From ancient times to the present, the navy has been a highly specialized branch of the military.

In the face of an experienced professional navy, the amateur landlubber navy, which was hastily pulled up, was still vulnerable even if there were many of them.

For example, on the Sea of Marmara, outside Constantinople, the Venetian fleet, which numbered less than a tenth of its opponents, with a kind of astonishing courage, puffed up its sails and swooped down on the stunned Turkish navy with a stunningly strong wind.

Such a brave charge, or rather such a frantic charge, that the Turkish fleet, which was originally gathering its ranks and preparing to retreat, was already drawn into an unexpected naval battle before it was ready to turn around and deal with the Venetian fleet that was killing from behind.

Then, almost in the first place, eight Venetian galleys flying the golden lion flag on a red background sliced the messy Turkish fleet to pieces, as if they were slicing through the solidified butter with their red-hot blades.

The defenders of the Eastern Roman Empire, standing on the shore, watched in disbelief as the Venetian fleet rushed left and right among the Turkish ships, like hungry wolves hunting sheep, slaughtering the Turkish fleet ten times its size!

Under their noses, a huge Turkish transport ship, barely half of its body surrounded by countless small boats, was slammed into it by a Venetian warship that was rushing forward, poking the sharp bow horns into its hull and waist!

Suddenly, with a terrible roar, the Turks on the boat didn't even have time to scream. The whole sea ship has been sliced through the middle by that huge liliang! Then there was a dull tooth-aching thud, and the broken hull crashed into the water, and the people on board were thrown into the tumbling water, each clutching the broken pieces of wood and struggling desperately between the waves.

The Venetian warships, which had just achieved their first victory, had already continued to puff out their full sails and swing their oars, rushing through the wreckage and drifters floating on the sea. Aimed his own ramming angle at the next target......

At the same time, the Venetians were firing rockets at Turkish ships with ballistas, or spraying Greek fire at them at close range, since the Fourth Crusade stormed Constantinople in 1204. For the Venetian fleet, the Greek fire of the Eastern Roman Empire was no longer a secret - in a matter of moments, at least dozens of Turkish ships had been plunged into a hell of fire.

As a result, under this stormy blow, the Turkish fleet, which was already demoralized and disorganized, collapsed almost as a matter of course. The Turkish sailors, who had no experience in naval warfare, were depressed for a while, and their only thought was to cry and shout and flee for their lives, and try to get as far away as possible from these sea killing gods.

And the Turkish officers armed with scimitars, although they were still babbling and ordering a counterattack, after a day of wandering on the sea, these nomads on horseback were already seasick and faint. Not to mention the broadside battle with the Venetians, even if you can't stand on your feet.

And in the Sea of Marmara, the massacre of more than a hundred Turkish warships by eight Venetian warships continued in an orderly manner...... Whether it was a fire attack, a ramming, or a broadside battle, the Turks, who did not know the nature of the water, were all defeated. Not to mention defeating the opponent, sinking the Venetian's battleship, and even stopping the Venetian's attack in the slightest!

-- The Venetian fleet, which dominates the Mediterranean, is indeed not in vain, and deserves to be called the "bride of the Adriatic."

――――――――――――――――――――――――――――

In this era, only 200,000 Venetians were able to dominate the entire Mediterranean. Relying on an invincible sailing fleet.

At that time, most other European countries were still intoxicated with medieval castles and knightly games, and there was no decent navy, let alone a regular national navy, and most of them only temporarily recruited a group of armed merchant ships to make up the numbers, or used officials and fiefs to recruit a group of water thieves to sell their lives.

However, the Venetians, the "people of the sea" who took the sea as their home, spared no expense to form an extremely elite and powerful standing navy.

Since about the end of the tenth century, the Republic of Venice has divided the country and overseas colonial cities into dozens of conscription districts according to the dioceses assigned by the Church, and all adult men aged 2060 are registered on the conscription list, and the roster is subdivided into groups of twelve according to the registration order. If a conscripted person is unable to accept the call-up for any reason or for any reason, he or she is required to pay a substitute payment to the government or negotiate a commission with other men in the same group to replace his or her service quota - roughly equivalent to the modern military service system.

These Venetian men who were urgently recruited were to be recruited as oarsmen for galleys, and they were also likely to be incorporated into the Venetian naval crossbowmen, equipped with heavy crossbows and sophisticated armor, and became the main force in landing operations and naval battles. Occasionally, he served as a guard for the coastal colonies. In addition to the citizens of Venice itself, the government of the Republic of Venice recruited volunteers from its colonies and allied cities, such as Dalmatia, Greece, Crete and Cyprus, to serve as a standing navy.

In addition, the Venetians would catch those who owed debts and could not pay them on the boats, and force them to paddle to pay the money, but the treatment was far better than that of slaves, because the shrewd Venetians could not let the debtors die easily.

Generally speaking, the sailing ships used in the Mediterranean theater at that time required 60,100 oarsmen to power each ship, so the scale of human resources that could be mobilized can be said to be an important constraint on determining a country's naval strength. Venice, with a population of only 200,000, had to fight against the Eastern Roman Empire, the Ottoman Turkish Empire, as well as the Kingdom of France and Spain, which had a population of tens of millions, and had to use all the people like the ancient Greek city-states. Every adult male citizen can be sent to the warship if necessary.

- It should be noted that it is not just a matter of grabbing a few peasants to let them sail out to sea - that is simply ruining the warship! The navy needs professional sailors, which can only be provided by countries with developed shipping industries.

Although this kind of professional navy, which was formed by allocating funds from the treasury to build ships and forcibly conscripting citizens to serve, was extremely expensive to maintain (it was generally impossible for warships to do their own business and earn maintenance costs), for medieval states with weak financial capabilities. It is tantamount to an extremely expensive gold-eating beast, but in the event of naval warfare, this fleet also has a clear advantage over other galleys that use the oars of slaves or prisoners of war. The Venetian navy was not only made up of experienced sailors, but also because the oarsmen were armed and paid, so they could be used as soldiers in battle. This allowed each Venetian warship to fight two to three times as many people as the other nations, giving it a strong advantage in hand-to-hand combat (if weapons were issued to rowing slaves, it was likely to cause an immediate rebellion against the other nations).

The Athenians in ancient Greece relied on such a standing navy to establish their own maritime empire on the Aegean coast.

The Venetians of the Renaissance also defeated the Vikings, the Arab fleet, the Eastern Roman Empire, and other Italian coastal city-states such as Genoa, Pisa, and Sardinia through this expensive and fierce fleet.

Those pirate peoples who claim to be good at seafaring are in a long competition. After all, they were defeated by the highly organized Venetian navy, and one after another were defeated, so that the Republic of Venice, the "bride of the Adriatic", finally ascended to the supreme throne of the Mediterranean overlord.

――――――――――――――――――――――――――

Stand on a seaside tower shrouded in twilight and watch the Turkish fleet rapidly crumble and disintegrate. There were also the wrecks of floating and sinking ships on the sea, and the Turkish sailors desperately struggling with wooden planks, Emperor Constantine XI couldn't help but be entangled for a while.

And I don't know when the former Japanese Prime Minister Kotori Yumashiro stood beside him, and he also looked at the Venetians on the battlefield with a surprised expression, invincible. Like a cat hunting a mouse, it beat the Turkish fleet to the point that there was no way into the sky and no way to enter the ground in an instant.

“…… Oh, my God! Is this really Italian? Who exactly said that the Italians would not fight? I should have let him come here and see it! ”

“…… Hehe? The Italians don't know how to fight? Miss Birdie, you shouldn't have watched too much of "Hetalia"! ”

The emperor glanced back at Xiao Bird You Zhenbai, smiled bitterly and sighed, "...... The Italians of this age are very arrogant! ”

- Although in modern history, especially during the two Shijie wars, the various street performances of the Italian "spaghetti" are almost a joke. But if you go back to the 14th and 15th centuries, these lovely Italians also had a glorious age of dominance and high spirits.

After the opening of the Age of Discovery, the main theme of this shijie is that Europeans explore, conquer and rule the earth. Then in the fifteenth century, on the eve of the Age of Discovery, or the Renaissance, the main theme of the Western shijie was that the Italians were leading Europe!

In the Renaissance era in Europe, the once great and powerful Roman Empire has long since disappeared, leaving only a medium-sized state with Constantinople as the core still surviving. The Holy Roman Empire, founded by the Germanic peoples, had been shattered by endless divisions. But the Italians, who inherited the legacy of ancient Rome, began to pick up the lost treasures of civilization again from the late Middle Ages, sounding the horn of the Renaissance in the dark fog of the Middle Ages, illuminating the way to modern civilization.

Renaissance Italy was a bit like ancient Greece with its city-states in the Golden Age, and a bit like a miniature version of modern Europe – a small land with huge wealth, a formidable army, advanced science and Enlightenment ideas, and great artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. The banking, the academy of sciences, the standing army, the schooling, the diplomatic and diplomatic system, the joint-stock company system, the overseas trade, and the colonial model of modern Europe almost all originated from the Italian peninsula.

At that time, although the Italian city-states were small in territory and small in population, their financial revenues were incredibly far superior to those of Britain and France. And turning the entire Mediterranean shijie into his own shili range and colony, it is almost like an early version of the European colonization of the world in the future. Militarily, Milan's elite army has long been known in Europe for its bravery and skillful warfare, and Venice's armada has suppressed the entire Mediterranean.

In short, the "spaghetti" at that time was really not "noodles" at all. When other European nations saw these prosperous and powerful Italian city-states, they were just as the modern countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America were as terrified as they were when they saw "the superior civilized men of Europe." And jealousy, and some envy.

Specifically, Venice and Genoa, which have been fighting for sea power for hundreds of years. It's like England and Spain in the future. Milan, lacking a seaport and a strong army, was much like Germany in the future, with the entire Mediterranean being almost completely divided, in order to seize its own colonies and maritime areas. The Milanese had been trying to annex Genoa, and for a time they were successful. And across the Alps, the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of France, in the eyes of the Italian city-states, were a bit like the Soviet Union in the eyes of the Europeans - barbaric, backward and huge.

According to European politicians at the time, if these Italian city-states of the Renaissance could be effectively united, just as the Roman Republic of BC gradually integrated the many city-states and tribes of Italy, then a new Western empire would be born

But, like ancient Greece of yesteryear, Renaissance Italy. After all, he still failed to take the crucial step from city-state to empire.

Although many brilliant Italian city-states often joined hands to fight against foreign invasions, they were also seeking their own hegemony and wanted to restore the glory of the great Rome of the past. So, the descendants of these Romans. In this way, generation after generation wasted their blood on the slaughter between brothers, countless great heroes went to the battlefield with dreams and then shattered their dreams on the battlefield - Milan, Florence, Pisa, Venice, Genoa, ...... In Italy's millennia of civil and foreign wars, cities rose and fell, but no one was able to emerge as a true victor.

Just like the global colonial hegemony of Europe, due to the delay in the reunification of the whole of Europe, it was finally dried up because of the two Shijie wars. As a result, the entire colonial system became unsustainable and collapsed rapidly. Frequent scuffles between Italian city-states did not lead to a unified Italian kingdom, but were invaded by France, Spain, Austria and even Turkey, resulting in the dismal end of the whole of Italy being economically bankrupt, politically weakened, and militarily reduced to a laughing stock (like the modern European Union?). The numerous trading colonies that once dotted the Black Sea and the Mediterranean either rebelled for independence or were taken away by Spain and Turkey - so much so that the vague idea of a "united Italy" was instigated. For example, the famous political theorist Machiavelli said that his greatest wish was to assist a master to unify Italy, and only a unified Italy could compete with the European powers.

And a "League of Nations" that encompassed most of Italy was indeed established at one time - first by the leader of the Florentine Republic, Lorenzo the Luxury. The Medici spearheaded the formation of the Union of Northern Italy, and made it clear that peace in Northern Italy must be based on a balance of state shili (like the core idea of the European Union?). ）。 After Lorenzo's death, this shili equilibrium collapsed and led to a major invasion by King Charles VIII of France. But the Venetians regained their alliance and succeeded in destroying the invading French army.

The European Community and the European Union were also born during the Cold War in order to be able to form a large enough body to compete with the United States and the Soviet Union.

Unfortunately, it is precisely because of the advanced, rich and brilliant Italian city-states that the European countries that have not yet broken free from the obscurantism of the Middle Ages are generally worried about the birth of a new powerful power, let alone the resurrection of another Roman Empire, so they have always tried their best to obstruct the unification of Italy. It only lasted for a short time, and it was disintegrated under internal and external difficulties.

In the following history, with the advent of the Age of Discovery, the prosperity of Western European countries, the Italian city-state, as the forerunner of the times, could no longer maintain its advanced nature and was gradually abandoned by the times. The repeated invasions of Italy by France, Austria and Spain completely destroyed the little vitality that the Italians had accumulated from the Renaissance era. In modern times, the scattered region of northern Italy was completely reduced to a hunting ground and colony for Napoleon and the Austrians. By the time Garibaldi, Italy's modern national hero, finally shouted the slogan of "United Italy" and in the middle of the nineteenth century made Italy no longer just a "geographical term", it was too late......

(Based on the historical fate of the Italian city-states, it seems possible to peek into some kind of future prospects for the European Union...... After the end of the Renaissance, the exhausted Italians degenerated into noodles. And what will the exhausted old Europe look like after the end of the era of global colonization? ）

However, although the fate of these Italian city-states will probably be very bleak in the future, at least for this century, they will undoubtedly stand at the pinnacle of the entire era. And the Republic of Venice, the "bride of the Adriatic", is like the British Empire in the nineteenth century, arrogantly and confidently ruling thousands of waves, and with an invincible fleet as a chain, firmly binding the entire Mediterranean Shijie......)

!