of Syracuse; but, as already stated, her naval power had been given there a check from which it never completely recovered.  The navy of Carthage had had similar experience; and, in later ages, the power of the Turks was broken at Lepanto and that of Spain at Gravelines notwithstanding deceptive appearances afterwards.  Venice was soon confronted on the sea by a new rival.  The Turkish naval historian, Haji Khalifeh,[30] tells us that, ’After the taking of Constantinople, when they [the Ottomans] spread their conquests over land and sea, it became necessary to build ships and make armaments in order to subdue the fortresses and castles on the Rumelian and Anatolian shores, and in the islands of the Mediterranean.’  Mohammed II established a great naval arsenal at Constantinople.  In 1470 the Turks, ’for the first time, equipped a fleet with which they drove that of the Venetians out of the Grecian seas.’[31] The Turkish wars of Venice lasted a long time.  In that which ended in 1503 the decline of the Venetians’ naval power was obvious.  ’The Mussulmans had made progress in naval discipline; the Venetian fleet could no longer cope with theirs.’  Henceforward it was as an allied contingent of other navies that that of Venice was regarded as important.  Dyer[32] quotes a striking passage from a letter of AEneas Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius II, in which the writer affirms that, if the Venetians are defeated, Christendom will not control the sea any longer; for neither the Catalans nor the Genoese, without the Venetians, are equal to the Turks.

[Footnote 30:  MaritimeWars_of_the_Turks_, Mitchell’s trans., p. 12.]

[Footnote 31:  Sismondi, p. 256.]

[Footnote 32:  Hist.Europe_, i. p. 85.]

SEA-POWER IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES

The last-named people, indeed, exemplified once more the rule that a military state expanding to the sea and absorbing older maritime populations becomes a serious menace to its neighbours.  Even in the fifteenth century Mohammed II had made an attack on Southern Italy; but his sea-power was not equal to the undertaking.  Suleyman the Magnificent directed the Ottoman forces towards the West.  With admirable strategic insight he conquered Rhodes, and thus freed himself from the danger of a hostile force on his flank.  ’The centenary of the conquest of Constantinople was past, and the Turk had developed a great naval power besides annexing Egypt and Syria.’[33] The Turkish fleets, under such leaders as Khair-ad-din (Barbarossa), Piale, and Dragut, seemed to command the Mediterranean including its western basin; but the repulse at Malta in 1565 was a serious check, and the defeat at Lepanto in 1571 virtually put an end to the prospect of Turkish maritime dominion.  The predominance of Portugal in the Indian Ocean in the early part of the sixteenth century had seriously diminished the Ottoman resources.  The wealth derived