Pylos > Pílos Messinia Greece

The mainland Greek cities of Pylos and …

…others, like Pylos, disappear forever. (The precise circumstances of these events are unknown, but historians speculate that the top-heavy system, whose elite had based their power solely on military might, contained the seeds of its own destruction.)

The Dorians, having also conquered Messenia, …

Demosthenes, whose credit with the Assembly must now be excellent, is in 425 authorized to use the Athenian fleet for operations around the Peloponnese.

He occupies and fortifies the remote promontory of Pylos in Messenia and, while the rest of the flotilla sails on to Sicily, remains with five ships at the harbor of the peninsula at Pylos.

Here, he manages to resist attacks by the Spartans, …

Athens is to retain the Messenian harbor of Pylos; …

Demetrius makes several unsuccessful attacks on Pylos; then, taking fifty of the ships, …

Venice's long decline had started in the earlier part of the fifteenth century, when it first made an unsuccessful attempt between 1423 and 1430 to hold Thessalonica against the Ottomans.

It had also sent ships to help defend Constantinople in 1453 against the besieging Turks.

After Constantinople fell to Sultan Mehmet II, he declared war on Venice.

The war lasted thirty years and cost Venice much of its eastern Mediterranean possessions.

Next, Christopher Columbus had discovered the New World in 1492, and now Vasco da Gama of Portugal has found a sea route to India by rounding the Cape of Good Hope during his first voyage of 1497-99, destroying Venice's land route monopoly.

France, England and the Dutch Republic will soon follow.

Venice's oared galleys are at a disadvantage when it comes to traversing the great oceans, and Venice will therefore be left behind in the race for colonies.

Venice has meanwhile been encouraging revolts against the sultan in the Morea, Dalmatia, and Albania, which it had ceded in 1479 to the Ottomans.

Kemal Res had set sail from Constantinople in January 1499 with a force of ten galleys and four other types of ships, and in July meets with the huge Ottoman fleet and takes over its command in order to wage a large-scale war against the Republic of Venice.

The Ottoman fleet consists of sixty-seven galleys, twenty galliots and about two hundred smaller vessels.

Kemal Reis, after reaching Cape Zonchio in the Ionian Sea with the large Ottoman fleet in August 1499, defeats the Venetian fleet of forty-seven galleys, seventeen galliots and about a hundred smaller vessels under the command of Antonio Grimani.

Grimani, sixty-five, had only obtained the command through a donation of sixteen thousand ducats to the state.

He had not been told whether to fight an offensive or defensive campaign.

Many captains ignore his orders to attack the Ottomans and he does not personally take part in the battle.

Grimani, on the day of the second battle, orders the crews to kill any captains who refuse to fight.

Despite this, and the arrival of four French galleys he sends just two galleys out of one hundred and seventy against the Ottomans.

Both somehow return unharmed.

The Venetians capture some Ottoman galleys on August 25, then discipline breaks down and the Ottomans recapture the vessels while they are being looted.

The French reinforcements abandon the Venetians in disgust and flee to Rhodes.

During the most critical stage of the battle, two Venetian carracks, captained by Andrea Loredan (a member of the influential Loredan family of Venice) and Alban d'Armer, board one of the command ships of the Ottoman fleet.

The commander of the vessel, Burak Reis, is unable to disentangle his ship from the boarders and chooses to set her aflame.

The sight of the three great ships burning together deals a severe blow to the Venetian morale.