The writer of the "Saga" tells how in the centre of the fleet the "Long Serpent" lay, with the "Crane" and the "Short Serpent" to port and starboard. The sterns of the three ships were in line, and so the bow of the "Long Serpent" projected far in front of the rest. As the sailors secured the ships in position, Ulf the Red-haired, who commanded on the forecastle of the "Long Serpent," went aft and called out to the King that if the "Serpent" lay so far ahead he and his men would have tough work in the bow. "Are you afraid?" asked the King. "We are no more afraid forward than you are aft," replied Ulf, with a flash of anger. The King lost his temper and threatened Ulf with an arrow on his bowstring. "Put down your bow," said Ulf. "If you shoot me you wound your own hand," and then he went back to his post on the forecastle deck.

The allied fleet was now formed in line and bearing down on the Norwegians. Sigvald Jarl, who had lured the King into this ambush, hung back with his eleven ships, and Olaf with his sixty had to meet a threefold force. King Svend, with the Danish fleet, formed the enemy's centre. To his right Olaf's namesake, King Olaf Svensker, led the Swedish ships. On the left was Erik, with the rebel heathen Jarls of Norway. Olaf watched the enemy's approach and talked to Kolbiorn and the men of the Shield-burg. He did not reckon that the Danes or the Swedes would give much trouble, he said; the Danes were soft fellows, and the Swedes would be better "at home pickling fish" than risking themselves in fight with Norsemen, but Erik's attack would be dangerous. "These are Norwegians like ourselves. It will be hard against hard."

Perhaps we have here a touch of flattery for his countrymen from the poet of the "Saga," a Norseman telling the tale to men of his own race. However this may be, the words put into Olaf's mouth were true so far as the rebel Jarls were concerned, even if they did injustice to Dane and Swede.

Erik Jarl seems to have had some inventive talent and some idea of naval tactics. His ship was called the "Iron Beard," because her bows bristled with sharpened spikes of iron. She was to be herself a weapon, not merely a means of bringing fighting men to close quarters for a hand-to-hand struggle. It is remarkable that, though it proved useful at the battle of Svold, the armed bow found no regular place in Viking warfare. The "Iron Beard" also anticipated modern methods in another way. Her bulwarks were covered with iron-plating. It cannot have been of any serious thickness, for a Viking ship had not enough displacement to spare for carrying heavy armour; but the thin plates were strong enough to be a defence against arrows and spears, and as these would not penetrate a thick wooden bulwark it seems likely that the plating was fixed on a rail running along each side, thus giving a higher protection than the bulwark itself. Erik's ship was thus a primitive ironclad ram.

Though Olaf had spoken lightly of the Danes, it was King Svend's squadron that began the fight, rowing forward in advance of the rest and falling on the right and right centre of Olaf's fleet. The Swedes at first hung back. Svend himself on the left of the Danish attack steered straight for the projecting bows of the "Long Serpent." Red-haired Ulf grappled the Danish King's ship, boarded her, and after a fierce fight in which the Norwegian battle-axes did deadly work, cleared her from end to end. King Svend saved his life by clambering on board of another ship. Olaf and his men from the high stern of the "Long Serpent" shot their arrows with telling effect into the Danish ships. All along the centre the Norwegians held their own, and gradually the Danes began to give way. It was then only the Swedes worked their ships into the mêlée that raged in front of the line of Norwegian bows. To have swept round the line and attacked in flank and rear, while the Danes still grappled it in front, would have been a more effective method of attack, but the opponents thought only of meeting front to front like fighting bulls. It may be too that Olaf's fleet had so drifted that there was not much room to pass between its right wing on the land.

But however this may be, there was plenty of sea room on the left, and here Erik Jarl, in the "Iron Beard," led the attack and used his advantage to the full. Part of his squadron fell upon the Norwegian front; but the "Iron Beard" and several of her consorts swung round the end of the line, and concentrated their attack on the outside ship. Erik had grasped a cardinal principle of naval tactics, the importance of trying to crush a part of the hostile line by bringing a local superiority of force to bear upon it. It was "hard against hard"—Viking against Viking—but the Norwegians in the end ship were hopelessly outnumbered. They fought furiously and sold their lives dearly; but soon the armed bow of the "Iron Beard" drove between their ship and the next, the lashings were cut, and the Norwegian drifted out of the line, with her deck heaped with dead. Erik let her drift and attacked the next ship in the same way. He was eating up Olaf's left wing ship by ship, while the Danes and Swedes kept the centre and right busy.

It was the bloodiest fight that the North had ever seen, a fight to the death, for though there was now small hope of victory, the Norse battle madness was strong in Olaf and his men. As the day wore on the right held its own; but one by one every ship on the left had been cleared by Erik and the Jarls, and now the battle raged round the three great ships in the centre, the "Crane" and the two "Serpents." Erik came up and drove the bow of the "Iron Beard" into the "Long Serpent's" bulwarks. The rebel Jarl stood on the forecastle behind the bristling spikes, his blood-stained battle-axe in hand and his Shield-burg standing close around him.

They had now hard work to ward off the arrows that came whistling from the "Long Serpent," for at such close quarters Erik had been recognized, and more than one archer shot at him. The "Saga" tells how young Einar Tamberskelver, the best of the bowmen of Norway, so strong that he could send a blunt arrow through a bull's hide, had posted himself in the rigging of the "Long Serpent" and made the rebel Jarl his mark. His arrows rattled on the shields of Erik's guard. One of them grazed his helmet, whistled over the "Iron Beard's" deck and buried itself in her rudder-head. Crouching in the bow of the "Iron Beard" behind her armour plates was a Finnish archer, and the Finlanders were such good bowmen that men said sorcery aided their skill. Erik told him to shoot the man in the "Serpent's" rigging. The Finn, to show his marksmanship, aimed at Einar's bowstring and cut it with his arrow. The bow released from the string sprang open and broke with a loud report. "What is that sound?" asked Olaf. Einar sprang down from the rigging and answered, "It is the sound of the sceptre of Norway falling from your grasp." It was noticed that Olaf's hand was bleeding, "his gauntlet was full of blood," but he had given no sign when he was wounded. Arrows, javelins, and stones were falling in showers on the decks of the "Crane" and the "Serpents," for the Danes and Swedes worsted in the close fight had drawn off a little, and were helping Erik's attack by thus fighting at a safer distance.

Erik now boarded the "Long Serpent" amidships, but was beaten back. He brought up more of his ships and gathered a larger boarding-party. The Danish and Swedish arrows had thinned the ranks of Ulf's men in the "Long Serpent's" bows. When Erik led a second storming-party on board, Danes and Swedes too came clambering over the bow, and the "Long Serpent" attacked on all sides was cleared to the poop. Here Olaf fought with Kolbiorn, Einar and the men of the Shield-burg around him. He was somewhat disabled by his wounded hand, but he still used his battle-axe with deadly effect. The attacking party were not quite sure which of the tall men in gilded armour was the King, but at such close quarters some of them soon recognized him, and Erik called to his men not to kill Olaf, but to make him prisoner. Olaf knew well that if his life was spared for a while it would be only to put him to death finally with the cruelty the heathen Vikings delighted in inflicting on their enemies. As his men fell round him and his party was driven further and further astern, he must have seen that, outnumbered as his men were, and with himself wounded, he would soon be overmastered and made prisoner. There was just one chance of escape for the best swimmer in Norway. Holding up his shield he stepped on the bulwark, threw the shield at his enemies, and dived overboard. Kolbiorn tried to dive with him, but was seized and dragged back to the ship. When Erik found he was not the King he spared his life.

The few who remained of the Shield-burg sprang overboard. Some were killed by men who were waiting in boats to dispose of the fugitives, others escaped by diving and swimming, and reached Danish and Swedish ships where they asked for, and were given, quarter. Einar, the archer, was one of those thus saved, and he is heard of later in the Danish wars of England.

Olaf was never seen again. Sigvald's ships, after having watched the fight from afar, were rowing up to the victorious fleets, and for a long time there was a rumour that King Olaf had slipped out of his coat of mail as he swam under water, and then rose and eluded Erik's boats, and reached one of Sigvald's ships, where he was hidden. The tale ran that he had been taken back to Wendland, where he was waiting to reappear some day in Norway and claim his own. But years went on and there were no tidings of King Olaf Tryggveson. He had been drowned in his armour under the stern of the "Long Serpent."

King Olaf is still, after nine centuries, one of the popular heroes of the Norwegian people. He had a twofold fame, as the ideal of a sea-king, as the ruler who tried in his own wild untaught way to win the land of the Fiords to Christendom. Another Olaf, who completed this last work a few years later, and who, like Olaf Tryggveson, reigned over Norway in right of his prowess and his descent from Harold the Fair-haired, is remembered as St. Olaf, saint and martyr; but no exploit of either king lives in popular tradition so brightly as the story of Olaf Tryggveson's death-battle at Svold. "My life is in God's hands," he had said, "but flight would be shame for ever." His fight against desperate odds and ending in defeat and death won him fame for ever.

CHAPTER IV

Sluys, which had such far-reaching consequences, was not the first of English naval victories. Alfred the Great maintained in the latter part of his reign a fleet of small ships to guard the coasts against the Norse and Danish pirates, and this won him the name of founder of the British Navy. But for centuries after there was no attempt at forming or keeping up a regular naval establishment. Alfred's navy must have been dispersed under his weaker successors, for the Northmen never found any serious obstacles to their raids. Harold had no navy, and the result was that in a single twelvemonth England was twice invaded, first by Harold Hadrada and Tostig, who were beaten at Stamford Bridge, and then by William the Norman, who conquered at Hastings. But even the Conqueror had no fighting fleet. His ships were used merely to ferry his army across the Channel, and he made no attempt to use them against the Northmen who harried the east coast. The record of victory begins with the reign of King John, when in 1213 William Longsword, his half-brother, with a fleet gathered from the shipping of Dover and the south-eastern ports, destroyed a French fleet that had assembled on the coast of the Netherlands to transport an invading army to England. Damme (i.e. "the dams or embankments to keep out the sea") was then a fortified port. It is now a Dutch village, some miles from the coast, in the midst of green meadows won from the sea, with roads shaded by avenues of trees, and only the traffic of its canal to remind it that it once had a harbour.

Four years later Hubert de Burgh, Governor of Dover Castle, defeated another attempted raid on England by improvising a fleet and attacking the French squadron in the Straits. De Burgh got to windward of the French, then sailed down on them, grappled and boarded them. There was an incident which happily we do not hear of again in naval warfare. As the English scrambled on board of the French ships they threw quicklime in the eyes of their opponents. It was, no doubt, an ugly trick of piratical fighting, for in those days when there was no police of the seas there was a certain amount of piracy and smuggling carried on by the men of Dover and the Cinque Ports. Just as for lack of police protection highway robbery was a danger of travel by road, so till organized naval power developed there was a good deal of piracy in the European seas, and peaceful traders sailed in large fleets for mutual protection, just as travellers on land took care to have companions for a journey. The Channel was also enlivened by occasional fights for fishing-grounds between fleets of fishing-craft, and the quicklime trick of Hubert de Burgh's battle was probably one of the methods of this irregular warfare.

Edward I had a navy which did useful service by coasting northward, as his armies marched into Scotland, and securing for them regular supplies and reinforcements by sea. Under his weak successor the sea was neglected, and it was the third Edward who used the navy effectually to secure that his quarrel with France should be fought out, not on English ground, but on the Continent, and thus became the founder of the sea power of England.

There was no Royal Navy in the modern sense of the term. When the King went to war his fleet was recruited from three different sources. The warship was a merchantman, on board of which a number of fighting-men, knights, men-at-arms, archers and billmen were embarked. These were more numerous than the crew of sailors which navigated the ship, for the largest vessels of the time were not of more than two to three hundred tons, and as oars were not used in the rough seas of the Channel and there was only one mast with a single square sail, and perhaps a jib-foresail, the necessary hands for sailing her were few. There was a dual command, the knight or noble who led the fighting-men being no sailor, and having a pilot under him who commanded the sailors and navigated the ship. This dual arrangement (which we have seen at work in the fleets of more ancient days) left its traces in our Navy up to the middle of the nineteenth century, when ships of the Royal Navy still had, besides the captain, a "sailing master" among their officers.

The King owned a small number of ships, which he maintained just as he kept a number of knights in his pay to form his personal retinue on land. During peace he hired these ships out to merchants, and when he called them back for war service he took the crews that navigated them into his pay, and sent his fighting-men on board. But the King's ships were the least numerous element in the war fleet. Merchantmen were impressed for service from London and the other maritime towns and cities, the feudal levy providing the fighting complement. A third element in the fleet was obtained from the Cinque Ports. There were really seven, not five, of them—Dover, Hythe, Hastings, Winchelsea, Rye, Romney, and Sandwich. Under their charter they enjoyed valuable privileges, in return for which they were bound to provide, when the King called upon them, fifty-seven ships and twelve hundred men and boys for fifteen days at their own expense, and as long after as the King paid the necessary charges. The naming of so short a term of service shows that maritime operations were expected not to last long. It was, indeed, a difficult matter to keep a medieval fleet at sea, and the conditions that produced this state of things lasted far into the modern period. Small ships crowded with fighting-men had no room for any large store of provisions and water. When the first scanty supply was exhausted, unless they were in close touch with a friendly port, they had to be accompanied by a crowd of storeships, and as the best merchantmen would naturally have been impressed for the actual fighting, these would be small, inferior, and less seaworthy ships, and the fleet would have to pay as much attention to guarding its convoy as to operating against an enemy. No wonder that as a rule the most that could be attempted was a short voyage and a single stroke.

It was in 1340 that King Edward III challenged the title of Philip of Valois to the crown of France, and by claiming it for himself began "the Hundred Years' War." Both sides to the quarrel began to collect fleets and armies, and both realized that the first struggle would be on the sea. It would be thus decided whether the war was to be fought out on French or on English ground.

The French King collected ships from his ports and strengthened his fleet by hiring a number of large warships from Genoa, then one of the great maritime republics of the Mediterranean. The Genoese sailors knew the northern seas, for there were always some of their ships in the great trading fleet that passed up the Channel each spring, bringing the produce of the Mediterranean countries and the East to the northern ports of Europe, and returned in the late summer laden with the merchandise of the Hansa traders.

Early in the year King Philip had assembled a hundred and ninety ships, large and small, French and Genoese, off the little town of Sluys on the coast of Flanders. The fleet lay in the estuary of the river Eede. Like Damme, Sluys has now become an inland village. Its name means "the sluice," and, like Damme, reminds us how the people of the Netherlands have for centuries been winning their land from the sea by their great system of dams to keep the sea-water back, and sluices to carry the river-water to the sea. The estuary of the Eede where the French fleet anchored is now pasture land traversed by a canal, and the embankments that keep the sea from the meadow lands lie some miles to the westward of the place where King Edward won his great naval victory.

Had the French acted at once, there was nothing to prevent them from opening the war by invading England. Perhaps they did not know how slowly the English fleet was assembling.

In the late spring when the French armament was nearly complete, King Edward had only forty ships ready. They lay in the estuaries of the Orwell and the Stour, inside Harwich, long a place of importance for English naval wars in the North Sea. Gradually, week after week, other ships came in from the Thames, and the northern seaports, from Southampton and the Cinque Ports, and even from Bristol, creeping slowly along the coasts from harbour to harbour. All this time the French might have swept the seas and destroyed the English in detail; but they waited for more ships and more men, and the time of opportunity went by.

At last in the beginning of June the English King had two hundred ships assembled, from decked vessels down to open sailing-boats. An army crowded on board of them, knights and nobles in shining armour, burghers and peasants in steel caps and leather jerkins, armed with the long-bow or the combined pike and long battle-axe known as the "bill." The King's ship flew the newly adopted royal standard in which the golden lions on a red field, the arms of England, were quartered with the golden lilies of France on a field of blue, and another banner displaying the device that is still the flag of the Royal Navy, the Red Cross of St. George on a field of white, the banner adopted by Richard Cœur de Lion in his Crusade. The other ships flew the banners of the barons and knights who commanded them, and on the royal ship and those of the chief commanders there were trumpeters whose martial notes were to give the signal for battle. As a knight of the Middle Ages despised the idea of fighting on foot, and there might be a landing in Flanders, some of the barons had provided for all eventualities by taking with them their heavy war horses, uncomfortably stabled in the holds of the larger ships.

The fleet sailed southward along the coast, keeping the land in sight. The two hundred ships of varying rates of speed and handiness could not move in the ordered lines of a modern naval armament, but streamed along in an irregular procession, closing up when they anchored for the night. From the North Foreland, with a favourable wind behind them, they put out into the open sea, and steering eastward were out of sight of land for a few hours, a more venturous voyage for these coasting craft than the crossing of the Atlantic is for us to-day. It must have been a trying experience for knight and yeoman, and they must have felt that a great peril was past when the tops of church towers and windmills showed above the horizon, and then the low shore fringed with sandhills and the green dykes came in sight.

Coasting along the shore north-eastwards, the fleet reached a point to the north-west of Bruges, not far from where the watering-place of Blankenberg now stands. It had been ascertained from fishermen and coast-folk that the French fleet was still at Sluys, and it was decided to proceed no further without reconnoitring the enemy. The larger ships anchored, the smaller were beached. The fighting-men landed and camped on the shore to recover from the distresses of their voyage, during which they would have been cramped up in narrow quarters.

Instead of, like a modern admiral, sending some of his lighter and swifter ships to take a look at the enemy, King Edward arranged a cavalry reconnaissance, a simpler matter for his knightly following. Some of the horses were got ashore, and a party of knights mounted and rode over the sandhills towards Sluys. They reached a point where, without being observed by the enemy, they could get a good view of the hostile fleet, and they brought back news that made the King decide to attack next day.

The French fleet was commanded by two knights, the Sieur de Kiriet and the Sieur de Bahuchet. Kiriet's name suggests that he came of the Breton race that has given so many good sailors and naval officers to France, so perhaps he knew something of the sea. Associated with the two French commanders there was an experienced fighting admiral, a veteran of the wars of the Mediterranean, Barbavera, who commanded the Genoese ships. Though they had a slight superiority of numbers and more large ships than the English, Kiriet and Bahuchet were, as one might expect from their prolonged inactivity, very wanting in enterprise now that the crisis had come. They were preparing to fight on the defensive. It was in vain that the experienced commander Barbavera urged that they should weigh anchor and fight the English in the open sea, where numbers and weight would give them an advantage that would be lost in the narrow waters of the Eede estuary. They persisted in awaiting the attack.

The French fleet was anchored along the south shore of the river-mouth, sterns to the land, its left towards the river-mouth, its right towards the town of Sluys. The vessel on the extreme left was an English ship of large size, the "Great Cristopher," captured in the Channel in the first days of the war. The ships were grouped in three divisions—left, centre, and right. Kiriet and Bahuchet adopted the same plan of battle that King Olaf had used at Svold. The ships in each of the three divisions were lashed together side by side, so that they could only be boarded by the high narrow bows, and there was an addition to the Norse plan, for inboard across the bows barricades had been erected formed of oars, spars, and planking, fastened across the forecastle decks. Behind these barriers archers and Genoese cross-bowmen were posted. There was a second line of archers in the fighting-tops, for since the times of Norse warfare the masts had become heavier, and now supported above the crossyard a kind of crow's nest where two or three bowmen could be stationed, with shields hung round them as a parapet.

The fleet thus was converted into a series of three long, narrow floating forts. It was an intelligible plan of defence for a weak fleet against a strong one, but a hopeless plan for an armament strong enough to have met its opponents on the open sea, ship to ship. At Svold, Erik Jarl had shown that such an array could be destroyed piecemeal if assailed on an exposed flank, and at Sluys the left, where the "Great Cristopher" lay to seaward, positively invited such an attack.

King Edward saw his advantage as soon as his knights came back from their adventurous ride and told him what they had seen, and he arranged his plans accordingly. His great ships were to lead the attack, and concentrate their efforts on the left of the French line. The rest were to pass inside them and engage the enemy in front, on the left, and centre. The enemy had by tying up his ships made it impossible to come to the rescue of the left, even if the narrow waters of the estuary would have allowed him to deploy his force into line. The English would have, and could not fail to keep, a local superiority from the very outset on the left of the enemy, and once it came to close quarters they would clear the French and Genoese decks from end to end of the line, taking ship after ship. While the attack developed the English archers would prepare the way for it by thinning the ranks of their enemies on the ships in the centre and then on the right.

At dawn on 24 June—the day of battle—the wind was blowing fair into the mouth of the Eede, but the tide was ebbing, and the attack could not be driven home till it turned, and gave deep water everywhere between the banks of the inlet. King Edward used the interval to array his fleet and get it into position for the dash into the river. His ships stood out to sea on the starboard tack, a brave sight with the midsummer sun shining on the white sails, the hundreds of banners glowing with red, blue, white, and gold, the painted shields hanging on poop and bulwark. On the raised bows and sterns of the larger ships barons and knights and men-at-arms stood arrayed in complete armour. The archers were ranged along the bulwarks, or looked out from the crow's-nest-tops over the swelling sails.

Old Barbavera must have longed to cut lashings, slip cables, drift out on the tide, and meet the English in the open, but he was in a minority of one against two. And now the tide was dead slack and began to turn, and King Edward's trumpets gave the expected signal for action. As their notes rang over the sea the shouting sailors squared the yards and the fleet began to scud before the wind for the river-mouth, where beyond the green dykes that kept the entrance free a forest of masts bristled along the bank towards Sluys.

The English came in with wind and tide helping them, several ships abreast, the rest following each as quickly as she might, like a great flock of sea-birds streaming towards the shore. There could be no long ranging fire to prelude the close attack. At some sixty yards, when men could see each other's faces across the gap, the English archers drew their bows, and the cloth-yard arrows began to fly, their first target the "Great Cristopher" on the flank of the line. Bolts from cross-bows came whizzing back in reply. But, as at Crecy soon after, the long-bow with its rapid discharge of arrows proved its superiority over the slower mechanical weapon of the Genoese cross-bowmen.

But no time was lost in mere shooting. Two English ships crashed into the bows and the port side of the "Cristopher," and with the cry of "St. George for England!" a score of knights vied with each other for the honour of being first on board of the enemy. The other ships of the English van swung round bow to bow with the next of the French line, grappled and fought to board them. King Edward himself climbed over the bows of a French ship, risking his life as freely as the youngest of his esquires. Then for a while on the French left it was a question of which could best handle the long, heavy swords, made not for deft fencing work, but for sheer hard hacking at helmet and breastplate.

Behind this fight on the flank, ship after ship slipped into the river, but at first attacked only the left division closely, those that had pushed furthest in opening with arrow fire on the centre and leaving the right to look helplessly on. The English archers soon cleared the enemy's tops of their bowmen, and then from the English masts shot coolly into the throng on the hostile decks, their comrades at the bulwarks shooting over the heads of those engaged in the bows. The English arrows inflicted severe loss on the enemy, but the real business was done by the close attack of the boarding-parties, that cleared ship after ship from the left inwards, each ship attacked in turn having to meet the knights and men-at-arms from several of the English vessels.

But the French fought with determined courage, and hour after hour went by as the attack slowly worked its way along the line. The slaughter was terrible, for in a sea-fight, as in the storming of a city wall, no quarter was asked or given. The crews of the captured ships were cut down as they fought, or driven over the stern into the water, where, for the most part, their heavy armour drowned them.

It was past noon, and the tide was turning when the left and centre, the squadrons of Kiriet and Bahuchet, were all captured. Then the attack raged round the nearest vessels on the right, tall ships of the Genoese. Most of these, too, were taken, but as the tide ran out King Edward feared his large ships would ground in the upper waters of the estuary, and the signal was given to break off the attack, an order welcome even to the weary victors.

Barbavera, with a few ships, got clear of the beaten right wing and lay up near Sluys, while the English plundered and burned some of their prizes and took the best of them out to sea on the ebbing tide. In the night the Genoese admiral slipped out to sea, and got safely away. The French fleet had been utterly destroyed, and the Genoese sailors had no intention of further risking themselves in King Philip's quarrel. They thought only of returning as soon as might be to the Mediterranean.

King Edward went on to Ghent, after landing his fighting-men, and sending his fleet to bring further forces from England. Henceforth for many a long year he might regard the Channel as a safe highway for men and supplies for the war in France.

The victory of the English had cost them a relatively trifling loss. The French losses are said to have been nearly 30,000 men. Strange to say, among the English dead were four ladies who had embarked on the King's ship to join the Queen's Court at Ghent. How they were killed is not stated. Probably they were courageous dames whose curiosity led them to watch the fight from the tall poop of the flagship as they would have watched a tournament from the galleries of the lists, and there the cross-bow bolts of the Genoese found them.

There is an old story that men feared to tell King Philip the news of the disaster, and the Court jester broke the tidings with a casual remark that the French must be braver than the English, for they jumped into the sea by scores, while the islanders stuck to their ships. The defeat at sea prepared the way for other defeats by land, and in these campaigns there appeared a new weapon of war—rudely fashioned cannon of short range and slow, inaccurate fire—the precursors of heavier artillery that was to change the whole character of naval warfare.

It was the coming of the cannon that inaugurated the modern period. But before telling of battles in which artillery played the chief part, we must tell of a decisive battle that was a link between old and new. Lepanto—the battle that broke the Turkish power in the Mediterranean—saw, like the sea-fights of later days, artillery in action, and at the same time oar-driven galleys fighting with the tactics that had been employed at Salamis and Actium, and knights in armour storming the enemy's ships like Erik Jarl at Svold and King Edward at Sluys.

CHAPTER V

But the Turks during this century became a maritime power. They had conquered the Crimea and were masters of the Black Sea. They had overrun Greece and most of the islands of the Archipelago. They had threatened Venice with their fleets, and had for a while a foothold in Southern Italy. They took Rhodes from the Knights of St. John, annexed Syria and Egypt, and the Sultan of Constantinople was acknowledged as the Khalifa of Islam, the representative of the Prophet by the Mohammedan states of North Africa—Tripoli, Tunis, and Morocco. In 1526 the victory of Mohacs made the Turks masters of Hungary. They had driven a wedge deep into Europe, and there was danger that their fleets would soon hold the command of the Mediterranean.

These fleets were composed chiefly of large galleys—lineal descendants (so to say) of the ancient triremes. There was a row of long oars on either side, but sail power had so far developed that there were also one, two, even three tall masts, each crossed by a long yard that carried a triangular lateen sail. The base of the triangle lay along the yard, and the apex was the lower corner of the triangular sail, which could be hauled over to either side of the ship, one end of the yard being hauled down on the other side. The sail thus lay at an angle with the line of the keel, with one point of the yard high above the masthead, and by carrying the sheet tackle of the point of the sail across the ship, and reversing the position of the yard, the galley was put on one tack or the other. Forward, pointing ahead, was a battery of two or more guns, and there was sometimes a second but lighter battery astern, to be used when the galley was escaping from a ship of superior force. Turks, in the Eastern Mediterranean, Moors in the West, recruited their crews of rowers by capturing Christian ships and raiding Christian villages, to carry off captives who could be trained to the oar. This piracy, plundering, and slave-hunting went on in the Mediterranean up to the first years of the nineteenth century, when, after the Turks themselves had long abandoned it, the sea rovers of the Barbary States in the western waters of the inland sea still kept it up, and European nations paid blackmail to the Beys of Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers to secure immunity for their ships and sailors.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries no part of the Mediterranean was free from the raids of the Moslem pirates. Such was the peril of the sea that ships used to carry two sets of sails, one white for use by day, the other black, in order to conceal their movements in the darkness. Thousands of Christian slaves were always wearing out their miserable lives in the galleys and prisons of the Mohammedan ports. Isolated expeditions were sometimes made by this or that Christian power for their deliverance. Two religious orders were founded to collect alms for their ransom, to minister to them in their captivity, and to negotiate for their deliverance. But all this was only a mitigation of the evil, and year after year there went on the enslavement of Europeans, men for the galleys, women for the harems.

One would have thought that all Europe would have banded itself together to drive back the Turk from the Danube and sweep the corsairs from the Mediterranean. To their honour be it said that successive Popes endeavoured to arouse the old crusading spirit, and band civilized and Christian Europe together for an enterprise that was to the advantage of all, and the neglect of which was a lasting disgrace. But their efforts were long defeated by the mutual quarrels and jealousies and the selfish policy of the European powers. Venice and Genoa long preferred to maintain peace with the Sultans, in order to have the undisturbed monopoly of the Eastern trade. France was too often the ally of the Turk, thanks to her traditional rivalry with the House of Austria, the rulers of the German Empire. The pressure of Turkish armies on the Eastern frontiers of the Empire made it impossible for the Emperors to use their full strength on the Rhine or in North Italy.

Again and again Rome uttered the cry of alarm, and the warning passed unheeded. But at last it was listened to, when a new outburst of aggressive activity on the part of the Turks for a while roused the maritime nations of the Mediterranean from their lethargy, and then a glorious page was added to the story of naval warfare.

In the year 1566 Suleiman the Magnificent died. He had conquered at Mohacs and besieged Vienna, enlarged the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire on land, and made its fleets the terror of the Mediterranean; but the year before he died his pashas had failed disastrously in their attempt on Malta, and his successor, Selim II (whom Ottoman historians surname "the Drunkard"), was reported to be a half-imbecile wretch, devoid of either intelligence or enterprise. So Europe breathed more freely. But while the "Drunkard" idled in his seraglio by the Golden Horn, the old statesmen, generals, and admirals, whom Suleiman had formed, were still living, and Europe had lulled itself with false hopes of peace.

For the sake of their Eastern trade interests the Venetians had as far as possible stood neutral in the wars between Turk and Christian, and had long been in undisturbed possession of Cyprus. For eighty years they had held it under a treaty that recognized certain rights of the Sultan to the island as a dependency of Egypt. They had stood neutral while Suleiman took Rhodes and besieged Malta, though on either occasion the intervention of the Venetian fleet would have been a serious blow to the Ottoman power. The Venetian Senate was therefore disagreeably surprised when an envoy from Constantinople demanded the evacuation of Cyprus, and announced that the Sultan intended to exercise his full rights as sovereign of the island. The armaments of the Republic were at a low ebb, but Doge and Senate rejected the Ottoman demand, and defied the menace of war that accompanied it.

The neutrality of Venice had been the chief obstacle to the efforts of Pius V to form a league of the maritime powers of Southern Europe against the common enemy of Christendom. When, therefore, the Venetian ambassadors applied to the Vatican for help, the Pope put the limited resources of his own states at their disposal, and exerted his influence to procure for them help from other countries. Pius saw the possibility of at last forming a league against the Turk, and was statesman enough to perceive that a more effective blow would be struck against them by attacking them on the sea than by gathering a crusading army on the Theiss and the Danube.

His own galleys were prepared for service under the orders of Prince Colonna, and a subsidy was sent to Venice from the papal treasury to aid in the equipment of the Venetian fleet. The papal envoys appealed to the Genoese Republic, the Knights of Malta, and the Kings of France and Spain to reinforce the fleets of Rome and Venice. But France and Spain were more interested in their own local ambitions and jealousies, and even Philip II gave at first very limited help. With endless difficulty a fleet of galleys was at last assembled, Maltese, Genoese, Roman, Venetian, united under the command of Colonna. By the time the Christian armament was ready a larger Turkish fleet had appeared in the waters of Cyprus and landed an army, which, under its protection, began the siege of Nicosia. After long delays Colonna's fleet reached Suda Bay in Crete, and joined a squadron of Venetian galleys kept for guardship duties in Cretan waters.

Though Colonna was in nominal command, the fleet was really controlled by a committee of the chiefs of its various squadrons. There were endless councils of war, and it is a trite saying that "councils of war do not fight." Prudent caution is oftener the outcome of such debates than daring enterprises. There was a time, in the first days of September, when, if the Suda fleet had gone boldly to the relief of Nicosia, it might have raised the siege, for the Venetian garrison was making such a vigorous defence that in order to press the siege the Turkish pashas had stripped their fleet of thousands of fighting-men to employ them in the trenches. But the golden opportunity passed by, and when at last Colonna took his galleys across to the coast of Asia Minor, Nicosia had fallen, and the Turks had begun the siege of the other Cypriote fortress, Famagusta.

Again there were divided counsels and pitiful irresolution. The commanders of the various contingents were brave men, veterans of the Mediterranean wars. But the coalition lacked one determined leader who could dominate the rest, decide upon a definite plan of action, and put it into energetic execution. Time was wasted till the bad weather began. Then the various squadrons made their way to the ports where they were to pass the winter. A squadron of the Venetians remained in the Cretan ports. The rest dispersed to the harbours of Italy and the Ionian islands.

The aged pontiff heard with bitter disappointment that nothing had been accomplished. The news might well have made even a younger man lose heart. But with undaunted courage he devoted himself to forming a more powerful combination for the great effort of the coming summer.

It was all-important to secure the alliance of the King of Spain, who was also ruler of Naples and Sicily. But it was only after long negotiations and smoothing away of endless jealousies between Spain and Venice, that at last the treaty of the "Holy League" was signed by the Republic of Venice, the King of Spain, and the Pope, Pius V undertaking to bring in help from the minor Princes and Republics of Italy and the Knights of Malta.

It was proposed that there should be a fleet of three hundred ships, of which two hundred were to be galleys and a hundred navi, that is full-rigged sailing-ships. It was the first time that the sailing-ship had been given so important a place in naval projects in the Mediterranean, and this shows the change that was rapidly coming into naval methods. The allies were jointly to raise a force of 50,000 fighting-men, including 500 gunners.

Once the treaty was arranged preparations were pushed forward, but again there were wearisome delays. It was easy enough to build galleys. The arsenal of Venice had once laid a keel at sunrise and launched the galley before sunset. But to recruit the thousands of oarsmen was a longer business. It was not till well into the summer of 1571 that the armada of the Holy League began to assemble at the appointed rendezvous, Messina. Meanwhile, the Turks were pressing the siege of Famagusta, blockading it by land and sea, and sapping slowly up to its walls. The heroic commandant of the place, Antonio Bragadino, a worthy son of Venice, made an active defence, retarding by frequent sorties the progress of the enemy's siege works.

By the month of June the Turks had lost nearly 30,000 men, including those who fell victims to the fever that raged in their camps. Bragadino's garrison had been thinned by the enemy's fire, by sickness, and by semi-starvation, and at the same time the magazines of ammunition were nearly empty. Behind the yawning breaches of the rampart an inner line of improvised defences had been erected, and the citadel was still intact. If he had had a little more flour and gunpowder, Bragadino would have held out as stubbornly as ever. But with starving men, empty magazines, and no sign of relief, he had to accept the inevitable. He sent a flag of truce to Mustapha Pasha, the Ottoman general, and relying on the impression made by his stubborn defence, asked for generous terms.

Mustapha professed a chivalrous admiration for the heroism of the Venetians. It was agreed that the garrison should march out with the honours of war, and be transported under a flag of truce to Crete and there set at liberty. The Ottoman general pledged himself to protect the people of Famagusta, and secure for them the free exercise of their religion.

The war-worn soldiers marched out. Bragadino, with the Venetian nobles, were received at Mustapha's tent with every mark of honour. But no sooner had the officers been separated from their men, and these divided into small parties, than all were made prisoners, bound, and robbed of all their personal property. The Turks had often shown remorseless cruelty after victory, but they generally observed the terms of a capitulation honourably. Mustapha's conduct was an unexampled case of treachery and barbarity.

The Venetian soldiers were sent on board the Turkish galleys and chained to their oars as slaves. Bragadino saw his officers beheaded before the Pasha's tent. He might have saved his life by becoming a renegade, but he was incapable of such apostasy and treason. The barbarian, in whose power he was, invented new torments for his victim. Bragadino had his ears and nose cut off, and thus mutilated he was paraded round the Turkish army, and then rowed in a boat through the fleet, and everywhere greeted with insult and mockery. Then Mustapha sentenced his prisoner to be flayed alive. The torture had hardly begun when he expired, dying the death of a hero and a martyr. Mustapha sent to Selim the Drunkard as trophies of the conquest of Cyprus the heads of the Venetian nobles and the skin of Bragadino stuffed with straw. The news of the fall of Famagusta and the horrors that followed it did not reach the allied fleet till long after it had sailed from Messina.

But even during the period of preparation there were tidings that might well have inspired the leaders of the League with a new energy. The danger from the East was pressing. In the spring the Ottoman fleet in the waters of Cyprus had been reinforced with new galleys from the arsenal of Constantinople, and a squadron of Algerine corsairs under the renegade Pasha Ulugh Ali, one of the best of the Turkish admirals. Thus strengthened, the fleet numbered some two hundred and fifty sail. Even before Famagusta fell Mustapha detached powerful squadrons which harried the Greek archipelago, and then rounding the capes of the Morea, made prizes of peaceful traders and raided villages along the western shores of Greece and in the Ionian islands.

During the period of the Turkish power Europe was saved again and again from grave danger, because the Ottoman Sultans and the Pashas of Barbary never seem to have grasped the main principles of maritime warfare. They had no wide views. Most of the men who commanded for them on the sea had the spirit of pirates and buccaneers rather than of admirals. They put to sea to harry the trade of the Christian states and to raid their coast villages, and so secure prizes, plunder, and slaves. They frittered away their strength on these minor enterprises. Again and again occasions offered, when to concentrate their naval forces for a series of campaigns that would sweep the Christian fleets one by one from the sea would have made them masters of the Mediterranean, placed its commerce and its coasts at their mercy, and opened the way for a career of conquest, but they allowed these opportunities to escape.

The peril that menaced European civilization in 1571 was that at last the Moslem powers of the Mediterranean were actually combining their sea forces for a great effort of maritime conquest. Their operations were still delayed by their traditional disposition to indulge in plundering raids, or to wait for the fall of a blockaded fortress, instead of making the destruction of the opposing sea power their first object. If the pashas of Selim's fleets had really understood their business, they might have destroyed the Christian squadrons in detail before they could effect their concentration in the waters of Messina. But the Turkish admirals let the opportunity escape them during the long months when the "Holy League" was being formed and its fleets made ready for action.

That the danger was met by the organization of a united effort to break the Moslem power on the sea was entirely due to the clear-sighted initiative and the persistent energy of the aged Pius V. He had fully realized that the naval campaign of 1570 had been paralysed by the Christian fleet being directed, not by one vigorous will, but by the cautious decisions of a permanent council of war. He insisted on the armament of 1571 being under the direction of one chief, and exercising his right as chief of the League, Pius V had to select the commander of its forces; he named as captain-general of the Christian armada Don Juan of Austria.

Don Juan was then a young soldier, twenty-four years of age. He was the son of the Emperor Charles V and his mistress, Barbara Blomberg of Ratisbon. His boyhood had been passed, unknown and unacknowledged by his father, in a peasant household in Castille. As a youth he had been adopted by a noble family of Valladolid. Then Philip II had acknowledged him as his half-brother, and given him the rank of a Spanish Prince. He studied at Alcala, having for his friends and companions Alexander Farnese, the "Great Captain" of future years, and the unfortunate Don Carlos. Don Juan's rank gave him early the opportunity of displaying in high command his marked genius for war. He was employed in expeditions in the Mediterranean, and directed the suppression of the Moorish revolt in Granada in 1570. He was then named "Capitan-General del Mar"—High Admiral of the Spanish fleets. Young as he was when Pius V appointed him commander-in-chief of the forces of the Holy League, his services by land and sea, as well as his princely rank, gave him the necessary prestige to enable him to command even older generals like Marco Antonio Colonna, the leader of the papal and Italian forces, and the veteran Sebastian Veniero, who directed those of Venice.

During the period of concentration it was Veniero who had the most difficult problem to solve. The Venetian fleet had separated into two divisions at the close of the campaign of 1570. The weaker wintered in the harbours of Crete. The stronger detachment passed the winter at Corfu, in the Ionian islands. In the early summer of 1571 Veniero took command at Corfu, and occupied himself with preparing the fleet for sea, and reinforcing it with new galleys from the arsenal of Venice, and newly raised drafts of sailors, rowers, and fighting-men. Before his preparations were complete, the vanguard of the Turkish armada, continually reinforced from the East, appeared on the western coasts of Greece. To attack them with the force he had at hand would be to court destruction. Ulugh Ali, who commanded the vanguard of the enemy, was perhaps the best-hated of the Moslem admirals. A Calabrese fisherman, he had been captured as a young man by one of the Barbary corsairs, and spent some miserable years chained as a galley-slave at an oar. At last his endurance broke down, and he escaped from his misery by becoming a Mohammedan. Under his new name he rose rapidly to command, enriched himself by successful piracy, and before long won himself the rank of a Pasha and a vice-royalty in North Africa. But, happily for Europe at large, though unfortunately for many a village along the shores of Greece and Illyria, Ulugh Ali as admiral of the Turkish fleets remained still a pirate, with the fixed idea that a plundering cruise was better than a naval campaign. Had the renegade been more admiral than pirate, he had an opportunity of changing the course of history in that early summer of 1571.

His fleet cruising off the coasts of Epirus held a central strategic position in relation to the still dispersed Christian fleets. The papal contingents on the western shores of Italy and the Spanish fleets in the ports of the Two Sicilies, or coasting from Spain by the Gulf of Lyons and the Italian shores, were, it is true, beyond his immediate reach, but he could easily lop off one important branch of the triple League by cutting off the Venetians. The squadron from Crete must pass him to the southward; the more important contingent from Corfu must pass between him and Southern Italy in narrow seas where he could hardly fail to bring it to action, and if it fought, the chances were he would overwhelm it. Or he might attack it at Corfu, or drive it from the island back upon Venice. If he had good luck he might hope to be in time even after this to strike a blow also at the Cretan squadron.

But he thought only of plundering and burning along the coasts, carrying off crowds of prisoners, some of whom were at once added to his crews of chained rowers. Veniero at Corfu had to steel his heart against entreaties to come to the rescue of the mainland coast population. He could not save them, and he dared not destroy his fleet in a hopeless effort. He must seize the opportunity while the Turks were occupied with their raids to sail unopposed to Messina. He decided even to risk the loss of Corfu. He was acting on the sound principle that in war all minor objects must be sacrificed to the chief end of the campaign. But he could not be sure that in obeying his original orders, and taking his fleet to Messina, he was not in another way risking his position, perhaps his life. He was leaving to the Turks the temporary command of the Adriatic. After he left Corfu they carried fire and sword along the Illyrian coast. There was a panic in Venice, and the city of the lagoons made hasty preparations for defence. But Veniero's action was soon justified. The news that the Christian armada was assembled at Messina alarmed Ulugh Ali into abandoning any further enterprises in the Adriatic, and his squadrons withdrew to join the concentration of the Turkish fleets at the entrance of the Gulf of Corinth.

It was not till 23 August that the Spanish Prince arrived at Messina, took command of the assembled fleets, and proceeded at once to organize his forces, and issued his sailing and battle orders.

Nearly three hundred ships crowded the harbour of Messina. There were three fleets, the Italian squadrons under the papal admiral Colonna, the Venetian fleet, and the fleet of Philip II formed of the ships of Spain and Naples. The main force of the three fleets was made up of galleys. But there were also six galleasses and some seventy frigates, the former depending chiefly, the latter entirely, on sail power for propulsion. The frigate was, in the following century and almost up to our time, what the cruiser is in the armoured navies of to-day. But in the Mediterranean fleets of the fifteenth century the frigata represented only an early type, out of which the frigate of later days was developed. She was a small sailing-ship, sometimes a mere yacht, armed only with a few light guns. The frigates were used to convey stores, the swifter among them being often employed as dispatch boats. Depending entirely on the wind, it was not always easy for them to accompany a fleet of galleys. Don Juan gave up the idea of making them part of his fighting fleet. It was still the period of the oar-driven man-of-war, though the day of sails was close at hand.

The six galleasses represented a new type, a link between the oared ships of the past and the sailing fleets of the immediate future. They were heavy three-masted ships, with rounded bows, and their upper works built with an inward curve, so that the width across the bulwarks amidships was less than that of the gundeck below. The frames of warships were built on these lines till after Nelson's days. This "tumble home" of the sides, as it was called, was adopted to bring the weight of the broadside guns nearer the centre line of the ship, and so lessen the leverage and strain on her framework. The guns had first been fired over the bulwarks, but at a very early date port-holes were adopted for them. The galleass had a high forecastle and poop, each with its battery of guns, pointing ahead, astern, and on each side. Other guns were mounted on the broadsides in the waist of the ship; and to command the main-deck, in case an enemy's boarders got possession of it, lighter guns were mounted on swivels at the back of the forecastle and on the forepart of the poop. Compared to the low, crowded galley, the galleass was a roomy and much more seaworthy ship. She was generally a slow sailer, but in order to enable her to make some progress, even in calms or against a head wind, and so work with a fleet of galleys, she had a rowers' deck, under her main or gundeck, and on each side twelve or fifteen oars of enormous length, each worked by several men. She had the drawbacks of most compromises. She could not sail as well as the frigate, and her speed with the oar was much less than that of the galley. But the gain was that she could be used as a floating battery, carrying many more guns than the few pieces mounted in the galley's bows. The galleass's guns were high above the water, and the galleys dreaded their plunging fire. Each of Don Juan's six galleasses carried some thirty guns of various calibres, and to defend their high sides against an attack by boarders, their fighting-men were chiefly arquebusiers.

In order to fuse the triple fleet of the Allies into one armada, and to avoid the risk of international jealousies, Don Juan proceeded to form his galleys into five squadrons, each made up of ships selected from the three fleets, so that none of these divisions could claim to act only for Rome, or Spain, or Venice.

The organization of the Christian armada may be thus summed up in tabular form:—