on the Austrian rear in Venetia had not the military
reverses of Austria in Lombardy brought the war to an end. In the War of
Secession in America the issue was largely determined, or at least
accelerated, by the close but not impenetrable blockade established by
the North over the ports and coasts of the South, and by the
co-operation of Farragut on the Mississippi with the Federal land forces
in that region. On the other hand, in the War of 1866 there was no naval
conflict worth mentioning between Austria and Prussia, because Prussia
had no navy to speak of; but as Italy, a naval Power, was the ally of
Prussia, and as Austria had a small but very efficient naval force led
by a great naval commander, the conflict between these two Powers led
to the Battle of Lissa, in which the Italian fleet was decisively
defeated, though the triumph of Prussia over the armies of Austria saved
Italy from the worst consequences of defeat, and indeed obtained for
her, in spite of her military reverses on land, the coveted possession
of Venetia. In the War of 1870 again, although the supremacy of France
on the seas was never seriously challenged by Prussia, yet her collapse
on land was so sudden and complete that her superiority at sea availed
her little or nothing. The maritime trade of Prussia was annihilated for
the time, but it was then too insignificant a factor in the economic
fabric of Prussia for its destruction to count for much, and the fleets
of France rode triumphant in the North Sea and the Baltic; but finding
no ships to fight, having no troops to land, and giving a wide berth to
fortifications with which they were ill-equipped--as ships always are
and always must be--to contend without support from the military arm,
their presence was little more than an idle and futile demonstration. In
the Boer War the influence of England's unchallenged supremacy at sea,
albeit latent, was decisive. The Boers had no naval force of any kind;
but no nation not secure in its dominion of the seas could have
undertaken such a war as England then had to wage, and it was perhaps
only the paramount sea power of this country that prevented the
conflict taking a form and assuming dimensions that would have taxed
British endurance to the uttermost and must almost certainly have
entailed the loss of South Africa to the Empire. Certain naval features
of the Cuban War between Spain and the United States, and of the War in
the Far East between Russia an