Meanwhile the Empire was again cut short to the north by a new Bulgarian revolt, which established a third Bulgarian kingdom, but a kingdom which seems to have been as much Vlach or Rouman as strictly Bulgarian. The new kingdom took in the old Bulgarian land between Danube and Hæmus, and it presently spread both to the west and to the south. ♦Other Slavonic revolts.♦ The Bulgarian revolt was followed by other movements among the Thracian and Macedonian Slaves, which did not lead to the foundation of any new states, but which had their share in the general break-up of the Imperial power. ♦Increased Greek character of the Empire.♦ The work of Basil and Manuel was now undone, but its undoing had the effect of making the Empire more nearly a Greek state than ever. It did not wholly coincide with the Greek-speaking lands: the Empire had subjects who were not Greeks, and there were Greeks who were not subjects of the Empire. But the Greek speech and the new Greek nationality were dominant within the lands which were still left to the Empire. The Roman name was now merely a name: Roman and Greek meant the same thing. Whatever was not Greek in European Romania was mainly Albanian and Vlach. The dominion of the Empire in the peninsula was mainly confined to the primitive races of the peninsula. ♦The Slavonic states.♦ The great element of later times, the Slavonic settlers, had almost wholly separated themselves from the Empire, establishing their independence, but not their unity. They formed a group of independent powers which had simply fallen away from the Empire; it was by the powers of the West that the Empire itself was to be broken in pieces.

The taking of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade was the work of an alliance between the now independent commonwealth of Venice and a body of Western crusaders who, along with the states which they founded, may be indifferently called Latins or Franks. ♦Act of Partition.♦ A regular act of partition was drawn out, by which the Empire was to be divided into three parts. One was to be assigned to a Latin Emperor of Romania, another of the pilgrims as his feudatories, a third to the commonwealth of Venice. But the partition was never carried out. A large part of the Empire was never conquered; another large part was not assigned by the act of partition. In fact the scheme of partition is hardly a geographical fact at all. The real partition to which the Latin conquest led was one of quite another kind, a partition of the Empire among a crowd of powers, Greek, Frank, and Venetian, more than one of which had some claim to represent the Empire itself.

These were the Latin Empire of Romania, and the Greek Empire which maintained itself at Nikaia, and which, after nearly sixty years of banishment, won back the Imperial city. In the crusading scheme the Latin Emperor was to be the feudal superior of the lesser princes who were to establish themselves within the Empire. For his own Imperial domain he was to have the whole of the Imperial possessions in Asia, with a Thracian dominion stretching as far north as Agathopolis. Hadrianople, with a narrow strip of territory stretching down to the Propontis, was to be Venetian. The actual result was very different. ♦Its extent.♦ The Latin Emperors never got any footing in Asia beyond parts of the themes bordering on the Propontis, reaching from Adramyttion to the mouth of the Sangarios. In Europe they held the eastern part of Thrace, with a fluctuating border towards Bulgaria on the north, and to the new Latin and Greek states which arose to the west. Their dominion also took in Lêmnos, Lesbos, Chios, and some others of the Ægæan islands.

But the Latin Empire of Romania was not the only Empire which arose out of the break-up of the old East-Roman power. Two, for a time three, Greek princes bore the Imperial title; there was also a Latin king. It will be convenient for a while to leave out of sight both Asia and southern Greece, and to look to the revolutions of Thrace, Macedonia, northern Greece, and what we may now begin to call Albania. The immediate result of the Latin conquest was to divide these lands between three powers, two Latin and one Greek. ♦Kingdom of Thessalonikê. 1204-1222. Despotat of Epeiros.♦ Besides the Empire of Romania, there was the Latin kingdom of Thessalonikê, and the Greek despotat[27] of Epeiros held by the house of Angelos. Of these the Thessalonian kingdom was the most short-lived, and there can be little doubt that its creation was the ruin of the Latin Empire. It cut off the Emperor from his distant vassals in Greece, whose vassalage soon became nominal. It gave him, in successive reigns, a powerful neighbour who knew his own power, and a weak neighbour, who fell before the Greek advance sooner than himself. But the beginnings of the kingdom, under its first king Boniface, were promising. His power stretched over Thessaly, now known as Great Vlachia, and he received the homage of the Frank princes further to the south. But within twenty years from its foundation, Frank rule had ceased in Macedonia. ♦Thessalonikê again Greek.♦ Thessalonikê was again a Greek and an Imperial city, and its recovery by the Greeks split the Latin Empire asunder.

This blow came from the west. It was the Nicene Empire which did in the end win back the Imperial city; but, for some years after the Latin conquest, things looked as if the restoration of the Greek power in Europe was designed for Epeiros. The first despot Michael paid a nominal homage to all the neighbouring powers, Greek and Frank, in turn; but in truth he was the lord of an independent and growing state. His power began in the Epeirot land west of Pindos. ♦1208-1210.♦ For a moment he held in Peloponnêsos Corinth, Nauplia, and Argos. Durazzo and Corfu were won from Venice. ♦1215.♦ The Epeirot power advanced also to the east. ♦1222.
1225.♦ Thessalonikê was taken; its ruler took the Imperial title; Hadrianople followed, and the new Empire stretched across the peninsula from sea to sea, and took in Thessaly to the south. But the Thessalonian Empire was hardly more long-lived than the Thessalonian kingdom. It was first dismembered among the princes of the ruling house. ♦Separation of Epeiros and Thessalonia. 1237.♦ The original Epeirot despotat, along with Corfu, parted away from the new Macedonian power, to survive it by many years. But by this time the championship of the Greek speech and faith against the Latin lords of Constantinople had passed to the foremost of the Greek powers which had grown up in Asia, to the Empire of Nikaia.

These Greek powers were two, which arose at the same time, but by different processes and with different destinies. ♦The Empire of Trebizond, 1204-1461.♦ The Empire of Nikaia was the truer continuation of the old East-Roman power; the Empire of Trapezous or Trebizond was the last independent fragment of Roman dominion and Greek culture. The Trapezuntine Empire was not in strictness one of the states which arose out of the Latin partition. One of the parts of the Empire which showed most disposition to fall away was independently seized by a rival Emperor, at the very moment of the Latin conquest. Alexios Komnênos occupied Trebizond, an occupation largely wrought by Iberian help, as if the Empire, already dismembered by the Christians of the West, was to be further dismembered by the Christians of the further East. ♦Extent of the Komnenian dominion.♦ The dominions of Alexios, enlarged by his brother David to the west, at first took in the whole south coast of the Euxine from the Sangarios eastward, broken by the city of Amisos, which contrived to make itself virtually independent, and by the neighbouring Turkish settlement at Samsoun. But this dominion was only momentary. The eastern part alone survived to form the later Empire of Trebizond; the western part, the government of David, soon passed to the rising power of Nikaia.

The founder of that power was Theodore Laskaris, in whom the succession of the Eastern Empire was held to be continued. ♦1214.♦ Ten years after the taking of Constantinople, a treaty fixed his border towards the small Latin dominion in Asia. ♦1220.
1240.♦ Six years later the Latins kept only the lands north of the gulf of Nikomêdeia; sixteen years later they held only the Asiatic coast of the Bosporos. ♦1247.♦ Seven years later Chios, Lêmnos, Samos, Kôs, and other islands were won back by the growing Greek state. ♦The Nicene Empire in Europe. 1235.♦ But, long before this, the Nicene Empire had become an European power. The Thracian Chersonêsos was first won, the work beginning at Kallipolis. ♦1242.
1246.♦ Presently the Thessalonian Emperor sank to the rank of a despot under him of Nikaia; four years later Thessalonikê was incorporated with the Nicene dominions. ♦1245-1256.♦ A series of Bulgarian campaigns carried the Imperial frontier, first to the Hebros—already the Slavonic Maritza—and then to the foot of Hæmus. ♦1254-1259.♦ A series of Epeirot campaigns won a Hadriatic seaboard, and made Durazzo for a while again a city of the Empire. ♦1259.♦ The Nicene power in these regions was confirmed by the victory of Pelagonia, won over the combined forces of Epeiros, Achaia, and Sicily. ♦1260.♦ The next year Selymbria was won from the Latins, and the Frank Empire was cut down to so much territory as could be guarded from the walls of Constantinople. ♦Recovery of Constantinople, 1261.♦ At last the recovery of Constantinople changed the Empire of Nikaia into the revived Byzantine Empire of the Palaiologoi.

That Empire still lasted a hundred and ninety years, and we must carefully distinguish between its European and its Asiatic history. The Asiatic border fell back almost as soon as the seat of rule was restored to Europe. ♦Advance of the Empire in Europe.♦ In Europe the revived Empire kept the character of an advancing power till just before the entrance of the Ottoman into Europe, in some parts till just before the fall of Constantinople. Many events helped to weaken the real power of the Empire, which did not affect its geography. ♦1302.♦ Such were the earlier Turkish inroads and the destroying visit of the Catalans. ♦Advance in Peloponnêsos.♦ The land in which advance was most steady was Peloponnêsos, where, at the time of the recovery of Constantinople, the Empire did not hold a foot of ground. ♦1262.♦ Misithra, Monembasia, and Maina were the fruits of the day of Pelagonia. For a while the Imperial frontier was stationary, but from the beginning of the fourteenth century it steadily advanced. It advanced perhaps all the more after Peloponnêsos became an Imperial dependency, or an appanage for princes of the Imperial house, rather than an immediate possession of the Empire. ♦1404.♦ Early in the fifteenth century the greater part of the peninsula, including Corinth, was again in Greek hands. ♦1430.♦ At last, twenty-three years only before the Turkish conquest of Constantinople, all Peloponnêsos, except the points held by Venice, was under the superiority of the Empire.

In more northern parts the advance of the Empire, though chequered by more reverses, went on steadily till the growth of the Servian power in the middle of the fourteenth century. ♦1308.♦ The frontier varied towards Servia, Bulgaria, Epeiros, and the Angevin power which established itself on the Hadriatic coast. Even under Andronikos the Second the Imperial dominion was extended over the greater part of Thessaly or Great Vlachia. ♦1318-1339.♦ Later still, all Epeiros, Jôannina and Arta—once Ambrakia—were won. At the moment of the great Servian advance, the Empire held the uninterrupted seaboard from the Euxine to the Pagasaian Gulf, as well as its Hadriatic seaboard from the Ambrakian gulf northward. But the Frank principalities still cut off the main body of the Empire from its possessions in Peloponnêsos.

In Asia there is another tale to tell. There the frontier of the Empire steadily went back from the recovery of Constantinople. A few points gained or lost to European powers go for little. ♦1260.♦ Smyrna passed for a while to Genoa. ♦The Knights of Saint John, 1309-1315.♦ The Knights of Saint John won Rhodes, Kôs, and other islands, but they did not become a power on the mainland of Asia till the Empire had almost withdrawn from that continent. ♦Advance of the Turks.♦ The Imperial power steadily crumbled away before the advance of the Turk, first the Seljuk and then the Ottoman. The small Turkish powers into which the Sultanate of Roum had now split up began to encroach on the Greek dominion in Asia as soon as its centre was transferred to Europe. By the end of the thirteenth century, the Imperial possessions in Asia had again shrunk up to a narrow strip on the Propontis, from the Ægæan to the Euxine. Losses followed more speedily when the Turkish power passed from the Seljuk to the Ottoman. ♦1326-1338.♦ Brusa, Nikaia, Nikomêdeia, were all lost within twelve years. By the middle of the fourteenth century, the Emperors kept nothing in Asia, save a strip of land just opposite Constantinople, and the outlying cities of Philadelphia and Phôkaia, their allies rather than their subjects.

The Ottoman was now all but ready to pass into Europe, and the way was made easier for him by the rise and fall of an European power which again cut short the Empire in its western provinces. ♦The Empire falls back towards Servia and Bulgaria.
1331.♦ While the Imperial frontier was advancing in Epeiros and Thessaly, it fell back towards Servia, and advanced towards Bulgaria only to fall back again. ♦Loss of Philippopolis, 1344.♦ Philippopolis, so often lost and won, now passed away for ever. ♦Conquest. Stephen Dushan.♦ And now came the great momentary advance of Servia under Stephen Dushan, which wrested from the Empire a large part of its Thracian, Macedonian, Albanian, and Greek possessions. ♦Extent of the Empire.♦ At the middle of the fourteenth century, the Empire, all but banished from Asia, kept no unbroken European dominion out of Thrace. Its other possessions were isolated. It kept Thessalonikê and Chalkidikê, with a small strip of Macedonia as far as Berrhoia and Vodena. It kept a small Thessalian territory about Lamia or Zeitouni. There was the Peloponnesian province, fast growing into importance; there was Lesbos and a few other islands. ♦1355.♦ On Stephen’s death his dominion broke in pieces, but the Empire did not win back its lost lands. For the Ottoman was already in Europe, ready, in the space of the next hundred years, to swallow up all that was left.

As in the recovery of Romania by the Greeks of Nikaia, so in the final conquest of Romania by the Turks of Brusa, Constantinople itself was—with the exception of the Peloponnesian appanage—the last point of the Empire to fall. The Turk, like the Greek, made his way in by Kallipolis; like the Greek, he hemmed in the Imperial city for years before it fell into his hands. ♦Loss of Hadrianople, 1361.
1366.♦ In seven years from his first landing, Hadrianople had become the European capital of the Turk; the Empire was his tributary, keeping, besides its outlying possessions, only the land just round the city. The romantic expedition of Amadeo of Savoy gave back to the Empire its Euxine coast as far as Mesêmbria. ♦Loss of Philadelphia, 1374-1391.♦ Before the end of the century Philadelphia was lost in Asia, and the Imperial dominion in Europe hardly reached beyond the city itself and the Peloponnesian province. Thessalonikê and the Thessalian province were both lost for a while. ♦Effects of Timour’s invasion, 1401.♦ Bajazet was on the point of doing the work of Mahomet, when the Empire was saved for another half-century by the invasion of Timour and the consequent break-up of the Ottoman power. During the Ottoman civil wars, the outlying points of the Empire were restored and seized again more than once. ♦1424.♦ At last the boundaries of the Empire were fixed by treaty between Sultan Mahomet and the Emperor Manuel, much as they had stood sixty years before. The coast of the Propontis to Selymbria, the coast of the Euxine to Mesêmbria, Thessalonikê and Chalkidikê, the Peloponnesian province, the smaller Thessalian province, the overlordship of Lesbos, Ainos, and Thasos, was all that was left. Further losses soon followed. ♦1426.♦ Thessalonikê passed from the Empire within two years. ♦1453.♦ At last, as all the world knows, the Imperial city itself fell, and the name of the Eastern Roman Empire was blotted out of European geography. ♦1460.♦ Six years later came the conquest of Peloponnêsos, and the whole of European Greece passed into the hands of foreign masters.

Having thus sketched the changes in the extent of the Eastern Roman Empire during a period of six hundred and fifty years, we have now to trace the geography of the states which, within that time, grew up within its borders or upon its frontiers. These fall naturally into four groups. ♦The Slavonic states.♦ First come the national states which were formed by throwing off the dominion of the Empire. These are mainly the Slavonic powers to the north, Bulgaria, Servia, Croatia, and the later states which arose out of their divisions and combinations. ♦Hungary.
Rouman states.♦ And with these, different as was their origin, we must, for our purposes, place both the Hungarian kingdom which annexed so many of the Slavonic lands, and the Rouman states, so closely connected with Hungarian history, which arose by migrations out of the Empire. ♦The Greek states.♦ Another group consists of the Greek states which split off from the Empire before or at the Latin conquest, and which were not recovered by the Greek Emperors of Nikaia and Constantinople. Both these classes of states belong strictly to Eastern Christendom. Catholic Hungary ruling over Orthodox Slaves forms a link between the East and the West; so do those Slaves who themselves belong to the Latin Church. ♦Latin states with the Empire.♦ Another link is supplied by a third group of states, namely, those parts of the Empire which, either at or before the Latin conquest, came under Latin rule. This class is not confined to the Frank powers in Romania or to the Eastern settlements of Venice and Genoa. ♦Kingdom of Sicily.
Kingdom of Jerusalem.♦ From our point of view it takes in the Norman kingdom of Sicily and the crusading kingdom of Jerusalem with its fiefs. In all these cases, territory which had formed part of the Eastern Empire came under Latin rule. And in all these cases, Latin masters bore rule over alien subjects, Greek, Slave, Syrian, or any other. None of the Latin powers were national states, like the Slavonic or even like the Greek powers. But the foreign masters of these lands were at least European and Christian. The last class consists of powers which lie beyond the range of European and Christian civilization. ♦Turkish dynasties.♦ These are the Turkish dynasties which arose within the Empire. ♦The Ottomans.♦ Of these only the last and greatest, the dynasty of Othman, became geographically European, and swallowed up nearly all the lands which had belonged to the Empire in Europe, together with much which lay beyond its bounds. Here we have, not only the absence of national being, but the rule of the Asiatic over the European, of the Mussulman over the Christian. ♦The New States.♦ Lastly, we come to the partial redressing of this wrong by the re-establishment of independent Greek and Slavonic states in our own century.

These seem to make four natural groups, and it is needful to bear in mind their nature and relations to each other. But it will be more convenient to speak of the several states thus formed in an order approaching more nearly to the order of their separation from the Empire. And first comes a power which parted off so early, and which became so thoroughly a part of Western Europe, that it needs an effort to grasp the fact that its right place is among the powers which had their beginning in separation from the Imperial throne of Constantinople.

§ 2. The Kingdom of Sicily.

This is the power which, in the course of the eleventh century, was formed by the Norman adventurers in southern Italy and in Sicily. It was not wholly formed at the expense of the Eastern Empire. But all its insular, and the greater part of its continental, territory, was either won from the Eastern Empire and its vassals, or else had once formed part of that Empire. Its kings also more than once established their power, for a longer or shorter time, in the Imperial lands east of the Hadriatic. With the Western Empire and the Kingdom of Italy the Sicilian kingdom had in its beginnings nothing to do, though it was afterwards somewhat enlarged at their expense.

When the Norman conquests in Italy began, early in the eleventh century, the Eastern Empire still kept the coast of both seas from the further side of the peninsula of Gargano to the head of the gulf of Policastro. The Imperial duchies of Naples, Gaeta, and Amalfi, lying to the north of this point, were cut off by the duchies of Benevento, Capua, and Salerno, over which the Empire had at the most a very precarious superiority. ♦Advance of the Normans.♦ Within a hundred years, all these lands, together with the island of Sicily, were brought under Norman rule. Thus grew up a new European power, sometimes forming one kingdom, sometimes two, sometimes held alone, sometimes together with other kingdoms. This power supplanted alike the Eastern Empire, the Saracen powers of Sicily, and the Lombard princes of southern Italy. It started from two points, two distinct Norman settlements, of which the later outshone the earlier. ♦County of Aversa, 1021.♦ The earliest Norman territorial settlement was the county of Aversa, held in vassalage of the Imperial duchy of Naples. ♦Principality of Capua, 1062-1068.♦ Forty years later its counts became possessed of the principality of Capua, of which they received a papal confirmation which implied a denial of all dependence on either Empire. The more lasting duchy of Apulia began later under the adventurers of the house of Hauteville. ♦County of Apulia, 1042.♦ Their first stage is marked by the foundation of the county of Apulia, with Melfi as its capital, under William of-the-Iron-arm. This took in the peninsula of Gargano and the lands immediately to the south of it. ♦Investiture by Pope Leo, 1053.♦ The next stage is when Leo the Ninth invested Count Humfrey, or rather the Normans as a body, with all that they could conquer in Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily. ♦Robert Wiscard Duke, 1059.
Completion of the Apulian duchy, 1077.♦ The first of several takings of Tarentum, and the assumption of the ducal title by Robert Wiscard, mark another stage. Less than twenty years later the Eastern Empire kept nothing but the duchy of Naples; Benevento had passed to the Popes. The rest of the lands both of the Empire and of the Lombard princes were now very unequally divided between two Norman lords, the Duke of Apulia and the Prince of Capua. ♦Robert Wiscard in Epeiros, 1081-1085.♦ The Byzantine power west of the Hadriatic being thus overthrown, Robert Wiscard for the first time pushed the Norman arms into the Eastern peninsula itself. For the last few years of his life he held the islands of Corfu and Kephallênia, with Durazzo and the coast to the south, and even inland as far as Kastoria and Trikkala. ♦1147-1150.♦ His power was renewed for a moment by his son Bohemond, and in the middle of the next century Corfu was again for a short time held by King Roger.

For by that time the island of Sicily was a kingdom of Western Christendom. The second time of Mussulman rule over the whole island was short. In the space of thirty years Count Roger won the great island alike from Islam and from Eastern Christendom. ♦Taking of Messina, 1061;
of Palermo, 1072;
of Syracuse, 1086;
of Noto, 1091;♦ Greek Messina was first won; after a while Saracen Palermo followed; Syracuse was won much later; the last Saracen post in the island to hold out was Noto in the south-eastern corner. ♦of Malta, 1091.♦ Malta, the natural appendage of Sicily, was soon added. The first Norman capital was Messina. Duke Robert, as overlord of his brother Count Roger, kept Palermo and the surrounding district in his own hands. It was not till the next century that the Count of Sicily won full possession of the city. ♦Palermo capital of Sicily.♦ Palermo then became again, as it had been under the Saracens, the head of Sicily.

The ruler of Sicily also became a potentate on the Italian mainland. First the half, then the whole, of Calabria formed part of his dominions. ♦Roger the Second, 1105-1154.
King, 1130.♦ The third Great Count, the first King, of Sicily, Roger the Second, gradually won the whole possessions of his family on the mainland. ♦Capua, 1132-1136.♦ To these he presently added the Norman principality of Capua, first as a dependent territory, then as fully incorporated with his dominions. ♦Naples, 1138.♦ He next won the last possession in the West which was still held by the Eastern Empire, the city of Naples. ♦The Abruzzi, 1140.♦ He then pressed beyond the bounds both of the Eastern Empire and of the early Norman conquests by the annexation of the Abruzzi. He then, as we have seen, extended his power for a moment east of the Hadriatic. Meanwhile he was more successful against the common enemies of Eastern and Western Christendom. ♦Conquests in Africa, 1135-1137.♦ As Sicily had twice been conquered from Africa, Africa now began to be conquered from Sicily. ♦1160.♦ Roger held a considerable dominion on the African coast including Mehadia, Bona, and other points, which were lost under his son William.

Thus was founded a kingdom which has, perhaps oftener than any other European state, been divided and united and handed over from one dynasty of strangers to another, but whose boundaries, strictly so called, have hardly changed at all. For the only immediate neighbour of the Sicilian king was his ecclesiastical overlord. The question was whether the king of the mainland should be also king of the island. But the successive dynasties which reigned both over the whole kingdom and over its divided parts were for a long time eager to carry out the policy of their first founder, by conquests east of the Hadriatic. ♦Epeirot conquests of William the Good, 1185.♦ Before the fall of the old Empire, William the Good began again to establish an Epeirot and insular dominion by the conquest of Durazzo, Corfu, Kephallênia, and Zakynthos. ♦Kingdom of Margarito, 1186.
1338.♦ But these outlying dominions were granted in fief to the Sicilian Admiral Margarito,[28] who, himself bearing the strange title of King of the Epeirots, founded a dynasty which, with the title of Count Palatine, held Kephallênia, Zakynthos, and Ithakê into the fourteenth century. Thus these lands, like Cyprus and Trebizond, were cut off from the Empire just before its fall, and the revolutions of Sicily cut them off equally from the Sicilian kingdom. ♦Epeirot dominion of Manfred, 1258.♦ A more lasting power in these regions began under Manfred, who received with his Greek wife Corfu, Durazzo, and a strip of the Albanian coast, with the title of Lord of Romania. ♦Of Charles of Anjou, 1266-69.
1272-1276.♦ This dominion passed to his conqueror Charles of Anjou, who further established a feudal superiority over the Epeirot despotat. ♦1282.♦ But his plans were cut short by the revolution of the Vespers. ♦History of Durazzo, 1322.
Duchy of Durazzo, 1333-1360.
1378.♦ Durazzo was lost and won more than once; but it came back to the Angevin house, to become a separate Angevin duchy, till it fell before the growth of the Albanian powers. Another branch held Lepanto—once Naupaktos—which lasted longer. ♦1373-1386.♦ Corfu and Butrinto became immediate possessions of the Neapolitan crown till they found more lasting masters at Venice.

This Eastern dominion of the two Sicilian crowns, besides their influence of which we shall have presently to speak in southern Greece, tends to keep up the connexion of the Sicilian kingdoms with the Empire out of which they sprang. But it can hardly be called a geographical enlargement of the kingdoms themselves. ♦Acre occupied by Charles of Anjou.♦ Still less can that name be given to the short occupation of Acre by Charles of Anjou in his character of one of the many Kings of Jerusalem. ♦Malta granted to the Knights, 1530.♦ The Sicilian kingdoms themselves cannot be said to have gained or lost territory till Charles the Fifth granted Malta to the Knights of Saint John, till Philip the Second added the Stati degli Presidi to the Two Sicilies. The great revolution of all has taken place in our own day. The name of Sicily has for the first time been wiped from the European map. The island of Hierôn and Roger has sunk to form seven provinces of a prince who has not deigned to take the crown or the title of that illustrious realm.

§ 3. The Crusading States.

The Sicilian kingdom has much in common with the states formed by the crusaders in Asia and Eastern Europe. Both grew out of lands won by Western conquerors, partly from the Eastern Empire itself, partly from Mussulman holders of lands which had belonged to the Eastern Empire. But the order of the two processes is different. The Sicilian Normans began by conquering lands of the Empire, and then went on to win the island which the Saracens had torn from the Empire. The successive crusades first founded Christian states in the lands which the Mussulmans had won from the Empire, and then partitioned the Empire itself. The first crusaders undertook to hold their conquest as fiefs of the Eastern Empire. This condition was only very partially carried out; but the mere theory marks a stage in the relations between the Eastern Empire and the Latin powers of Palestine which has nothing answering to it in the case of Sicily.

First among these powers come the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the other Frank principalities which arose out of the first crusade. ♦Cyprus.♦ The kingdom of Cyprus, which in some sort continued the Kingdom of Jerusalem, forms a link between the true crusading states and those which arose out of the partition of the Empire in the fourth crusade. ♦Armenia.♦ And closely connected with this was the kingdom of Kilikian Armenia whose foundation we have already mentioned.[29] This last was an Eastern state which became to some extent Latinized. But the Syrian states, Cyprus, and the Latin powers which arose out of the partition of the Empire, all agree in being colonies of Western Europe in Eastern lands, states where the Latin settlers appear as a dominant race over the natives, of whatever blood or creed.

The great geographical result of the first crusade was to cut off the Mussulman powers from the seas of Asia and Eastern Europe. In the first years of the twelfth century the Christian powers, Byzantine, Armenian, and Latin, held the whole coast of Asia Minor and Syria. ♦Extent of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.♦ The Kingdom of Jerusalem, at its greatest extent, stretched along the coast from Berytos to Gaza. To the east it reached some way beyond Jordan and the Dead Sea, with a strip of territory reaching southward to the eastern gulf of the Red Sea. To the north lay two Latin states which, in the days of Komnenian revival, acknowledged the superiority of the Eastern Emperor. ♦Tripolis.
Antioch.♦ These were the county of Tripolis, reaching northwards to the Syrian Alexandretta, and the more famous principality of Antioch. ♦640.
968.
1081.
1098.
1268.♦ That great city, lost to Christendom in the first days of Saracen conquest, won back to the Empire in the Macedonian revival, lost to the Turk, won back by the Frank, remained a Christian principality long after the fall of Jerusalem, and did not pass again under Mussulman rule till late in the thirteenth century. ♦Edessa.♦ North-east of Antioch lay the furthest of the Latin possessions, the inland county of Edessa. ♦1128-1173.♦ This was the first to be lost; it fell under the power of the Turkish Attabegs of Syria. ♦Loss of the lands beyond Jordan.♦ They cut short the kingdom of Jerusalem, taking away the territory east of Jordan. On their ruin arose the mightier power of Saladin, lord alike of Egypt and Syria. ♦Jerusalem taken by Saladin, 1187.♦ He took Jerusalem, and the kingdom which still bore that name was cut down to the lands just round Tyre. ♦Jerusalem recovered by Frederick the Second, 1228.♦ The crusades which followed won back Acre and various points, and at last the diplomacy of Frederick the Second won back from the Egyptian Sultan Tyre, Sidon, and the Holy City itself. A strip of coast running inland at two points, so as to take in Tiberias and Nazareth at one end, Jerusalem and Bethlehem at the other, formed the Eastern realm of the lord of Rome and Sicily. ♦1239-1243.
Final loss of Jerusalem, 1244.♦ Lost and won again by the Christians, Jerusalem was finally won for Islam by the invasion of the Chorasmians from the shores of the Caspian. But for nearly fifty years longer the points on the coast were lost and won, as the Mussulman powers or fresh crusaders from Europe had the upper hand. ♦Fall of Acre, 1291.♦ With the fall of Acre, the Latin dominion on the Syrian mainland came to an end. The land won by the Western Christians from the Mussulman went back to the disciples of the Prophet. The land won by the Western Christian from the Eastern, and the land where the Eastern Christian still maintained his independence, held out longer.

These were the kingdoms of Cyprus and Armenia. ♦Famagosta Genoese.♦ The frontier of Cyprus hardly admitted of geographical change, unless it were when, for a part of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the city and haven of Famagosta passed to Genoa. ♦Connexion between Cyprus and Jerusalem.♦ The kings of Cyprus however claimed the crown of Jerusalem, and sometimes, before the whole Syrian coast was lost, they really held this or that piece of territory on the mainland. ♦Armenia acknowledges the Western Emperor, 1190.♦ Meanwhile the Armenian kingdom in some sort entered the Western world, when its king, after receiving one confirmation from the Eastern Emperor, thought it wise to receive another from the Western Emperor also. ♦1342.♦ The kingdom, though sadly cut short by its Mussulman neighbours, lived on under native princes till the middle of the fourteenth century. ♦Connexion between Armenia and Cyprus, 1393.♦ Then the fragments of the kingdom passed, first to a branch of the Cypriot royal family, and then to the reigning king of Cyprus. But the first joint reign was the last. ♦End of Armenia and Cyprus, 1489.♦ The remnant of independent Armenia was swallowed up by the Mameluke lords of Syria, while Cyprus lingered on till Saint Mark and his commonwealth became the heirs of its last king.

The kingdom of Cyprus forms a link between the Latin states in Syria and those which arose in Romania after the crusading capture of Constantinople. And these last again fall into two classes. ♦Frank principalities in Greece.
Possessions of the maritime commonwealths.♦ There are the Frank principalities on the mainland of Greece, and there are the lands, chiefly insular, which fell to the lot of the maritime commonwealths of the West and of their citizens. Among these the first place belongs to the great commonwealth which had now cast off all traces of allegiance to the Empire. ♦Genoa.♦ Genoa, which had no share in the original partition of the Empire, obtained several points of Imperial territory, both for the commonwealth itself and for particular Genoese citizens. ♦Venice.♦ But the part played by Genoa in the East is small beside the great and abiding dominion of Venice. No result of the partition was greater than the field which it gave to Venetian growth. ♦Comparison between the two.♦ The position of the two commonwealths is different. Genoa was a mere stranger in the East; Venice was in a manner at home. Once an outlying possession of the Empire, her really great historical position is due to her share in its overthrow.

§ 4. The Eastern Dominion of Venice and Genoa.

We have already seen the origin of the Venetian state, and the beginning of Venetian rule over the Slavonic coasts of the Hadriatic. ♦Connexion of the Dalmatian and Greek dominion of Venice.♦ The Eastern dominion of Venice now began, and, in a strictly geographical view, her Istrian and Dalmatian dominion cannot be separated from her Albanian and purely Greek dominion. But Venice did not become a great European power till she passed from the Slavonic lands whose connexion with the Empire was nominal or precarious into the Albanian and Greek lands which were among its immediate possessions. ♦Effect of the partition on Venice.♦ The greatness of Venice dates from that partition of the Empire which was the surest proof that she had wholly cast aside her Byzantine allegiance. ♦Comparison between Venice and Sicily.♦ In this point of view the history of Venice may be compared and contrasted with the history of Sicily. In each case, a part of the dominions of the Eastern Rome grew into a separate power; that power passed, so to speak, from Eastern Europe to Western, and, in its new Western character, it appeared as a conqueror in the Eastern lands. But, as Venice and Sicily parted from the Empire in different ways, so their later relations to the Empire were widely different. The Sicilian state began in actual conquests made by foreign invaders at the expense of the Empire. Venice was a dependency of the Empire which gradually drifted into independence. Thus Sicily became more thoroughly Western than Venice. The attempts of the kings, both of the whole Sicilian kingdom and of its divided parts, to establish an Eastern dominion were attacks from without, and were not really lasting. ♦Venice inherits the position of the Empire.♦ But Venice, whose princes were lords of one fourth and one eighth of the Empire of Romania,[30] took up in some sort the position of the Empire itself. If she destroyed one bulwark against the Mussulman, she set up another. As long as Venice was really a great power, her main interests lay east of the Hadriatic. ♦Importance of the fourth crusade in Venetian history.♦ The fourth crusade was her turning point. It was at once the beginning of her Greek dominion and the recovery of her Dalmatian dominion.