| Byzantine navy | |
|---|---|
 The imperial ensign (basilikon phlamoulon) with the tetragrammic cross, carried by Byzantine warships in the 14th century, as described by Pseudo-Kodinos and illustrated in the Castilian atlas Conosçimiento de todos los reynos (c. 1350)[1][2] | |
| Leaders | Byzantine Emperor (Commander-in-chief); droungarios tou ploïmou and thematic strategoi (8th–11th centuries), megas doux (after c. 1092) |
| Dates of operation | 330–1453 |
| Headquarters | Constantinople |
| Active regions | Mediterranean Sea, Danube, Black Sea |
| Size | c. 42,000 men in 899.[3] c. 300 warships in 9th–10th centuries.[4] c. 150 warships under Manuel Komnenos. |
| Part of | Byzantine Empire |
| Allies | Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Crusader states, Aydinids |
| Opponents | Vandals, Ostrogoths, Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates, Emirate of Crete, Fatimids, Slavs, Bulgarians, Rus', Normans, Genoa, Venice, Pisa, Crusader states, Seljuks, Anatolian beyliks, Ottomans |
| Battles and wars | the Justinianic Wars, the Arab–Byzantine wars, the Byzantine–Bulgarian wars, the Rus'–Byzantine wars, the Byzantine–Norman wars, the Crusades and the Byzantine–Ottoman wars |
The Byzantine navy was the naval force of the Byzantine Empire. Like the state it served, it was a direct continuation from its Roman predecessor, but played a far greater role in the defence and survival of the state than its earlier iteration. While the fleets of the Roman Empire faced few great naval threats, operating as a policing force vastly inferior in power and prestige to the army, command of the sea became vital to the very existence of the Byzantine state, which several historians have called a "maritime empire".[5][6]
The first threat to Roman hegemony in the Mediterranean Sea was posed by the Vandals in the 5th century, but their threat was ended by the wars of Justinian I in the 6th century. The re-establishment of a permanently maintained fleet and the introduction of the dromon galley in the same period also marks the point when the Byzantine navy began departing from its late Roman roots and developing its own characteristic identity. This process would be furthered with the onset of the early Muslim conquests in the 7th century. Following the loss of the Levant and later Africa, the Mediterranean was transformed from a "Roman lake" into a battleground between the Byzantines and a series of Muslim states. In this struggle, the Byzantine fleets were critical, not only for the defence of the Empire's far-flung possessions around the Mediterranean basin, but also for repelling seaborne attacks against the imperial capital of Constantinople itself. Through the use of the newly invented "Greek fire", the Byzantine navy's best-known and feared secret weapon, Constantinople was saved from several sieges and numerous naval engagements resulted in Byzantine victories.
Initially, the defence of the Byzantine coasts and the approaches to Constantinople was borne by the great fleet of the Karabisianoi. Progressively however it was split up into several regional fleets, while a central Imperial Fleet was maintained at Constantinople, guarding the city and forming the core of naval expeditions. By the late 8th century, the Byzantine navy, a well-organized and maintained force, was again the dominant maritime power in the Mediterranean. Conflicts with navies of the Muslim world continued with alternating success, but in the 10th century, the Byzantines were able to gain supremacy in the Eastern Mediterranean.
During the 11th century, the navy, like the Empire itself, began to decline. Faced with new naval challenges from the West, the Byzantines were increasingly forced to rely on the navies of Italian city-states such as Venice and Genoa, with disastrous effects on the Empire's economy and sovereignty. A period of recovery under the Komnenos dynasty was followed by another period of decline, which culminated in the disastrous dissolution of the Empire by the Fourth Crusade in 1204. After the Empire was restored in 1261, several emperors of the Palaiologan dynasty attempted to revive the navy, but their efforts only had a temporary effect. Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos even dissolved the navy completely, allowing Venice to defeat the Byzantines in two wars, the first of which resulted in a humiliating treaty that saw the Venetians keep multiple islands captured from Byzantine forces during the war and forced the latter to repay Venice for the destruction of Constantinople's Venetian quarter at the hands of the city's Genoese residents. By the mid-14th century, the Byzantine fleet, which once could put hundreds of warships to sea, was limited to a few dozen at best, and control of the Aegean Sea definitively passed to Italian navies and, in the 15th century, the nascent Ottoman Navy. The diminished Byzantine navy continued to be active until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453.
| Part of a series on the |
| Byzantine army |
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| Structural history |
| Campaign history |
| Lists of wars, revolts and civil wars, and battles (Constantinople) |
| Strategy and tactics |
- ^ Verpeaux 1966, p. 167.
- ^ "Other Byzantine flags shown in the "Book of All Kingdoms" (14th century)". Flags of the World. Retrieved 2010-08-07.
- ^ Treadgold 1998, p. 67.
- ^ Treadgold 1998, p. 85.
- ^ Lewis & Runyan 1985, p. 20.
- ^ Scafuri 2002, p. 1.