A History of Sea Power Part 6

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 a.s.sisted 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 compet.i.tor.

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 Ph?nicians, 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 ash.o.r.e 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 sh.o.r.e 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 pa.s.sing 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 ma.n.u.scripts 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 a.s.sured 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 pa.s.sion of Venice was to make money, as it had been of ancient Ph?nicia, 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 Pa.s.s, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THEATER OF OPERATIONS, VENICE AND THE TURK]

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 a.s.sure 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 ma.s.sacred 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 a.s.sembled 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 ma.s.sacre of some 30,000 inhabitants and returned home, thanking G.o.d 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 16TH CENTURY GALLEY]

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 sh.o.r.es 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 p.o.o.p 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 p.o.o.p 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 sh.o.r.e. 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.