A History of Sea Power. Allan F. Westcott
Table of Contents
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 Phœnicia, 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.
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| 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 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