Sixteen hundred years after Actium another great naval battle took place upon the coast of Greece. It was of momentous importance, as it is not too much to say that it decided the future fate and sovereignty of at least the eastern part of Europe.
Before we speak of Lepanto, however, it may be well to glance at naval events for two or three centuries previous to the eventful year 1571.
After the Republic of Venice had become strong, their first great sea fight was with the Saracens, then a terror to all the Christian nations of the Mediterranean. The Venetians, at the solicitation of the Emperor Theodosius, coöperated with the Greeks against their implacable enemy. The hostile fleets met at Crotona, in the Gulf of Taranto, where the Greeks fled at the first onset of the Saracens, leaving their Venetian allies to fight against vastly superior numbers. In spite of their courage and constancy, which maintained the unequal fight for many hours, the Venetians were defeated, and lost nearly every one of the sixty ships which they took into the fight.
Twenty-five years afterwards the Venetian fleet met the Saracens again, almost in the very spot of their former discomfiture, and obtained a splendid victory; and their naval fights continued, almost without intermission, and with varying fortunes; the Venetians, on the whole, holding their own.
On February 13th, 1353, there was a remarkable naval fight between the allied fleets of Venice, Aragon, and Constantinople, and the Genoese fleet, under the command of the redoubtable Paganino Doria. The Genoese were victorious.
In spite of the successful achievements of Doria, which should have brought him the respect and support of his countrymen, he was supplanted by his bitter foe, Antonio Grimaldi, who was put in command of the fleet. He was, not long after, defeated by the allied fleets of Spain and Venice, with tremendous loss. Grimaldi, thereupon, fell out of favor; and the next year the Genoese were obliged to again place Doria in command of their fleet, with which he gained a great victory over the Venetians at Porto Longo, capturing the whole of their fleet.
Peace between the two Republics was then made, and continued until 1378, when war was again declared. Victor Pisani, in command of the fleet of Venice, had a successful battle with the Genoese off Actium, the scene of the wonderful fight just before the commencement of the Christian era.
In 1379 Pisani was forced by the Venetian Senate, against his own judgment, to fight a far superior Genoese fleet, under Luciano Doria, off Pola, in the Adriatic. The Venetian fleet was almost annihilated, and Pisani, on his return, was loaded with chains, and thrown into a dungeon. The Genoese, after burning several Venetian towns upon the Adriatic, appeared off Venice, entered the lagoon, took Chioggia, and filled the Venetians with consternation and terror. The people flocked to the Piazza San Marco, in thousands, and demanded that Pisani be restored to the command of the fleet. The authorities were at their wits’ ends, and consented, while Pisani, with true patriotism, condoned his wrongs and ill treatment, and applied himself at once to the work of organization. After unheard of exertions he succeeded in discomfiting the enemy, and Venice was saved.
Pisani afterwards made a cruise in command of the fleet on the Asiatic coast, but, worn out by hard service and his former ill treatment, he died soon after his return, to the common sorrow and remorse of all Venetians.