by Lucy E. Zahnle

Created on: September 06, 2009

Medieval Piracy From the Vikings to the Renaissance

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Western Europe enjoyed a small interlude of relative peace as far as sea raiding was concerned. Then, in the eighth century C. E., the first Norse pirates arrived to plunder the coastal and island villages scattered around the North Sea.

With crews of thirty to one hundred freemen, Viking longships, powered by oars or light sail, traveled in small fleets. Raiding only in the spring and summer months, Norsemen were able to strike, loot their victims, destroy everything in their path, and return to sea with remarkable speed.

By the latter half of the ninth century, Norse pirates had become campaigners rather than raiders, launching full-scale military expeditions with an eye to taking land and founding new settlements. Norse piracy faded as the Vikings assimilated into the cultures they had sought to dominate.

By the eleventh century, Europe had begun to build sophisticated trading relationships, establishing trading fleets, ports, and posts. Sovereign states as well as brotherhoods of merchants from trading cities drew up agreements granting privileges to each other and guaranteeing safe passage at sea.

With all this wealth suddenly floating about on the High Seas, the old Norse custom of piracy resurfaced. In the thirteenth century, the coastal communities of Cornwall, Scotland, and Ireland adopted seaborne raiding as a supplement to their traditional livelihood as fishermen. At first, the pirates only attacked Genoese, Castilian, or Hansa ships, but soon many of the raiders became less discriminating, attacking any ship that happened across their path.

The early fourteenth century brought a response to this threat. Seven cities in the south of England, Sandwich, Romney, Winchelsea, Hythe, Rye, Dover and Hastings, formed a coalition, the League of .Cinq Ports (although there were seven cities, the title only referred to five ports). The league put together a squadron to fight the pirates and protect goods on their way to market, but the fleet soon degenerated into a band of thieves, imposing their own arbitrary rule as they plundered the Channel traffic they were supposed to protect.

Other English cities banded together to create their own fleets to combat Cinq Ports' fleet. Soon 'attack and reprisal' fleets from all the coastal countries of Europe cruised the seas to protect their own countries' ships and prey on those of their rivals.

Losses due to

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>