of forcing the boom, or chain, that was stretched from that tower to
the Byzantine shore. After some fruitless attempts, their intrepid
perseverance prevailed; twenty ships of war, the relics of the Grecian
navy, were either sunk or taken; the enormous and massy links of iron
were cut asunder by the shears, or broken by the weight, of the galleys;
and the Venetian fleet, safe and triumphant, rode at anchor in the port
of Constantinople. By these daring achievements, a remnant of twenty
thousand Latins solicited the license of besieging a capital which
contained above four hundred thousand inhabitants, able, though not
willing, to bear arms in the defence of their country. Such an account
would indeed suppose a population of near two millions; but whatever
abatement may be required in the numbers of the Greeks, the belief of
those numbers will equally exalt the fearless spirit of their assailants.

THE CAPTURE OF CONSTANTINOPLE (1203 A.D.)

The trembling usurper was supported by Theodore Lascaris, his son-in-law,
a valiant youth, who aspired to save and to rule his country; the
Greeks, regardless of that country, were awakened to the defence of
their religion; but their firmest hope was in the strength and spirit
of the Varangian guards, of the Danes and English, as they are named in
the writers of the times. After ten days’ incessant labour, the ground
was levelled, the ditch filled, the approaches of the besiegers were
regularly made, and 250 engines of assault exercised their various powers
to clear the rampart, to batter the walls, and to sap the foundations.
On the first appearance of a breach, the scaling-ladders were applied,
the numbers that defended the vantage ground repulsed and oppressed the
adventurous Latins; but they admired the resolution of fifteen knights
and sergeants, who had gained the ascent, and maintained their perilous
station till they were precipitated or made prisoners by the imperial
guards.

On the side of the harbour, the naval attack was more successfully
conducted by the Venetians; and that industrious people employed every
resource that was known and practised before the invention of gunpowder.
A double line, three bow-shots in front, was formed by the galleys and
ships; and the swift motion of the former was supported by the weight
and loftiness of the latter, whose decks, and poops, and turret were
the platforms of military engines, that discharged their shot over the
heads of the first line. The soldiers, who leaped from the galleys on
shore, immediately planted and ascended their scaling-ladders, while the
large ships, advancing more slowly into the intervals, and lowering a
drawbridge, opened a way through the air from their masts to the rampart.
In the midst of the conflict, the doge, a venerable and conspicuous form,
stood aloft in complete armour on the prow of his galley. The great
standard of St. Mark was displayed before him; his threats, promises, and
exhortations urged the diligence of the rowers; his vessel was the first
that struck; and Dandolo was the first warrior on the shore.

The nations admired the magnanimity of the blind old man, without
reflecting that his age and infirmities diminished the price of life, and
enhanced the value of immortal glory. On a sudden, by an invisible hand
(for the standard-bearer was probably slain), the banner of the republic
was fixed on the rampart; twenty-five towers were rapidly occupied; and,
by the cruel expedient of fire, the Greeks were driven from the adjacent
quarter. The doge had despatched the intelligence of his success, when
he was checked by the danger of his confederates. Nobly declaring that
he would rather die with the pilgrims than gain a victory by their
destruction, Dandolo relinquished his advantage, recalled his troops,
and hastened to the scene of action. He found the six weary diminutive
battles of the French encompassed by sixty squadrons of the Greek
cavalry, the least of which was more numerous than the largest of their
divisions.

Shame and despair had provoked Alexius to the last effort of a general
sally; but he was awed by the firm order and manly aspect of the Latins;
and, after skirmishing at a distance, withdrew his troops in the close of
the evening. The silence or tumult of the night exasperated his fears;
and the timid usurper, collecting a treasure of ten thousand pounds
of gold, basely deserted his wife, his people, and his fortune, threw
himself into a bark, stole through the Bosporus, and landed in shameful
safety in an obscure harbour of Thrace. As soon as they were apprised
of his flight, the Greek nobles sought pardon and peace in the dungeon
where the blind Isaac expected each hour the visit of the executioner.
Again saved and exalted by the vicissitudes of fortune, the captive,
in his imperial robes, was replaced on the throne, and surrounded with
prostrate slaves, whose real terror and affected joy he was incapable
of discerning. At the dawn of day, hostilities were suspended; and the
Latin chiefs were surprised by a message from the lawful and reigning
emperor, who was impatient to embrace his son, and to reward his generous
deliverers.

[Sidenote: [1203-1204 A.D.]]

But these generous deliverers were unwilling to release their hostage
till they had obtained from his father the payment, or at least the
promise, of their recompense. The father of young Alexius inquired with
some anxiety into the nature of his stipulations. The submission of the
Eastern Empire to the Pope, the succour of the Holy Land, and a present
contribution of two hundred thousand marks of silver--“These conditions
are weighty,” was his prudent reply; “they are hard to accept, and
difficult to perform. But no conditions can exceed the measure of your
services and deserts.”

After this satisfactory assurance, the barons mounted on horseback, and
introduced the heir of Constantinople to the city and palace. His youth
and marvellous adventures engaged every heart in his favour, and Alexius
was solemnly crowned with his father in the dome of St. Sophia. At the
price of sixteen hundred pounds of gold, he prevailed on the marquis
of Montferrat to lead him with an army round the provinces of Europe;
to establish his authority, and pursue his uncle, while Constantinople
was awed by the presence of Baldwin, and his confederates of France
and Flanders. The expedition was successful. The blind old emperor
exulted in the success of his arms, and listened to the predictions of
his flatterers, that the same Providence which had raised him from the
dungeon to the throne, would heal his gout, restore his sight, and watch
over the long prosperity of his reign.

By the recent invasion, the Greeks were awakened from a dream of nine
centuries; from the vain presumption that the capital of the Roman Empire
was impregnable to foreign arms. The strangers of the West had violated
the city, and bestowed the sceptre of Constantine; their imperial clients
soon became as unpopular as themselves; the well-known vices of Isaac
were rendered still more contemptible by his infirmities, and the young
Alexius was hated as an apostate, who had renounced the manners and
religion of his country. His secret covenant with the Latins was divulged
or suspected; the people, and especially the clergy, were devoutly
attached to their faith and superstition; and every convent, and every
shop, resounded with the danger of the church and the tyranny of the
pope. An empty treasury could ill supply the demands of regal luxury and
foreign extortion; the Greeks refused to avert, by a general tax, the
impending evils of servitude and pillage; the oppression of the rich
excited a more dangerous and personal resentment; and if the emperor
melted the plate, and despoiled the images, of the sanctuary, he seemed
to justify the complaints of heresy and sacrilege.

Alexius hesitated between gratitude and patriotism, between the fear of
his subjects and of his allies. By his feeble and fluctuating conduct he
lost the esteem and confidence of both; and while he invited the marquis
of Montferrat to occupy the palace, he suffered the nobles to conspire,
and the people to arm, for the deliverance of their country. Regardless
of his painful situation, the Latin chiefs repeated their demands,
resented his delays, suspected his intentions, and exacted a decisive
answer of peace or war.

In the eyes of both nations Alexius was false and contemptible; the base
and spurious race of the Angeli was rejected with clamorous disdain;
and the people of Constantinople encompassed the senate, to demand at
their hands a more worthy emperor. To every senator, conspicuous by
his birth or dignity, they successively presented the purple; by each
senator the deadly garment was repulsed; the contest lasted three days;
and we may learn from the historian Nicetas, one of the members of the
assembly, that fear and weakness were the guardians of their loyalty. A
phantom, who vanished in oblivion, was forcibly proclaimed by the crowd;
but the author of the tumult, and the leader of the war, was a prince
of the house of Ducas; and his common appellation of Alexius must be
discriminated by the epithet of Murtzuphlus, which in the vulgar idiom
expressed the close junction of his black and shaggy eyebrows.

At once a patriot and a courtier, the perfidious Murtzuphlus, who
was not destitute of cunning and courage, opposed the Latins both in
speech and action, inflamed the passions and prejudices of the Greeks,
and insinuated himself into the favour and confidence of Alexius, who
trusted him with the office of great chamberlain, and tinged his buskins
with the colours of royalty. At the dead of night he rushed into the
bedchamber with an affrighted aspect, exclaiming, that the palace was
attacked by the people and betrayed by the guards. Starting from his
couch, the unsuspecting prince threw himself into the arms of his enemy,
who had contrived his escape by a private staircase. But that staircase
terminated in a prison; Alexius was seized, stripped, and loaded with
chains; and, after tasting some days the bitterness of death, he was
poisoned, or strangled, or beaten with clubs, at the command and in the
presence of the tyrant. The emperor, Isaac Angelus, soon followed his son
to the grave, and Murtzuphlus, perhaps, might spare the superfluous crime
of hastening the extinction of impotence and blindness.

SECOND CAPTURE, AND SACK OF THE CITY (1204 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1204 A.D.]]

The death of the emperors, and the usurpation of Murtzuphlus, had changed
the nature of the quarrel. It was no longer the disagreement of allies
who over-valued their services, or neglected their obligations; the
French and Venetians forgot their complaints against Alexius, dropped a
tear on the untimely fate of their companion, and swore revenge against
the perfidious nation who had crowned his assassin. Near three months,
without excepting the holy season of Lent, were consumed in skirmishes
and preparations before the Latins were ready or resolved for a general
assault.

In more than a hundred places the assault was urged, and the defence was
sustained, till the superiority of ground and numbers finally prevailed,
and the Latin trumpets sounded a retreat. On the ensuing days, the attack
was renewed with equal vigour, and a similar event. In the third assault,
two ships were linked together to double their strength; a strong north
wind drove them on the shore; the bishops of Troyes[79] and Soissons[80]
led the van; and the auspicious names of the _Pilgrim_ and the _Paradise_
resounded along the line. The episcopal banners were displayed on
the walls; a hundred marks of silver had been promised to the first
adventurers; and if their reward was intercepted by death, their names
have been immortalised by fame. Four towers were scaled, three gates were
burst open, and the French knights, who might tremble on the waves, felt
themselves invincible on horseback on the solid ground. Shall we relate
that the thousands who guarded the emperor’s person fled on the approach,
and before the lance, of a single warrior? Their ignominious flight is
attested by their countryman Nicetas[j]--an army of phantoms marched
with the French hero, and he was magnified to a giant in the eyes of the
Greeks. The Latins entered the city under the banners of their leaders;
the streets and gates opened for their passage; and either design or
accident kindled a third conflagration, which consumed in a few hours the
measure of three of the largest cities of France.

Constantinople had been taken by storm; and no restraints, except those
of religion and humanity, were imposed on the conquerors by the laws of
war. Boniface, marquis of Montferrat, still acted as their general; and
the Greeks, who revered his name as that of their future sovereign, were
heard to exclaim in a lamentable tone, “Holy marquis-king, have mercy
upon us!” His prudence or compassion opened the gates of the city to the
fugitives; and he exhorted the soldiers of the cross to spare the lives
of their fellow-Christians. The streams of blood that flow down the
pages of Nicetas may be reduced to the slaughter of two thousand of his
unresisting countrymen; and the greater part was massacred, not by the
strangers, but by the Latins, who had been driven from the city, and who
exercised the revenge of a triumphant faction. Yet of these exiles some
were less mindful of injuries than of benefits; and Nicetas himself was
indebted for his safety to the generosity of a Venetian merchant.

Pope Innocent III accuses the pilgrims of respecting, in their lust,
neither age, nor sex, nor religious profession; and bitterly laments
that the deeds of darkness, fornication, adultery, and incest were
perpetrated in open day; and that noble matrons and holy nuns were
polluted by the grooms and peasants of the Catholic camp. It is indeed
probable that the license of victory prompted and covered a multitude
of sins; but it is certain, that the capital of the East contained a
stock of venal or willing beauty sufficient to satiate the desires of
twenty thousand pilgrims; and female prisoners were no longer subject
to the right or abuse of domestic slavery. The marquis of Montferrat
was the patron of discipline and decency; the count of Flanders was the
mirror of chastity; they had forbidden, under pain of death, the rape of
married women, or virgins, or nuns; and the proclamation was sometimes
invoked by the vanquished and respected by the victors. Their cruelty and
lust were moderated by the authority of the chiefs and feelings of the
soldiers; for we are no longer describing an irruption of the northern
savages; and, however ferocious they might still appear, time, policy,
and religion had civilised the manners of the French, and still more of
the Italians. But a free scope was allowed to their avarice, which was
glutted, even in the holy week, by the pillage of Constantinople.

[Illustration: RUINS OF A SARACEN TOWER]

The right of victory, unshackled by any promise or treaty, had
confiscated the public and private wealth of the Greeks; and every hand,
according to its size and strength, might lawfully execute the sentence
and seize the forfeiture. A portable and universal standard of exchange
was found in the coined and uncoined metals of gold and silver, which
each captor at home or abroad might convert into the possessions most
suitable to his temper and situation. Of the treasures which trade and
luxury had accumulated, the silks, velvets, furs, the gems, spices, and
rich movables, were the most precious, as they could not be procured
for money, in the ruder countries of Europe. An order of rapine was
instituted; nor was the share of each individual abandoned to industry
or chance. Under the tremendous penalties of perjury, excommunication,
and death, the Latins were bound to deliver their plunder into the common
stock; three churches were selected for the deposit and distribution
of the spoil; a single share was allotted to a foot-soldier; two for a
sergeant on horseback; four to a knight; and larger proportions according
to the rank and merit of the barons and princes. For violating this
sacred engagement, a knight belonging to the count of St. Pol was hanged
with his shield and coat of arms round his neck; his example might render
similar offenders more artful and discreet; but avarice was more powerful
than fear; and it is generally believed that the secret far exceeded
the acknowledged plunder. Yet the magnitude of the prize surpassed the
largest scale of experience or expectation. After the whole had been
equally divided between the French and Venetians, fifty thousand marks
were deducted to satisfy the debts of the former and the demands of the
latter. The residue of the French amounted to four hundred thousand marks
of silver [about £800,000 or $4,000,000].

In this great revolution we enjoy the singular felicity of comparing
the narratives of Villehardouin and Nicetas, the opposite feelings of
the marshal of Champagne and the Byzantine senator. At the first view
it should seem that the wealth of Constantinople was only transferred
from one nation to another; and that the loss and sorrow of the Greeks
are exactly balanced by the joy and advantage of the Latins. But in the
miserable account of war, the gain is never equivalent to the loss,
the pleasure to the pain; the smiles of the Latins were transient and
fallacious; the Greeks forever wept over the ruins of their country; and
their real calamities were aggravated by sacrilege and mockery. What
benefits accrued to the conquerors from the three fires which annihilated
so vast a portion of the buildings and riches of the city? What a stock
of such things, as could neither be used nor transported, was maliciously
or wantonly destroyed! How much treasure was idly wasted in gaming,
debauchery, and riot! And what precious objects were bartered for a vile
price by the impatience or ignorance of the soldiers, whose reward was
stolen by the base industry of the last of the Greeks!

These alone, who had nothing to lose, might derive some profit from the
revolution; but the misery of the upper ranks of society is strongly
painted in the personal adventures of Nicetas himself. His stately palace
had been reduced to ashes in the second conflagration; and the senator,
with his family and friends, found an obscure shelter in another house
which he possessed near the church of St. Sophia. It was the door of this
mean habitation that his friend the Venetian guarded in the disguise of
a soldier, till Nicetas could save, by a precipitate flight, the relics
of his fortune and the chastity of his daughter. In a cold wintry season,
these fugitives, nursed in the lap of prosperity, departed on foot; his
wife was with child; the desertion of their slaves compelled them to
carry their baggage on their own shoulders; and their women, whom they
placed in the centre, were exhorted to conceal their beauty with dirt,
instead of adorning it with paint and jewels.

Every step was exposed to insult and danger; the threats of the strangers
were less painful than the taunts of the plebeians, with whom they were
now levelled; nor did the exiles breathe in safety till their mournful
pilgrimage was concluded at Selymbria, above forty miles from the
capital. On their way they overtook the patriarch, without attendance,
and almost without apparel, riding on an ass, and reduced to a state of
apostolic poverty, which, had it been voluntary, might perhaps have been
meritorious. In the meanwhile, his desolate churches were profaned by the
licentiousness and party zeal of the Latins. After stripping the gems and
pearls, they converted the chalices into drinking cups; their tables, on
which they gamed and feasted, were covered with the pictures of Christ
and the saints; and they trampled under foot the most venerable objects
of the Christian worship. In the cathedral of St. Sophia, the ample veil
of the sanctuary was rent asunder for the sake of the golden fringe; and
the altar, a monument of art and riches, was broken in pieces and shared
among the captors.

Their mules and horses were laden with the wrought silver and gilt
carvings which they tore down from the doors and pulpit; and if the
beasts stumbled under the burden, they were stabbed by their impatient
drivers, and the holy pavement streamed with their impure blood. A
prostitute was seated on the throne of the patriarch; and that daughter
of Belial, as she is styled, sang and danced in the church, to ridicule
the hymns and processions of the Orientals. Nor were the repositories
of the royal dead secure from violation; in the church of the Apostles,
the tombs of the emperors were rifled; and it is said, that after six
centuries the corpse of Justinian was found without any sign of decay or
putrefaction. In the streets the French and Flemings clothed themselves
and their horses in painted robes and flowing head-dresses of linen; and
the coarse intemperance of their feasts insulted the splendid sobriety of
the East. To expose the arms of a people of scribes and scholars, they
affected to display a pen, an inkhorn, and a sheet of paper, without
discerning that the instruments of science and valour were useless in the
hands of the modern Greeks.

Their reputation and their language encouraged them, however, to despise
the ignorance, and to overlook the progress of the Latins. In the love
of the arts, the national difference was still more obvious and real;
the Greeks preserved with reverence the works of their ancestors, which
they could not imitate; and, in the destruction of the statues of
Constantinople, we are provoked to join in the complaints and invectives
of the Byzantine historian. The brass statues were broken and melted by
the unfeeling avarice of the crusaders; the cost and labour were consumed
in a moment; the soul of genius evaporated in smoke; and the remnant of
base metal was coined into money for the payment of the troops. Bronze
is not the most durable of monuments; from the marble forms of Phidias
and Praxiteles, the Latins might turn aside with stupid contempt; but
unless they were crushed by some accidental injury, those useless stones
stood secure on their pedestals. The most enlightened of the strangers,
above the gross and sensual pursuits of their countrymen, more piously
exercised the right of conquest in the search and seizure of the relics
of the saints.[h]

FOOTNOTES

[64] Leo Diaconus[b] calls his murderers Germans, meaning doubtless
Northmen.

[65] These numbers are given by Leo Diaconus.[b] Cedrenus[c] gives five
thousand infantry and four thousand cavalry; Zonaras,[d] the same number.
The proportion affords some insight into the constitution of Byzantine
armies at this period of military glory. The cavalry served as the model
for European chivalry, but the sword of the legionary could still gain a
battle.

[66] Leo Diaconus[b] calls the larger vessels triremes, though they
certainly had not more than two tiers of oars.

[67] The Russians then wore armour similar to that worn by the Normans in
western Europe at a later period, according to Leo Diaconus.[b]

[68] Leo Diaconus,[b] 171.

[69] Cruelty similar to that of Basil was perpetrated on a smaller scale
by Richard Cœur-de-Lion, though of course it is not necessary to place
strict reliance on the numbers reported by the Byzantine historians.
Richard, to revenge the loss of a body of men, ordered three hundred
French knights to be thrown into the Seine, and put out the eyes of
fifteen, who were sent home blind, led by one whose right eye had been
spared. Philip Augustus, nothing loath, revenged himself by treating
fifteen English knights in the same way.--Putting out men’s eyes was, for
several centuries, a common practice all over Europe, and not regarded
with much horror. As late as the reign of Henry IV. 1403 A.D., an Act of
Parliament was passed, making it felony for Englishmen to cut out one
another’s tongues, or put out their neighbours’ eyes.

[70] [He was utterly defeated by the Saracens at Agaz in 1030; the
fleets, however, won two victories.]

[71] [The Saracens attacked the empire on all sides, and Sicily was all
but won by the general Maniaces. It was lost through the incapacity of
Michael’s brother-in-law Stephen. In 1040 Servia regained her freedom,
and the Slavonians and Bulgarians were driven to rebellion by the fiscal
exactions of the eunuch Joannes called Orphanotrophus.]

[72] [It was merely an hereditary surname, according to Finlay.[e]]

[73] [Maniaces revolted, and proclaimed himself emperor. He was killed
in the moment of victory by an arrow. Leo Tornicus, a relative of the
emperor, besieged Constantinople but was repulsed. The imperial troops
suffered defeats from the Servians, but repulsed the Russians and the
Patzinaks. Armenia was conquered, 1045, and two invasions of Seljuk Turks
beaten off.]

[74] “To contemporaries, this revolution presented nothing to distinguish
it from the changes of sovereign, which had been an ordinary event in
the Byzantine Empire, and which were ascribed by the wisest statesmen of
the time to the decree of heaven, and not to the working of political
and moral causes, which the will of God allows the intelligence of man
to employ for effecting the improvement or decline of human affairs.
Perhaps no man then living perceived that this event was destined to
change the whole system of government, destroy the fabric of the central
administration, deliver up the provinces of Asia an easy conquest to the
Seljuk Turks, and the capital a prey to a band of crusaders.”[e]

[75] [In 1059 Isaac marched against the Hungarians and Patzinaks, who
were ravaging the northern frontier, and the invaders were soon compelled
to sue for peace. This is the only opportunity Isaac had of showing his
military ability.]

[76] [Togrul Beg and Alp Arslan began their invasion from Mesopotamia in
1060; Avii was captured in 1064.]

[77] [The campaign of 1070 was conducted by Manuel Comnenus, but after
Alp Arslan captured Manzicert Romanus returned to the command.]

[78] [The Turkish war was renewed in 1072 when Alp Arslan was unable to
obtain payment of Romanus’ ransom. He finally conquered the Byzantine
portion of Asia Minor and gave it to Suleiman to rule over. In 1076
Jerusalem fell before the Seljuks, and this event was the direct cause of
the Crusades. Nor were these the only foreign troubles of the empire at
this period. In 1073 the Bulgarians made a desperate attempt to regain
their liberty.]

[79] [The Roman Augustobona, afterwards Tricassæ.]

[80] [The Roman Augusta Suessonum.]

CHAPTER IX. THE LATIN EMPIRE

[1204-1261 A.D.]

After the festival of Easter, the crusaders shared the captured riches;
the fourth part of the spoil was set aside for him who should be chosen
emperor, and the rest was divided among the French and the Venetians. The
French crusaders, who had conquered Zara, to the sole advantage of the
Venetians, were not the less called upon to pay the fifty thousand silver
marks they owed to the republic; the amount was deducted beforehand from
the portion of the booty that belonged to them. In the division that was
made among the warriors of Lombardy, Germany, and France, each knight had
a part equal to that of two horsemen, and every horseman one equal to
that of two foot-soldiers. All the plunder of the Greeks yielded[81] only
400,000 silver marks; but although this sum far exceeded the revenues of
all the kingdoms of the West, it did not by any means represent the value
of the riches accumulated in Byzantium. If the princes and barons, upon
making themselves masters of the city, had been satisfied with imposing a
tribute upon the inhabitants, they might have received a much larger sum.

When they had shared the plunder, the crusaders gave way to the most
extravagant joy, without perceiving that they had committed a great fault
in exhausting a country which was about to become their own; they did not
reflect that the ruin of the conquered might one day bring on that of the
conquerors, and that they might become as poor as the Greeks they had
just despoiled. Without regrets, as without foresight, hoping everything
from their own good swords, they set about electing a leader who should
reign over a people in mourning and a desolated city. The imperial purple
had still the same splendour in their eyes, and the throne, though shaken
by their arms, was still the object of their ambition.

THE ELECTION OF AN EMPEROR

[Sidenote: [1204 A.D.]]

Six electors were chosen from among the Venetian nobles, and six others
from among the French ecclesiastics, to give a master to Constantinople;
the twelve electors assembled in the palace of Bukoleon, and swore, upon
the Gospel, to crown only merit and virtue.

Three of the principal leaders of the Crusade had equal claims to
the suffrages of the electors. If the purple was to be the reward of
experience, of ability in council, and of services rendered to the cause
of the Latins, Henry Dandolo, who had been the moving spirit, the very
soul of the enterprise, certainly had the first claim to it. The marquis
of Montferrat, likewise, had titles worthy of great consideration;
the Latins had chosen him for their leader, and the Greeks already
acknowledged him as their master. His bravery, proved in a thousand
fights, promised a firm and generous support to a throne that must rise
from amidst ruins. His prudence and moderation might give the Latins and
the people of Greece reason to hope that, when once raised to empire,
he would repair the evils of war. The claims of Baldwin to the imperial
crown were not less cogent than those of his concurrents. The count of
Flanders was related to the most powerful monarchs of the West, and was
descended, in the female line, from Charlemagne. He was much beloved
by his soldiers, whose dangers he was always ready to share; he had
deservedly obtained the esteem of the Greeks, who, even amidst the
disorders of conquest, celebrated him as the champion of chastity and
honour. Baldwin was the protector of the weak, the friend of the poor; he
loved justice, and had no dread of truth.

The electors at first turned their attention towards the venerable
Dandolo; but the republicans of Venice trembled at the idea of seeing an
emperor among their fellow-citizens: “What shall we not have to dread,”
said they, “from a Venetian, become master of Greece, and of part of the
East? Shall we be subject to his laws, or will he remain subject to the
laws of our country? Under his reign, and under that of his successors,
who will assure us that Venice, the Queen of the Seas, will not become
one of the cities of this empire?” The Venetians, whilst speaking thus,
bestowed just eulogiums upon the virtue and character of Dandolo; they
added, that their doge, who was approaching the end of a life filled
with great actions, had nothing left him but to finish his days with
glory, and that he himself would find it more glorious to be the head of
a victorious republic, than the sovereign of a conquered nation. “What
Roman,” cried they, “would have been willing to lay down the title of
citizen of Rome, to become king of Carthage?”

On terminating their speeches, the Venetians conjured the assembly to
elect an emperor from among the other leaders of the army. After this,
the choice of the electors could only be directed towards the count of
Flanders and the marquis of Montferrat. To prevent the effects of a
fatal discord, it was judged best to decree, at once, that the prince
that should gain the suffrages for the imperial throne, should yield to
the other, under the condition of fealty and homage, the property of the
island of Candia, and all the lands of the empire situated on the other
side of the Bosporus. After this decision the assembly turned their
whole attention to the election of an emperor. Their choice was for a
long time uncertain. The marquis of Montferrat at first appeared to have
the majority of the suffrages; but the Venetians were fearful of seeing
upon the throne of Constantinople a prince who had any possessions in
the neighbourhood of their territories. The interests and jealousies of
policy, and, without doubt, also wisdom and equity, at length united all
voices in favour of the count of Flanders.

The crusaders, assembled before the palace of Bukoleon, awaited with
impatience the decision of the electors. At the hour of midnight, the
bishop of Soissons came forward under the vestibule, and pronounced, in
a loud voice, these words: “This hour of the night, which witnessed the
birth of a Saviour of the world, gives birth to a new empire, under the
protection of the Omnipotent. You have for emperor, Baldwin, count of
Flanders and Hainault.” Loud cries of joy arose from among the Venetians
and the French. The people of Constantinople, who had so often changed
masters, received, without repugnance, the new one just given to them,
and mingled their acclamations with those of the Latins. Baldwin was
elevated upon a buckler, and borne in triumph to the church of St.
Sophia. The marquis of Montferrat followed in the train of his rival; the
generous submission, of which he presented an example, was much admired
by his companions in arms, and his presence drew scarcely less attention
than the warlike pomp that surrounded the new emperor.

BALDWIN CROWNED

The ceremony of the coronation was postponed till the fourth Sunday
after Easter. In the meantime the marriage of the marquis of Montferrat
with Margaret of Hungary, the widow of Isaac, was celebrated with much
splendour. Constantinople beheld within its walls the festivities and
spectacles of the West, and, for the first time, the Greeks heard in
their churches the prayers and hymns of the Latins. On the day appointed
for the coronation of the emperor, Baldwin repaired to St. Sophia,
accompanied by the barons and the clergy. Whilst divine service was
being performed, the emperor ascended a throne of gold, and received the
purple from the hands of the pope’s legate, who performed the functions
of patriarch. Two knights carried before him the _laticlavici tunica_
of the Roman consuls, and the imperial sword, once again in the hands
of warriors and heroes. The head of the clergy, standing before the
altar, pronounced, in the Greek language, these words: “He is worthy of
reigning;” and all persons present repeated in chorus, “He is worthy! he
is worthy!” The crusaders shouting their boisterous acclamations, the
knights clad in armour, the crowd of miserable Greeks, the sanctuary
despoiled of its ancient ornaments, and decked with foreign pomp,
presented altogether a spectacle solemn and melancholy--all the evils of
war amidst the trophies of victory. Surrounded by the ruins of an empire,
reflective spectators could not fail to remark among the ceremonies of
this day, that in which, according to the custom of the Greeks, were
presented to Baldwin a little vase filled with dust and bones, and a lock
of lighted flax, as symbols of the shortness of life and the nothingness
of human grandeur.

Before the ceremony of his coronation, the new emperor distributed
the principal dignities of the empire among his companions in arms.
Villehardouin, marshal of Champagne, obtained the title of marshal of
Romania; the count de St. Pol, the dignity of constable; the charges of
master of the wardrobe, great cupbearer and butler, were given to Canon
de Bethune, Macaire de St. Ménéhoult, and Miles de Brabant. The doge of
Venice created despot or prince of Romania, had the right of wearing
purple buskins, a privilege, among the Greeks, reserved for members of
the imperial family. Henry Dandolo represented the republic of Venice at
Constantinople; half the city was under his dominion and recognised his
laws; he raised himself, by the dignity of his character as well as by
his exploits, above all the princes and all the nobles of the court of
Baldwin; he alone was exempt from paying fealty and homage to the emperor
for the lands he was to possess.

DIVISION OF THE TERRITORY

The barons began to be impatient to share the cities and provinces
of the empire. In a council composed of twelve of the patricians of
Venice and twelve French knights, all the conquered lands were divided
between the two nations. Bithynia, Romania or Thrace, Thessalonica, all
Greece from Thermopylæ to Cape Sunium, with the larger isles of the
Archipelago, fell to the share and under the dominion of the French. The
Venetians obtained the Cyclades and the Sporades in the Archipelago; the
isles and the oriental coast of the Adriatic Gulf; the coasts of the
Propontis and the Euxine Sea; the banks of the Hebrus and the Vardas;
the cities of Cypsedes, Didymatica, and Hadrianopolis; the maritime
countries of Thessalonica, etc. Such was at first the distribution of the
territories of the empire. But circumstances that could not be foreseen,
the diversity of interests, the rivalries of ambition, all the chances
of fortune and of war, soon produced great changes in this division of
dominions. History would in vain endeavour to follow the conquerors into
the provinces allotted to them; it would be more easy to mark the banks
of an overflowing torrent, or to trace the path of the storm, than to fix
the state of the uncertain and transitory possessions of the conquerors
of Byzantium.

[Illustration: METHODS OF ATTACKING A WALL, ELEVENTH CENTURY

(From an old print)]

The lands situated beyond the Bosporus were erected into a kingdom, and,
with the island of Candia, given to the marquis of Montferrat. Boniface
exchanged them for the province of Thessalonica, and sold the island of
Candia to the republic of Venice for thirty pounds weight of gold. The
provinces of Asia were abandoned to the count of Blois, who assumed the
title of duke of Nicæa and Bithynia. In the distribution of the cities
and lands of the empire, every one of the lords and barons had obtained
domains proportionate with the rank and services of the new possessor.
When they heard speak of so many countries of which they scarcely knew
the names, the warriors of the West were astonished at their conquests,
and believed that the greater part of the universe was promised to their
ambition. In the intoxication of their joy, they declared themselves
masters of all the provinces that had formed the empire of Constantine.
They cast lots for the countries of the Medes and Parthians, and the
kingdoms that were under the domination of the Turks and Saracens. With
the money which arose from the plunder of the capital, the conquerors
purchased the provinces of the empire; they sold, they played at dice,
for whole cities and their inhabitants. Constantinople was during several
days a market, in which seas and their islands, nations and their wealth,
were trafficked for; in which the Roman world was put up to sale, and
found purchasers among the obscure crowd of the crusaders.

Whilst the barons were thus distributing cities and kingdoms, the
ambition of the Latin clergy was by no means idle, but was busy in
invading the property of the Greek church. The leaders of the Crusade
had agreed among themselves that if the emperor of Constantinople should
be chosen from the French, the patriarch should be a Venetian. According
to this convention, which had preceded the conquest, Thomas Morosini was
elevated to the chair of St. Sophia; priests and Latin bishops were, at
the same time, sent into the other conquered cities, and took possession
of the wealth and the privileges of the Greek clergy. Thus the Romish
worship associated itself with the victories of the crusaders, and made
its empire acknowledged wherever the banners of the conquerors floated.

THE POPE ACKNOWLEDGED

After his coronation, Baldwin wrote to the pope, to announce to him the
extraordinary victories by which it had pleased God to crown the zeal
of the soldiers of the cross. The new emperor, who assumed the title of
knight of the holy see, recalled to the mind of the sovereign pontiff
the perfidies and the long revolt of the Greeks. “We have brought under
your laws,” said he, “that city, which, in hatred for the holy see, would
scarcely hear the name of the prince of the apostles, and did not afford
a single church to him who received from the Lord the supremacy over all
churches.” Baldwin, in his letter, invited the vicar of Jesus Christ to
imitate the example of his predecessors, John, Agapetus, and Leo, who
visited in person the church of Byzantium.

The marquis of Montferrat at the same time addressed a letter to the
sovereign pontiff, in which he protested his humble obedience to all
the decisions of the holy see. The doge of Venice, who till that time
had braved with so much haughtiness the threats and thunders of the
church, acknowledged the sovereign authority of the pope, and joined his
protestations with those of Baldwin and Boniface. To disarm the anger of
Innocent, they represented to him that the conquest of Constantinople had
prepared the deliverance of Jerusalem, and boasted of the wealth of a
country which the crusaders had at length brought under the laws of the
holy see. In all their letters to the pope or the faithful of the West,
the conquerors of Byzantium spoke of the Greek empire as of a new land of
promise, which awaited the servants of God and the soldiers of Christ.

Innocent had been for a long time irritated by the disobedience of the
crusaders; in his reply, he reproached with bitterness the victorious
army of the Latins for having preferred the riches of the earth to
those of heaven; he reprimanded the leaders for having exposed to the
outrages of the soldiers and followers of the army, the honour of matrons
and maidens, and virgins consecrated to the Lord; for having ruined
Constantinople, plundered both great and small, violated the sanctuary,
and put forth a sacrilegious hand upon the treasures of the churches.
Notwithstanding this outward show of anger, the pope approved the
election of Baldwin, who took the title of knight of the holy see, and
consented to recognise an empire to which he was to give laws.

The greater part of the defenders of the Holy Land, who had experienced
nothing but the evils of war, became desirous of partaking of the glory
and the good fortune of the French and Venetians, and the king of
Jerusalem was left almost alone at Ptolemais, without means of making the
truce he had entered into with the infidels respected. Baldwin warmly
welcomed the defenders of the Holy Land; but the joy he experienced
at their arrival was much troubled by the intelligence of the death
of his wife, Marguerite of Flanders. This princess had embarked in
the fleet of John de Nesle, in the belief that she should meet her
husband in Palestine; sinking under the fatigue of a long voyage, and
perhaps the pains of disappointment, she fell sick at Ptolemais, and
died at the moment she learned that Baldwin had been crowned emperor of
Constantinople. The vessel destined to convey the new empress to the
shores of the Bosporus only brought back her mortal remains. Baldwin,
amidst his knights, wept for the loss of a princess he had loved tenderly.

The emperor and his barons, with all the succours they had received from
the East, had scarcely twenty thousand men to defend their conquests
and restrain the people of the capital and the provinces. The sultan
of Iconium and the king of the Bulgarians had long threatened to
invade the lands contiguous to their states, and they thought that
the dissensions and subsequent fall of the Greek empire presented a
favourable opportunity for the outbreak of their jealousy and ambition.
The nations of Greece were conquered without being subdued. As in the
disorder which accompanied the conquest of Byzantium, no other right had
been acknowledged but that of force and the sword; all the Greeks, who
had still arms in their hands, were desirous of forming a principality or
a kingdom. On all sides new states and empires sprang up from the bosom
of the ruins, and already threatened that which the crusaders had so
recently established.

FATE OF THE ROYAL FUGITIVES

A grandson of Andronicus founded in a Greek province of Asia Minor the
principality of Trebizond; Leo Sgurre, master of the little city of
Napoli, had extended his dominions by injustice and violence; and, to
employ a comparison offered by Nicetas, he had grown greater, like the
torrent that swells in the storm and is enlarged by the waters of the
tempest. A barbarous conqueror, a fierce and cruel tyrant, he reigned,
or rather he spread terror, over Argos and the Isthmus of Corinth.
Michael-Angelus Comnenus, employing the arms of treachery, gained the
kingdom of Epirus, and subdued to his laws a wild and warlike people.
Theodore Lascaris, who, like Æneas, had fled from his burning country,
collected some troops in Bithynia, and caused himself to be proclaimed
emperor at Nicæa, whence his family was destined at a future day to
return in triumph to Constantinople.

If despair had imparted any degree of courage to the two fugitive
emperors, they might have obtained a share of their own spoils, and
preserved a remnant of power; but they had not profited by the lessons
of misfortune. Murtzuphlus, who had completed all the crimes begun
by Alexius, did not hesitate to place himself in the power of his
unfortunate rival, whose daughter he had married; the wicked sometimes
take upon themselves the duty of punishing one another. Alexius, after
having loaded Murtzuphlus with caresses, inveigled him into his house,
and caused his eyes to be put out. In this condition, Murtzuphlus,
abandoned by his followers, for whom he was now nothing but an object of
disgust, went to conceal his existence and his misery in Asia; but on his
road he fell into the hands of the Latins. Being led to Constantinople,
and condemned to expiate his crimes by an ignominious death, he was
precipitated from the top of a column raised by the emperor Theodosius in
the Place of Taurus. The multitude of Greeks that had offered the purple
to Murtzuphlus were present at his tragical end, and appeared terrified
at a punishment that was much more new to them than the crimes for which
it was inflicted.

The perfidy and cruelty of Alexius did not remain long unpunished; the
usurper was obliged to wander from city to city, and not unfrequently
to conceal the imperial purple under the garb of a mendicant. For a
considerable time he only owed his safety to the contempt in which he
was held by the conquerors. After having long strayed about in a state
of destitution, he was given up to the marquis of Montferrat, who sent
him a prisoner into Italy; escaping thence, he again passed into Asia,
and found an asylum with the sultan of Iconium. Alexius could not be
satisfied to live in peace in his retreat, but joined the Turks in an
attack upon his son-in-law Lascaris, whom he could not pardon for having
saved a wreck of the empire, and reigning over Bithynia. As the Turks
were beaten, the fugitive prince fell at length into the hands of the
emperor of Nicæa, who compelled him to retire to a monastery, where he
died, forgotten by both Greeks and Latins.

Thus four emperors were immolated to ambition and vengeance--a deplorable
spectacle, and most worthy of pity! Amidst the convulsions and fall of an
empire, we behold princes of the same family quarrelling for a phantom
of authority, snatch from each other by turns both the sceptre and life,
surpass the populace in fury, and leave them no crime, no parricide, to
commit.

BALDWIN QUARRELS WITH BONIFACE

Whilst the Greek princes were thus making war against each other, and
quarrelling for the wrecks of the empire, the French counts and barons
quitted the capital to go and take possession of the cities and provinces
that had fallen to their share. Many of them were obliged to conquer,
sword in hand, the lands that had been assigned to them. The marquis of
Montferrat set out on his march to visit the kingdom of Thessalonica, and
receive the homage of his new subjects. The emperor Baldwin, followed
by his brother Henry of Hainault, and a great number of knights, made
a progress through Thrace and Romania, and everywhere on his passage,
was saluted by the noisy acclamations of a people always more skilful
in flattering their conquerors than in combating their enemies. When
he arrived at Hadrianopolis, where he was received in triumph, the
new emperor announced his intention of pursuing his march as far as
Thessalonica. This unexpected resolution surprised the marquis of
Montferrat, who entertained the desire of going alone to his own kingdom.
Boniface promised to be faithful to the emperor, to be always ready to
employ his forces against the enemies of the empire; but he feared the
presence of Baldwin’s army in his cities, already exhausted by war.

[Illustration: WAR GALLEY OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY

(From an old print)]

A serious quarrel broke out between the two princes. The marquis of
Montferrat accused the emperor of wishing to get possession of his
states; Baldwin fancied he could perceive in the resistance of Boniface
the secret design of denying the sovereignty of the head of the empire.
Both loved justice, and were not wanting in moderation; but now one had
become king of Thessalonica and the other emperor of Constantinople, they
had courtiers who endeavoured to exasperate their quarrel and inflame
their animosity. In spite of all the representations of the marquis
of Montferrat, Baldwin led his army into the kingdom of Thessalonica.
Boniface considered this obstinacy of the emperor as a flagrant outrage,
and swore to take vengeance with his sword. Impelled by passion, he
departed suddenly with several knights who had declared in his favour,
and got possession of Didymatica, a city belonging to the emperor.

The marquis of Montferrat took with him his wife, Mary of Hungary, the
widow of Isaac; and the presence of this princess, with the hopes of
keeping up the division among the Latins, drew many Greeks to the banner
of Boniface. He declared to them that he fought for their cause, and
clothed in the imperial purple a young prince, the son of Isaac and Mary
of Hungary. Dragging in his train this phantom of an emperor, around whom
the principal inhabitants from all parts of Romania rallied, he resumed
the road to Hadrianopolis, and made preparations for besieging that city.
Boniface, daily becoming more irritated, would listen to neither the
counsels nor the prayers of his companions in arms; and discord was about
to cause the blood of the Latins to flow, if the doge of Venice, the
count of Blois, and the barons that remained at Constantinople, had not
earnestly employed their authority and credit to prevent the misfortunes
with which the new empire was threatened. The marquis of Montferrat
promised to submit his quarrel with Baldwin to the judgment of the counts
and barons.

In the meanwhile Baldwin had taken possession of Thessalonica. As
soon as he heard of the hostilities of the marquis of Montferrat, he
hastily marched back to Hadrianopolis. He was brooding over projects of
vengeance, and threatening to repel force by force, and oppose war to
war, when he met the deputies.

He promised to lay down his arms, and repair to Constantinople, to adjust
the quarrel between him and the marquis of Montferrat. The marquis of
Montferrat, who very shortly followed him, entered the capital with a
degree of mistrust; but the welcome he received from Baldwin and the
other leaders completely appeased all his resentments.

OTHER CONQUESTS

[Sidenote: [1204-1205 A.D.]]

As soon as peace was re-established, the knights and barons again
quitted the capital to pass through the provinces, and subdue such as
were refractory. The count of Blois, who had obtained Bithynia, sent his
knights across the Bosporus; the troops of the crusaders gained several
advantages over those of Lascaris. Penamenia, Lopada, Nicomedia, and
some other cities, opened their gates to the conquerors, after a feeble
resistance. The Latins brought under their dominion all the coasts of
the Propontis and the Bosporus, as far as the ancient Æolis. Henry
of Hainault was not idle in this new war: whilst the warriors of the
count of Blois were pushing their conquests towards Nicæa he led his
men-at-arms into Phrygia, unfurled his triumphant banners in the plains
where Troy once stood, fought at the same time both Greeks and Turks, in
the fields which had been trod by the armies of Xerxes and Alexander, and
took possession of all the country that extends from the Hellespont to
Mount Ida.

At the same time the marquis of Montferrat, now the peaceable master
of Thessalonica, undertook the conquest of Greece. He advanced into
Thessaly, passed the chain of mountains of Olympus and Ossa, and took
possession of Larissa. Boniface and his knights, without fear and without
danger, passed through the narrow straits of Thermopylæ, and penetrated
into Bœotia and Attica. They put to flight Leo Sgurre, who was the
scourge of a vast province; and their exploits might have reminded the
Greeks of those heroes of the early ages who travelled about the world
fighting monsters and subduing tyrants. As all the Greeks, for so long
a time oppressed, sighed for a change, the heroes of the Crusades were
everywhere received as liberators. Whilst Boniface was becoming possessed
of the beautiful countries of Greece, Geoffrey de Villehardouin, nephew
of the marshal of Champagne, established the authority of the Latins in
the Peloponnesus. After having driven the troops of Michael Comnenus
to the mountains of Epirus, he occupied, without fighting, Coronea and
Patras, and met with no resistance except in the canton of Lacedæmonia.
The conquered lands and cities were given to the barons, who rendered
fealty and homage to the king of Thessalonica and the emperor of
Constantinople. Greece then beheld lords of Argos and Corinth, grand
sieurs of Thebes, dukes of Athens, and princes of Achaia. French knights
dictated laws in the city of Agamemnon, in the city of Minerva, in the
country of Lycurgus, and in that of Epaminondas. Strange destiny of the
warriors of this Crusade, who had quitted the West to conquer the city
and lands of Jesus Christ, and whom fortune had conducted into places
filled with the remembrances of the gods of Homer and the glory of
profane antiquity!

THE BULGARIAN WAR

The crusaders were not allowed to felicitate themselves long upon their
conquests. Possessors of an empire much more difficult to be preserved
than invaded, they had not the ability to master fortune, which soon
took from them all that victory had bestowed. They exercised their
power with violence, and conciliated neither their subjects nor their
neighbours. Joannice [Johannitsa, John, Kalojan, or Calo-John], king
of the Bulgarians, had sent an ambassador to Baldwin, with offers of
friendship; Baldwin replied with much haughtiness, and threatened to
compel Joannice to descend from his usurped throne. When despoiling
the Greeks of their property, the crusaders shut out from themselves
every source of prosperity, and reduced men, to whom they left nothing
but life, to despair. To fill up the measure of their imprudence, they
received into their armies the Greeks, whom they loaded with contempt,
and who became their implacable enemies. Not content with reigning over
cities, they were desirous of subjugating hearts to their will, and
awakened fanaticism. Unjust persecutions exasperated the minds of the
Greek priests, who declaimed with vehemence against tyranny, and who,
reduced to misery, were listened to as oracles and revered as martyrs.

[Illustration: COAT OF MAIL OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY]

In their despair, the conquered people resolved to have recourse to
arms; and, looking around them to find enemies for the crusaders, they
implored the alliance and protection of the king of the Bulgarians.
There was formed a widely-extended conspiracy, into which all entered
to whom slavery was no longer tolerable. All at once the storm burst
forth by the massacre of the Latins; a war-cry arose from Mount Hæmus
to the Hellespont; the crusaders, dispersed in the various cities and
countries, were surprised by a furious and pitiless enemy. The Venetians
and French, who guarded Hadrianopolis and Didymatica, were not able to
resist the multitude of the Greeks; some were slaughtered in the streets;
others retired in disorder, and, in their flight, beheld with grief their
banners torn down from the towers, and replaced by the standards of the
Bulgarians. The roads were covered with fugitive warriors, who found no
asylum in a country which lately trembled at the fame of their arms.

Every city besieged by the Greeks was ignorant of the fate of the
other cities confided to the defence of the Latins; communications
were interrupted; in the provinces sinister rumours prevailed, which
represented the capital in flames, all the cities given up to pillage,
and all the armies of the Franks dispersed or annihilated. When the
report of these disasters reached Constantinople, Baldwin assembled the
counts and barons. The crusaders who were engaged in warlike expeditions
on the other side of the Bosporus received orders to abandon their
conquests, and to return immediately to the standards of the main army.
Baldwin waited for them several days, but as he was impatient to begin
the war, and wished to astonish the enemy by the promptitude of his
proceedings, he set out at the head of the knights that remained in the
capital, and, five days after his departure, appeared before the walls of
Hadrianopolis.

The leaders of the crusade, accustomed to brave all obstacles, were
never checked nor restrained by the small number of their own soldiers,
nor the multitude of their enemies. The capital of Thrace, surrounded
by impregnable ramparts, was defended by a hundred thousand Greeks, in
whom thirst of vengeance supplied the want of courage. Baldwin mustered
scarcely eight thousand men around his banners. The doge of Venice soon
arrived with eight thousand Venetians. The Latin fugitives came from
all parts to join this small army. The crusaders pitched their tents,
and prepared to lay siege to the city. Their preparations proceeded but
slowly, and provisions were beginning to fail them, when the report
reached them of the march of the king of the Bulgarians. Joannice, the
leader of a barbarous people, himself more barbarous than his subjects,
was advancing with a formidable army. He concealed his ambitious projects
and his desire for vengeance under an appearance of religious zeal, and
caused a standard of St. Peter, which he had received from the pope,
to be borne before him. This new ally of the Greeks boasted of being a
leader of a holy enterprise, and threatened to exterminate the Franks,
whom he accused of having assumed the cross for the purpose of ravaging
the provinces and pillaging the cities of Christians.

The king of the Bulgarians was preceded in his march by a numerous troop
of Wallachians and Comans, whom the hopes of pillage had drawn from the
mountains and forests near the banks of the Danube and Borysthenes. The
Comans, more ferocious than the nations of Mount Hæmus, drank, it was
said, the blood of their captives, and sacrificed Christians on the
altars of their idols. Like the warriors of Scythia, accustomed to fight
whilst flying, the Wallachian horsemen received orders from Joannice
to provoke the enemy, even in their camp, and to endeavour to draw the
heavy cavalry of the Franks into an ambuscade. The barons were aware of
this danger, and forbade the crusaders to quit their tents, or go beyond
their entrenchments. But such was the character of the French warriors,
that prudence, in their eyes, deprived valour of all its lustre, and it
appeared disgraceful to shun the fight in the presence and amidst the
scoffs of an enemy.

DEFEAT OF THE LATINS

[Sidenote: [1205 A.D.]]

Scarcely had the barbarians appeared near the camp, when the sight of
them made even the leaders themselves forget the orders they had issued
only the night before. The emperor and the count of Blois flew to meet
the enemy, put them to flight, and pursued them with ardour for the
space of two leagues. But all at once the barbarians rallied, and in
their turn charged the Christians. The latter, who believed they had
gained a victory, were obliged to defend themselves in a country with
which they were unacquainted. Their squadrons, exhausted by fatigue, were
surprised and surrounded by the army of Joannice; pressed on all sides,
they made useless efforts to recover their line of battle, but had no
power either to fly, or resist the barbarians. The count of Blois fell,
covered with wounds, and his faithful squire died by his side.

The emperor Baldwin still disputed the victory; the bravest of his
knights and barons followed him into the _mêlée_, and a horrible carnage
marked their progress through the ranks of the barbarians. Peter, bishop
of Bethlehem, Stephen count of Perche, Renaud de Montmirail, Mathieu de
Valencourt, Robert de Ronçai, and a crowd of lords and valiant warriors,
lost their lives in defending their sovereign. Baldwin remained almost
alone on the field of battle, and still continued fighting bravely;
but at length, overpowered by numbers, he fell into the hands of the
Bulgarians, who loaded him with chains. The wreck of the army retired in
the greatest disorder, and only owed their safety to the prudent bravery
of the doge of Venice and the marshal of Champagne, who had been left to
guard the camp.

In the night that followed the battle, the crusaders raised the siege of
Hadrianopolis, and retook the route to the capital, amidst a thousand
dangers. The Bulgarians and the Comans, proud of their victory, pursued
without intermission the army they had conquered; this army, which had
lost half of its numbers, was in great want of provisions, and had great
difficulty in dragging along the wounded and the baggage. The crusaders
were plunged in a melancholy silence, their despair was evident in their
actions and on their countenances. At Rodosto they met Henry of Hainault,
and several other knights, who were on their way from the provinces of
Asia, to join the army of Hadrianopolis. The retreating leaders related
with tears their defeat and the captivity of Baldwin. All the Franks were
seized with grief and terror, on learning they had no longer an emperor.
The Greeks that inhabited the capital applauded in secret the triumph
of the Bulgarians, and their ill-concealed joy still further increased
the alarms of the Latins. A great number of knights, overcome by so many
reverses, saw no safety but in flight, and embarked hastily on board some
Venetian vessels.

In the meantime, Joannice continued his pursuit of the conquered army.
The Greeks, united with the Bulgarians, took possession of all the
provinces, and left the Latins no repose. Among the disasters of which
contemporary history has left us a deplorable account, we must not
forget the massacre of twenty thousand Armenians. This numerous colony
had left the banks of the Euphrates, and established themselves in the
province of Natolia. After the conquest of Constantinople, they declared
for the Latins, and when the latter experienced their reverses, finding
themselves menaced and pursued by the Greeks, they crossed the Bosporus,
and followed Henry of Hainault, who was marching towards Hadrianopolis.
The Armenians took with them their flocks and their families; they drew,
in carriages, all that they possessed that was most valuable, and had
great difficulty, on their march across the mountains of Thrace, in
keeping up with the army of the crusaders. These unfortunate people were
surprised by the barbarians, and, to a man, perished beneath the swords
of a pitiless conqueror.

The Franks wept at the defeat and destruction of the Armenians, without
being able to avenge them; they had nothing but enemies throughout the
vast provinces of the empire. Beyond the Bosporus, they only preserved
the castle of Peges; on the European side, only Rodosto and Selymbria.
Their conquests in ancient Greece were not yet threatened by the
Bulgarians; but these distant possessions only served to divide their
forces. Henry of Hainault, who took the title of regent, performed
prodigies of valour in endeavouring to retake some of the cities of
Thrace; and lost, in various combats, a great number of the warriors that
remained under his banners.

The bishop of Soissons and some other crusaders, invested with the
confidence of their unfortunate companions in arms, were sent into Italy,
France, and the county of Flanders, to solicit the assistance of the
knights and barons; but the succour they hoped for could only arrive
slowly, and the enemy continued to make rapid progress. The army of the
Bulgarians, like a violent tempest, advanced on all sides; it desolated
the shores of the Hellespont, extended its ravages into the kingdom of
Thessalonica, repassed Mount Hæmus, and returned, more numerous and more
formidable than ever, to the banks of the Hebrus. The Latin empire had
no other defenders but a few warriors divided among the various cities
and fortresses, and every day war and desertion diminished the numbers
and strength of the unfortunate conquerors of Byzantium. Five hundred
knights, picked warriors of the army of the crusaders, were attacked
before the walls of Rusium, and cut to pieces by a countless multitude of
Bulgarians and Comans.[82] This defeat was not less fatal than the battle
of Hadrianopolis; the hordes of Mount Hæmus and the Borysthenes carried
terror everywhere. On their passage, the country was in flames, and the
cities afforded neither refuge nor means of defence. The land was covered
with soldiers, who slaughtered all who came in their way; the sea was
covered with pirates, who threatened every coast with their brigandage.
Constantinople expected every day to see the standards of the victorious
Joannice beneath its walls, and only owed its safety to the excess of
evils that desolated all the provinces of the empire.

The king of the Bulgarians did not spare his allies any more than
his enemies; he burned and demolished all the cities that fell into
his hands. He ruined the inhabitants, dragged them in his train like
captives, and made them undergo, in addition to the calamities of war,
all the outrages of a jealous and barbarous tyranny. The Greeks, who had
solicited his assistance, were at last reduced to implore the aid of
the Latins against the implacable fury of their allies. The crusaders
accepted with joy the alliance with the Greeks, whom they never ought
to have repulsed, and re-entered into Hadrianopolis. Didymatica, and
most of the cities of Romania, shook off the intolerable yoke of the
Bulgarians, and submitted to the Latins. The Greeks, whom Joannice had
urged on to despair, showed some bravery, and became useful auxiliaries
to the Latins; and the new empire might have hoped for a return of days
of prosperity and glory, if so many calamities could possibly have been
repaired by a few transient successes. But all the provinces were strewed
with ruins, and the cities and countries were without inhabitants. The
hordes of Mount Hæmus, whether victorious or conquered, still continued
their predatory habits. They easily recovered from their losses; the
losses of the Franks became every day more irreparable. The leader of the
Bulgarians sought out everywhere the foes of the new empire; and, being
abandoned by the Greeks of Romania, he formed an alliance with Lascaris,
the implacable enemy of the Latins.

The pope in vain exhorted the nations of France and Italy to take up arms
for the assistance of the conquerors of Byzantium; he could not awaken
their enthusiasm for a cause that presented to its defenders nothing but
certain evils, and dangers without glory.

THE FATE OF BALDWIN

[Sidenote: [1205-1206 A.D.]]

Amidst the perils that continued to multiply, the crusaders remained
perfectly ignorant of the fate of Baldwin; sometimes it was said that
he had broken his bonds, and had been seen wandering in the forests of
Servia; sometimes that he had died of grief in prison; sometimes that
he had been massacred in the midst of a banquet by the king of the
Bulgarians; that his mutilated members had been cast out upon the rocks,
and that his skull, encased in gold, served as a cup for his barbarous
conqueror. Among the romantic accounts that were circulated concerning
Baldwin, we must not omit the following: The emperor was kept close
prisoner at Terenova, where the wife of Joannice became desperately in
love with him, and proposed to him to escape with her. Baldwin rejected
this proposal, and the wife of Joannice, irritated by his disdain and
refusal, accused him to her husband of having entertained an adulterous
passion. The barbarous Joannice caused his unfortunate captive to be
massacred at a banquet, and his body was cast on to the rocks, a prey
to vultures and wild beasts. But people could not be convinced that
he was dead. A hermit had retired to the forest of Glançon, on the
Hainault side, and the people of the neighbourhood became persuaded
that this hermit was Count Baldwin. The solitary at first answered with
frankness, and refused the homage they wished to render. They persisted,
and at length he was induced to play a part, and gave himself out for
Baldwin. At first he had a great many partisans; but the king of France,
Louis VIII, having invited him to his court, he was confounded by the
questions that were put to him: he took to flight, and was arrested in
Burgundy by Erard de Chastenai, a Burgundian gentleman, whose family
still exists. Jane, countess of Flanders, caused the impostor to be hung
in the great square of Lisle.[e] Several messengers, sent by Henry of
Hainault, travelled through the cities of Bulgaria to learn the fate of
Baldwin; but returned to Constantinople, without having been able to
ascertain anything. A year after the battle of Hadrianopolis, the pope,
at the solicitation of the crusaders, conjured Joannice to restore to
the Latins of Byzantium the head of their new empire. The king of the
Bulgarians contented himself with replying, that Baldwin had paid the
tribute of nature, and that his deliverance was no longer in the power
of mortals.[83] This answer destroyed all hopes of again seeing the
imprisoned monarch, and the Latins no longer entertained a doubt of the
death of their emperor.

Henry of Hainault received the deplorable heritage of his brother with
tears and deep regret, and succeeded to the empire amidst general
mourning and sorrow. To complete their misfortunes, the Latins had
to weep for the loss of Dandolo, who finished his glorious career at
Constantinople, and whose last look must have perceived the rapid decline
of an empire he had founded. The greater part of the crusaders had either
perished in battle or returned to the west.[d]

HENRY OF HAINAULT

[Sidenote: [1206-1207 A.D.]]

In all civilised hostility a treaty is established for the exchange of
ransom of prisoners; and if their captivity be prolonged, their condition
is known, and they are treated according to their rank with humanity
or honour. But the savage Bulgarian was a stranger to the laws of war;
his prisons were involved in darkness and silence; and above a year
elapsed before the Latins could be assured of the death of Baldwin,
before his brother, the regent Henry, would consent to assume the title
of emperor. His moderation was applauded by the Greeks as an act of rare
and inimitable virtue. Their light and perfidious ambition was eager to
seize or anticipate the moment of a vacancy, while a law of succession,
the guardian both of the prince and people, was gradually defined and
confirmed in the hereditary monarchies of Europe.

In the support of the Eastern Empire, Henry was gradually left without
an associate, as the heroes of the Crusades retired from the world or
from the war. The doge of Venice, the venerable Dandolo, in the fullness
of years and glory, sank into the grave. The marquis of Montferrat was
slowly recalled from the Peloponnesian War to the revenge of Baldwin
and the defence of Thessalonica. Some nice disputes of feudal homage
and service were reconciled in a personal interview between the emperor
and the king: they were firmly united by mutual esteem, and the common
danger; and their alliance was sealed by the nuptials of Henry with the
daughter of the Italian prince. He soon deplored the loss of his friend
and father.

At the persuasion of some faithful Greeks, Boniface made a bold and
successful inroad among the hills of Rhodope; the Bulgarians fled on
his approach, they assembled to harass his retreat. On the intelligence
that his rear was attacked, without waiting for any defensive armour, he
leaped on horseback, couched his lance, and drove the enemies before him;
but in the rash pursuit he was pierced with a mortal wound; and the head
of the king of Thessalonica was presented to Joannice, who enjoyed the
honours, without the merit, of victory. It is here, at this melancholy
event, that the pen or the voice of Geoffrey de Villehardouin seems to
drop or to expire; and if he still exercised his military office of
marshal of Romania, his subsequent exploits are buried in oblivion.[84]

The character of Henry was not unequal to his arduous situation: in the
siege of Constantinople, and beyond the Hellespont, he had deserved the
fame of a valiant knight and skilful commander; and his courage was
tempered with a degree of prudence and mildness unknown to his impetuous
brother. In the double war against the Greeks of Asia and the Bulgarians
of Europe, he was ever the foremost on shipboard or on horseback; and
though he cautiously provided for the success of his arms, the drooping
Latins were often roused by his example to save and to second their
fearless emperor. But such efforts, and some supplies of men and money
from France, were of less avail than the errors, the cruelty, and death
of their most formidable adversary. When the despair of the Greek
subjects invited Joannice as their deliverer, they hoped that he would
protect their liberty and adopt their laws; they were soon taught to
compare the degrees of national ferocity, and to execrate the savage
conqueror who no longer dissembled his intention of dispeopling Thrace,
of demolishing the cities, and of transplanting the inhabitants beyond
the Danube. Many towns and villages of Thrace were already evacuated; a
heap of ruins marked the place of Philippopolis, and a similar calamity
was expected at Demotica and Hadrianopolis, by the first authors of the
revolt. They raised a cry of grief and repentance to the throne of Henry;
the emperor alone had the magnanimity to forgive and trust them. No
more than four hundred knights, with their sergeants and archers, could
be assembled under his banner; and with this slender force he fought
and repulsed the Bulgarian, who, besides his infantry, was at the head
of forty thousand horse. In this expedition, Henry felt the difference
between a hostile and a friendly country; the remaining cities were
preserved by his arms, and the savage, with shame and loss, was compelled
to relinquish his prey.

The siege of Thessalonica was the last of the evils which Joannice
inflicted or suffered; he was stabbed during the night in his tent; and
the general, perhaps the assassin, who found him weltering in his blood,
ascribed the blow with general applause to the lance of St. Demetrius.

[Sidenote: [1207-1216 A.D.]]

After several victories, the prudence of Henry concluded an honourable
peace with the successor of the tyrant, and with the Greek princes of
Nicæa and Epirus. If he ceded some doubtful limits, an ample kingdom was
reserved for himself and his feudatories; and his reign, which lasted
only ten years, afforded a short interval of prosperity and peace. Far
above the narrow policy of Baldwin and Boniface, he freely entrusted to
the Greeks the most important offices of the state and army; and this
liberality of sentiment and practice was the more seasonable, as the
princes of Nicæa and Epirus had already learned to seduce and employ
the mercenary valour of the Latins. It was the aim of Henry to unite
and reward his deserving subjects of every nation and language; but he
appeared less solicitous to accomplish the impracticable union of the two
churches.

[Illustration: HELMET OF THE TENTH AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES]

Pelagius, the pope’s legate, who acted as the sovereign of
Constantinople, had interdicted the worship of the Greeks, and sternly
imposed the payment of tithes, the double procession of the Holy Ghost,
and a blind obedience to the Roman pontiff. As the weaker party, they
pleaded the duties of conscience, and implored the rights of toleration:
“Our bodies,” they said, “are Cæsar’s, but our souls belong only to God.”
The persecution was checked by the firmness of the emperor; and if we can
believe that the same prince was poisoned by the Greeks themselves, we
must entertain a contemptible idea of the sense of gratitude in mankind.
His valour was a vulgar attribute, which he shared with ten thousand
knights; but Henry possessed the superior courage to oppose, in a
superstitious age, the pride and avarice of the clergy. In the cathedral
of St. Sophia he presumed to place his throne on the right hand of the
patriarch; and this presumption excited the sharpest censure of Pope
Innocent III. By a salutary edict, one of the first examples of the laws
of mortmain, he prohibited the alienation of fiefs; many of the Latins,
desirous of returning to Europe, resigned their estates to the church
for a spiritual or temporal reward; these holy lands were immediately
discharged from military service, and a colony of soldiers would have
been gradually transformed into a college of priests.

The virtuous Henry died at Thessalonica (1216), in the defence of that
kingdom, and of an infant, the son of his friend Boniface. In the first
two emperors of Constantinople the male line of the counts of Flanders
was extinct.[f]

PIERRE DE COURTENAI AND ROBERT OF NAMUR

[Sidenote: [1216-1228 A.D.]]

Baldwin and Henry had a sister named Yolande, married to Pierre de
Courtenai, count of Auxerre. This latter was elected emperor. He was
then in France, and hastened to raise an army. He visited Honorius III
at Rome, embarked for Durazzo, and from there followed the Egnatian
road. Attacked by the Epirots in the gorges of Elbassan, his army
was destroyed; the papal legate perished; the emperor was taken, and
doubtless died in captivity.

He had left in the West ten children, of whom the eldest was Philippe of
Namur. The empress, his wife, had come by sea to Constantinople, where a
little son was born, afterwards to be Baldwin II. She took the regency
for Philippe of Namur, renewed the treaties with the emperor of Nicæa,
made him marry her stepdaughter, and died in 1219. Philippe of Namur
having refused to leave his Meuse comté, his younger brother, Robert, was
thereupon elected.

His reign marked the rapid decline of the empire. All the chiefs of the
First Crusade--Baldwin, Henry of Flanders, Boniface de Montferrat, Louis
de Blois, Dandolo, and Villehardouin--were dead. The number of Latin
warriors diminished unceasingly by combats or by returning to the West,
and were not recruited by new arrivals. Robert had one of his sisters
married to King Andrew of Hungary, one to Geoffrey of Achaia, and a
third to the emperor of Nicæa. One of his nieces married John Asan II of
Bulgaria; he himself was about to marry a daughter of Lascaris. But these
family alliances gave him neither power nor security.

The despot of Epirus, Theodore, who never ceased taking land from the
Latins, took advantage of the Thessalonican king being gone to seek help
in the West to surprise his capital and finish conquering his provinces
(1222). So perished the Lombard kingdom of Thessalonica.

In Nicæa, Joannes Vatatzes, successor to Lascaris, renewed war against
the French, inflicted on them a bloody defeat at Pemanene (1224), and
conquered nearly all Thrace. The Greeks had now two emperors, without
counting the one at Trebizond, for the despot of Epirus had got himself
crowned by the archbishop of Okhrida in Thessalonica. The forces of
these two emperors, henceforth enemies, marched each on its own road
to Hadrianopolis. The town at first yielded to the Nicæan troops, then
drove them away and opened their gates to those of Epirus. Robert could
not even interfere in the struggle, and nothing remained but to see
which of the two Greek armies would be the first to enter Byzantium. In
his own court a bloody drama showed how little respected and how weak
was sovereign power. Robert was very much in love with a young Neuville
lady, already engaged to a Burgundian cavalier; and the mother consented
to get the first engagement broken off. The rejected cavalier gathered
his relatives and friends and forced a way into the palace by night. He
cut off the nose and lips of the young girl, and threw her mother into
the Bosporus. Robert could obtain no redress from his barons for this
cruel insult. He went to seek help in the West and died on the journey
(1228).[c]

JEAN DE BRIENNE

[Sidenote: [1228-1237 A.D.]]

It was only in the age of chivalry that valour could ascend from a
private station to the thrones of Jerusalem and Constantinople. The
titular kingdom of Jerusalem had devolved to Mary, the daughter of
Isabella and Conrad of Montferrat, and the granddaughter of Almeric or
Amaury. She was given to Jean de Brienne, of a noble family in Champagne,
by the public voice and the judgment of Philippe Auguste, who named him
as the most worthy champion of the Holy Land. In the Fifth Crusade, he
led a hundred thousand Latins to the conquest of Egypt; by him the siege
of Damietta was achieved, and the subsequent failure was justly ascribed
to the pride and avarice of the legate. After the marriage of his
daughter with Frederick II, he was provoked by the emperor’s ingratitude
to accept the command of the army of the church; and though advanced in
life, and despoiled of royalty, the sword and spirit of Jean de Brienne
were still ready for the service of Christendom.

In the seven years of his brother’s reign, Baldwin de Courtenai had not
emerged from a state of childhood, and the barons of Romania felt the
strong necessity of placing the sceptre in the hands of a man and a
hero. The veteran king of Jerusalem might have disdained the name and
office of regent; they agreed to invest him for life with the title
and prerogatives of emperor, on the sole condition that Baldwin should
marry his second daughter, and succeed at a mature age to the throne
of Constantinople. The expectation, both of the Greeks and Latins, was
kindled by the renown, the choice, and the presence of John de Brienne;
and they admired his martial aspect, his green and vigorous age of more
than fourscore years, and his size and stature, which surpassed the
common measure of mankind.

But avarice and the love of ease appear to have chilled the love of
enterprise; his troops were disbanded, and two years rolled away without
action or honour, till he was awakened by the dangerous alliance of
Vatatzes, emperor of Nicæa, and of Asan, king of Bulgaria. They besieged
Constantinople by sea and land, with an army of one hundred thousand
men, and a fleet of three hundred ships of war; while the entire force
of the Latin emperor was reduced to 160 knights, and a small addition
of sergeants and archers. Instead of defending the city, the hero made
a sally at the head of his cavalry; and of forty-eight squadrons of the
enemy, no more than three escaped from the edge of his invincible sword.
Fired by his example, the infantry and the citizens boarded the vessels
that anchored close to the walls; and twenty-five were dragged in triumph
into the harbour of Constantinople. At the summons of the emperor, the
vassals and allies armed in her defence, broke through every obstacle
that opposed their passage; and, in the succeeding year, obtained a
second victory over the same enemies. By the rude poets of the age,
Jean de Brienne is compared to Hector, Roland, and Judas Maccabæus; but
their credit and his glory receive some abatement from the silence of
the Greeks. The empire was soon deprived of the last of her champions;
and the dying monarch was ambitious to enter paradise in the habit of a
Franciscan friar (1237).

BALDWIN II

[Sidenote: [1237-1261 A.D.]]

In the double victory of Jean de Brienne we cannot discover the name
or exploits of his pupil Baldwin, who had attained the age of military
service, and who succeeded to the imperial dignity on the decease of
his adoptive father. The royal youth was employed on a commission more
suitable to his temper; he was sent to visit the western courts of the
pope more especially, and of the king of France; to excite their pity by
the view of his innocence and distress; and to obtain some supplies of
men or money for the relief of the sinking empire. He thrice repeated
these mendicant visits, in which he seemed to prolong his stay, and
postpone his return; of the five-and-twenty years of his reign, a greater
number were spent abroad than at home, and in no place did the emperor
deem himself less free and secure than in his native country and his
capital.

By such shameful or ruinous expedients he returned to Romania with an
army of thirty thousand soldiers, whose numbers were doubled in the
apprehension of the Greeks. But the troops and treasures of France
melted away in his unskilful hands; and the throne of the Latin emperor
was protected by a dishonourable alliance with the Turks and Komans. To
secure the former, he consented to bestow his niece on the unbelieving
sultan of Cogni. To please the latter, he complied with their pagan
rites; a dog was sacrificed between the two armies and the contracting
parties tasted each other’s blood, as a pledge of their fidelity. In the
palace, or prison, of Constantinople the successor of Augustus demolished
the vacant houses for winter fuel, and stripped the lead from the
churches for the daily expense of his family. Some usurious loans were
dealt with a scanty hand by the merchants of Italy; and Philippe, his son
and heir, was pawned at Venice as the security of a debt. Thirst, hunger,
and nakedness are positive evils; but wealth is relative, and a prince
who would be rich in a private station may be exposed by the increase of
his wants to all the anxiety and bitterness of poverty.

THE CROWN OF THORNS

But in this abject distress, the emperor and empire were still
possessed of an ideal treasure, which drew its fantastic value from
the superstition of the Christian world. The merit of the true cross
was somewhat impaired by its frequent division; and a long captivity
among the infidels might shed some suspicion on the fragments that were
produced in the East and West. But another relic of the Passion was
preserved in the imperial chapel of Constantinople; and the crown of
thorns which had been placed on the head of Christ was equally precious
and authentic. It had formerly been the practice of the Egyptian debtors
to deposit, as a security, the mummies of their parents; and both their
honour and their religion were bound for the redemption of the pledge. In
the same manner, and in the absence of the emperor, the barons of Romania
borrowed the sum of 13,134 pieces of gold [£7000 or $35,000] on the
credit of the holy crown.

The success of this transaction tempted the Latin emperor to offer, with
the same generosity, the remaining furniture of his chapel--a large and
authentic portion of the true cross; the baby linen of the Son of God;
the lance, the sponge, and the chain of his Passion; the rod of Moses;
and part of the skull of St. John the Baptist. For the reception of these
spiritual treasures, twenty thousand marks were expended by St. Louis on
a stately foundation, the holy chapel of Paris, on which the muse of
Boileau has bestowed a comic immortality. The truth of such remote and
ancient relics, which cannot be proved by any human testimony, must be
admitted by those who believe in the miracles which they have performed.

PROGRESS OF THE GREEKS (1237-1261 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1237-1261 A.D.]]

[Illustration: A THIRTEENTH CENTURY CRUSADER]

The Latins of Constantinople were on all sides encompassed and pressed:
their sole hope, the last delay of their ruin, was in the division of
their Greek and Bulgarian enemies; and of this hope they were deprived
by the superior arms and policy of Vatatzes, emperor of Nicæa. From
the Propontis to the rocky coast of Pamphylia, Asia was peaceful and
prosperous under his reign; and the events of every campaign extended
his influence in Europe. The strong cities of the hills of Macedonia
and Thrace were rescued from the Bulgarians; and their kingdom was
circumscribed by its present and proper limits, along the southern banks
of the Danube. The sole emperor of the Romans could no longer brook
that a lord of Epirus, a Comnenian prince of the West, should presume
to dispute or share the honours of the purple; and the humble Demetrius
changed the colour of his buskins, and accepted with gratitude the
appellation of despot. His own subjects were exasperated by his baseness
and incapacity; they implored the protection of their supreme lord.

After some resistance, the kingdom of Thessalonica was united to the
empire of Nicæa; and Vatatzes reigned without a competitor from the
Turkish borders to the Adriatic Gulf. The princes of Europe honoured his
merits and power; and had he subscribed an orthodox creed, it should seem
that the pope would have abandoned, without reluctance, the Latin throne
of Constantinople. But the death of Vatatzes, the short and busy reign
of Theodore, his son, and the helpless infancy of his grandson John,
suspended the restoration of the Greeks.

The young prince was oppressed by the ambition of his guardian and
colleague, Michael Palæologus, who displayed the virtues and vices that
belong to the founder of a new dynasty. The emperor Baldwin had flattered
himself that he might recover some provinces or cities by an impotent
negotiation. His ambassadors were dismissed from Nicæa with mockery and
contempt. The captivity of Villehardouin, prince of Achaia, deprived the
Latins of the most active and powerful vassal of their expiring monarchy.
The republics of Venice and Genoa disputed, in the first of their
naval wars, the command of the sea and the commerce of the East. Pride
and interest attached the Venetians to the defence of Constantinople;
their rivals were tempted to promote the designs of her enemies, and
the alliance of the Genoese with the schismatic conqueror provoked the
indignation of the Latin church.

CONSTANTINOPLE RECOVERED BY THE GREEKS (1261 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1261 A.D.]]

Intent in this great object, the emperor Michael visited in person and
strengthened the troops and fortifications of Thrace. The remains of the
Latins were driven from their last possessions; he assaulted without
success the suburb of Galata; and corresponded with a perfidious baron,
who proved unwilling or unable to open the gates of the metropolis. The
next spring his favourite general, Alexius Strategopulus, whom he had
decorated with the title of Cæsar, passed the Hellespont with eight
hundred horse and some infantry, on a secret expedition. The weakness of
Constantinople, and the distress and terror of the Latins, were familiar
to the observation of the volunteers; and they represented the present
moment as the most propitious to surprise and conquest. A rash youth, the
new governor of the Venetian colony, had sailed away with thirty galleys,
and the best of the French knights, on a wild expedition to Daphnusia,
a town on the Black Sea, at the distance of forty leagues; and the
remaining Latins were without strength or suspicion. They were informed
that Alexius had passed the Hellespont; but their apprehensions were
lulled by the smallness of his original numbers, and their imprudence
had not watched the subsequent increase of his army. If he left his main
body to second and support his operations, he might advance unperceived
in the night with the chosen detachment. No sooner had Alexius passed the
threshold of the Golden Gate, than he trembled at his own rashness; he
paused, he deliberated, till the desperate volunteers urged him forward,
by the assurance that in retreat lay the greatest and most inevitable
danger. Whilst the cæsar kept his regulars in firm array, the commons
dispersed themselves on all sides; an alarm was sounded, and the threats
of fire and pillage compelled the citizens to a decisive resolution. The
Greeks of Constantinople remembered their native sovereigns; the Genoese
merchants their recent alliance and Venetian foes; every quarter was in
arms; and the air resounded with a general acclamation of “Long life and
victory to Michael and Joannes, the august emperors of the Romans!”

Their rival, Baldwin, was awakened by the sound; but the most pressing
danger could not prompt him to draw his sword in the defence of a
city which he deserted, perhaps, with more pleasure than regret.
Constantinople was irrecoverably lost; but the Latin emperor and the
principal families embarked on board the Venetian galleys and steered for
the isle of Eubœa, and afterwards for Italy, where the royal fugitive was
entertained by the pope and the Sicilian king with a mixture of contempt
and pity.

From the loss of Constantinople to his death, he consumed thirteen years,
soliciting the Catholic powers to join in his restoration; the lesson
had been familiar to his youth, nor was his last exile more indigent or
shameful than his three former pilgrimages to the courts of Europe. His
son Philippe was the heir of an ideal empire; and the pretensions of his
daughter Catharine were transported by her marriage to Charles of Valois,
the brother of Philippe le Bel, king of France. The house of Courtenai
was represented in the female line by successive alliances, till the
title of emperor of Constantinople, too bulky and sonorous for a private
name, modestly expired in silence and oblivion.[f]

TRACES LEFT BY THE FRANK DOMINATION IN THE GREEK EMPIRE

The crusaders had been able to destroy the Byzantine monarchy but were
not able to reconstruct it with profit to themselves. They had to combat
not only with the Greeks, but all the various people they had helped to
emancipate. In fact, their domination only served to awake and fortify
Greek patriotism. “They did great good in Byzantium, both to Hellenism
and religion; social distinctions were abolished” (Sathas)--if not
abolished, at any rate modified.

In the countries that the Latins held longest, as in the Morea, a certain
fusion took place between conquerors and conquered. Nicetas, Acropolitas,
Pachymeres gave the name of _gasmuli_ to the creole issue of the two
races. The French dynasties of Athens and the Morea tended to Hellenism;
the princes learned the language of their subjects. Greek stratiota and
French cavaliers were treated as on equal footing; they respected the
_pronoiai_ of the Hellenic cities as privileged and exempt from the Latin
communities. There was a great _logothete_ and a proto officer of Achaia
as there had been a grand steward (_seneschal_) of Romania. In the French
schools the Greeks learned afresh the meaning of civic liberty and the
dignity of a warrior-landowner.[c]

It will be necessary now to cast a glance back at the rise of that Greek
power which had recovered itself thus effectually after the retirement in
1204 of Theodore Lascaris and his founding of a kingdom in Nicæa.[a]

FOOTNOTES

[81] One edition of Villehardouin[b] makes the plunder of Constantinople
amount to 500,000 silver marks, equivalent to 24,000,000 francs; if we
add to this sum the 50,000 marks due to the Venetians, and deducted
before the division, and the part which they had in the division
itself, we shall find the total amount of booty 50,400,000 francs
[about £2,100,000, or $10,500,000]. As much, says the modern historian
who supplies us with this note, perhaps, was appropriated secretly by
individuals. The three fires which had consumed more than half the city
had destroyed at least as much of its riches, and in the profusion that
followed the pillage, the most precious effects had lost so much of their
value, that the advantage of the Latins probably was not equivalent to
a quarter of what they had cost the Greeks. Thus we may suppose that
Constantinople, before the attack, contained 600,000,000 francs of wealth
[£25,000,000 or $125,000,000].

[82] [Gibbon[f] puts the loss at 120.]

[83] [Lavisse and Rambaud[c] quote his words, “He absolved the debt of
the flesh while he was held in prison” (_debitum carnis exsolverat dum
carcere teneretur_). His two daughters inherited Flanders and Hainault.]

[84] [According to Finlay[g] he “appears to have died about the year
1218.”]

CHAPTER X

THE RESTORATION OF THE GREEK EMPIRE

[1204-1391 A.D.]

THEODORE (I) LASCARIS AND JOANNES VATATZES (1204-1254 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1222-1259 A.D.]]

The loss of Constantinople in 1204 had restored a momentary vigour to
the Greeks. From their palaces, the princes and nobles were driven into
the field; and the fragments of the falling monarchy were grasped by the
hands of the most vigorous or the most skilful candidates. In the long
and barren pages of the Byzantine annals, it would not be an easy task to
equal the two characters of Theodore Lascaris and Joannes Ducas Vatatzes,
who had replanted and upheld the Roman standard in Nicæa in Bithynia.
The difference of their virtues was happily suited to the diversity of
their situation. In his first efforts, the fugitive Lascaris commanded
only three cities and two thousand soldiers; his reign was the season of
generous and active despair; in every military operation he staked his
life and crown; and his enemies, of the Hellespont and the Mæander, were
surprised by his celerity and subdued by his boldness.

A victorious reign of eighteen years expanded the principality of Nicæa
to the magnitude of an empire. The throne of his successor and son-in-law
Vatatzes was founded on a more solid basis, a larger scope, and more
plentiful resources; and it was the temper, as well as the interest,
of Vatatzes to calculate the risk, to expect the moment, and to insure
the success of his ambitious designs. In the decline of the Latins we
have briefly exposed the progress of the Greeks, the prudent and gradual
advances of a conqueror who, in a reign of thirty-three years, rescued
the provinces from national and foreign usurpers, till he pressed on all
sides the imperial city--a leafless and sapless trunk, which must fall at
the first stroke of the axe.

But his interior and peaceful administration is still more deserving of
notice and praise. The calamities of the times had wasted the numbers and
the substance of the Greeks; the motives and the means of agriculture
were extirpated; and the most fertile lands were left without cultivation
or inhabitants. A portion of this vacant property was occupied and
improved by the command and for the benefit of the emperor; a powerful
hand and a vigilant eye supplied and surpassed, by a skilful management,
the minute diligence of a private farmer. The royal domain became the
garden and granary of Asia; and, without impoverishing the people,
the sovereign acquired a fund of innocent and productive wealth. His
first wife was Irene, the daughter of Theodore Lascaris, a woman more
illustrious by her personal merit, the milder virtues of her sex,
than by the blood of the Angeli and Comneni that flowed in her veins
and transmitted the inheritance of the empire. After her death he was
contracted to Anne, or Constance, a natural daughter of the emperor
Frederick II; but as the bride had not attained the years of puberty,
Vatatzes placed in his solitary bed an Italian damsel of her train, and
his amorous weakness bestowed on the concubine the honours, though not
the title, of lawful empress. The slaves of the Latins, without law or
peace, applauded the happiness of their brethren who had resumed their
national freedom; and Vatatzes employed the laudable policy of convincing
the Greeks of every dominion that it was their interest to be enrolled in
the number of his subjects.

THEODORE (II) LASCARIS AND JOANNES (IV) LASCARIS (1254-1259 A.D.)

A strong shade of degeneracy is visible between Joannes Vatatzes and his
son Theodore. Yet the character of Theodore was not devoid of energy; he
had been educated in the school of his father, in the exercise of war
and hunting. Constantinople was yet spared; but in the three years of
a short reign he thrice led his armies into the heart of Bulgaria. His
virtues were sullied by a choleric and suspicious temper. The cruelty of
the emperor was exasperated by the pangs of sickness, the approach of
a premature end, and the suspicion of poison and magic. The lives and
fortunes, the eyes and limbs, of his kinsmen and nobles were sacrificed
to each sally of passion. In his last hours the emperor testified a wish
to forgive and be forgiven, a just anxiety for the fate of Joannes, his
son and successor, who, at the age of eight years, was condemned to the
dangers of a long minority. His last choice entrusted the office of
guardian to the sanctity of the patriarch Arsenius, and to the courage
of George Muzalon, the great domestic, who was equally distinguished by
the royal favour and the public hatred. The holy rites were interrupted
by a sedition of the guards. Muzalon, his brothers, and his adherents
were massacred at the foot of the altar; and the absent patriarch was
associated with a new colleague, with Michael Palæologus, the most
illustrious in birth and merit of the Greek nobles.

MICHAEL (VIII) PALÆOLOGUS (1259-1282 A.D.)

As early as the middle of the eleventh century, the noble race of the
Palæologi stands high and conspicuous in the Byzantine history. It was
the valiant George Palæologus who placed the father of the Comneni on
the throne; and his kinsmen, or descendants, continue in each generation
to lead the armies and councils of the state. In his early youth Michael
was promoted to the office of constable, or commander of the French
mercenaries; the private expense of a day never exceeded three pieces
of gold; but his ambition was rapacious and profuse, and his gifts were
doubled by the graces of his conversation and manners. The love of the
soldiers and people excited the jealousy of the court; and Michael thrice
escaped from the dangers in which he was involved by his own imprudence
or that of his friends.

[Sidenote: [1251-1258 A.D.]]

Under the reign of Justice and Vatatzes, a dispute arose between two
officers, one of whom accused the other of maintaining the hereditary
right of the Palæologi. The cause was decided, according to the new
jurisprudence of the Latins, by single combat: the defendant was
overthrown; but he persisted in declaring that himself alone was guilty,
and that he had uttered these rash or treasonable speeches without the
approbation or knowledge of his patron.

Yet a cloud of suspicion hung over the innocence of the constable; he was
still pursued by the whispers of malevolence; and a subtle courtier, the
archbishop of Philadelphia, urged him to accept the judgment of God in
the fiery proof of the ordeal. Three days before the trial, the patient’s
arm was enclosed in a bag and secured by the royal signet; and it was
incumbent on him to bear a red-hot ball of iron three times from the
altar to the rails of the sanctuary, without artifice and without injury.

Palæologus eluded the dangerous experiment with sense and pleasantry.
“I am a soldier,” said he, “and will boldly enter the lists with my
accusers; but a layman, a sinner like myself, is not endowed with
the gift of miracles. Your piety, most holy prelate, may deserve the
interposition of heaven, and from your hands I will receive the fiery
globe, the pledge of my innocence.” The archbishop started; the emperor
smiled; and the absolution or pardon of Michael was approved by new
rewards and new services.

In the succeeding reign, as he held the government of Nicæa, he was
secretly informed that the mind of the absent prince was poisoned with
jealousy, and that death or blindness would be his final reward. Instead
of awaiting the return and sentence of Theodore, the constable with
some followers escaped from the city and the empire; and though he was
plundered by the Turkomans of the desert, he found a hospitable refuge
in the court of the sultan. In the ambiguous state of an exile, Michael
reconciled the duties of gratitude and loyalty; drawing his sword against
the Tatars, admonishing the garrisons of the Roman limit, and promoting
by his influence the restoration of peace, in which his pardon and recall
were honourably included.

While he guarded the West against the despot of Epirus, Michael was
again suspected and condemned to the palace; and such were his loyalty
and weakness that he submitted to be led in chains above six hundred
miles from Durazzo to Nicæa. The civility of the messenger alleviated
his disgrace; the emperor’s sickness dispelled his danger; and the last
breath of Theodore which recommended his infant son, at once acknowledged
the innocence and the power of Palæologus.

[Sidenote: [1258-1261 A.D.]]

But his innocence had been too unworthily treated, and his power was too
strongly felt, to curb an aspiring subject in the fair field that was
opened to his ambition. In the council after the death of Theodore, he
was the first to pronounce and the last to violate the oath of allegiance
to Muzalon; and so dexterous was his conduct that he reaped the benefit
without incurring the guilt, or at least the reproach, of the subsequent
massacre. In the choice of a regent, he balanced the interests and
passions of the candidates, turning their envy and hatred from himself
against each other; and forced every competitor to own that, after his
own claims, those of Palæologus were best entitled to the preference.

Under the title of grand duke, he accepted or assumed during a long
minority the active powers of government; the patriarch was a venerable
name; and the factious nobles were seduced or oppressed by the ascendant
of his genius. The fruits of the economy of Vatatzes were deposited in a
strong castle on the banks of the Hermus, in the custody of the faithful
Varangians; the constable retained his command or influence over the
foreign troops. He employed the guards to possess the treasure, and the
treasure to corrupt the guards; and whatsoever might be the abuse of
the public money, his character was above suspicion of private avarice.
By himself, or by his emissaries, he strove to persuade every rank of
subjects that their own prosperity would rise in just proportion to the
establishment of his authority. The weight of taxes was suspended, the
perpetual theme of popular complaint; and he prohibited the trials by the
ordeal and judicial combat. For the interest of the prince and people,
without any selfish views for himself or his family, the great duke
consented to guard and instruct the son of Theodore. It was afterwards
agreed that Joannes and Michael should be proclaimed as joint emperors,
and raised on the buckler; but that the pre-eminence should be reserved
for the birthright of the former.

MICHAEL PALÆOLOGUS CROWNED EMPEROR (1259 A.D.)

[Illustration: TWELFTH CENTURY CANDLESTICK]

Palæologus was content; but on the day of the coronation, and in the
cathedral of Nicæa, his zealous adherents most vehemently urged the just
priority of his age and merit. The unseasonable dispute was eluded by
postponing to a more convenient opportunity the coronation of Joannes
Lascaris; and he walked with a slight diadem in the train of his
guardian, who alone received the imperial crown from the hands of the
patriarch. A full harvest of honours and employments was distributed
among his friends by the grateful Palæologus. In his own family he
created a despot and two sebastocrators; Alexius Strategopulus was
decorated with the title of cæsar, and that veteran commander soon repaid
the obligation by restoring Constantinople, as we have seen, to the Greek
emperor.

[Sidenote: [1261-1282 A.D.]]

It was in the second year of his reign, while he resided in the palace
and gardens of Nymphæum, near Smyrna, that the first messenger arrived
at the dead of night; and the stupendous intelligence was imparted to
Michael, after he had been gently waked by the tender precaution of his
sister Eulogia. The man was unknown or obscure: he produced no letters
from the victorious cæsar; nor could it easily be credited, after the
defeat of Vatatzes and the recent failure of Palæologus himself, that the
capital had been surprised by a detachment of eight hundred soldiers.
As an hostage, the doubtful author was confined with the assurance of
death or an ample recompense; and the court was left some hours in the
anxiety of hope and fear, till the messengers of Alexius arrived with the
authentic intelligence, and displayed the trophies of the conquest--the
sword and sceptre, the buskins and bonnet, of the usurper Baldwin, which
he had dropped in his precipitate flight.[85]

RETURN AND RULE OF THE GREEK EMPEROR

So eager was the impatience of the prince and people, that Michael made
his triumphal entry into Constantinople only twenty days after the
expulsion of the Latins. The Golden Gate was thrown open at his approach;
the devout conqueror dismounted from his horse, and a miraculous image
of Mary the Conductress was borne before him, that the divine Virgin
in person might appear to conduct him to the temple of her Son, the
cathedral of St. Sophia. But after the first transport of devotion
and pride, he sighed at the dreary prospect of solitude and ruin. The
palace was defiled with smoke and dirt and the gross intemperance of the
Franks; whole streets had been consumed by fire, or were decayed by the
injuries of time; the sacred and profane edifices were stripped of their
ornaments; and, as if they were conscious of their approaching exile,
the industry of the Latins had been confined to the work of pillage
and destruction. Trade had expired under the pressure of anarchy and
distress, and the numbers of inhabitants had decreased with the opulence
of the city.[b]

Michael VIII was eager to efface the mark of foreign domination from the
capital of the empire, and to repair the injuries of time; but his plans
were injudicious, and his success extremely limited. He aspired to be the
second founder of the city of Constantinople, as well as of the Eastern
Roman Empire. The nobility of his dominions were invited to inhabit the
capital by the gift of places and pensions; traders were attracted by
monopolies and privileges. The wealth that ought to have been expended in
restoring communications between the dispersed and dissevered portions of
the Greek nation, in repairing roads and bridges, was wasted in building
palaces and adorning churches in the capital, where they were no longer
required for a diminished and impoverished population. Crowds of imperial
princes and princesses, despots and cæsars, officers of state and
courtiers, consumed the revenues which ought to have covered the frontier
with impregnable fortresses, and maintained a disciplined standing army
and a well-exercised fleet. Yet, while lavishing the public revenues
to gratify his pride and acquire popularity, he sacrificed the general
interests of the middle classes to a selfish and rapacious fiscal policy.

All the property within the walls of Constantinople, whether it belonged
to Greeks or Latins, was adjudged to the imperial government by the right
of conquest; but their ancient possessions were restored to the great
families whose power he feared, and to those individuals whose services
he wished to secure. Sites for building were then leased to the citizens
for a fixed rent; yet the Greek government was so despotic, and Michael
was so arbitrary in his administration, that twelve years later he
pretended that the concessions he had granted to private individuals were
merely acts of personal favour, and he demanded the payment of the rent
for the past twelve years, the collection of which he enforced with much
severity. Michael used other frauds to bring the property of his subjects
into the public treasury, or to deprive them of a portion of the money
justly due to them by the state. Under the pretext of changing the type
of the gold coinage, and commemorating the recovery of Constantinople by
impressing an image of its walls on the bezants, he debased the standard
of the mint, and issued coins containing only fifteen parts of gold and
nine of alloy.

While on one hand he rendered property insecure and impoverished his
subjects, he was striving by other arrangements to increase the Greek
population of the capital, in order to counterbalance the wealth and
influence of foreign traders. Numbers were drawn from the islands of the
Archipelago, and a colony of Tzaconians or Laconians from Monemvasia and
the neighbouring districts were settled in the capital, which supplied
the imperial fleet with its best sailors. But war, not commerce, was
the object of Michael’s care; and while he was endeavouring to increase
the means of recruiting his army and navy, he allowed the Genoese to
profit by his political errors, and render themselves masters of the
commerce of the Black Sea, and of great part of the carrying trade of
the Greek Empire. In the meantime, the fortifications of Constantinople
were repaired; and when Charles of Anjou threatened to invade the East, a
second line of wall was added to the fortifications on the land side, and
the defences already existing towards the sea were strengthened.

Michael VIII fulfilled all the stipulations of the treaty he had
concluded with the Genoese. The public property of the republic of Venice
was confiscated, and the Genoese were put in possession of the palace
previously occupied by the bailly of the Venetians. The turbulent conduct
of his allies had already created dissatisfaction in the mind of Michael,
when their defeat by the Venetians before Monemvasia, and the fall of
Baccanegra, who had concluded the treaty of Nymphæum in 1261 by placing
a party adverse to the Greek alliance in power, induced him to doubt
the fidelity of their services, and he dismissed sixty Genoese galleys
which he had taken into his pay. Charles of Anjou soon after effected the
conquest of the kingdom of Naples, and the Genoese government became more
anxious to cultivate his friendship than that of the Greek emperor.

The character and conduct of Michael VIII typifies the spirit of Greek
society from the recovery of Constantinople to the fall of the empire.
It displays a strange ignorance of the value of frankness and honesty in
public business, a constant suspicion of every friend, restless intrigues
to deceive every ally, and a wavering policy to conciliate every powerful
enemy. The consequence of this suspicion, plotting, and weakness, was
that very soon no one trusted either the emperor or the Greeks. The
invasion of Italy by Charles of Anjou, and the pretensions of the pope
to dispose of crowns, alarmed both Venice and Michael, and induced
them to forget all former grounds of hostility, and conclude a closer
alliance than the Greek emperor had concluded with Genoa, with which
he now declared war. This treaty is dated in June, 1265, about a month
before Charles of Anjou received the crown of the Two Sicilies from the
pope in the Lateran. The stipulations are remarkable both in a political
and commercial light. The emperor engaged to expel the Genoese from
Constantinople, and not to conclude peace with them except in concert
with the republic. The Venetians engaged to hire their galleys to the
emperor to serve even against the pope, the king of France, and Charles
of Anjou, as well as against the republics of Genoa, Pisa, and Ancona,
and any prince or community that might attack the Greek Empire.

At length, in the year 1275, the emperor Michael formed a new alliance
with the Genoese; but, in order to prevent their making the streets of
Constantinople again the scene of their disorders, he obliged them to
establish their factory at Heraclea, on the Propontis. Some years later
they were allowed to transfer their settlement to Galata, forming a
colony which soon deprived the Greeks of part of their trade in the Black
Sea.

The morbid ambition of Michael Palæologus was not satisfied until he was
sole emperor. In defiance, therefore, of the repeated oaths by which
he had sworn to respect the rights of his ward, his colleague, and his
sovereign he availed himself of the first favourable moment to dethrone
the unfortunate boy who had been left neglected at Nicæa. On Christmas
Day, 1261, the agents of Michael deprived Joannes IV of his sight, though
he had not attained the age of ten, and he was declared to have forfeited
the throne. The cruel and perjured emperor then ordered him to be
immured in the fort of Dacybiza, where he remained neglected, and almost
forgotten, for eight-and-twenty years, when his solitude was broken in
upon by Andronicus, the bigoted son of the hypocritical Michael. The
conscience of the bigot was uneasy on account of his father’s crimes,
of which he was enjoying the fruit; so by a few kind words he easily
induced his imprisoned victim to make what was falsely termed a voluntary
cession of all his rights to the imperial crown. The evil consequences of
this crime were deeply felt in the empire; for the clergy, the nobility,
and the people, had all participated in the system of corruption and
peculation by which Michael VIII had smoothed the way for his usurpation.
The violation of every sentiment of honour, patriotism, and virtue was
so iniquitous that the public character of the Greek nation was degraded
by its obsequiousness on this occasion; and the feelings of the people
in the provinces of the east, as well as in western Europe, avenged the
misfortunes of Joannes. Michael Palæologus had hitherto been regarded
as a bold, frank, and generous prince; he henceforward showed himself a
timid, hypocritical, and cruel tyrant.

The patriarch Arsenius, who was one of the guardians of the dethroned
emperor, considered himself bound to protest against the injustice and
perjury of Michael. He convoked an assembly of the prelates resident
in Constantinople, and proposed that the reigning emperor should be
excommunicated by the synod; but too many of the clergy had been
participators in the intrigues of Michael, and were enjoying the rewards
of their subserviency, for such a measure to meet with any support.
Arsenius, therefore, on his own authority as patriarch, interdicted
Michael from all religious rites; but he did not venture to pronounce
the usual form of words, which deprived him of the prayers of the
orthodox. The Greek church, under the Palæologi, was tainted with the
same spirit of half measures and base tergiversation which marks the
imperial administration. The emperor accepted the modified censure of
the church as just, and hypocritically requested that his penance might
be assigned. By obtaining his dispensation in this manner, he expected
that public opinion would render the church an accessary after the fact,
while he secured to himself an additional guarantee for the enjoyment of
the fruits of his crime. Confident in his power, he punished with cruelty
all who ventured to express publicly their compassion for their dethroned
emperor.

Though the family of Vatatzes had been unpopular among the nobility, it
was beloved by the Asiatic Greeks, and especially by the mountaineers
of Bithynia. The people in the vicinity of Nicæa took up arms to avenge
Joannes IV, and their insurrection was suppressed with great difficulty.
A blind boy, who was found wandering in the neighbourhood, was supposed
to be their legitimate sovereign, the victim of Michael’s treachery.
The warlike peasantry flew to arms, and rendered themselves masters
of the forts and mountain passes. The advance of the imperial troops
sent to suppress the revolt was impeded by those famous archers who had
previously formed one of the most effective bodies in the emperor’s army.
Every ravine was contested, and every advantage dearly purchased. The
imperial troops at last subdued the country by adopting the policy by
which the Turks extended their conquests. The habitations were destroyed,
and the forests were burned down, so that the native population had
no means of obtaining subsistence, while the soldiers of Michael
became masters of the country, under the cover of their widespread
conflagrations. The resources of this flourishing province were ruined,
and its population was so diminished that, when the Ottoman Turks
attacked the empire, the renowned archers of Bithynia and the mountain
militia had ceased to exist.

THE PROVINCES OF THE EMPIRE

The change which is visible in the condition of the Asiatic provinces
of the empire towards the end of the reign of Michael VIII must be
attentively observed. When he mounted the throne, the power of the
Seljuk empire was so broken by the conquests of the Moguls, and the
energy of the Greek population was so great, in consequence of the wise
government of Joannes III and Theodore II, that the Greeks under the
Turkish dominion seemed on the eve of regaining their independence.
Azeddin Kaikus II, sultan of Iconium, was an exile; his brother
Rokneddin ruled only a small part of the Seljuk empire of Rum; for
Hulaku, the brother of the great khans Mangku and Kublai, possessed the
greater part of Asia Minor, and many Turkish tribes lived in a state of
independence. The cruelty and rapacity of Michael’s government, and the
venality and extortion which he tolerated among the imperial officers
and administrators, arrested the progress of the Greek nation, and
prepared the way for its rapid decline. The jealousy which Michael showed
of all marks of national independence, and the fear he entertained of
opposition, are strong characteristics of his policy. So rapacious was
the imperial treasury that the historian Pachymeres, though a courtier,
believed that the emperor Michael systematically weakened the power of
the Greek population from his fear of rebellion. The consequence was that
the whole country beyond the Sangarius, and the mountains which give rise
to the Rhyndacus and Macestus, were occupied by the Turks, who were often
invited by the inhabitants to take possession of the small towns.

[Illustration: A TWELFTH CENTURY CROSS-BOW]

As the reign of Michael VIII advanced, the encroachments of the nomad
Turks became more daring. Joannes Palæologus, who had for some time
restrained their incursions, was by his brother’s jealousy deprived of
all military command; and Andronicus, the emperor’s eldest son, was sent
to the frontier as commander-in-chief. In the year 1280 the incapacity
of the young prince threw all the imperial provinces open to invasion.
Nestongus, who commanded in the city of Nyssa, was defeated and taken
prisoner. Nyssa was taken, and the Turks then laid siege to Tralles,
which had been recently rebuilt and repeopled. The Turks at last formed a
breach in the walls by sapping, and then carried the city by storm. The
inhabitants who escaped the massacre were reduced to slavery.

About the same time Michael VIII usurped his place on the throne of the
Greek Empire, a small Turkish tribe made its first appearance in the
Seljuk empire. Othman, who gave his name to this new band of immigrants,
is said to have been born in the year 1258, and his father, Ertogrul,
entered the Seljuk empire as the chief of only four hundred families;
yet Orkhan, the son of Othman, laid the foundations of the institutions
and power of the Ottoman empire. No nation ever increased so rapidly
from such small beginnings, and no government ever constituted itself
with greater sagacity than the Ottoman; but no force or prudence could
have enabled this small tribe of nomads to rise with such rapidity to
power, had it not been that the emperor Michael and the Greek nation
were paralysed by political and moral corruption, and both left behind
them descendants equally weak and worthless. When history records that
Michael Palæologus recovered possession of Constantinople by accident, it
ought also to proclaim that, by his deliberate policy, he prepared the
way for the ruin of the Greek race and the conquest of Constantinople
by the Ottoman Turks. There is no other instance in history of a nation
so numerous, so wealthy, and so civilised, as the Greeks were in the
fourteenth century, having been permanently subdued by an enemy so
inferior in political and military resources. The circumstance becomes
the more disgraceful, as its explanation must be sought in social and
moral causes.

[Sidenote: [1261-1271 A.D.]]

The rebellion of his subjects in Asia made Michael anxious to secure
peace in Europe. In order to counterbalance the successes of the despot
of Epirus, and dispose him to conclude a treaty, Michael resolved to
release the Prince of Achaia, who had been taken prisoner at the battle
of Pelagonia in 1259. William Villehardouin, prince of Achaia, was freed,
by the destruction of the Latin Empire of Romania, from those feudal
ties which connected him with the throne of Baldwin II. To obtain his
liberty, he consented to become a vassal of the Greek Empire, and he
re-established the imperial power in the Peloponnesus, by delivering up
to Michael the fortresses of Monemvasia, Misithra, and Maina. On swearing
fidelity to Michael VIII he was released from captivity, after having
remained a prisoner for three years. The pope, however, was so much
alarmed at this example of a Catholic prince becoming a vassal of the
Greek emperor, that as soon as the Prince of Achaia was firmly settled
in his principality, his holiness absolved him from all his oaths and
obligations to the Greek emperor. Pope Urban IV even went so far as to
proclaim a crusade against Michael, and to invite St. Louis to take the
command; but the king of France, who was much more deeply imbued with the
Christian spirit than the pope, declined the office. The crusade ended in
a partisan warfare between the prince of Achaia and the governors Michael
had placed in the fortresses of which he had gained possession in the
Peloponnesus.

The conquest of Naples by Charles of Anjou threatened the Greek Empire
with a new invasion. Under the auspices of Clement IV a treaty was
concluded between the dethroned emperor Baldwin, Charles of Anjou,
and William, prince of Achaia, by which Baldwin ceded to Charles the
suzerainty of Achaia, and the prince agreed to transfer his allegiance
from the titular emperor to the king of Naples, who had already obtained
the absolute sovereignty of Corfu, and of the cities of Epirus, given
by the despot Michael II as dowry to his daughter, who married Manfred,
king of Sicily. In return, Charles of Anjou engaged to furnish Baldwin
with a force of two thousand knights and their followers, to enable him
to invade the Greek Empire. This treaty was concluded at Viterbo on the
27th of May, 1267. Its stipulations alarmed Michael Palæologus, who had
already involved himself in ecclesiastical quarrels with his subjects;
and in order to delay an attack on Constantinople, he sent an embassy
to Pope Clement IV, proposing measures for effecting a union of the