All the Crusaders, however, did not exhibit this noble degree of courage; many knights[154] whom Villehardouin is not willing to name, that he may not dishonour their memory, abandoned the banners of the army and fled to Constantinople; they related the disasters of the Crusaders, and, to excuse their desertion, drew a lamentable picture of the misfortunes that threatened the empire. 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 vain the legate of the pope and several leaders of the army endeavoured to detain them, threatening them with the anger of God and the contempt of men: they renounced their own glory; they abandoned an empire founded by their arms, and went to announce the captivity of Baldwin in the cities of the West, where the rejoicings for the first victories of the Crusaders were still being celebrated.
In the mean time, 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 Bosphorus, and followed Henry of Hainault, who was marching towards Adrianople. 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 Tartars, 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 Bosphorus, they only preserved the castle of Peges: on the European side, only Rodosto and Selembria. 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 Hemus, 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. This defeat was not less fatal than the battle of Adrianople; the hordes of Mount Hemus 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 burnt 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 Adrianople. 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 Hemus, 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.
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;[155] 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, enchased in gold, served as a cup for his barbarous conqueror. 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 Adrianople, 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. 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 looks must have perceived the rapid decline of an empire he had founded.[156] The greater part of the Crusaders had either perished in battle, or returned to the West. Boniface, in an expedition against the Bulgarians of Rhodope, received a mortal wound, and his head was carried in triumph to the fierce Joannice, who had already immolated a monarch to his ambition and vengeance. The succession of Boniface gave birth to serious disputes among the Crusaders; and the kingdom of Thessalonica, which had exhibited some splendour during its short existence, disappeared amidst the confusion and the storms of a civil and a foreign war. In the brother and successor of Baldwin were united the civil and military virtues; but he could scarcely hope to restore a power so shaken on all sides.
I have not the courage to pursue this history, and describe the Latins in the extremes of their abasement and misery. On commencing my narration, I said: “Evil to the conquered;” on terminating it, I cannot refrain from saying: “Evil to the conquerors.”
An old empire which moulders away, a new empire ready to sink into ruins, such are the pictures that this crusade presents to us; never did any epoch offer greater exploits for admiration, or greater troubles for commiseration. Amidst these glorious and tragical scenes, the imagination is excited in the most lively manner, and passes, without ceasing, from surprise to surprise. We are at first astonished at seeing an army of thirty thousand men embark to conquer a country which might reckon upon many millions of defenders; a tempest, an epidemic disease, want of provisions, disunion among the leaders, an indecisive battle, all, or any of these, might have ruined the army of the Crusaders, and brought about the failure of their enterprise. By an unheard-of good fortune, nothing that they had to dread happened to them. They triumphed over all dangers, and surmounted all obstacles: without having any party among the Greeks, they obtained possession of their capital and the provinces; and, at the moment when they saw their standards triumphant all around them, it was that their fortune deserted them and their ruin began. A great lesson is this, given to nations by Providence, which sometimes employs conquerors to chastise both people and princes, and then, at its pleasure, destroys the instrument of its justice! There is no doubt that that Providence, which protects empires, will not permit great states to be subverted with impunity; and to deter those who wish to conquer everything by force of arms, it has decreed that victory shall sometimes bear none but very bitter fruits.
The Greeks, a degenerate nation, honoured their misfortunes by no virtue; they had neither sufficient courage to prevent the reverses of war, nor sufficient resignation to support them. When reduced to despair, they showed some little valour; but that valour was imprudent and blind; it precipitated them into new calamities, and procured them masters much more barbarous than those whose yoke they were so eager to shake off. They had no leader able to govern or guide them; no sentiment of patriotism strong enough to rally them: deplorable example of a nation left to itself, which has lost its morals, and has no confidence in its laws or its government!
The Franks had just the same advantages over their enemies that the barbarians of the north had over the Romans of the Lower Empire. In this terrible conflict, simplicity of manners, the energy of a new people for civilization, the ardour for pillage, and the pride of victory, were sure to prevail over the love of luxury, habits formed amidst corruption, and vanity which attaches importance to the most frivolous things, and only preserves a gaudy resemblance of true grandeur.
The events we have recorded are, doubtless, sufficient to make us acquainted with the manners and intellectual faculties of the Greeks and Latins. Two historians, however, who have served us as guides, may add by their style even, and the character of their works, to the idea that we form of the genius of the two races.
The Greek Nicetas makes long lamentations over the misfortunes of the vanquished; he deplores with bitterness the loss of the monuments, the statues, the riches which ministered to the luxury of his compatriots. His accounts, full of exaggeration and hyperboles, sprinkled all over with passages from the Scriptures and profane authors, depart almost always from the noble simplicity of history, and only exhibit a vain affectation of learning. Nicetas, in the excess of his vanity,[157] hesitates to pronounce the names even of the Franks, and fancies he inflicts a punishment upon them by preserving silence as to their exploits; when he describes the misfortunes of the empire, he can only weep and lament; but whilst lamenting, he is still anxious to please, and appears much more interested about his book than his country.
The marquis of Champagne does not pique himself upon his erudition, but even seems proud of his ignorance. It has been said that he could not write, and he himself confesses that he dictated his history. His narration, void of all spirit of research, but lively and animated, constantly recalls the language and the noble frankness of a preux chevalier. Villehardouin particularly excels in the speeches of his heroes, and delights in praising the bravery of his companions: if he never names the Grecian warriors, it is because he did not know them, and did not wish to know them. The marshal of Champagne is not affected by the evils of war, and only elevates his style to paint traits of heroism; the enthusiasm of victory alone can draw tears from him. When the Latins experienced great reverses, he cannot weep, he is silent; and it may be plainly seen he has laid down his book to go and fight.[158]
There is another contemporary historian, whose character may likewise assist us in forming a judgment upon the age in which he lived and the events he has related. Gunther, a monk of the order of Citeaux, who wrote under the dictation of Martin Litz, expatiates upon the preachings of the crusade, and on the virtues of his abbot, who placed himself at the head of the Crusaders of the diocese of Bâle. When the Christian army directs its course towards the capital of the Greek empire, Gunther remembers the orders of the pope, and becomes silent; if he affords us a few words upon the second siege of Constantinople, he cannot conceal the terror which this rash enterprise creates in him. In his recital, the valour of the Crusaders scarcely obtains a modest eulogy; the imagination of the historian is only struck by the difficulties and perils of the expedition; filled with the most sinister presentiments, he constantly repeats that there is no hope of success for the Latins. When they are triumphant, his fear is changed all at once into admiration. The monk Gunther celebrates with enthusiasm the unhoped-for success of the conquerors of Byzantium, among whom he never loses sight of his abbot, Martin Litz, loaded with the pious spoils of Greece.
When reading the three histories contemporary with the expedition to Constantinople, we plainly perceive that the first belongs to a Greek brought up at the court of Byzantium, the second to a French knight, and the third to a monk. If the two first historians, by their manner of writing and the sentiments they express, give us a just idea of the Greek nation and the heroes of the West, the last may also explain to us the opinions and the character of the greater part of those Crusaders, who were constantly threatening to quit the army after it had left Venice, and who, perhaps, were only so mindful of the oath they had made to go to the Holy Land, because the name alone of Constantinople filled them with terror. There were, as may be plainly seen, but very few of these timid Crusaders in the Christian army, and even these were governed by the general spirit that animated the knights and barons. Other crusades had been preached in councils, this crusade was proclaimed at tournaments; thus the greater parts of the Crusaders proved more faithful to the virtues and laws of chivalry than to the will of the Holy See. These warriors, so proud and so brave, were full of respect for the authority and judgment of the pope; but, governed by honour, placed between their first vows and their word given to the Venetians, they often swore to deliver Jerusalem, and were led, without thinking of it, to the walls of Constantinople. Armed to avenge the cause of Christ, they became subservient to the ambition of Venice, to which republic they esteemed themselves bound by gratitude, and overturned the throne of Constantinople to pay a debt of fifty thousand silver marks.
The chivalric spirit, one of the peculiar characteristics of this war, and of the age in which it was undertaken, kept up in the hearts of the Crusaders ambition and the love of glory. In the early days of chivalry, knights declared themselves the champions of beauty and innocence; at first they were appealed to for justice against injuries and robberies; but soon princes and princesses, deprived of their rights by force, came to demand of them the restitution of provinces and kingdoms. The champions of misfortune and beauty then became illustrious liberators and true conquerors.
At the same time that a young prince came to implore the Crusaders to assist him in replacing his father upon the throne of Constantinople, a young princess, the daughter of Isaac, king of Cyprus, despoiled by Richard Cœur de Lion, repaired to Marseilles, to solicit the support of the Crusaders, who were embarking for Palestine. She married a Flemish knight, and charged him with the task of recovering her father’s kingdom. This Flemish knight, whose name history does not mention, but who belonged to the family of Count Baldwin, when he arrived in the East, addressed himself to the king of Jerusalem, and demanded the kingdom of Cyprus of him; he was supported in his demand by the châtelain of Bruges, and the greater part of his companions who had taken the cross. Amaury, who had received from the pope and the emperor of Germany, the title of king of Cyprus, far from yielding to such pretensions, ordered the Flemish knight, John of Nesle, and their companions, to quit his dominions. The knights who had embraced the cause of the daughter of Isaac, abandoned the idea of retaking the kingdom of Cyprus, and without stopping in the Holy Land, turned their steps towards the banks of the Euphrates and the Orontes, to seek for other countries to conquer.
Before there was a question of attacking Constantinople, we have seen a daughter of Tancred, the last king of Sicily, espouse a French knight, and transfer to him the charge of avenging her family and establishing her claims to the kingdom founded by the Norman knights. Gauthier de Brienne, after his marriage, set out for Italy, furnished with a thousand livres tournois, and accompanied by sixty knights. Having received at Rome the benediction of the pope, he declared war against the Germans, then masters of Apulia and Sicily; got possession of the principal fortresses,[159] and appeared likely to enjoy the fruits of his victories in peace, when he was surprised in his tent, and fell, covered with wounds, into the hands of his enemies. He was offered his liberty upon the condition of renouncing his claim to the crown of Sicily; but he preferred the title of king to freedom, and allowed himself to die with hunger rather than abandon his rights to a kingdom which victory had bestowed upon him.
This spirit of conquest, which appeared so general among the knights, might favour the expedition to Constantinople; but it was injurious to the holy war, by turning the Crusaders aside from the essential object of the crusade. The heroes of this war did nothing for the deliverance of Jerusalem, of which they constantly spoke in their letters to the pope. The conquest of Byzantium, very far from being, as the knights believed, the road to the land of Christ, was but a new obstacle to the taking of the holy city; their imprudent exploits placed the Christian colonies in greater peril, and only ended in completely subverting, without replacing it, a power which might have served as a barrier against the Saracens.
The Venetians skilfully took advantage of this disposition of the French knights; Venice succeeded in stifling the voice of the sovereign pontiff, who often gave the Crusaders counsels dictated by the spirit of the gospel. The republic had the greatest influence over the events of this war, and over the minds of the barons and knights, who allowed themselves to be governed by turns by the sentiments of honour and by a desire to win rich dominions, and thus exhibited throughout their conduct an inconsistent mixture of generosity and avarice.
The inclination to enrich themselves by victory had, particularly, no longer any bounds when the Crusaders had once beheld Constantinople; ambition took the place in their hearts of every generous sentiment, and left nothing of that enthusiasm which had been the moving principle of other crusades. No prodigy, no miraculous apparition came to second or stimulate the valour of knights to whom it was quite sufficient to point out the wealth of Greece. In preceding crusades, the bishops and ecclesiastics promised the combatants indulgences of the Church and eternal life; but in this war, as the Crusaders had incurred the displeasure of the head of the faithful, they could not be supported in their perils by the hope of martyrdom; and the leaders who were acquainted with the spirit that animated their followers, contented themselves with offering a sum of money to the soldier that should first mount the ramparts of Constantinople. When they had pillaged the city, knights, barons, and soldiers exclaimed, in the intoxication of their joy,—Never was so rich a booty seen since the creation of the world!
We have remarked that, in the conquest of the provinces, every knight wished to obtain a principality; every count, every lord, wished for a kingdom; the clergy themselves were not exempt from this ambition, and often complained to the pope of not having been favoured in the division of the spoils of the Greek empire.
To recapitulate, in a few words, our opinion of the events and consequences of this crusade, we must say that the spirit of chivalry and the spirit of conquest at first gave birth to wonders; but that they did not suffice to maintain the Crusaders in their possessions. This conquering spirit, carried to the most blind excess, did not allow them to reflect that among the greatest triumphs, there is a point at which victory and force themselves are powerless, if prudence and wisdom do not come to the assistance of valour.
The Franks, their ancestors, who set out from the North to invade the richest provinces of the Roman empire, were better seconded by fortune, but more particularly by their own genius. Respecting the usages of the countries that submitted to their arms, they only beheld in the conquered, fellow-citizens and supporters of their own power; they did not create a foreign nation in the midst of the nations they had desolated by their victories. The Crusaders, on the contrary, evinced a profound contempt for the Greeks, whose alliance and support they ought to have been anxious to seek; they wished to reform manners and alter opinions,—a much more difficult task than the conquest of an empire,—and only met with enemies in a country that might have furnished them with useful allies.
We may add that the policy of the Holy See, which at first undertook to divert the Latin warriors from the expedition to Constantinople, became, in the end, one of the greatest obstacles to the preservation of their conquests. The counts and barons, who reproached themselves with having failed in obedience to the sovereign pontiff, at length followed scrupulously his instructions to procure by their arms the submission of the Greek Church, the only condition on which the holy father would pardon a war commenced in opposition to his commands. To obtain his forgiveness and approbation, they employed violence against schism and heresy, and lost their conquest by endeavouring to justify it in the eyes of the sovereign pontiff. The pope himself did not obtain that which he so ardently desired. The union of the Greek and Roman churches could not possibly be effected amidst the terrors of victory and the evils of war; the arms of the conquerors had less power than the anathemas of the Church, to bring back the Greeks to the worship of the Latins. Violence only served to irritate men’s minds, and consummated the rupture, instead of putting an end to it. The remembrance of persecutions and outrages, a reciprocal contempt, an implacable hatred arose and became implanted between the two creeds, and separated them for ever.
History cannot affirm that this crusade made great progress in the civilization of Europe. The Greeks had preserved the jurisprudence of Justinian; the empire possessed wise regulations upon the levying of imposts and the administration of the public revenues; but the Latins disdained these monuments of human wisdom and of the experience of many ages; they coveted nothing the Greeks possessed but their territories and their wealth. Most of the knights took a pride in their ignorance, and amongst the spoils of Constantinople, attached no value to the ingenious productions of Greece. Amidst the conflagrations that consumed the mansions and palaces of the capital, they beheld with indifference large and valuable libraries given up to the flames. It must be confessed, however, that, in these great disasters the Muses had not to weep for the loss of any of the masterpieces they had inspired. If the conquerors knew not how to appreciate the treasures of genius, this rich deposit was not to be lost for their descendants. All the books of antiquity that were known in the time of Eustathius [A. D. 750, Trans.], and of which that learned philosopher made the nomenclature some centuries before the fifth crusade, enriched France and Italy at the revival of letters.
We may add that the necessity for both conquerors and conquered of intercommunication must have contributed to the spreading of the Latin language among the Greeks, and that of the Greeks among the Latins.[160] The people of Greece were obliged to learn the idiom of the clergy of Rome in order to make their petitions and complaints known; the ecclesiastics charged by the pope to convert the Greeks could not dispense with the study of the language of Plato and Demosthenes, to teach the disciples of Photius the truths of the Roman Catholic religion.
We have spoken of the destruction of the masterpieces of sculpture; we must admit, nevertheless, that some of them escaped the barbarism of the conquerors. The Venetians, more enlightened than the other Crusaders, and born in a city constructed and embellished by the arts, caused several of the monuments of Byzantium to be transported into Italy. Four horses of bronze,[161] which, amidst the revolutions of empires, had passed from Greece to Rome, from Rome to Constantinople, were sent to decorate the place of St. Mark: many ages after this crusade, they were doomed to be carried away from Venice, in its turn invaded by victorious armies, and again to return to the shores of the Adriatic, as eternal trophies of war, and faithful companions of victory.
The Crusaders likewise profited by several useful inventions, and transmitted them to their compatriots; and the fields and gardens of Italy and France were enriched by some plants till that time unknown in the West. Boniface sent into his marquisate some seeds of maize, which had never before been cultivated in Italy: a public document, which still exists, attests the gratitude of the people of Montferrat. The magistrates received the innocent fruits of victory with great solemnity, and, upon their altars, called down a blessing upon a production of Greece, that would one day constitute the wealth of the plains of Italy.[162]
Flanders, Champagne, and most of the provinces of France, which had sent their bravest warriors to the crusade, fruitlessly lavished their population and their treasures upon the conquest of Byzantium. We may say that our intrepid ancestors gained nothing by this wonderful war, but the glory of having given, for a moment, masters to Constantinople, and lords to Greece. And yet these distant conquests, and this new empire, which drew from France its turbulent and ambitious princes, must have been favourable to the French monarchy. Philip Augustus must have been pleased by the absence of the great vassals of the crown, and had reason to learn with joy that the count of Flanders, a troublesome neighbour, and a not very submissive vassal, had obtained an empire in the East. The French monarchy thus derived some advantage from this crusade; but the republic of Venice profited much more by it.
This republic, which scarcely possessed a population of two hundred thousand souls, and had not the power to make its authority respected on the continent, in the first place, made use of the arms of the Crusaders, to subdue cities, of which, without their assistance, she could never have made herself mistress. By the conquest of Constantinople, she enlarged her credit and her commerce in the East, and brought under her laws some of the richest possessions of the Greek emperors. She increased the reputation of her navy, and raised herself above all the maritime nations of Europe. The Venetians, though fighting under the banners of the cross, never neglected the interests or glory of their own country, whilst the French knights scarcely ever fought for any object but personal glory and their own ambition. The republic of Venice, accustomed to calculate the advantages and expenses of war, immediately renounced all conquests the preservation of which might become burdensome and of her new possessions in the East, only retained such as she judged necessary to the prosperity of her commerce, or the maintenance of her marine. Three years after the taking of Constantinople, the senate of Venice published an edict, by which it permitted any of the citizens to conquer the islands of the Archipelago; yielding to them the proprietorship of all the countries they might subdue. After this there soon appeared princes of Naxos, dukes of Paros, and lords of Mycone, as there had been dukes of Athens, lords of Thebes, and princes of Achaia; but these dukes and princes were only vassals of the republic. Thus Venice, more fortunate than France, made the valour and ambition of her citizens subservient to her interests.