Chapter I: Classical Civilizations
The Rise of Carthage
By the sixth century B.C.E., Carthage had eclipsed its Phoenician motherland as the jewel of the Mediterranean. In many ways, the rise of Carthage mirrors that of Aragon. Initially, Carthage was the lesser of the Phoenician lands, just as Aragon had been the lesser of the Spanish lands, which was originally dominated by the Kingdom of Castile. Over time however, Carthage grew wealthier from her vast trading network that dotted the western Mediterranean. The Carthaginian navy was the most powerful fleet of classical Antiquity, and Carthaginian ships could be found at every corner of the Mediterranean Sea.
In comparison, the principle reason why Carthage came to outshine her patrimonial motherland was the wealth and domination of Mediterranean trade - as it was situated at the center of the Mediterranean World where modern Tunis lay. Although there was room for agriculture, the principle means of wealth that had made Carthage was through trade. The same can be said of the Kingdom of Aragon. The lands of Aragon were situated well for agriculture, but the real ticket to the wealth the Crown of Aragon would amass was in trade. Just as Carthage dominated the Western Mediterranean basin, Aragonese trade dominated the very same trading routes that had made Carthage the envy of the known world! As Carthaginian ships sailed from her magnificence harbor in her namesake city, Aragonese ships spread out across the sea at the center of the world. Carthaginian lands included the Eastern Iberian coastline, North Africa, Sardinia, and Sicily. Aragonese crownlands included the eastern Iberian coastline, her ships gave her a hegemonic presence in North Africa, and Sardinia and Sicily had all come under her domain. In many ways, the Crown of Aragon possessed many of the same lands that Carthage had a little less than 2000 years ago upon the ascendency of King Charles.
Carthage’s navy secured her trading empire, and the sight of Carthaginian ships meant two things: Carthage was here to do business (trade) or Carthage was here to do business (protect its trade, which meant you would soon feel the wrath of Carthaginian power). The Crown of Aragon, although it was initially outmatched by the navies of Venice and Genoa, who also dotted the Mediterranean, even into the Black Sea, eventually surpassed its Italian rivals and came to have the largest and most powerful fleet of any kingdom in the Mediterranean - before the birth of Charles. The sight of Aragonese ships often meant similar things for those unfortunate enough to see the banners of Aragon entering their harbor. As Carthage held its trading empire with an iron fist of ship and sails - the empire that Aragon had carved out in the Western Mediterranean, and her domination of the trade routes at that crossed at Gibraltar, Genoa, and Tunis was maintained by her magnificent navy. Indeed, if wasn’t for her navy, the very empire that stretched across the Western Mediterranean would have never come to be; the very truth of Carthage’s trading empire was that her navy ensured her rise to power. Just as Carthage would send her mighty navy to do her bidding, in 1543, the Great Mediterranean War broke out between Spain and her allies and the Ottoman Empire and her allies – the casus belli, an Ottoman embargo on Spanish trade in the eastern Mediterranean. To protect Spanish trade, which was already seeing a drastic decline as other European powers started to join the colonial race, Charles declared war to protect his fading monopolies and much of the war was fought between the world’s two greatest naval forces.
Throughout human history, the prestige and power of empires could be found in one’s navy. When Lord Acton declared, “The British Army should be a projectile fired by the British Navy,” he was not praising the British Army, but was praising the British Navy. The great powers of the world have always possessed grand naval fleets - for one’s fleet is the true epitome of the height and power of empire. Often, the decline of the navy indicates the decline of imperial power and prestige. Thus, when Spain possessed one of the greatest and largest fleets in the world, with her ships found as far away from the Mediterranean as the Caribbean Sea, Indian Ocean, and even the Pacific, the reputation and sight of Spanish ships was unrivaled in the world. However, Spain's principle rival in the Mediterranean - the Ottomans, possessed the largest fleet when Charles became King and all of her ships were concentrated in the Mediterranean whereas about 1/3 of the Spanish fleet was overseas in her colonial holdings. Despite this, Spain's navy was the most feared in Mediterranean, just as the Carthaginian navy was the most feared almost two millennia ago!
A Trireme, a ship design first pioneered by the Phoenicians and made famous by the Carthaginians. The Romans and Greeks would later adopt their ship designs from those of Carthage. The Spanish navy during the reign of Charles, before the Mediterranean War, was second largest fleet in the world behind the Ottomans - but the Spanish fleet had fully modernized itself by 1530 and therefore possessed no antiquated ships during the outbreak of the war. Spain's navy was the pride of Charles' empire. Nearly 1/4 of the Spanish fleet was comprised of galleys.
Thus, it should come as no surprise that Carthage, then the world’s pre-eminent naval power in Mediterranean, lo, the entire world – was the most potent power in the Mediterranean world. The vast wealth acquired by Carthage through her trading empire also had far reaching political ramifications. Carthage had been, since its founding – an monarchy, a common and ancient form of authority-derived governance in which a single individual, usually a King or Queen, held the political power of the state as it was their divine right to rule over the people (or for some, like the Persians had theorized – the entire world). The transition to more representative forms of government often the result of increased wealth. As a people become wealthier, they realize they have more autonomous power and demand more rights. In 308 B.C.E., the longstanding monarchy had been done away with in favor of a primitive republic.
The politics of Carthage, transformed by her great wealth, resulted in the establishment of one of the first elected legislative assemblies in the world. Although, one shouldn’t confuse this legislature as having the interest of the people, but rather – the middle classes and other merchant oligarchs who had benefited from the vast trade that Carthage had dominated. Even so, trade unions also sprang up to protect the Carthaginian underclasses – namely the farmers and poor merchants and craftsmen in the city and solicited the ears of the elected assemblies. The practice of townhall meetings are not creations of the English congregational churches, as often mythologized, but first had their roots in the primitive townhall meetings of Ancient Carthage. In fact, one could say that the people of Carthage had more power in their politics than those of Rome, the Republic of Carthage was more a republic than her chief rival in Italy!
This liberalized political reformation was predicated on the wealth of Carthage. Today, the wealthiest societies of the world are overwhelmingly democratic and liberal – a reflection of the truth that wealth begets liberalism and in turn, helps created democratic-republican forms of government. In this sense, it made sense that the Crown of Aragon, which had amassed a vast trading network in the western Mediterranean basin, almost identical to Carthage – followed Carthage not in a total reformation of the Kingdom and dissolution of monarchism, but allowed for early European trade unions and popular political movements to form when King Martin II allowed for the formation of the Sindicat Remenca in the lands of Aragon proper – a collection of trade unions of sort that had the interests of the common laborers moreover than the feudal lords who dominated over them.
The decision of King Martin II of Aragon to liberalize the state through the formation of the Sindicat Remenca parallels the transition from monarchy to republic by Carthage. The great trading wealth amassed by Aragon, like with Carthage, caused the underclasses to clamor for reform in the newly found wealth and power of their country.
The rise of Carthage and the rise of Aragon parallel one another on so many levels. Indeed, some might suggest that the Kingdom of Aragon, before it transformed itself into Spain under the leadership of King Charles I, was the “New” Carthage. Unlike Rome – who sent colonies to displace previous cultures and cement the superiority of Roman culture and society, the empire Carthage carved out was one moved by trade. The empire Aragon carved out in the Mediterranean was one not to see the expansion of Catalan culture, but to ensure the safety and protection of the wealthy trade routes of the Mediterranean Sea that Phoenicia, Greece, Carthage, and Rome all squabbled over with various other powers at one point or another.
In military history – both empires witnessed a remarkable moment in war, both of which occurred in Italy. The great Carthaginian general and statesmen – Hannibal, famously during one of the episodes of the Punic Wars, crossed the Alps into Italy and rocked the Roman world with his accomplishment of maneuvering an army of men, horse, and even elephants over the mountainous Alps and into Italy! The accomplishment of Hannibal is among the greatest feats in the history of war – indeed, the Romans scoffed at the idea that Hannibal could lead a Carthaginian army over the Alps and invade Italy from the north. Most had expected that Hannibal would invade from Sicily and cross into the toe of Italy and drive on Rome to the South.
In 1528, the first major political test for the young Charles I of Spain, just 23 years old at the time, had become embroiled in the Third Italian War which pitted the Empire of Spain and her allies Genoa and the dependency of Naples against the mighty Holy Roman Empire – whose power was housed in the Habsburg Archduke of Austria, who were often the emperors of the ancient empire of Charlemagne. While Charles himself was met with great success in his Italian Campaign, which included – like with the Battle of Cannae in which Hannibal dealt a crushing blow to the Romans and cast dark clouds over the fate of the republic, among the darkest hours of the Holy Roman Empire came with their near obliteration at the Battle of Pisa in which the Austrian armies suffered five times as many losses as the Spanish under the leadership of Charles!
Yet, in the glorious military history of Spain, as well as the Mediterranean – the greatest episode of tragedy, triumph, and romanticism came with the Spanish campaign that tracked across the same path of the great Hannibal some 1700 years ago. Just as Hannibal crossed the Alps to stun his enemies, Charles was in a precarious position despite the success of his campaign in Tuscany. The vast Spanish armies were spread from Sicily to Mexico, although Charles himself commanded the very best outfit in the Spanish military – the Army of Sicily, a loyal general of his, Francisco de Paula Fadrique Duke of Toledo commanded the largest army in the Spanish military, and had been stuck in the Iberian Peninsula. The reformed armies of the Holy Roman Empire pressed their advantage in the Spring of 1529 when an army of Naples was defeated and Charles I was in risk of being isolated by an Austrian army twice his size.
Duke Francisco, who had been busy defending Northern Spain from minor armies within the Holy Roman Empire embarked to save the isolated Charles and trekked the same footsteps as Hannibal. On June 27, he crushed an army of the Bishopric of Cologne that was invading through Roussillon. Upon securing this great victory – Duke Francisco marched through southern France and crossed the Alps – just like Hannibal. Thundering out of the Alps, Duke Francisco reunited with Charles in Genoa and prevented the capture of Charles. After the incredible “March across the Alps,” Europe gazed with marvel at the armies of Charles and the accomplishment of the Spanish soldiers. One Italian observer remarked, “Hannibal has been reborn.” Of all the great accomplishments of Carthaginian Army that preceded the Army of Charles – Carthage’s immortality lives on in Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps (even though, in a way, Carthage’s great days of power and prestige had since been eclipsed). In the same fashion today, although the prestige and might of Spain has long since vanished, the March across the Alps by the Spanish Army under Duke Francisco remains one of the most celebrated and memorialized moments in human history!
While one might think that Duke Francisco's crossing is not something to marvel at since it occurred more than 1700 years after Hannibal had accomplished it, in a era when roads through the Alps were scare, and most armies often bypassed the dangerous journey through the Alps in favor of the few mountain passes (which meant one risked being ambushed or halted in the few normalized roads leading into Italy), the accomplishment of the Spanish army during this crossing equally rivaled that of Hannibal. The logistics, discipline, and morale, let alone organization needed to accomplish such a task would have necessarily been akin to Hannibal to make such a successful journey. The arrival of an additional 30,000 Spanish soldiers in Italy broke the back of the armies of the Holy Roman Empire during the Third Italian War, soon after, a pro-Spanish peace was concluded early the next year.
