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- The most terrible thing is the occupation of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453.

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- Effendi, you Mehmed II, you asked us to reinforce the citadel of Anadoluhisari,

- and facing it on the shore of the Romans controlling the passage of the Bosphorus, you had made us raise Rumelihisari in three months.

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- You gave us the courage to transport our boats by land to take Constantinople from the rear.

- We attacked the walls deemed to be unwavering.

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- Inside his castle, the last emperor Constantine XI Palaeologus only has to pray.

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- The Byzantine eagle will fall.

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- You will remain in memoirs as the one who, at the age of 24, overthrew Byzantium.

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- And we will tell that triumphant on your white horse, you came in the basilica of Hagia Sophia.

- Now this city is Muslim. It is called Istanbul.

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- I talked about the Crusades. I have not spoken of Lepanto, but it is not Lepento we retain. Lepanto is the end of autumn crusade, October the 7th, 1571,

- with Don Juan of Austria who commands the Christian fleet and who is, as we say, the last of the Crusaders.

- Lepanto is the last great naval battle of medieval type involving two antagonistic groups.

- On the one hand, the Westerners for once united since the great crusades of the 12th to the early 13th century.

- And on the other hand, the Ottoman power which until now has been virtually undefeated and that just inflicted a great defeat to the Venetians by taking possession of Cyprus.

- Why Lepanto? Well, to answer this question we need a little flashback.

- In 1453, the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople and so at that time they occupy Asia Minor and the Balkan Europe.

- From this point of view, we can consider that they are the heirs of the Byzantine world.

- Some 60 years later, the Ottoman world is truly enormous, extending from Hungary, the Hungarian border, to the Euphrates,

- and from the Nile and beyond, to the Moroccan-Algerian border. It is a considerable power.

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- Among the opponents of the Ottoman world, well united despite everything, the Spaniards, Maltese, that is to say the Knights of Malta, Venice, the Papacy and the city of Genoa.

- Those are the elements that at the time of Lepanto tried to unite for once in front of the Ottoman world

- which tries to eject Venice from its Eastern Mediterranean possessions.

- Venice and its allies.

- From 1522, the Turks took Rhodes to Knights of Malta after a siege of six months.

- In 1535, they had to abandon Tunis to the fleet of Charles V. But in 1565 they arrived on the island of Malta and attacked Fort St. Elmo.

- For four months they held it with their cannons, in vain.

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- This does not prevent them from running on the last Venetian possession in the East, Cyprus, they take in 1571.

- And sustaining the momentum of this victory, the Turks decide to attack the Venetians in their own den, that is to say the Adriatic.

- At the same time a fleet was concentrated in Messina, fleet that aims to attack precisely this Ottoman fleet in the Adriatic and to destroy it.

- But this Christian fleet arrives too late. The Turks already withdrew in the Gulf of Corinth, in Lepanto.

- So fleets arrived on both sides of the constriction which is located here.

- The Ottoman fleet to the east of the cape, the Christian fleet to the west.

- The Ottoman fleet is divided into three groups:

- a squadron near the right side of the coast, a center, and ships on the left side commanded by the famous Uluç Ali.

- The Christian fleet symmetrically, but the left side near the coast, the center in the middle, of course, and the right side a bit ahead, moving towards the Ottomans.

- And this is this right side the Turks see first, without fully seeing the Christian fleet.

- At this moment the Ottoman right side moves in trying to attack from rear this small squadron.

- But comes the rest of the Christian fleet and this attack of the Ottoman right side is destroyed, its leaders captured or killed.

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- This battle is going to imply fleets that interpenetrate, so to speak, and it is truly a tough struggle that happens.

- You'd think of a land battle. The Turks end defeated. Lepanto is the last major battle of Islam and Christianity.

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- Conflicts will become financial, political. Merchants succeed warriors.

- Around 1600 in the Mediterranean, we can say that a period of disenchanted Mediterranean begins, of anemic Mediterranean, of abandoned Mediterranean.

- The beginning of the 17th century is the beginning of a regression that will accelerate gradually and will put the Mediterranean out of the mainstream of the world's wealth.

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- The maritime area a long time limited to the Mediterranean basin opened to the ocean dimension.

- Maritime discoveries of the late 15th century:

- 1492-1497-1498, the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope.

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- And the discovery five or six years ago of America.

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- This continent inhabited by savages that should be evangelized is upsetting the Mediterranean economy.

- But from 1590 the centre of the world swings and will settle permanently in the north in favour of Amsterdam and later in favour of London.

- We observe a slow evolution, gradual but inexorable.

- Major partners that fought at Lepanto have indeed gradually lost their power

- and more deeply their right to control world affairs.

- But the Mediterranean ceased to be a privileged area. It will weaken more and more.

- Between the early 17th and the 19th century new extra-Mediterranean or partially Mediterranean powers such as France

- took control of the commercial space of the inland sea.

- It is in order, the Dutch, a long time the first commercial power in the world,

- the English and the French.

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- So I would say that, before the Suez Canal, you do not understand the English imperialism if you do not see it moved in Gibraltar, it moved in Malta,

- it will move later in Egypt. It also moved in Cyprus. It took the relay points for the passage to India, the land passage to India,

- if it becomes a liquid passage across the isthmus of Suez it is perfect, from, as you know, 1869.

- This is the event of the century. All the crowned heads of Europe arranged a date to solemnly inaugurate the Suez Canal.

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- Honour where honour is due. It is a lady, the Empress Eugénie, who will lead the inauguration.

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- This Canal is obviously an outstanding technological achievement, completed after 10 years of work thanks to the relentlessness of a man, Ferdinand de Lesseps.

- At the same time, from a technical point of view, this is a bet on the steamboat, which is new but will transform completely the traffic conditions.

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- This Canal, however, symbolizes the political collapse of the Mediterranean world.

- It was achieved by others and it transforms the Mediterranean Sea into a passage way. It is a bit the end of a world.

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- The 19th century leaves face to face the two powers that have taken the lead in the industrial revolution.

- On one side England, the first naval power in the world.

- In front, France tries a Mediterranean policy. It conquered Algeria, the first remains of the Ottoman Empire.

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- France took the initiative of the Canal.

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- Of course, the Canal has its history. But the Anglo-French rivalry will dominate the Mediterranean history until 1956.

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- July the 26th, Nasser annexes the Canal. France and England unite to fight back. Suez is now the sensitive area of the Mediterranean.

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- New powers will take over from France and England, it will be once again extra-Mediterranean powers. This is the Mediterranean today.

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- The Canal has been reopened. We no longer believed in it.

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- We are in June 1975. Boats immobilised in the Canal since the Six-Day War have been removed. Traffic just began again.

- What meant this closure? Much less than we might have feared.

- The western world had learned, thanks to container ships and oil tankers, to do without it.

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- The oil passage got used to skirt round the Mediterranean, reopening today, but for whose benefit?

- The visible presence of U.S. aircraft carriers and Russian helicopter carriers points out the conflicting dominations of the two major world powers.

- Which proves that the Mediterranean is still today one of the combat area of world history.

- Eastern Mediterranean continues to be torn apart: wars, bombings, reprisals.

- These are political conflicts, we know how much they are due to international interests.

- But they are conflicts of religion and civilization as well.

- On one side a Jew, on the other a Muslim. Antagonism of mentality emphasised under pressure from the West.

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- We constantly see burning conflicts that are conflicts of the past.

- It is repeating the same mistakes, the same atrocities, the same tragedies, today again.

- And this is even more visible in the Mediterranean, sometimes civilizations are side by side, and today the sea does not separate them anymore. It is a half-hour trip.

- For two months, the American flag has often replaced the Soviet flag in the Egyptian capital. Kissinger will remain there for 48 hours…

- History. The history of the Mediterranean.

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- On the south shores populations had been moved aside by colonization. They now look forward to repossess them.

- We are in Algeria, socialist country.

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- Young students go to the fields to help farmers to be politically educated.

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- What separates these girls from these women, it is not only what separates one generation from another, a city from a country, ease of deprivation.

- We can almost say it is a difference of civilization.

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- Belghimouz is an agricultural village of the agrarian revolution. It is a voluntary work trip made by students from the University of Constantine.

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- For the work in fields, it is rather symbolic because we know that this is not our work that will make progress in the agricultural production, it is not true.

- But if we do this work, it is for them to be more confident. With farmers, it is very difficult to start out of the blue a discussion that could have...

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- She says she is a torn apart woman. Her husband died during the Revolution. Currently she lives in a shack. These are the legacy of colonization.

- And she believes she can only go a step further if she struggles.

- And she says she doesn't do it for her, since she has already lived, a pretty hard life, but she does it for future generations. For her children for instance.

- And she confirms it with the farming village of Belghimouz which will be soon completed.

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- Facing the Northern Mediterranean there is today that Southern Mediterranean pursuing its industrialization based on its energy resources.

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- On the one hand there is decolonized Islam trying to translate into common policy its mastery of oil necessary for Europe.

- On the other hand, Europe of northwest combining its community with the great Mediterranean peninsulas.

- In Southern Italy, in Spain, in Southern France, appear oil ports, steel centres, processing plants.

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- These are the outposts of Europe.

- Yes, the power of decision comes from Paris. But the Mediterranean area basically did not give rise to major industrial implantations so far.

- This is a gap being filled for the benefit of course, as we saw, of Europe but also for the benefit of the whole Mediterranean basin.

- Between the two of them, a difficult but necessary dialogue tries to set up. This North-South dialogue, as we say today, will it come to replace the East-West Dialogue?

- Think! Think! Think of Italy. When in the 19th century everything will revive.

- There will be an opportunity for Mediterranean countries, and it continues today, to catch up but not to jump on the bandwagon of industrial process as it existed in the 19th century,

- but as it is, I would say, in the 20th century. What the countries of the Mediterranean are doing now, those who understood the situation.

- And think of Algeria. What happened in Algeria happened also in Italy.

- When Italy made up for lost time by heading towards, I would say, the most obvious modernity of the industrial world.

- So much so that being late is the possibility one day or another to take sevenleague boots and run faster than others.

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- Today's Mediterranean is a Mediterranean that is considerably perking up again,

- or we should rather say taking back its worldwide place, and quite brilliantly.

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