A decisive event, the Mohammedan conquest of Northern Africa
from Egypt westwards, is unintelligible until it is seen how
great a part sea-power played in effecting it. Purely land
expeditions, or expeditions but slightly supported from the sea,
had ended in failure. The emperor at Constantinople still had at
his disposal a fleet capable of keeping open the communications
with his African province. It took the Saracens half a century
(647-698 A.D.) to win 'their way along the coast of Africa as
far as the Pillars of Hercules';[25] and, as Gibbon tells us,
it was not till the Commander of the Faithful had prepared a
great expedition, this time by sea as well as by land, that the
Saracenic dominion was definitely established. It has been generally
assumed that the Arabian conquerors who, within a few years of his
death, spread the faith of Mohammed over vast regions, belonged
to an essentially non-maritime race; and little or no stress has
been laid on the extent to which they relied on naval support
in prosecuting their conquests. In parts of Arabia, however,
maritime enterprise was far from non-existent; and when the
Mohammedan empire had extended outwards from Mecca and Medina
till it embraced the coasts of various seas, the consequences
to the neighbouring states were as serious as the rule above
mentioned would lead us to expect that they would be. 'With the
conquest of Syria and Egypt a long stretch of sea-board had come
into the Saracenic power; and the creation and maintenance of
a navy for the protection of the maritime ports as well as for
meeting the enemy became a matter of vital importance. Great
attention was paid to the manning and equipment of the fleet.'[26]
At first the fleet was manned by sailors drawn from the Phoenician
towns where nautical energy was not yet quite extinct; and later
the crews were recruited from Syria, Egypt, and the coasts of
Asia Minor. Ships were built at most of the Syrian and Egyptian
ports, and also at Obolla and Bushire on the Persian Gulf,' whilst
the mercantile marine and maritime trade were fostered and
encouraged. The sea-power thus created was largely artificial.
It drooped--as in similar cases--when the special encouragement
was withdrawn. 'In the days of Arabian energy,' says Hallam,
'Constantinople was twice, in 668 and 716, attacked by great
naval armaments.' The same authority believes that the abandonment
of such maritime enterprises by the Saracens may be attributed to
the removal of the capital from Damascus to Bagdad. The removal
indicated a lessened interest in the affairs of the Mediterranean
Sea, which was now left by the administration far behind. 'The
Greeks in their turn determined to dispute the command of the
sea,' with the result that in the middle of the tenth century
their empire was far more secure from its enemies than under the
first successors of Heraclius. Not only was the fall of the empire,
by a rational reliance on sea-power, postponed for centuries,
but also much that had been lost was regained. 'At the close of
the tenth century the emperors of Constantinople possessed the
best and greatest part' of Southern Italy, part of Sicily, the
whole of what is now called the Balkan Peninsula, Asia Minor,
with some parts of Syria and Armenia.[27]
[Footnote 25: Hallam, _Mid._Ages_, chap. vi.]
[Footnote 26: Ameer Ali, Syed, _Short_Hist._Saracens_, p. 442]
[Footnote 27: Hallam, chap. vi.; Gibbon, chap. li.]
Neglect of sea-power by those who can be reached by sea brings its
own punishment. Whether neglected or not, if it is an artificial
creation it is nearly sure to disappoint those who wield it when
it encounters a rival power of natural growth. How was it possible
for the Crusaders, in their various expeditions, to achieve even
the transient success that occasionally crowned their efforts?
How did the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem contrive to exist
for more than three-quarters of a century? Why did the Crusades
more and more become maritime expeditions? The answer to these
questions is to be found in the decline of the Mohammedan naval
defences and the rising enterprise of the seafaring people of
the West. Venetians, Pisans, and Genoese transported crusading
forces, kept open the communications of the places held by the
Christians, and hampered the operations of the infidels. Even
the great Saladin failed to discern the important alteration
of conditions. This is evident when we look at the efforts of
the Christians to regain the lost kingdom. Saladin 'forgot that
the safety of Phoenicia lay in immunity from naval incursions,
and that no victory on land could ensure him against an influx
from beyond the sea.'[28] Not only were the Crusaders helped by
the fleets of the maritime republics of Italy, they also received
reinforcements by sea from western Europe and England, on the
'arrival of _Malik_Ankiltar_ (Richard Coeur de Lion) with twenty
shiploads of fighting men and munitions of war.'
[Footnote 28: Ameer Ali, Syed, pp. 359, 360.]
Participation in the Crusades was not a solitary proof of the
importance of the naval states of Italy. That they had been able
to act effectively in the Levant may have been in some measure
due to the weakening of the Mohammedans by the disintegration
of the Seljukian power, the movements of the Moguls, and the
confusion consequent on the rise of the Ottomans. However that
may have been, the naval strength of those Italian states was
great absolutely as well as relatively. Sismondi, speaking of
Venice, Pisa, and Genoa, towards the end of the eleventh century,
says 'these three cities had more vessels on the Mediterranean
than the whole of Christendom besides.'[29] Dealing with a period
two centuries later, he declares it 'difficult to comprehend
how two simple cities could put to sea such prodigious fleets
as those of Pisa and Genoa.' The difficulty disappears when we
have Mahan's explanation. The maritime republics of Italy--like
Athens and Rhodes in ancient, Catalonia in mediæval, and England
and the Netherlands in more modern times--were 'peculiarly well
fitted, by situation and resources, for the control of the sea by
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_perpetuique_dominii_.
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_the_Turks_, Mitchell's trans.,
p. 12.]
[Footnote 31: Sismondi, p. 256.]
[Footnote 32: _Hist._Europe_, i. p. 85.]