582 
SOME SITES OP BATTLE. 
Mouldering walls alone are left of what was once the thriving town 
of Salamis. Here wives and daughters, old men and children, sought 
refuge when Athens was abandoned to the invader, as Moscow was to 
be abandoned in a later age. They crossed the channel from the 
Piraaus to the island, bearing what little of their property they could 
take away. All night the lurid glare from the burning city which had 
been their home had lighted up the Eastern sky. They probably knew, 
many of them only too well, of the sore dissensions amongst the chieftains 
of the heterogeneous naval force to which they trusted for protection, 
dissensions silenced only when at early dawn the council found the 
exits to the Salamis channels closed and a decisive action to, therefore, 
be inevitable. It must have been an anxious morning for the fugitives 
as they noted, beyond the meagre line of Grecian vessels stretched 
across the bay, the foe's great fleet form up for battle. Beyond this 
again, marshalled on the hill-sides of the Attic shore, the keen-sighted 
could descry the formidable cohorts which had come from Susa and 
Persipolis to tread them down. They may have guessed that over there, 
from some high rocky throne, arrayed in all the barbaric splendour of 
he East and surrounded by his satraps, the dread Persian King was 
looking down upon the scene, confident of victory. 
In character and temperament, Themistokles resembled not a little 
Marlborough. Possibly his master-stroke, the suggestion borne to 
Xerxes by a trusty messenger to hem in the great flotilla, whereby the 
Corinthians and others from the south who meditated flitting were 
compelled to stay and fight it out at Salamis, had no other motive than 
pure patriotism. The winning of the Persian's friendship, should he 
gain the day, may not have been the trump card of the Athenian chief. 
It matters not. Themistokles' message to the King decided the fate of 
Greece and of the civilised world of the day. Once fairly at bay, 
animosities and differences between the leaders from the various States 
of Greece ceased, and the contingents vied with each other in their 
daring, and in their zeal for the common cause. 
An inferior fleet was not ill-posted in a bay before the era of long- 
range artillery. Brueys wisely enough ranged his squadron in Aboukir 
bay well inshore, so as, if possible, to hinder Nelson from closing, but 
failed in his design, which, against an antagonist less daring and de¬ 
termined, might have served him well. Against the Greeks, likewise 
drawn up in a bay at Salamis, the crushing’ superiority of the hostile 
force could not be developed. Ram tactics were the feature of the 
fight—not the ram tactics of to-day, no prodding down below the water¬ 
line with its fearful consequences. No. The shock tactics inaugurated 
in this battle consisted in striking the opposing vessel on its broadside 
with the beak or prow, or else in the oblique blow which destroyed the 
oars of the hostile craft on one side so rendering it unmanageable. 
At work like this, the crews of Xerxes were no match for the Greek 
sailors, highly drilled as they were, and guided by helmsmen as ex¬ 
perienced as they were intrepid. As in the days of the great Armada, 
seamanship told, and told decisively. Within a few short hours the 
mighty Persian fleet was in confusion, dispersed and flying, routed by 
a force of scarce one-fifth its strength, beaten as few fleets have been 
