Sea Fights.

The hostile encounters by land throughout the historic ages have been practically countless; sea fights are few. Man feels intuitively that the yielding wave is not the fit place for battle. Salamis, Actium, Lepanto, Calais Roads are the chief naval engagements of history.

When Rome had won her first game in world conquest and all Italy was Rome, Carthage was mistress of the Mediterranean, and without her permission no man might even wash his hands in her “Phœnician Lake.” Triremes and quinqueremes with proudly curving prows scudded over the blue waters or huddled together in port as bevies of black swans.

And Rome had no fleet. But Rome could learn from her enemies; and when a wrecked Carthaginian galley was dashed against the Latian coast, Rome quickly learned the art of making galleys; and within two months the waving forest near the coast was metamorphosed into a fleet of one hundred and twenty Roman triremes.

And when the pain of growth was upon Rome making further conquest fatally necessary, she embarked unsteadily upon her late waving forest trees and went reeling forth to meet the swan bevies of the Mediterranean. The hostile fleets engaged and Rome’s was annihilated.

Then these sullen young-world children wildly wept, as did Romulus and Remus, perhaps, in the cave of the she-wolf. But when they were suckled and made strong with the milk of defeat, these wild young Romans built themselves another fleet. And Duillius devised a grappling contrivance whereby to catch and hold the enemy’s ship until a drawbridge could be thrown across o’er which the short-sword Roman soldiers might pass and so fight on the deck hand to hand as on land.

Again the hostile fleets engaged on the blue Mediterranean. But as the haughty quinqueremes with their decks filled with archers bore down upon the awkward Roman triremes, the grappling “hands” arose, the quinqueremes were grappled. Consternation prevailed among the Carthaginians as the drawbridges from ship to ship were thrown across, and the dreaded Roman soldiers short-sword in hand were seen slaughtering the archers and the rowers. Rome’s first naval victory was won.

If the blue Mediterranean could make known all that has taken place upon its waves and shores—what a Homer of the waters it would be! But nature is indifferent to the human tragedy.

That other scene off the coast of Carthage, after the second Punic war, when Rome demanded as a condition of peace that the Carthaginian fleet should be destroyed—yet burns upon the historic page, but the waters that once reddened with the flames just ripple unrememberingly. Five hundred galleys—towering quinqueremes, sturdy triremes—were led out from the harbor before the mourning gaze of the dethroned Queen of the Seas, and set on fire; she watched them blaze down to the laughing waters.

Actium was fought on the Adriatic off the promontory on the west coast of Greece. Here half the world was bartered for one fleeing galley and one woman. While the conflict was yet doubtful and victory seemed even favorably inclined to perch upon the prow of Anthony’s vessel, the barge of Cleopatra shudderingly backed out from the bloody fray, wavered, turned, and sped southward. Marc Anthony followed. Upon the defeat of the allied Roman and Egyptian forces at Actium and over the tragically dead forms of Anthony and Cleopatra, Octavius Cæsar arose to world dominance, becoming Augustus Cæsar, Emperor, Pater Patriæ, and one man Ruler of Rome, Mistress of the world.

Lepanto was fought at the entrance of the Gulf of Corinth, not far from Actium. Here the Cross triumphed over the Crescent and rescued Europe from the deadly blight of Islamism. Don John of Austria, aged twenty-four, led the Christian forces; Alexander Farnese (Prince of Parma), then a youth of twenty, won here his first of many laurels under the generously approving eyes of his young cousin-commander, Don John.

And seventeen years later (1571-1588) the Prince of Parma, Captain general of all the Spanish armies, awaited impatiently at Dunkirk for Admiral Medina Sidonia to clear the channel of hostile vessels so that he and his veteran army might sail across and attack old England. He watched the fight off Gravelines. How his hot Spanish heart must have indignantly throbbed even to bursting, as helplessly cooped in port with a flotilla of unarmed barges to protect, and Lord Seymour with a strong blockading squadron at the mouth of the harbor, he could only see and know and acutely feel that a fearful battle was raging all day long from dawn till dark and that Spain was losing—Spain had lost. One by one hurrying northward past the Flemish ports limped the disabled Spanish ships; English and Dutch cruisers followed in fierce pursuit.

The invasion of England by way of the Thames, the conquest of an inveterate foe, Success proudly placing a flaming carbuncle upon the coronet of the Prince of Parma, the approving glance of Philip and of the fair girl-queen Isabella, Spanish dominance in the old and in the new world—all as burst bubbles died down in gray mist as twilight descended, as dark night gathered over the wave and the world and the fleeing scattered shattered ships of Spain’s vincible Armada.

[Chapter XII.]
NASEBY

The battle of Naseby was, perhaps, the anticipative preventive of an English “French Revolution.” The difference between Cromwell’s Ironsides and the gay Frondeurs measures the difference between the English people and the French.

Charles I. aimed to be in England what Louis XIV. was in France. Both fully believed in the divine right of Kings; both quoted as their favorite text of Scripture, “Where the word of a King is there is power; and who may say unto him ‘What doest thou?’” But Louis dealt with the fickle Frondeurs and Charles with Cromwell’s Ironsides; and this racial difference had as divergent results—absolutism for Louis le Grand and the block for Charles Stuart.

There will always be difference of opinion as to Cromwell’s place in history. Was he liberator or tyrant, Christian ruler or barbarously fanatic despot? There can be but one opinion as to the injustice of the trial, condemnation, and death of Charles. The Rump Parliament was certainly not representative of England. It was Cromwell’s creature as arbitrarily as ever the Star Chamber was Charles’.

“Must crimes be punished but by other crimes, and greater criminals?”—Byron.

But as a force in favor of constitutional government and civic liberty, however abused in immediate practice; and as a threatening protest against the abuse of power in high places; and as a veiled challenge of defiance to every absolute monarch—the battle fought June 14, 1645, at Naseby, Northamptonshire, between the Royalists under Charles I. and the Parliamentarians under Fairfax must ever be considered a victory decisive and for all time advantageous.