Heresies of Sea Power/Part 1/Chapter 4
IV
ACTIUM AND LEPANTO
The battle of Actiuin was one of the decisive battles of the world. Since it was a naval fight, it is always thought of as an instance of the use of Sea Power. The water was between the rival claimants for the empire of the world; and they met in conflict upon the water. But that the fight was a sea one depended primarily on the fact that both Antony and Octavianus had elected to move by water against the other—just as in the second Punic War both sides chose to decide the issues on land.
The fleet of Antony was by far the larger, not only in numbers but also in its individual units. Its efficiency was poor: the fidelity of many crews doubtful and Antony its leader more interested in Cleopatra than in war. The fleet of Octavianus on the other hand, though its units were smaller vessels, was under a competent leader, Agrippa, the men were all well disciplined and each man sure of his companion.
In Antony's fleet dissatisfaction was so great that a retreat to Egypt was contemplated, and only because of a gale was it not put into execution. Cleopatra wished to go, and in the heat of the action she fled with sixty ships. The love-sick Antony followed her in a light galley leaving his large vessels to fight as best they could. Even so the issue was long in doubt, the smaller ships of Agrippa made little impression on their monstrous antagonists and not till fire-ships were employed was much effect secured. Towards nightfall, however, the entire fleet was captured or destroyed.
Of this fight the lessons are obvious enough in some ways. There are some details not so obvious: for instance the exact influence that Cleopatra's flight had upon the issue. The accepted story is that she fled about noon; and that her defection, followed by Antony's, led to the subsequent defeat, which else had not been. Every defeat in history has some plausible reason to account for it, and Cleopatra's flight was the most satisfactory explanation to the vanquished.
There is, however, nothing unreasonable in the supposition that her flight may equally well have been the result instead of the cause; and that by noon the larger fleet was in such confusion that the final issue was no longer in doubt to the technical eye. Thus regarded, Actium stands out as a battle in which personnel shows markedly superior to mere matériel. Yet, in so far as Sea Power could be reckoned as a tangible thing it belonged to Antony with his large fleet of almost unassailable warships. His were the big battleships of the period; the ships of Octavianus were but the equivalent of cruisers at the best. Can one base on this a theory that cruisers well handled are sufficient to meet battleships? Scarcely: since the difference in personnel was so marked. Yet at the battle of Yalu in the Chino-Japanese War the conditions were in many ways not dissimilar, cruisers fought comparatively successfully with a fleet containing two (relatively) monster battleships. On the battleship side there was no leader—for Ting was out of action through the concussion of the first gun fired. At least one Chinese ship fled; whatever the moral effect of such an incident may be worth, it was present. Of course, Yalu was a trifling affair compared to Actium, the issues being narrower; still the comparison is profitable, the teachings of history being worth little except when applied to some modern conditions to enable us to seek for eternal principles—if they are to be found.[1] And what do we find? That the fittest to win were victors despite the inferior matériel with which they were handicapped. All other details and conditions are mere embroidery.
After Actium it is natural that we should consider Lepanto. Here after an interval of hundreds of years the issue was fought on very much the same spot, and the territories involved were much the same. The Christians, like Antony, trusted in monster ships, six mastodons being in the fore front of the fight. The Turks had the smaller and handier vessels and the Turks were hopelessly defeated.
One of the Venetian Galleasses at Lepanto.
What again does history teach save the victory of the fittest to win? Antony's mastodons and the Venetian mastodons at Lepanto were relatively the same thing,—they embodied the same reliance upon the practically invulnerable.
If we examine Actium, we find Antony's big ships proving as invulnerable as ever the Venetian galleons at Lepanto. They ceased to be invulnerable only when the ships of Octavianus began to ram so as to disable the steering gear and then brought fire to their aid—that is to say just so soon as the superior fitness to win of the crews enabled them to devise a means of overcoming the barriers between them and success.
Speculatively, we may apply this reasoning to the Russo-Japanese War and the destruction of the Baltic Fleet. Suppose the rival sides to have changed ships, and Togo and his men to have been caught on board the Russian ships in the formation in which Rogestvensky was caught. Can anyone doubt that the Russian squadron manned by Japanese would not easily have extricated itself, and easily annihilated the enemy in detail? Yet, since things were the other way about the tactics of Togo will go down to history as the excellent thing to be studied and imitated, and the tactics of Rogestvensky as the hall-mark of the maximum of badness.
Again: suppose Nelson and his men to have changed ships with the Allies at Trafalgar. Is there any reasonable doubt that British ships would have been aught but annihilated, and then history would have been full of the feeble tactical intelligence displayed by Villeneuve in giving victory to his enemy by his crass folly in attacking an immense line of guns by impinging on them single ships barely able to reply on account of their feeble bow-fire!
Such the main consideration that any comparative study of the battles of Actium and Lepanto must suggest; and yet, just because each has been regarded separately and on its own merits it is the one suggestion that has never been put forward. Either battle gives the lie to the other in all deduction as to materiel, but both combine to indicate the supreme importance of Fitness to Win, and show how trifling are all other things beside it.
- ↑ See Chapter on 'Eternal Principles.'