Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/67

TUEKISH ATTACKS ON EASTERN TRADE 31 or Chincheu in China) were fed by the Indian or Chi- nese trade. But the same Turkish avalanche that had thrown itself across the Syrian and Black Sea routes was also to descend on Egypt. The Venetians on their expulsion from Constantinople in 1261 transferred their Eastern commerce to Alexandria, and after the capture of Con- stantinople by the Turks in 1453, Egypt for a time enjoyed almost a monopoly of the Indian trade. The monsoon passage was in fact the one channel that re- mained always open from India amid the Mongol and Turkish convulsions along the caravan routes. The growth of the Ottoman navy from 1470 onwards began, however, to imperil the Mediterranean outlets of the Indo-Egyptian trade. It was in vain that Venice in 1454 made an un-Christian peace with the Moslem con- querors of Constantinople, and sought to secure the passage from the Adriatic to Alexandria by fortified stations and island strongholds along the route. Venice had ruined the naval power of Genoa, and the gallant defence of the Knights Hospitallers at Rhodes in 1480 could only delay, not avert, the Ottoman seizure of the Mediterranean highway. In 1470 the Turks wrested the Negropont from Venice with a fleet of one hundred galleys and two hun- dred transports. Before ten years passed their squad- rons swept the Adriatic and ravaged along the Italian coast. In their work of destruction the Turks were aided by an even more savage sea-force from the West. The rise of the Barbary corsairs is usually treated as