the seventh day, Canidius, who found himself in a hopeless dilemma, also went over to Octavius. This desertion by the commander settled the rest of the force. A few scattered into Macedonia, but the great bulk of the army and all that was left of the fleet surrendered. Nineteen legions and more than ten thousand cavalry thus came over to Octavius and took service under him. This was the real victory of Actium. In the words of the Italian historian Ferrero, "it was a victory gained without fighting, and Antony was defeated in this supreme struggle, not by the valor of his adversary or by his own defective strategy or tactics, but by the hopeless inconsistency of his double-faced policy, which, while professing to be republican and Roman, was actually Egyptian and monarchical."

The story of the naval battle of Actium is a baffling problem to reconstruct on account of the wide divergence in the accounts. For instance, the actual number of ships engaged is a matter of choice between the extremes of 200 to 500 on a side. And the consequences were so important to Octavius and to Rome that the accounts were naturally adorned afterwards with the most glowing colors. Every poet who lived by the bounty of Augustus in later years naturally felt inspired to pay tribute to it in verse. But the actual naval battle seems to have been of an indecisive character. For that matter, even after the wholesale surrender of Antony's Roman army and fleet, neither Anthony nor Octavius realized the importance of what had happened. Antony had recovered from worse disasters before, and felt secure in Alexandria. Octavius at first followed up his advantage with timid and uncertain steps. Only after the way was made easy by the hasty submission of the Asiatic princes and the wave of popularity and enthusiasm that was raised in Rome by the news of the victory, did Octavius press the issue to Egypt itself. There the war came to an end with the suicide of both Antony and Cleopatra.

As in the case of the indecisive naval battle off the capes of the Chesapeake, which led directly to the surrender of Cornwallis, an action indecisive in character may be most decisive in results. Actium may not have been a pronounced naval victory but it had tremendous consequences. As at Salamis, East and West met for the supremacy of the western world, and the East was beaten back. It is not likely that the Egyptian or the Syrian would have dominated the genius of the western world for any length of time, but the defeat of Octavius would have meant a hybrid empire which would have fallen to pieces like the empire of Alexander, leaving western Europe split into a number of petty states. On the other hand, Octavius was enabled to build on the consequences of Actium the great outlines of the Roman empire, the influence of which on the civilized world to-day is still incalculable. When he left Rome to fight Antony, the government was bankrupt and the people torn with faction. When he returned he brought the vast treasure of Egypt and found a people united to support him. Actium, therefore, is properly taken as the significant date for the beginning of the Roman empire. Octavius took the name of his grand-uncle Caesar, the title of Augustus, and as "Imperator" became the first of the Roman emperors.

The relation of the battle of Actium to this portentous change in the fortunes of Octavius was formally recognized by him on the scene where it took place. Nicopolis, the City of Victory, was founded upon the site of his camp, with the beaks of the captured ships as trophies adorning its forum. The little temple of Apollo on the point of Actium he rebuilt on an imposing scale and instituted there in honor of his victory the "Actian games," which were held thereafter for two hundred years.

After the battle of Actium and the establishment of a powerful Roman empire without a rival in the world, there follows a long period in which the Mediterranean, and indeed all the waterways known to the civilized nations, belonged without challenge to the galleys of Rome. Naval stations were established to assist in the one activity left to ships of war, the pursuit of pirates, but otherwise there was little or nothing to do. And during this long period, indeed, down to the Middle Ages, practically nothing is known of the development in naval types until the emergence of the low, one- or two-banked galley of the wars between the Christian and the Mohammedan. The first definite description we have of warships after the period of Actium comes at the end of the ninth century.

There was some futile naval fighting against the Vandals in the days when Rome was crumbling. Finally, by a curious freak of history, Genseric the Vandal took a fleet out from Carthage against Rome, and swept the Mediterranean. In the year 455, some six centuries after Rome had wreaked her vengeance on Carthage, this Vandal fleet anchored unopposed in the Tiber and landed an army that sacked the imperial city, which had been for so long a period mistress of the world, and had given her name to a great civilization.

During the four centuries in which the Pax Romana rested upon the world, it is easy to conceive of the enormous importance to history and civilization of having sea and river, the known world over, an undisputed highway for the fleets of Rome. Along these routes, even more than along the military roads, traveled the institutions, the arts, the language, the literature, the laws, of one of the greatest civilizations in history. And ruthless as was the destruction of Vandal and Goth in the city itself and in the peninsula, they could not destroy the heritage that had been spread from Britain to the Black Sea and from the Elbe to the upper waters of the Nile.

REFERENCES

HISTORY OF ROME, Theodor Mommsen, tr. by W. P. Dickson, 1867. GENERAL HISTORY, Polybius, transl. by Hampton, 1823. HISTORY OF THE ROMANS UNDER THE EMPIRE, Chas. Merivale (vol. III.), 1866. THE GREATNESS AND DECLINE OF ROME, G. Ferrero, tr. by A. E. Zemmern, 1909. ETUDES SUR L'HISTOIRE MILITAIRE ET MARITIME DES GRECS ET DES ROMAINS, Paul Serre, 1888. FLEETS OF THE FIRST PUNIC WAR, W. W. Tarn, in Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1907. HERESIES OF SEA POWER (pp. 40-71), Fred Jane, 1906. INFLUENCE OF SEA POWER ON HISTORY (pp. 15 ff.), A. T. Mahan, 1889. For a complete bibliography of Roman sea power, v. INFLUENCE OF SEA POWER ON THE ROMAN REPUBLIC (Doctoral Dissertation), F. W. Clark, 1915.



CHAPTER IV

THE NAVIES OF THE MIDDLE AGES: THE EASTERN EMPIRE

The thousand years following the collapse of the Roman empire, a period generally referred to as the Middle Ages, are characterized by a series of barbarian invasions. Angles, Saxons, Goths, Visigoths, Huns, Vandals, Vikings, Slavs, Arabs, and Turks poured over the broken barriers of the empire and threatened to extinguish the last spark of western and Christian civilization. Out of this welter of invasions and the anarchy of petty kingdoms arose finally the powerful nations that perpetuated the inheritance from Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem, and developed on this foundation the newer institutions of political and intellectual freedom that have made western civilization mistress of the world. For this triumph of West over East, of Christianity over barbarism, we have to thank partly the courage and genius of great warriors and statesmen who arose here and there, like Alfred of England and Martel of France, but chiefly the Eastern Empire, with its capital at Constantinople, which stood through this entire epoch as the one great bulwark against which the invasions dashed in vain. In this story of defense, the Christian fleets won more than one Salamis, as we shall see in the course of this chapter.

In the year 328 A.D. the Emperor Constantine the Great moved his capital to Byzantium and named it "New Rome." In honor of its founder, however, the name was changed soon to "Constantinople," which it has retained ever since. It may seem strange that after so many glorious centuries Rome should have been deprived of the honor of being the center of the great empire which bore its own name, but in the fourth century the city itself had no real significance. All power rested in the person of the Emperor himself, and wherever he went became for the time being the capital for all practical purposes. At this time the empire was already on the defensive and the danger lay in the east. Constantine needed a capital nearer the scene of future campaigns, nearer his weakest frontier, the Danube, and nearer the center of the empire. Byzantium not only served these purposes but also possessed natural advantages of a very high order. It was situated where Europe and Asia meet, it commanded the waterway between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, and it was a natural citadel. Whoever captured the city must needs be powerful by land and sea. Under the emperor's direction the new capital was greatly enlarged and protected by a system of massive walls. Behind these walls the city stood fast for over a thousand years against wave after wave of barbarian invasion.

Of the wars with the Persians, the Vandals, and the Huns nothing need be said here, for they do not involve the operations of fleets. The city was safe so long as no enemy appeared with the power to hold the sea. That power appeared in the seventh century when the Arabs, or "Saracens," as they were called in Europe, swept westward and northward in the first great Mohammedan invasion.

Most migrations are to be explained by the pressure of enemies, or the lack of food and pasturage in the countries left behind, or the discovery of better living conditions in the neighboring countries. But the impulse behind the two tremendous assaults of Islam upon Europe seems to have been religious fanaticism of a character and extent unmatched in history. The founder of the Faith, Mohammed, taught from 622 to 632. He succeeded in imbuing his followers with the passion of winning the world to the knowledge of Allah and Mohammed his prophet. The unbeliever was to be offered the alternatives of conversion or death, and the believer who fell in the holy wars would be instantly transported to Paradise. Men who actually believe that they will be sent to a blissful immortality after death are the most terrible soldiers to face, for they would as readily die as live. In fact Cromwell's "Ironsides" of a later day owed their invincibility to very much the same spirit. At all events, by the time of Mohammed's death all Arabia had been converted to his faith and, fired with zeal, turned to conquer the world. Hitherto the tribes of Arabia were scattered and disorganized, and Arabia as a country meant nothing to the outside world. Now under the leadership of the Prophet it had become a driving force of tremendous power. Mohammedan armies swept over Syria into Persia. In 637, only five years after Mohammed's death, Jerusalem surrendered, and shortly afterwards Egypt was conquered. Early in the eighth century the Arabs ruled from the Indus on the east, and the Caucasus on the north, to the shores of the Atlantic on the west. Their empire curved westward along the coast of northern Africa, through Spain, like one of their own scimitars, threatening all Christendom. Indeed, the Arab invasion stands unparalleled in history for its rapidity and extent.



The one great obstacle in the way was the Christian, or Roman, empire with its center at Constantinople. Muaviah, the Emir of Syria, was the first to perceive that nothing could be done against the empire until the Arabs had wrested from it the command of the sea. Accordingly he set about building a great naval armament. In 649 this fleet made an attack on Cyprus but was defeated. The following year, however, it took an important island, Aradus, off the coast of Syria, once a stronghold of the Phoenicians, and sacked it with savage barbarity. An expedition sent from Constantinople to recover Alexandria was met by this fleet and routed. This first naval victory over the Christians gave the Saracens unbounded confidence in their ability to fight on the sea. They sailed into the AEgean, took Rhodes, plundered Cos, and returned loaded with booty. Muaviah, elated with these successes, planned a great combined land and water expedition against the Christian capital.

At this point it is worth pausing to consider what the fighting ship of this period was like. As we have seen in the preceding chapter the Roman navy sank into complete decay. At the end of the fourth century there was practically no imperial navy in existence. The conquest of the Vandals by Belisarius in the sixth century involved the creation of a fleet, but when that task was over the navy again disappeared until the appearance of the Arabs compelled the building of a new imperial fleet. The small provincial squadrons then used to patrol the coasts were by no means adequate to meet the crisis.

The warships of this period were called "dromons," a term that persists even in the time of the Turkish invasion eight centuries later. The word means "fast sailers" or "racers." The dromon was not the low galley of the later Middle Ages but a two-banked ship, probably quite as large as the Roman quinquereme, carrying a complement of about 300 men. Amidships was built a heavy castle or redoubt of timbers, pierced with loopholes for archery. On the forecastle rose a kind of turret, possibly revolving, from which, after Greek fire was invented, the tubes or primitive cannon projected the substance on the decks of the enemy. The dromon had two masts, lateen rigged, and between thirty and forty oars to a side.

There were two classes of dromons, graded according to size, and a third class of ship known as the "pamphylian," which was apparently of a cruiser type, less cumbered with superstructure. In addition there were small scout and dispatch boats of various shapes and sizes.

Both Christian and Saracen fought with these kinds of warships. Apparently the Arabs simply copied the vessels they found already in use by their enemies, and added no new device of their own.



In 655 Muaviah started his great double invasion against Constantinople. He sent his fleet into the AEgean, while he himself with an army tried to force the passes of the Taurus mountains. Before the Arab fleet had gone far it met the Christian fleet, commanded by the Emperor himself, off the town of Phaselis on the southwestern coast of Asia Minor. A great battle followed. The Christian emperor, Constantine II, distinguished himself by personal courage throughout the action, but the day went sorely against the Christians. At last the flagship was captured and he himself survived only by leaping into a vessel that came to his rescue while his men fought to cover his escape. It was a terrible defeat, for 20,000 Christians had been killed and the remnants of their fleet were in full retreat. But the Saracens had bought their victory at such a price that they were themselves in no condition to profit by it, and the naval expedition went no further. Meanwhile Muaviah had not succeeded in forcing the Taurus with his army, so that the grand assault came to nothing after all.

The following year the murder of the Caliph brought on a civil war among the Saracens, in consequence of which Muaviah arranged a truce with Constantine. The latter was thus enabled to turn his attention to the beating back of the Slavs in the east and the recovery of imperial possessions in the west, notably the city and province of Carthage. During the last of these campaigns he was killed by a slave.

The death of this energetic and able ruler seemed to Muaviah the opportunity to begin fresh operations against the Christian empire. Three great armies invaded the territory of the Cross. One plundered Syracuse, another seized and fortified a post that threatened the existence of Carthage, a third pushed to the shores of the Sea of Marmora. These were, however, only preliminary to the grand assault on the capital itself.

In 673 a great Arab armada forced the Hellespont and captured Cyzicus. With this as a base, the fleet landed an army on the northern shore of the Sea of Marmora. By these means Constantinople was invested by land and sea. But the great walls proved impregnable against the attacks of the army, and the Christian fleet, sheltered in the Golden Horn, was able to sally out from time to time and make successful raids on detachments of the Saracen ships. This state of affairs continued for six months, after which Muaviah retired with his army to Cyzicus, leaving a strong naval guard to hold the straits.

The next spring Muaviah again landed his army on the European side and besieged the city for several months. The second year's operations were no more successful than the first, and again the Arab force retired to Cyzicus for the winter.

The Arab commander was determined to stick it out until he had forced the surrender of the city by sheer exhaustion, but his plan had a fatal error. During the winter months the land blockade was abandoned, with the result that supplies for the next year's siege were readily collected for the beleaguered city. Emperor and citizens alike rose to the emergency with a spirit of devotion that burned brighter with every year of the siege. Meanwhile the Christians of the outlying provinces of Syria and Africa were also fighting stubbornly and with considerable success against the enemy. The year 676 passed without any material change in the situation.



During the siege a Syrian architect named Callinicus is said to have come to Constantinople with a preparation of his own invention, "Greek fire," which he offered the Emperor for use against the Saracen. This, according to one historian, "was a semi-liquid substance, composed of sulphur, pitch, dissolved niter, and petroleum boiled together and mixed with certain less important and more obscure substances.... When ejected it caught the woodwork which it fell and set it so thoroughly on fire that there was no possibility of extinguishing the conflagration. It could only be put out, it is said, by pouring vinegar, wine, or sand upon it."[1]

[Footnote 1: THE ART OF WAR, Oman, p. 546.]

Constantine IV, the Emperor, was quick to see the possibilities of the innovation and equipped his dromons with projecting brass tubes for squirting the substance upon the enemy's ships. These are sometimes referred to as "siphons," but it is not clear just how they were operated. One writer[2] is of the opinion that something of the secret of gunpowder had been obtained from the East and that the substance was actually projected by a charge of gunpowder; in short, that these "siphons" were primitive cannon. In addition to these tubes other means were prepared for throwing the fire. Earthenware jars containing it were to be flung by hand or arbalist, and darts and arrows were wrapped with tow soaked in the substance.

[Footnote 2: THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE, Foord, p. 139.]

The Christian fleet was no match for the Saracen in numbers, but Constantine pinned his faith on the new invention. Accordingly, during the fourth year of the siege, 677, he boldly led his fleet to the attack. We have no details of this battle beyond the fact that the Greek fire struck such terror by its destructive effect that the Saracens were utterly defeated. This unexpected blow completed the growing demoralization of the besiegers. The army returned to the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus, and the survivors of the fleet turned homewards. Constantine followed up his victory with splendid energy. He landed troops on the Asiatic shore, pursued the retreating Arabs and drove the shattered remnant of their army back into Syria. The fleet was overtaken by a storm in the AEgean and suffered heavily. Before the ships could reassemble, the Christians were upon them and almost nothing was left of the great Saracen armada. Thus the second great assault on Constantinople was shattered by the most staggering disaster that had ever befallen the cause of Islam.

The Christian empire once more stood supreme, and that supremacy was attested by the terms of peace which the defeated Muaviah was glad to accept. There was to be a truce of thirty years, during which the Christian emperor was to receive an annual tribute of 3000 pounds of gold, fifty Arab horses and fifty slaves.

It is unfortunate that there was no Herodotus to tell the details of this victory, for it was tremendously important to European civilization. Western Europe was then a welter of barbarism and anarchy, and if Constantinople had fallen, in all probability the last vestige of Roman civilization would have been destroyed. Moreover, the battle is of special interest from a tactical point of view because it was won by a new device, Greek fire, which was the most destructive naval weapon up to the time when gunpowder and artillery took its place. Indeed this substance may be said to have saved Christian civilization for several centuries, for the secret of its composition was carefully preserved at Constantinople and the Arabs never recovered from their fear of it.

The victory did not, however, mark the crisis of the struggle. In the half century that followed, Constantinople suffered from weak or imbecile emperors while the Caliphate gained ground under able rulers and generals. In the first fifteen years of the eighth century the Saracens reached the climax of their power. Under a great general, Muza, they conquered Spain and spread into southern France. It was he who conceived the grandiose plan of conquering Christendom by a simultaneous attack from the west and from the east, converging at the city of Rome. One army was to advance from Asia Minor and take Constantinople; another was to cross the Pyrenees and overrun the territory of the Franks. Had the enterprise been started at the time proposed there could have been little opposition in the west, for the Franks were then busy fighting each other, but luckily Muza fell into disgrace with the Caliph at this time and his great project was undertaken by less able hands and on a piecemeal plan.

The eastern line of invasion was undertaken first in the year 717. A fleet of warships and transports to the number of 1800 sailed to the Hellespont, carrying about 80,000 troops, while a great army collected at Tarsus and marched overland toward the same destination. Meanwhile two more fleets were being prepared in the ports of Africa and Egypt, and a third army was being collected to reenforce the first expedition. This army was to be under the personal command of the Caliph himself. The third attack on the Christian capital was intended to be the supreme effort.

Fortunately, the ruler of Constantinople at this hour of peril was a man of ability and energy, Leo III; but the empire had sunk so low as a result of the misrule of his predecessors that his authority scarcely extended beyond the shores of the Sea of Marmora, and his resources were at a low ebb. The navy on which so much depended was brought to a high point of efficiency, but it was so inferior in numbers to the Saracen armada that he dared not attempt even a defense of the Dardanelles.

For the Arabs all went well at first. Unopposed they transported a part of their army to the European shore, moved toward Constantinople and invested it by land and sea. One detachment was sent to cover Adrianople, which was occupied by a Christian garrison; the rest of the force concentrated on the capital itself.

Meanwhile the Christian fleet lay anchored in the shelter of the Golden Horn, protected by a boom of chains and logs. As the Saracen ships came up to occupy the straits above the city they fell into confusion in trying to stem the rapid current. Seeing his opportunity, the emperor ordered the boom opened, and leading the way in his flagship, he fell upon the huddle of Saracen vessels in the channel. The latter could make little resistance, and before the main body of the fleet could work up to the rescue, the Christians had destroyed twenty and taken a number of prizes back to the Horn. Again Greek fire had proved its deadly efficacy. Elated with this success, Leo ordered the boom opened wide and, lying in battle order at the mouth of the Horn, he challenged the Arab fleet to attack. But such was the terror inspired by Greek fire that the Grand Vizier, in spite of his enormous superiority in numbers, declined to close. Instead he withdrew his dromons out of the Bosphorus and thereafter followed the less risky policy of a blockade. This initial success of the Christian fleet had the important effect of leaving open the sea route to the Black Sea, through which supplies could still reach the beleaguered city.

The Arabs then sat down to wear out the defenders by a protracted siege on land and sea. In the spring of 718 the new army and the two new fleets arrived on the scene. One of the latter succeeded, probably by night, in passing through the Bosphorus and closing the last inlet to the city. The situation for the defenders became desperate. Many of the men serving on these new fleets, however, were Christians. These took every opportunity to desert, and gave important information to the emperor as to the disposition of the Arab ships. Acting on this knowledge, Leo took his fleet out from the shelter of the boom and moved up the straits against the African and Egyptian squadrons that were blockading the northern exit. The deserters guided him to where these squadrons lay, at anchor and unprepared for action. What followed was a massacre rather than a battle. The Christian members of the crews deserted wholesale and turned upon their Moslem officers. Ship after ship was rammed by the Christian dromons or set on fire by the terrible substance which every Arab regarded with superstitious dread. Some were driven ashore, others captured, many more sunk or burnt to the water's edge. Of a total of nearly 800 vessels practically nothing was left.

Leo followed up this spectacular naval victory by transporting a force from the garrison of the city to the opposite shore of the Bosphorus, attacking the army encamped there and driving it in rout. Meanwhile the Bulgarian chieftain had responded to Leo's appeal and, relieving the siege of Adrianople, beat back the Saracen army at that point with great slaughter. The fugitives of that army served to throw into panic the troops encamped round the walls of Constantinople, already demoralized by disease, the death of their leaders, and the annihilation of the African and Egyptian fleets in the Bosphorus.

The great retreat began. The Arab soldiers started back through Asia Minor, but only 30,000 out of the original force of 180,000 lived to reach Tarsus. The fleet set sail for the AEgean, and as in the similar retreat of a half century before, the Arabs were overwhelmed by a storm with terrible losses. The Christian ships picked off many survivors, and the Christians of the islands destroyed others that sought shelter in any port. It is said that out of the original armada of 1800 vessels only five returned to Syria! Thus the third and supreme effort of the Saracen ended in one of the greatest military disasters in history.

The service of the Christian fleet in the salvation of the empire at this time is thus summarized by a historian:

"The fleet won most of the credit for the fine defense; it invariably fought with admirable readiness and discipline, and was handled in the most masterful manner. It checked the establishment of a naval blockade at the very outset, and broke it when it was temporarily formed in 718; it enabled the army to operate at will on either shore of the Bosphorus, and it followed up the retreating Saracens and completed the ruin of the great armament."[1]

[Footnote 1: THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE, Foard, p. 170.]

The winning stroke in this campaign was the tremendous naval victory at the mouth of the Bosphorus, and this, even more emphatically than Constantine's victory in 677, deserves to be called another Salamis. Not only did it save the Christian empire but it checked the Caliphate at the summit of its power and started it on its decline. Not for thirty years afterwards was the Saracen able to put any considerable fleet upon the sea.

It was ten years after the Arab defeat at Constantinople that the armies of the west began the other part of Muza's project—the conquest of the Franks. By this time the Frankish power was united and able to present a powerful defense. In six bitterly contested battles between Tours and Poitiers in 732 Charles Martel defeated the Arabs in a campaign that may well be called the Marathon, or better, the Plataea, of the Middle Ages, for it completed the work done by the imperial navy at Constantinople. From this time forward the power of the Saracen began to ebb by land and sea.

As it ebbed, the new cities of Genoa, Pisa, and Venice began to capture the trade and hold the control of the sea that once had been Saracen, until the Christian control was so well established as to make possible the Crusades. Later, as we shall see, a second invasion of Mohammedans, the Turks, ably assisted by the descendants of the Arabs who conquered Spain, once more threatened to control the Mediterranean for the cause of Islam. But the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, which fell into the hands of the Arabs as soon as they took to the water, remained in Arab hands down to the times of the Portuguese. In those waters, because they were cut off from the Mediterranean, the Saracen had no competitor. As early as the eighth century Ceylon was an Arab trading base, and when the Portuguese explorers arrived at the end of the 15th century they found the Arabs still dominating the water routes of India and Asia, holding as they had held for seven centuries a monopoly of the commerce of the east.

Of the Mediterranean during the struggle between Christian and Saracen a recent English writer makes the following suggestive comment:

"The function of the Mediterranean has thus undergone a change. In early times it had been a barrier; later, under the Phoenicians, it became a highway, and to the Greeks a defense. We find that the Romans made it a basis for sea power and subdued all the lands on its margin. With the weakening of Rome came a weakening of sea power. The Barbary states and Spain became Saracen only because the naval power of the eastern empire was not strong enough to hold the whole sea, but neither was the Saracen able to gain supreme control. Thus the conditions were the same as in the earlier days of the conflict between Rome and Carthage: the Mediterranean became a moat separating the rivals, though first one and then the other had somewhat more control. The islands became alternately Saracen and Christian. Crete and Sicily were held for centuries before they were regained by a Christian power."[1]

[Footnote 1: GEOGRAPHY AND WORLD POWER, Fairgrieve, p. 125.]

The victory of 718 saved Constantinople from any further peril from the Arabs, but it was again in grave peril, two centuries later, when a sudden invasion of Russians in great force threatened to accomplish at a stroke what the Saracens had failed to do in three great expeditions. The King of Kiev, one of the race of Vikings that had fought their way into southern Russia, collected a huge number of ships, variously estimated from one to ten thousand, and suddenly appeared in the Bosphorus. Probably there were not more than 1500 of these vessels all told and they must have been small compared with the Christian dromons; nevertheless they presented an appalling danger at that moment. The Christian fleet was watching Crete, the army was in the east winning back territory from the Arabs, and Constantinople lay almost defenseless. The great walls could be depended an to hold off a barbarian army, but a fleet was needed to hold the waterways; otherwise the city was doomed.

In the Horn lay a few antiquated dromons and a few others still on the stocks. To Theophanes the Patrician was given this nucleus of a squadron with which to beat back the Russians. Desperate and even hopeless as the situation appeared, he went to work with the greatest energy, patching up the old ships, and hurrying the completion of the new. Meanwhile the invaders sent raiding parties ashore that harried the unprotected country districts with every refinement of cruelty. In order to make each ship count as much as possible as an offensive unit, Theaphanes made an innovation by fitting out Greek fire tubes on the broadsides as well as in the bows. This may be noted as the first appearance of the broadside armament idea, which had to wait six hundred years more before it became finally established.

When the new ships had been completed and the old ones made serviceable, Theophanes had exactly fifteen men of war. With this handful of vessels, some hardly fit to take the sea, he set out from the Horn and boldly attacked the Russian fleet that blocked the entrance to the strait. Never was there a more forlorn hope. Certainly neither the citizens on the walls nor the men on the ships had any expectation of a return.

What followed would be incredible were it not a matter of history. These fifteen ships were immediately swallowed up by the huge fleet of the enemy, but under the superb leadership of Theophanes each one fought with the fury of desperation. They had one hope, the weapon that had twice before saved the city, Greek fire. The Russians swarmed alongside only to find their ships taking fire with a flame that water would not quench. Contempt of their feeble enemy changed soon to a wild terror. There was but one impulse, to get out of reach of the Christians, and the ships struggled to escape. Soon the whole Russian fleet was in wild flight with the gallant fifteen in hot pursuit. Some of these could make but slow headway because of their unseaworthiness, but when all was over the Russians are said to have lost two-thirds of their entire force. The invaders who had been left on shore were then swept into the sea by reenforcements that had arrived at Constantinople, and not a vestige was left of the Russian invasion. Once more Greek fire and the Christian navy had saved the empire; and for sheer audacity, crowned with a victory of such magnitude, the feat of Theophanes stands unrivaled in history.

From the tenth century on, Constantinople began to find her rivalries in the west. The coronation of Charlemagne in 800 had marked the final separation of the eastern and the western empire. As noted above, the passing of the Saracens gave opportunity for the growth of commercial city-states like Genoa, Pisa and Venice, and their interests clashed not only with one another but also with those of Constantinople.

The climax came in 1204 when Venice succeeded in diverting the Fourth Crusade to an expedition of vengeance for herself, first against the city of Zara and then against Constantinople. This time the Eastern Empire had no fleet ready for defense and the Venetian galleys filled the waters under the city walls. Many of these galleys were fitted with a kind of flying bridge, a long yard that extended from the mast to the top of the wall and stout enough to bear a file of men that scrambled by this means to the parapets. After many bloody repulses the city was finally captured, and there followed a sack that for utter barbarity outdid anything ever perpetrated by Arab or Turk. Thus the city that for nearly a thousand years had saved Christian civilization was, by a hideous irony of fate, taken and sacked by a Crusading army.

When the second Mohammedan invasion threatened Europe, Constantinople, weak on land and impotent by sea, and deserted by the Christian nations of the west, was unable to put up a strong resistance. At last, in 1453, it was captured by the Turks, and became thereafter the capital of the Moslem power. Great as this catastrophe was, it cannot compare with what would have happened if the city had fallen to the Saracen, the Hun, or the Russian during the dark centuries when the nations of the west were scarcely in embryo. In the 15th century they were strong enough to take up the sword that Constantinople had dropped and draw the line beyond which the Turk was not permitted to go.

Although it has been the fashion since Gibbon to sneer at the Eastern Empire, it must be remembered with respect as the last treasure house of the inheritance bequeathed by Rome and Greece during the dark centuries of barbarian and Saracen. Even in its ruin it sent its fugitives westward with the manuscripts of a language and literature then little known, the Greek, and thereby added greatly to the growing impetus of the Renaissance. It is significant also that during its thousand years of life, as long as it kept its hold on the sea it stood firm. When it yielded that, its empire dwindled to a mere city fortress whose doom was assured long before it fell.

REFERENCES

CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY, Vol. II., 1913. THE HISTORY OF THE SARACENS, E. Gibbon & S. Ockley. HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, Edward Gibbon, ed. by J. B. Bury. THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE, E. A. Foord, 1911. MILITARY AND RELIGIOUS LIFE IN THE MIDDLE AGES, Paul Lacroix, 1874. HISTORY OF THE LATER ROMAN EMPIRE, J. B. Bury, 1889. HISTORY OF THE EASTERN ROMAN EMPIRE, J. B. Bury, 1912.



CHAPTER V

THE NAVIES OF THE MIDDLE AGES [Continued]: VENICE AND THE TURK

The city-state of Venice owed its origin to the very same barbarian invasions that wrecked the old established cities of the Italian peninsula. Fugitives from these towns in northern Italy and the outlying country districts fled to the islets and lagoons for shelter from the Hun, the Goth, and the Lombard. As the sea was the Venetians' barrier from the invader, so also it had to be their source of livelihood, and step by step through the centuries they built up their commerce until they practically controlled the Mediterranean, for trade or for war.

As early as 991 a Doge of Venice made a treaty with the Saracens inaugurating a policy held thereafter by Venice till the time of Lepanto; namely, to trade with Mohammedans rather than fight them. The supreme passion of Venice was to make money, as it had been of ancient Phoenicia, and to this was subordinated every consideration of race, nationality, and religion. The first important step was the conquest of the Dalmatian pirates at the beginning of the 11th century. This meant the Venetian control of the Adriatic. When the Crusades began, the sea routes to the Holy Land were in the hands of the Venetians; indeed it was this fact that made the Crusades possible. As the carrying and convoying agent of the Crusaders, Venice developed greatly in wealth and power. With direct access to the Brenner Pass, she became a rich distributing center for Eastern goods to northern Europe. In all important Levantine cities there was a Venetian quarter, Venetians had special trading privileges, and many seaports and islands came directly under Venetian rule.



This rapid expansion naturally roused the jealousy of others. In 1171 Venice fought an unsuccessful war with Constantinople, and yet continued to grow in wealth and power. In 1204, as we have seen, Venice avenged herself by diverting the Fourth Crusade to the siege and sack of her eastern rival. As the reward of that nefarious exploit Venice received the greater part of the eastern empire, and became the dominating power in the Mediterranean. During the 13th and 14th centuries, however, she was compelled to fight with her rebellious colonies and her new rivals, Genoa and Padua. The wars with Genoa very nearly proved fatal to Venice, but just when matters seemed most desperate she was saved by a naval victory against a Genoese fleet in her own waters. In consequence of these wars between Venice and Genoa both were heavy losers in wealth and lives; Genoa never recovered from her defeat, but her rival showed amazing powers of recuperation. She extended her territory in Italy to include the important cities of Treviso, Padua, Vicenza, and Verona, and in 1488 acquired the island of Cyprus in the Levant. At this time the Venetian state owned 3300 ships, manned by 36,000 men, and stood at the height of her power.

Already, however, a new enemy had appeared who threatened not only Venice but all Europe. This was the Ottoman Turk. The Turks were not like the Arabs, members of the Indo-European family, but a race from the eastern borders of the Caspian Sea, a branch of the Mongolian stock. As these peoples moved south and west they came in contact with Mohammedanism and became ardent converts. Eventually they swept over Asia Minor, crossed the Dardanelles, took Adrianople, and pushed into Serbia. Thus, when Constantinople fell in 1453 it had been for some time a mere island of Christianity surrounded by Moslems. Indeed it was only the civil wars among the Turks themselves that held them back so long from the brilliant career of conquest that characterized the 15th and early 16th centuries, for these later followers of Mohammed had all the fanaticism of the Saracens. Before the fall of Constantinople and the transfer of the Turkish seat of government to that city, a corps of infantry was organized that became the terror of the Christian world—the Janissaries. By a grim irony of the Sultan, who created this body of troops, these men were exclusively of Christian parentage, taken as children either in the form of a human tribute levied on the Christian population of Constantinople, or as captives in the various expeditions in Christian territory. The Janissaries were brought up wholly to a military life, they were not permitted to marry, and their lives were devoted to fighting for the Crescent. For a long time they were invincible in the open field.

The first half of the 16th century saw the Turks in Persia, in the east, and at the gates of Vienna in the west. For a time they got a foothold in Italy by seizing Otranto. They had conquered Egypt and Syria, penetrated Persia, and in Arabia gained the support of the Arabs for the Turkish sultan as the successor to the Caliphs. Constantinople, therefore, became not only the political capital for the Turkish empire but the religious center of the whole Moslem world. Moreover, the Arab states on the southern borders of the Mediterranean acknowledged the suzerainty of the Turkish ruler.

This fact was of great importance, for it enabled the Turks to become masters of the inland sea. In 1492 the greater part of the Moors—the descendants of the Arab conquerors of Spain—were expelled from the Peninsula by the conquest of Granada. This event was hailed with joy throughout Christendom, but it had an unexpected and terrible consequence. Flung back into northern Africa, and filled with hatred because of the persecution they had endured, these Moors embarked on a career of piracy directed against Christians. In making common cause with the Turks they supplied the fleets that the Turkish power needed to carry out its schemes of conquest. Apparently the Turks had never taken to salt water as the Arabs had done, but in these Moorish pirates they found fighters on the sea well worthy to stand comparison with their peerless fighters on land, the Janissaries. Between 1492 and 1580, the date of Ali's death, there was a period in which the Moorish corsairs were supreme. It produced three great leaders, each of whom in turn became the terror of the sea: Kheyr ed Din, known as Barbarossa, Dragut, and Ali. It is a curious fact that the first and third were of Christian parentage.

So long as the Turk invaded Christian territory by land alone, the Venetians were unconcerned. They made what treaties they could for continuing their trade with communities that had fallen into the conquerors' hands. But when the Turk began to spread out by sea it was inevitable that he must clash with the Venetian, and so there was much fighting. Yet even after a successful naval campaign the emissary of Venice was obliged to come before the Sultan, cap in hand, to beg trading privileges in Turkish territory. Everything in Venetian policy was subordinated to the maintenance of sufficient friendly relations with the Turk to assure a commercial monopoly in the Levant. Although the Moslem peril grew more and more menacing, Venice remained unwilling to join in any united action for the common good of Europe.

Of course Venice was not alone in this policy. In 1534 Francis the First, for example, in order to humiliate his rival, Charles V, secretly sent word to Barbarossa of the plans being made against him. Indeed France showed no interest in combating the Turk even at the time when he was at the summit of his power. But Venice, as the dominating naval power, had the means of checking the Turkish invasion if she had chosen to do so. Instead she permitted the control of the Mediterranean to slip from her into the hands of the Moslems with scarcely a blow.

The leading part in the resistance to the Moslem sea power was taken by Spain under Charles V. He had, as admiral of the navy, Andrea Doria, the Genoese, the ablest seaman on the Christian side. Early in his career he had captured a notorious corsair; later in the service of Spain, he defeated the Turks at Patras (at the entrance to the Gulf of Corinth), and again at the Dardanelles. These successes threatened Turkish supremacy on the Mediterranean, and Sultan Soliman "the Magnificent," the ruler under whom the Turkish empire reached its zenith, summoned the Algerian corsair Barbarossa and gave him supreme command over all the fleets under the Moslem banner. At this time, 1533, Barbarossa was seventy-seven years old, but he had lost none of his fire or ability. On the occasion of being presented to the Sultan, he uttered a saying that might stand as the text for all the writings of Mahan: "Sire, he who rules on the sea will shortly rule on the land also."

The following year Barbarossa set out from Constantinople with a powerful fleet and proceeded to ravage the coast of Italy. He sacked Reggio, burnt and massacred elsewhere on the coast without opposition, cast anchor at the mouth of the Tiber and if he had chosen could have sacked Rome and taken the Pope captive. He then returned to Constantinople with 11,000 Christian captives.

Charles V was roused by this display of corsair power and barbarity to collect a force that should put an end to such raids. Barbarossa had recently added Tunis to his personal domains, and the great expedition of ships and soldiers which the emperor assembled was directed against that city. Despite the warning given by the King of France, Barbarossa was unable to oppose the Christian host with a force sufficiently strong to defend the city. The Christians captured it and the chieftain escaped only by a flight along the desert to the port of Bona where he had a few galleys in reserve. With these he made his way to Algiers before Andrea Doria could come up with him. The Christians celebrated the capture of Tunis by a massacre of some 30,000 inhabitants and returned home, thanking God that at last Barbarossa was done for. Indeed, with the loss of his fleet and his newly acquired province it seemed as if the great pirate was not likely to give much trouble, but the Christians had made the mistake of leaving the work only half done.

In 1537, two years after the fall of Tunis, the Sultan declared war on Venice. The Turkish fleet, although led by the Sultan Soliman himself, was defeated by the Venetians off Corfu. Doria, in the service of Charles V, caught and burned ten richly laden Turkish merchant ships and then defeated a Turkish squadron. The prestige of the Crescent on the sea was badly weakened by these events, but suddenly Barbarossa appeared and raided the islands of the Archipelago and the coasts of the Adriatic with a savagery and sweep unmatched by anything in his long career. He arrived in the Golden Horn laden with booty, and delivered to his master, the Sultan, 18,000 captives.

This exploit changed the complexion of affairs. During the winter of 1537-1538 the naval yards of Constantinople were busy with the preparations for a new fleet which should take the offensive against the Venetians and the Christians generally. In the spring Barbarossa got out into the Archipelago and, raiding at will, swept up another batch of prisoners to serve as galley slaves for the new ships. Meanwhile the Mediterranean states nerved themselves for a final effort. Venice contributed 81 galleys, the Pope sent 36, and Spain, 30. Later the Emperor sent 50 transports with 10,000 soldiers, and 49 galleys, together with a number of large sailing ships. Venice also added 14 sailing ships of war, or "nefs," and Doria 22; these formed a special squadron. The Venetian nefs were headed by Condalmiero in his flagship the Galleon of Venice, the most formidable warship in the Mediterranean, and the precursor of a revolution in naval architecture and naval tactics.



Although the sailing ship was coming more and more into favor because of the discoveries across the Atlantic, the galley was the man of war of this period. The dromons of the Eastern empire, with their stout build and two banks of oars, had given way to a long, narrow vessel with a single bank of oars which had been developed by men who lived on the shores of the sheltered lagoons of the Adriatic. The prime characteristic of this type was its mobility. For the pirate whose business it was to lie in wait and dash out on a merchantman, this quality of mobility—independence of wind and speed of movement—was of chief importance. Similarly, in order to combat the pirate it was necessary to possess the same characteristic. Of course, as in all the days of rowed ships, this freedom of movement was limited by the physical exhaustion of the rowers. In the ships of Greek and Roman days these men had some protection from the weapons of the enemy and from the weather, but in the 16th century galley, whether Turkish or Christian, they were chained naked to their benches day and night, with practically nothing to shelter them from the weather or from the weapons of an enemy. So frightful were the hardships of the life that the rowers were almost always captives, or felons who worked out their sentences on the rowers' bench. An important difference between the galley of this period and the earlier types of rowed ship is the fact that in the galley there was but one row of oars on a side, but these oars were very long and manned by four or five men apiece.

A typical galley was about 180 feet over all with a beam of 19 feet and a depth of hold of about 7-1/2 feet. A single deck sloped from about the water line to a structure that ran fore and aft amidships, about six feet wide, which served as a gangway between forecastle and poop and gave access to the hold. The forecastle carried the main battery of guns, and was closed in below so as to provide quarters for the fighting men. The poop had a deck house and a smaller battery; this deck also was closed in, furnishing quarters for the officers. There were two or three masts, lateen rigged, adorned in peace or war with the greatest profusion of banners and streamers. Indeed huge sums of money were expended on the mere ornament of these war galleys, particularly in the elaborate carvings that adorned the stern and prow.

In the conflict of Christian and Moslem, when Constantinople was the capital of Christendom, Greek fire on two critical occasions routed the Saracens. This substance was never understood in western Europe, and for centuries the secret was carefully preserved in the eastern capital. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, it was used by the Moslem against the Christian, but the discovery of gunpowder soon made the earlier substance obsolete. In the 16th century cannon had already reached considerable dimensions, but in a naval battle between galleys these weapons were not used after the first volley or so. The tactics were little different from those of the day of the trireme, consisting simply of ramming, and fighting at close quarters with arquebus, bows, pike, and sword.

Twenty feet from the bows of every galley projected her metal beak, and all her guns pointed forward; hence in the naval tactics of the period everything turned on a head-on attack. The battle line, therefore, was line abreast. For the same reasons a commander had to fear an attack on his flank, and he maneuvered usually to get at least one flank protected by the shore. The battle line in the days of the galley could be dressed as accurately as a file of soldiers, but the fighting was settled in a close melee in which all formation was lost from the moment of collision between the two fleets.

The Campaign of Prevesa

Such were the men of war and the tactics common to Christian and corsair during the 16th century. While the Christians were slowly collecting their armada, Barbarossa, with a force of 122 galleys, set out to catch his enemy in detail if he could. Pirate as he was, the old ruffian had a clear strategic grasp of what he might do with a force that was inferior to the fleet collecting against him. The Christians were to mobilize at Corfu. The Papal squadron had collected in the Gulf of Arta, and Barbarossa made for it. By sheer luck just before he arrived it had moved to the rendezvous. If he had followed it up immediately, he might have crushed both the Papal and Venetian contingents, because Doria and the Spanish fleet had not yet arrived; but apparently he felt uncertain as to just how far off these reenforcements were and therefore did not attempt the stroke. Instead, he took up a defensive position in the Gulf of Arta, exactly where Antony had collected his fleet before the battle of Actium.

In September (1538) the Christian fleet under Doria left Corfu and crossed to the Gulf. Barbarossa had drawn up his force in battle array inside the entrance, under the guns of the Turkish fortress at Prevesa. Since this entrance is obstructed by a bar with too little water for Doria's heavier ships, he lay outside. Thus the two fleets faced each other, each waiting for the other to make the next move. For the first time in their careers the greatest admiral on the Christian side was face to face with the greatest on the Moslem side. Both were old men, Doria over seventy and Barbarossa eighty-two. The stage was set for another decisive battle on the scene of Actium. The town of Prevesa stood on the site of Octavius's camp, and again East and West faced each other for the mastery of the sea. With the vastly greater strength of the Christian fleet, and the known skill of its leader, everything pointed to an overwhelming victory for the Cross. What followed is one of the most amazing stories in history.

Having the interior lines and the smooth anchorage, Barbarossa had only to watch his enemy go to pieces in the open roadstead in trying to maintain a blockade. His officers, however, scorned such a policy, and, being appointees of the Sultan and far from subordinate in spirit to their chief, they were finally able to force his hand and compel him to offer battle to the Christians by leaving the security of the gulf and the fortress and going out into the open, exactly where Doria wanted him. Accordingly on the 27th of September, the Turkish fleet sailed out to offer battle. It happened that Doria had gone ten miles away to Sessola for anchorage, and the Galleon of Venice lay becalmed right in the path of the advancing fleet. Condalmiero sent word for help, and Doria ordered him to begin fighting, assuring him that he would soon be reenforced.

The Turkish galleys, advancing in a crescent formation, soon enveloped the lonely ship. Her captain ordered his crew to lie down on her deck while he alone stood, in full armor, a target to the host of Moslems who pushed forward in their galleys anxious for the honor of capturing this great ship. Condalmiero ordered his gunners to hold their fire until the enemy were within arquebus range. Then the broadsides of the galleon blazed and the surrounding galleys crumpled and sank. A single shot weighing 120 pounds sank a galley with practically all on board. The signal to retreat was given and speedily obeyed.

Thereafter there were to be no more rushing tactics. Barbarossa organized his galleys in squadrons of twenty, which advanced, one after the other, delivered their fire, and retired. All the rest of the day, from about noon till sunset, this strange conflict between the single galleon and the Turkish fleet went on. The ship was cumbered with her fallen spars; she had lost thirteen men killed and forty wounded. The losses would have been far greater but for the extraordinarily thick sides of the galleon. After sundown the Turkish fleet appeared to be drawing up in line for the last assault. On the Galleon of Venice there was no thought of surrender; the ammunition was almost spent and the men were exhausted with their tremendous efforts, but they stood at their posts determined to defend their ship to the last man.

Then, to their astonishment Barbarossa drew off, sending some of his galleys to pursue and cut off certain isolated Christian units, but leaving the field to the Venetian galleon. Meanwhile, during all that long, hot afternoon the great fleet of Andrea Doria, instead of pressing forward to the relief of the Galleon of Venice and crushing Barbarossa with its great superiority in numbers, was going through strange parade maneuvers about ten miles away. Doria's explanation was that he was trying to decoy Barbarossa out into deeper water where the guns of the nefs could be used, but there is no other conclusion to be reached than that Doria did not want to fight. Fortune that day offered him everything for an overwhelming victory, one that might have ranked with the decisive actions of the world's history, and he threw it away under circumstances peculiarly disgraceful and humiliating. Never did commander in chief so richly deserve to be shot on his own deck. The following day as a fair wind blew for Corfu, Doria spread sail and retired from the gulf, while Barbarossa, roaring with laughter, called on his men to witness the cowardice of this Christian admiral.

The victory lay with Barbarossa. With a greatly inferior force he had challenged Doria and attacked. Doria had not only declined the challenge but fled back to Corfu. No wonder the Sultan ordered the cities of his domain to be illuminated. Barbarossa's prizes included two galleys and five nefs, but he, too, had failed in an inexplicable fashion in drawing off from the assault on the Galleon of Venice at the end of the day's fighting. It is with her, with the gallant Condalmiero and his men, that all the honor of the day belongs. Nothing in the adventurous 16th century surpasses their splendid, disciplined valor on this occasion.

The astonishing powers of resistance and the deadly effect of the broadsides of the Galleon of Venice displayed in a long and successful fight against an entire fleet of galleys should have had the effect of making a revolution in naval architecture fifty years before that change actually occurred. But men of war of those days were built after the models of Venetian architects, and the latter clung doggedly to the galley. They overlooked the great defensive and offensive powers of the galleon displayed in this story and saw only the fact that she was becalmed and unable to move.

Doria's failure left conditions in the Mediterranean as bad as ever. Barbarossa died at the age of ninety, but one of the last acts of his life was to ransom a follower of his, Dragut, Pasha of Tripoli, who had served under him at Prevesa and, having been captured two years later, served four years as a galley slave on the ship of Gian Andrea Doria, the grandnephew and heir of Andrea Doria. Dragut soon assumed the leadership laid down by Barbarossa, his master, fighting first the elder Doria and then his namesake with great skill and audacity. For years the Knights of Malta had been a thorn in the side of the Moslems who roamed the sea, and in 1565 a gigantic effort was made by the Sultan, together with his tributaries from the Barbary states, to wipe out this naval stronghold. The siege that followed was distinguished by the most reckless courage and the most desperate fighting on both sides. It extended from May 18 to September 8, costing the Christians 8000 and the Moslems 30,000 lives. In the midst of the siege Dragut himself was slain, and the conduct of the siege fell into less capable hands. Finally the Turks withdrew.

The death of Soliman the Magnificent, in 1566, brought to the head of the Turkish state a ruler known by the significant name, Selim the Drunkard. Weak and debauched as he was, nevertheless he aspired to add to the Turkish dominions as his father had done. Accordingly, he informed Venice that she must evacuate Cyprus. Previous to this time Venice had succeeded, by means of heavy bribes to the Sultan's ministers, in keeping her hold on this important island, but this policy only tempted further arrogance on the part of the Turk. Further, the time was propitious for such a stroke because Venice was impoverished by bad harvests and the loss of her naval arsenal by fire, Spain was occupied in troubles with the Moors, and France, torn with civil war, wanted to keep peace with the Sultan at any price. During the terrible siege of Malta Venice had remained neutral; now that the danger came home to her she cried for help, and not unnaturally there were those who sneered at her in this crisis and bade her save herself.

The Pope, however, had long been anxious to organize a league of Christian peoples to win back the Mediterranean to the Cross and draw a line beyond which the Crescent should never pass. In this plight of Venice he saw an opportunity, because hitherto the persistent neutrality or the unwillingness of the Venetians to fight the Turk to the finish had been one of the chief obstacles to concerted action. He therefore pledged his own resources to Venice and attempted to collect allies by the appeal to the Cross. The results were discouraging, but a force of Spanish, Papal, and Venetian galleys was finally collected and after endless delays dispatched to the scene in the summer of 1570.

Meanwhile the Turks had been pressing their attack on Cyprus and were besieging the city of Nicosia. If the Christians had been moved by any united spirit they could have relieved Nicosia and struck a heavy blow at the Turkish fleet, which lay unready and stripped of its men in the harbor. But Gian Doria, who inherited from his great uncle his great dislike of Venetians, and who probably had secret instructions from his master, Philip II, to help as little as possible, succeeded in blocking any vigorous move on the part of the other commanders. Finally, after a heated quarrel, he sailed back to Sicily with his entire fleet, and the rest followed. The allies had gone no nearer Cyprus than the port of Suda in Crete. The whole expedition, therefore, came to nothing.

In September Nicosia fell to the Turk, who then turned to the conquest of Famagusta, the last stronghold of the Venetians on the island. Bragadino, the commander of the besieged forces, fought against desperate odds with a courage and skill worthy of the best traditions of his native city, hoping to repulse the Turks until help could arrive. But Doria's defection in 1570 decided the fate of the city the following year. After fifty-five days of siege, with no resources left, Bragadino was compelled, on August 4, 1571, to accept an offer of surrender on honorable terms. The Turkish commander, enraged at the loss of 50,000 men, which Bragadino's stubborn defense had cost, no sooner had the Venetians in his power than he massacred officers and men and flayed their commander alive. This news did not reach the Christians, however, until their second expedition was almost at grips with the Turks at Lepanto.

The Campaign of Lepanto

Undismayed by the failure of his first attempt, Pope Pius had immediately gone to work to reorganize his Holy League. He had to overcome the mutual hatred and mistrust that lay between Spain and Venice, aggravated by the recent conduct of Doria, but neither the Pope nor Venice could do without the help of Spain. There was much bickering between the envoys in the Papal chambers, and it was not till February, 1571, that the terms of the new enterprise were agreed upon. By this contract no one of the powers represented was to make a separate peace with the Porte. The costs were divided into six parts, of which Spain undertook three, Venice, two, and the Pope, one. Don Juan, the illegitimate brother of Philip II, was to be commander in chief. Although only twenty-four, this prince had won a military reputation in suppressing the Moorish rebellion in Spain, and, having been recognized by Philip as a half brother, he had a princely rank that would subordinate the claims of all the rival admirals. Finally, the rendezvous was appointed at Messina.

The aged Venetian admiral, Veniero, had been compelled by the situation in the east to divide his force into two parts, one at Crete, and the other under himself at Corfu. By the time he received orders to proceed to the rendezvous, he learned that Ali, the corsair king of Algiers, known better by his nickname of "Uluch" Ali, was operating at the mouth of the Adriatic with a large force. To reach Messina with his divided fleet, Veniero ran the risk of being caught by Ali and destroyed in detail, but the situation was so critical that he took the risk and succeeded in slipping past the corsair undiscovered. In permitting this escape, and in fact in allowing all the other units of the Christian fleet to assemble at Messina, Ali missed a golden opportunity to destroy the whole force before it ever collected. Instead, he continued his ravages on the coasts of the Adriatic, bent only on plunder. He carried his raids almost to the lagoons of Venice itself, and indeed might have attacked the city had he not been hampered by a shortage of men.

Although the Turks were having their own way, unopposed, and the situation was growing daily more critical, the Christian fleet was slow in assembling. For a whole month Veniero waited in Messina for the arrival of Don Juan and the Spanish squadrons. Philip, apparently, used one pretext after another to delay the prince, and once on his way Don Juan had to tarry at every stage of the journey to witness ceremonial fetes held in his honor. Philip acted in good faith as far as his preparations went, but he wanted to save his galleys for use against the Moors of the Barbary coast, which was nearer the ports of Spain, and was indifferent to the outcome of the quarrel between Venice and the Porte. Undoubtedly Doria and the other Spanish officers were fully informed of their royal master's desires in this expedition as in the one of the year before. They were to avoid battle if they could.

On August 25 Don Juan arrived at Messina and was joyously received by the city and the fleet. Nevertheless, it was the 12th of September before the decision was finally reached to seek out the Turkish fleet and offer battle. Fortunately Don Juan was a high-spirited youth who shared none of his brother's half-heartedness; he went to work to organize the discordant elements under his command into as much of a unit as he could, and to imbue them with the idea of aggressive action. In this spirit he was seconded by thousands of young nobles and soldiers of fortune from Spain and Italy, who had flocked to his standard like the knight errants of the age of chivalry, burning to distinguish themselves against the infidel. Among these, oddly enough, was a young Spaniard, Cervantes, who was destined in later years to laugh chivalry out of Europe by his immortal "Don Quixote."

In order to knit together the three elements, Spanish, Venetian, and Papal, Don Juan so distributed their forces that no single squadron could claim to belong to any one nation. As the Venetian galleys lacked men, he put aboard them Spanish and Italian infantry. Before leaving Messina, he had given every commander written instructions as to his cruising station and his place in the battle line. The fighting formation was to consist of three squadrons of the line and one of reserve. The left wing was to be commanded by the Venetian Barbarigo; the center, by Don Juan himself, in the flagship Real, with Colonna, the Papal commander on his right and Veniero, the Venetian commander, on his left, in their respective flagships. The right wing was intrusted to Doria, and the reserve, amounting to about thirty galleys, was under the Spaniard, Santa Cruz. In front of each squadron of the line two Venetian galleasses were to take station in order to break up the formation of the Turkish advance. The total fighting force consisted of 202 galleys, six galleasses, and 28,000 infantrymen besides sailors and oarsmen.

The Venetian galleasses deserve special mention because they attracted considerable attention by the part they subsequently played in the action. Sometimes the word was applied to any specially large galley, but these represented something different from anything in either Christian or Turkish fleets. They were an attempt to reach a combination of galleon and galley, possessing the bulk, strength, and heavy armament of the former, together with the oar propulsion of the latter to render them independent of the wind. But like most, if not all, compromise types, the galleass was short-lived. It was clumsy and slow, being neither one thing nor the other. Most of the time on the cruise these galleasses had to be towed in order to keep up with the rest of the fleet. It is interesting to note that, despite the example of the Galleon of Venice at Prevesa, there was not a single galleon in the whole force.

On September 16 the start from Messina was made. The fleet crossed to the opposite shore of the Adriatic, creeping along the coast and in the lee of the islands after the manner of oar driven vessels that were unable to face a fresh breeze or a moderate sea. Delayed by unfavorable winds, it was not till October 6 that it arrived at the group of rocky islets lying just north of the opening of the Gulf of Corinth, or Lepanto[1] where the Turkish fleet was known to be mobilized. Meanwhile trouble had broken out among the Christians. Serious fighting had taken place between Venetians and Spaniards, and Veniero, without referring the case to Don Juan, had hanged a Spanish soldier who had been impudent to him, thus enraging the commander in chief. In a word, the various elements were nearly at the point of fighting each other before the object of their crusade was even sighted.

[Footnote 1: Lepanto is the modern name of Naupaktis, the naval base of Athens in the gulf. It had been a Venetian stronghold, but fell to the Turks in 1499. The name Lepanto is given to both the town and the gulf.]

At dawn of the 7th the lookout on the Real sighted the van of the Turkish fleet coming out to the attack, and this news had a salutary effect. Don Juan called a council of war, silenced those like Doria who still counseled avoiding battle, and then in a swift sailing vessel went through the fleet exhorting officers and men to do their utmost. The sacrament was then administered to all, the galley slaves freed from their chains, and the standard of the Holy League, the figure of the Crucified Savior, was raised to the truck of the flagship.

As the Christians streamed down from the straits to meet their enemy, they faced a serious peril. The Turks were advancing in full array aided by a wind at their backs; the same wind naturally was against the Christians, who had to toil at their oars with great labor to make headway. If the wind held there was every prospect that the Turks would be able to fall upon their enemy before Don Juan could form his line of battle. Fortunately, toward noon the wind shifted so as to help the Christians and retard the Turks. This shift just enabled most of the squadrons to fall into their appointed stations before the collision. Two of the galleasses, however, were not able to reach their posts in advance of the right wing before the melee began, and the right wing itself, though it had ample time to take position, kept on its course to the south, leaving the rest of the fleet behind. To Turk and Christian alike this move on the part of Doria meant treachery, for which Doria's previous conduct gave ample color, but there was no time to draw back or reorganize the line.

The Turkish force, numbering 222 galleys, swept on to the attack, also in three divisions, stretched out in a wide crescent. The commander in chief, Ali Pasha, led the center, his right was commanded by Sirocco, the Viceroy of Egypt, and his left by "Uluch" Ali. This arrangement should have brought Ali, the greatest of the Moslem seafighters of his day, face to face with Doria, the most celebrated admiral in Christendom. The two opposing lines swung together with a furious plying of oars and a tumult of shouting. The four galleasses stationed well in front of the Christian battle line opened an effective fire at close quarters on the foremost Turkish galleys as they swept past. In trying to avoid the heavy artillery of these floating fortresses, the Turks fell into confusion, losing their battle array almost at the very moment of contact, and masking the fire of many of their ships. This was an important service to the credit of the galleasses, but as they were too unwieldy to maneuver readily they seem to have taken no further part in the action.

The first contact took place about noon between Barbarigo's and Sirocco's squadrons. The Venetian had planned to rest his left flank so close to the shore as to prevent the Turks from enveloping it, but Sirocco, who knew the depth of water better, was able to pour a stream of galleys between the end of Barbarigo's line and the coast so that the Christians at this point found themselves attacked in front and rear. For a while it looked as if the Turks would win, but the Christians fought with the courage of despair. There was no semblance of line left; only a melee of ships laid so close to each other as to form almost a continuous platform over which the fighting raged hand to hand. Both the leaders fell. Barbarigo was mortally wounded, and Sirocco was killed when his flagship was stormed. The loss of the Egyptian flagship and commander seemed to decide the struggle at this point. The Christian slaves, freed from the rowers' benches, were supplied with arms and joined in the fighting with the fury of vengeance on their masters. A backward movement set in among the Turkish ships; then many headed for the shore to escape.

Meanwhile, shortly after the Christian left had been engaged the two centers crashed together. Such was the force of the impact that the beak of Ali Pasha's galley drove as far as the fourth rowing bench of the Real. Instantly a fury of battle burst forth around the opposing flagships. Attack and counter attack between Spanish infantry and Turkish Janissaries swayed back and forth across from one galley to another amid a terrific uproar. Once the Real was nearly taken, but Colonna jammed the bows of his galley alongside and saved the situation by a counter attack. On the other side of the flagship Veniero was also at one time in grave peril but was saved by the timely assistance of his comrades. Though wounded in the leg, this veteran of seventy fought throughout the action as stoutly as the youngest soldier.

The prompt action of Colonna turned the tide in the center, for after clearing the Turks from the deck of the Real, the Christians, now reenforced, made a supreme effort that swept the length of Ali Pasha's galley and left the Turkish commander in chief among the slain. In fighting of this character no quarter was given; of the 400 men on the Turkish flagship not one was spared. Don Juan immediately hoisted the banner of the League to the masthead of the captured ship. This sign of victory broke the spirit of the Turks and nerved the Christians to redoubled efforts. As on the left wing so in the center the offensive now passed to the allies. Thus after two hours' fighting the Turks were already beaten on left and center, though fighting still went on hotly in tangled and scattered groups of ships.



On the Christian right, however, the situation was different. Doria had from the beginning left the right center "in the air" by sailing away to the south. He explained this singular conduct afterwards by saying that he noticed Ali moving seaward as if to try an enveloping movement round the Christians' southern flank, and therefore moved to head him off. However plausible this may be, the explanation did not satisfy Doria's captains, who obeyed his signals with indignant rage. At all events Ali had a considerably larger force than Doria, and after the latter had drawn away so far as to create a wide gap between his own squadron and the center, Ali suddenly swung his galleys about in line and fell upon the exposed flank, leaving Doria too far away to interfere. The Algerian singled out a detached group of about fifteen galleys, among which was the flagship of the Knights of Malta. No Christian flag was so hated as the banner of this Order, and the Turks fell upon these ships with shouts of triumph. One after another was taken and it began to look as if Ali would soon roll up the entire flank and pluck victory from defeat.

But Santa Cruz, who was still laboring through the straits when the battle began, was now in a position to help. After an hour's fighting with all the advantage on Ali's side, Santa Cruz arrived with his reserve squadron and turned the scale. By this time, too, Doria managed to reach the scene with a part of his squadron. Thus Ali found himself outnumbered and in danger of capture. Signaling retreat, he collected a number of his galleys and, boldly steering through the field of battle, escaped to lay at the feet of the Sultan the captured flag of the Knights of Malta. Some thirty-five others of his force made their way safely back to Lepanto.

The fighting did not end till evening. By that time the Christians had taken 117 galleys and 20 galliots, and sunk or burnt some fifty other ships of various sorts. Ten thousand Turks were captured and many thousands of Christian slaves rescued. The Christians lost 7500 men; the Turks, about 30,000. It was an overwhelming victory.

As far as the tactics go, Lepanto was, like Salamis, an infantry battle on floating platforms. It was fought and won by the picked infantrymen of Spain and Italy; the day of seamanship had not yet arrived. For the conduct of the most distinguished admiral on the Christian side, Gian Andrea Doria, little justification can be found. Even if we accept his excuse at its face value, the event proved his folly. It is strange that in this, the supreme victory of the Cross over the Crescent on the sea, a Doria should have tarnished his reputation so foully, even as his great-uncle Andrea had tarnished his in the battle of Prevesa. It seems as if in both, as Genoese, the hatred of Venice extinguished every other consideration of loyalty to Christendom.

What were the consequences of Lepanto, and in what sense can it be called a decisive battle? The question at first seems baffling. Overwhelming as was the defeat of the Turks, Ali had another fleet ready the next spring and was soon ravaging the seas again. Twice there came an opportunity for the two fleets to meet for another battle, but Ali declined the challenge. After Lepanto he seemed unwilling, without a great superiority, to risk another close action and contented himself with a "fleet in being." In this new attitude toward the Christians lies the hint to the answer. The significance of Lepanto lies in its moral effect. Never before had the Turkish fleet been so decisively beaten in a pitched battle. The fame of Lepanto rang through Europe and broke the legend of Turkish invincibility on the sea.

The material results, it must be admitted, were worse than nothing at the time. In 1573 Don Juan was amazed and infuriated to learn that Venice, contrary to the terms of the Holy League, had secretly arranged a separate peace with the Sultan. The terms she accepted were those of a beaten combatant. Venice agreed to the loss of Cyprus, paid an indemnity of 300,000 ducats, trebled her tribute for the use of Zante as a trading post, and restored to the Turk all captures made on the Albanian and Dalmatian coast. Apparently the Venetian had to have his trade at any price, including honor. At this news Don Juan tore down the standard of the allies and raised the flag of Castile and Aragon. In two years and after a brilliant victory, the eternal Holy League, which was pledged to last forever, fell in pieces.

As for Venice, her ignoble policy brought her little benefit. She steadily declined thereafter as a commercial and naval power. Her old markets were in the grip of the Turk, and the new discoveries of ocean routes to the east—beyond the reach of the Moslem,—diverted the course of trade away from the Mediterranean, which became, more and more, a mere backwater of the world's commerce. In fact, it was not until the cutting of the Suez Canal that the inland sea regained its old time importance.

In the long unsuccessful struggle of Christian against the Turk Venice must bear the chief blame, for she had the means and the opportunity to conquer if she had chosen the better part. And yet the story of this chapter shows also that the rest of Christendom was not blameless. If Christians in the much extolled Age of Faith had shown as much unity of spirit as the Infidels, the rule of the Turk would not have paralyzed Greece, the Balkans, the islands of the AEgean, and the coasts of Asia Minor for nearly five centuries.

REFERENCES

LA GUERRE DE CHYPRE ET LA BATAILLE DE LePANTE, J. P. Jurien de la Graviere, 1888. By the same author, DORIA ET BARBEROUSSE, 1886. HISTORY OF THE REIGN OF PHILIP THE SECOND (vol. III.), W. H. Prescott, 1858. SEA WOLVES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN, E. Hamilton Currey. This contains a full bibliography. THE NAVY OF VENICE, Alethea Wiel, 1910. THE EASTERN QUESTION (chap. V.), J. A. R. Marriott, 1917. BARBARY CORSAIRS, Story of the Nations Series, Lane-Poole, 1890. DRAKE AND THE TUDOR NAVY (Introduction), J. S. Corbett, 1898. GEOGRAPHY AND WORLD POWER, James Fairgrieve, 1917.



CHAPTER VI

OPENING THE OCEAN ROUTES

1. PORTUGAL AND THE NEW ROUTE TO INDIA

From the days of the Phoenicians to the close of the 15th century, all trade between Europe and Asia crossed the land barrier east of the Mediterranean. Delivered by Mohammedan vessels at the head of the Persian Gulf or the ports of the Red Sea, merchandise followed thence the caravan routes across Arabia or Egypt to the Mediterranean, quadrupling in value in the transit. Intercourse between East and West, active under the Romans, was again stimulated by the crusades and by Venetian traders, until in the 14th and the 15th centuries the dyes, spices, perfumes, cottons, muslins, silks, and jewels of the Orient were in demand throughout the western world. This assurance of a ready market and large profits, combined with the capture of Constantinople by the Turks (1453), their piratical attacks in the Mediterranean which continued unchecked until Lepanto, and their final barring of all trade routes through the Levant, revived among nations of western Europe the old legends of all-water routes to Asia, either around Africa or directly westward across the unknown sea.

With the opening of ocean routes and the discovery of America, a rivalry in world trade and colonial expansion set in which has continued increasingly down to the present time, forming a dominant element in the foreign policies of maritime nations and a primary motive for the possession and use of navies. The development of overseas trade, involving the factors of merchant shipping, navies, and control of the seas, is thus an integral part of the history of sea power. The great voyages of discovery are also not to be disregarded, supplying as they did the basis for colonial claims, and illustrating at the same time the progress of nautical science and geographical knowledge.