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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 SARACEN EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT, ABOUT 715 A.D.

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 Phœnicians, 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 Ægean, 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.

EUROPE'S EASTERN FRONTIER

In 655 Muaviah started his great double invasion against Constantinople. He sent his fleet into the Ægean, 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.

CONSTANTINOPLE AND VICINITY

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 Ægean 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 reënforce 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 Ægean, 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 Platæa, 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 Phœnicians, 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 reënforcements 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.