historian, Haji Khalifeh,[30] tells us that, 'After the taking of
Constantinople, when they [the Ottomans] spread their conquests
over land and sea, it became necessary to build ships and make
armaments in order to subdue the fortresses and castles on the
Rumelian and Anatolian shores, and in the islands of the
Mediterranean.' Mohammed II established a great naval arsenal at
Constantinople. In 1470 the Turks, 'for the first time, equipped
a fleet with which they drove that of the Venetians out of the
Grecian seas.'[31] The Turkish wars of Venice lasted a long time.
In that which ended in 1503 the decline of the Venetians' naval
power was obvious. 'The Mussulmans had made progress in naval
discipline; the Venetian fleet could no longer cope with theirs.'
Henceforward it was as an allied contingent of other navies that
that of Venice was regarded as important. Dyer[32] quotes a striking
passage from a letter of Æneas Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius II,
in which the writer affirms that, if the Venetians are defeated,
Christendom will not control the sea any longer; for neither the
Catalans nor the Genoese, without the Venetians, are equal to
the Turks.

[Footnote 30: _Maritime_Wars_of_the_Turks_, Mitchell's trans.,
p. 12.]

[Footnote 31: Sismondi, p. 256.]

[Footnote 32: _Hist._Europe_, i. p. 85.]


SEA-POWER IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES