from the galleries of the lists, and there the cross-bow bolts
of the Genoese found them.

There is an old story that men feared to tell King Philip the news of the
disaster, and the Court jester broke the tidings with a casual remark that
the French must be braver than the English, for they jumped into the sea by
scores, while the islanders stuck to their ships. The defeat at sea
prepared the way for other defeats by land, and in these campaigns there
appeared a new weapon of war--rudely fashioned cannon of short range and
slow, inaccurate fire--the precursors of heavier artillery that was to
change the whole character of naval warfare.

It was the coming of the cannon that inaugurated the modern period. But
before telling of battles in which artillery played the chief part, we must
tell of a decisive battle that was a link between old and new. Lepanto--the
battle that broke the Turkish power in the Mediterranean--saw, like the
sea-fights of later days, artillery in action, and at the same time
oar-driven galleys fighting with the tactics that had been employed at
Salamis and Actium, and knights in armour storming the enemy's ships like
Erik Jarl at Svold and King Edward at Sluys.

[Illustration: A GALLEY
_From an engraving by J. P. le Bas_]

[Illustration: A CARRACK OR FRIGATE
_From an engraving by Tomkins_
MEDITERRANEAN CRAFT OF THE 16TH CENTURY]

CHAPTER V

LEPANTO

1571

The Turk has long been known as the "sick man of Europe," and the story of
the Ottoman Empire for a hundred years has been a tale of gradual
dismemberment. Thus it is no easy matter for us to realize that for
centuries the Ottoman power was the terror of the civilized world.

It was in 1358 that the Ottomans seized Gallipoli, on the Dardanelles, and
thus obtained their first footing in Europe. They soon made themselves
masters of Philippopolis and Adrianople. A crusading army, gathered to
drive the Asiatic horde from Europe, was cut to pieces by the Sultan
Bajazet at Nicopolis in 1396. On the day after the battle ten thousand
Christian prisoners were massacred before the Sultan, the slaughter going
on from daybreak till late in the afternoon. The Turk had become the terror
of Europe.

Constantinople was taken by Mahomet II in 1453, and the Greek Empire came
to an inglorious end. Then for more than a century Austrians, Hungarians,
and Poles formed a barrier to the advance of the Asiatic power into