Sea-Power and Other Studies | Page 9

both war and commerce.' As far as the
western Mediterranean was concerned, Genoa and Pisa had given early
proofs of their maritime energy, and fixed themselves, in succession to
the Saracens, in the Balearic Isles, Sardinia, and Corsica. Sea-power
was the Themistoclean instrument with which they made a small state
into a great one.
[Footnote 29: _Ital.Republics, English ed., p. 29.]
A fertile source of dispute between states is the acquisition of territory

beyond sea. As others have done before and since, the maritime
republics of Italy quarrelled over this. Sea-power seemed, like Saturn,
to devour its own children. In 1284, in a great sea-fight off Meloria, the
Pisans were defeated by the Genoese with heavy loss, which, as
Sismondi states, 'ruined the maritime power' of the former. From that
time Genoa, transferring her activity to the Levant, became the rival of
Venice, The fleets of the two cities in 1298 met near Cyprus in an
encounter, said to be accidental, that began 'a terrible war which for
seven years stained the Mediterranean with blood and consumed
immense wealth.' In the next century the two republics, 'irritated by
commercial quarrels'--like the English and Dutch afterwards--were
again at war in the Levant. Sometimes one side, sometimes the other
was victorious; but the contest was exhausting to both, and especially
to Venice. Within a quarter of a century they were at war again.
Hostilities lasted till the Genoese met with the crushing defeat of
Chioggia. 'From this time,' says Hallam, 'Genoa never commanded the
ocean with such navies as before; her commerce gradually went into
decay; and the fifteenth century, the most splendid in the annals of
Venice, is till recent times the most ignominious in those of Genoa.'
Venice seemed now to have no naval rival, and had no fear that anyone
could forbid the ceremony in which the Doge, standing in the bows of
the Bucentaur, cast a ring into the Adriatic with the words,
_Desponsamus_te,_Mare,_in_signum_veri_perpetuiquedominii. The
result of the combats at Chioggia, though fatal to it in the long-run, did
not at once destroy the naval importance of Genoa. A remarkable
characteristic of sea-power is the delusive manner in which it appears
to revive after a great defeat. The Persian navy occasionally made a
brave show afterwards; but in reality it had received at Salamis a mortal
wound. Athens seemed strong enough on the sea after the catastrophe
of Syracuse; but, as already stated, her naval power had been given
there a check from which it never completely recovered. The navy of
Carthage had had similar experience; and, in later ages, the power of
the Turks was broken at Lepanto and that of Spain at Gravelines
notwithstanding deceptive appearances afterwards. Venice was soon
confronted on the sea by a new rival. The Turkish naval historian, Haji
Khalifeh,[30] tells us that, 'After the taking of Constantinople, when
they [the Ottomans] spread their conquests over land and sea, it became

necessary to build ships and make armaments in order to subdue the
fortresses and castles on the Rumelian and Anatolian shores, and in the
islands of the Mediterranean.' Mohammed II established a great naval
arsenal at Constantinople. In 1470 the Turks, 'for the first time,
equipped a fleet with which they drove that of the Venetians out of the
Grecian seas.'[31] The Turkish wars of Venice lasted a long time. In
that which ended in 1503 the decline of the Venetians' naval power was
obvious. 'The Mussulmans had made progress in naval discipline; the
Venetian fleet could no longer cope with theirs.' Henceforward it was
as an allied contingent of other navies that that of Venice was regarded
as important. Dyer[32] quotes a striking passage from a letter of Æneas
Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius II, in which the writer affirms that, if the
Venetians are defeated, Christendom will not control the sea any longer;
for neither the Catalans nor the Genoese, without the Venetians, are
equal to the Turks.
[Footnote 30: _Maritime_Wars_of_theTurks, Mitchell's trans., p. 12.]
[Footnote 31: Sismondi, p. 256.]
[Footnote 32: _Hist.Europe, i. p. 85.]
SEA-POWER IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH
CENTURIES
The last-named people, indeed, exemplified once more the rule that a
military state expanding to the sea and absorbing older maritime
populations becomes a serious menace to its neighbours. Even in the
fifteenth century Mohammed II had made an attack on Southern Italy;
but his sea-power was not equal to the undertaking. Suleymân the
Magnificent directed the Ottoman forces towards the West. With
admirable strategic insight he conquered Rhodes, and thus freed
himself from the danger of a hostile force on his flank. 'The centenary
of the conquest of Constantinople was past, and the Turk had
developed a great naval power besides annexing Egypt and Syria.'[33]
The Turkish fleets, under such leaders as Khair-ad-din (Barbarossa),
Piale, and Dragut, seemed