After the death of the lawful princes, the French and Venetians, confident of justice and victory, agreed to divide and regulate their future possessions. 1 It was stipulated by treaty, that twelve electors, six of either nation, should be nominated; that a majority should choose the emperor of the East; and that, if the votes were equal, the decision of chance should ascertain the successful candidate. To him, with all the titles and prerogatives of the Byzantine throne, they assigned the two palaces of Boucoleon and Blachernæ, with a fourth part of the Greek monarchy. It was defined that the three remaining portions should be equally shared between the republic of Venice and the barons of France; that each feudatory, with an honorable exception for the doge, should acknowledge and perform the duties of homage and military service to the supreme head of the empire; that the nation which gave an emperor, should resign to their brethren the choice of a patriarch; and that the pilgrims, whatever might be their impatience to visit the Holy Land, should devote another year to the conquest and defence of the Greek provinces. After the conquest of Constantinople by the Latins, the treaty was confirmed and executed; and the first and most important step was the creation of an emperor. The six electors of the French nation were all ecclesiastics, the abbot of Loces, the archbishop elect of Acre in Palestine, and the bishops of Troyes, Soissons, Halberstadt, and Bethlehem, the last of whom exercised in the camp the office of pope's legate: their profession and knowledge were respectable; and as they could not be the objects, they were best qualified to be the authors of the choice. The six Venetians were the principal servants of the state, and in this list the noble families of Querini and Contarini are still proud to discover their ancestors. The twelve assembled in the chapel of the palace; and after the solemn invocation of the Holy Ghost, they proceeded to deliberate and vote. A just impulse of respect and gratitude prompted them to crown the virtues of the doge; his wisdom had inspired their enterprise; and the most youthful knights might envy and applaud the exploits of blindness and age. But the patriot Dandolo was devoid of all personal ambition, and fully satisfied that he had been judged worthy to reign. His nomination was overruled by the Venetians themselves: his countrymen, and perhaps his friends, 2 represented, with the eloquence of truth, the mischiefs that might arise to national freedom and the common cause, from the union of two incompatible characters, of the first magistrate of a republic and the emperor of the East. The exclusion of the doge left room for the more equal merits of Boniface and Baldwin; and at their names all meaner candidates respectfully withdrew. The marquis of Montferrat was recommended by his mature age and fair reputation, by the choice of the adventurers, and the wishes of the Greeks; nor can I believe that Venice, the mistress of the sea, could be seriously apprehensive of a petty lord at the foot of the Alps. 3 But the count of Flanders was the chief of a wealthy and warlike people: he was valiant, pious, and chaste; in the prime of life, since he was only thirty-two years of age; a descendant of Charlemagne, a cousin of the king of France, and a compeer of the prelates and barons who had yielded with reluctance to the command of a foreigner. Without the chapel, these barons, with the doge and marquis at their head, expected the decision of the twelve electors. It was announced by the bishop of Soissons, in the name of his colleagues: "Ye have sworn to obey the prince whom we should choose: by our unanimous suffrage, Baldwin count of Flanders and Hainault is now your sovereign, and the emperor of the East." He was saluted with loud applause, and the proclamation was reechoed through the city by the joy of the Latins, and the trembling adulation of the Greeks. Boniface was the first to kiss the hand of his rival, and to raise him on the buckler: and Baldwin was transported to the cathedral, and solemnly invested with the purple buskins. At the end of three weeks he was crowned by the legate, in the vacancy of the patriarch; but the Venetian clergy soon filled the chapter of St. Sophia, seated Thomas Morosini on the ecclesiastical throne, and employed every art to perpetuate in their own nation the honors and benefices of the Greek church. 4 Without delay the successor of Constantine instructed Palestine, France, and Rome, of this memorable revolution. To Palestine he sent, as a trophy, the gates of Constantinople, and the chain of the harbor; 5 and adopted, from the Assise of Jerusalem, the laws or customs best adapted to a French colony and conquest in the East. In his epistles, the natives of France are encouraged to swell that colony, and to secure that conquest, to people a magnificent city and a fertile land, which will reward the labors both of the priest and the soldier. He congratulates the Roman pontiff on the restoration of his authority in the East; invites him to extinguish the Greek schism by his presence in a general council; and implores his blessing and forgiveness for the disobedient pilgrims. Prudence and dignity are blended in the answer of Innocent. 6 In the subversion of the Byzantine empire, he arraigns the vices of man, and adores the providence of God; the conquerors will be absolved or condemned by their future conduct; the validity of their treaty depends on the judgment of St. Peter; but he inculcates their most sacred duty of establishing a just subordination of obedience and tribute, from the Greeks to the Latins, from the magistrate to the clergy, and from the clergy to the pope.
1 (return)
[ See the original treaty of
partition, in the Venetian Chronicle of Andrew Dandolo, p. 326—330,
and the subsequent election in Ville hardouin, No. 136—140, with
Ducange in his Observations, and the book of his Histoire de
Constantinople sous l'Empire des François.]
2 (return)
[ After mentioning the
nomination of the doge by a French elector his kinsman Andrew Dandolo
approves his exclusion, quidam Venetorum fidelis et nobilis senex, usus
oratione satis probabili, &c., which has been embroidered by modern
writers from Blondus to Le Beau.]
3 (return)
[ Nicetas, (p. 384,) with
the vain ignorance of a Greek, describes the marquis of Montferrat as a maritime
power. Dampardian de oikeisqai paralion. Was he deceived by the Byzantine
theme of Lombardy which extended along the coast of Calabria?]
4 (return)
[ They exacted an oath from
Thomas Morosini to appoint no canons of St. Sophia the lawful electors,
except Venetians who had lived ten years at Venice, &c. But the
foreign clergy was envious, the pope disapproved this national monopoly,
and of the six Latin patriarchs of Constantinople, only the first and the
last were Venetians.]
5 (return)
[ Nicetas, p. 383.]
6 (return)
[ The Epistles of Innocent
III. are a rich fund for the ecclesiastical and civil institution of the
Latin empire of Constantinople; and the most important of these epistles
(of which the collection in 2 vols. in folio is published by Stephen
Baluze) are inserted in his Gesta, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum,
tom. iii. p. l. c. 94—105.]
In the division of the Greek provinces, 7 the share of the Venetians was more ample than that of the Latin emperor. No more than one fourth was appropriated to his domain; a clear moiety of the remainder was reserved for Venice; and the other moiety was distributed among the adventurers of France and Lombardy. The venerable Dandolo was proclaimed despot of Romania, and invested after the Greek fashion with the purple buskins. He ended at Constantinople his long and glorious life; and if the prerogative was personal, the title was used by his successors till the middle of the fourteenth century, with the singular, though true, addition of lords of one fourth and a half of the Roman empire. 8 The doge, a slave of state, was seldom permitted to depart from the helm of the republic; but his place was supplied by the bail, or regent, who exercised a supreme jurisdiction over the colony of Venetians: they possessed three of the eight quarters of the city; and his independent tribunal was composed of six judges, four counsellors, two chamberlains two fiscal advocates, and a constable. Their long experience of the Eastern trade enabled them to select their portion with discernment: they had rashly accepted the dominion and defence of Adrianople; but it was the more reasonable aim of their policy to form a chain of factories, and cities, and islands, along the maritime coast, from the neighborhood of Ragusa to the Hellespont and the Bosphorus. The labor and cost of such extensive conquests exhausted their treasury: they abandoned their maxims of government, adopted a feudal system, and contented themselves with the homage of their nobles, 9 for the possessions which these private vassals undertook to reduce and maintain. And thus it was that the family of Sanut acquired the duchy of Naxos, which involved the greatest part of the archipelago. For the price of ten thousand marks, the republic purchased of the marquis of Montferrat the fertile Island of Crete or Candia, with the ruins of a hundred cities; 10 but its improvement was stinted by the proud and narrow spirit of an aristocracy; 11 and the wisest senators would confess that the sea, not the land, was the treasury of St. Mark. In the moiety of the adventurers the marquis Boniface might claim the most liberal reward; and, besides the Isle of Crete, his exclusion from the throne was compensated by the royal title and the provinces beyond the Hellespont. But he prudently exchanged that distant and difficult conquest for the kingdom of Thessalonica Macedonia, twelve days' journey from the capital, where he might be supported by the neighboring powers of his brother-in-law the king of Hungary. His progress was hailed by the voluntary or reluctant acclamations of the natives; and Greece, the proper and ancient Greece, again received a Latin conqueror, 12 who trod with indifference that classic ground. He viewed with a careless eye the beauties of the valley of Tempe; traversed with a cautious step the straits of Thermopylæ; occupied the unknown cities of Thebes, Athens, and Argos; and assaulted the fortifications of Corinth and Napoli, 13 which resisted his arms. The lots of the Latin pilgrims were regulated by chance, or choice, or subsequent exchange; and they abused, with intemperate joy, their triumph over the lives and fortunes of a great people. After a minute survey of the provinces, they weighed in the scales of avarice the revenue of each district, the advantage of the situation, and the ample or scanty supplies for the maintenance of soldiers and horses. Their presumption claimed and divided the long-lost dependencies of the Roman sceptre: the Nile and Euphrates rolled through their imaginary realms; and happy was the warrior who drew for his prize the palace of the Turkish sultan of Iconium. 14 I shall not descend to the pedigree of families and the rent-roll of estates, but I wish to specify that the counts of Blois and St. Pol were invested with the duchy of Nice and the lordship of Demotica: 15 the principal fiefs were held by the service of constable, chamberlain, cup-bearer, butler, and chief cook; and our historian, Jeffrey of Villehardouin, obtained a fair establishment on the banks of the Hebrus, and united the double office of marshal of Champagne and Romania. At the head of his knights and archers, each baron mounted on horseback to secure the possession of his share, and their first efforts were generally successful. But the public force was weakened by their dispersion; and a thousand quarrels must arise under a law, and among men, whose sole umpire was the sword. Within three months after the conquest of Constantinople, the emperor and the king of Thessalonica drew their hostile followers into the field; they were reconciled by the authority of the doge, the advice of the marshal, and the firm freedom of their peers. 16
7 (return)
[ In the treaty of
partition, most of the names are corrupted by the scribes: they might be
restored, and a good map, suited to the last age of the Byzantine empire,
would be an improvement of geography. But, alas D'Anville is no more!]
8 (return)
[ Their style was dominus
quartæ partis et dimidiæ imperii Romani, till Giovanni Dolfino, who was
elected doge in the year of 1356, (Sanuto, p. 530, 641.) For the
government of Constantinople, see Ducange, Histoire de C. P. i. 37.]
9 (return)
[ Ducange (Hist. de C. P.
ii. 6) has marked the conquests made by the state or nobles of Venice of
the Islands of Candia, Corfu, Cephalonia, Zante, Naxos, Paros, Melos,
Andros, Mycone, Syro, Cea, and Lemnos.]
10 (return)
[ Boniface sold the Isle
of Candia, August 12, A.D. 1204. See the act in Sanuto, p. 533: but I
cannot understand how it could be his mother's portion, or how she could
be the daughter of an emperor Alexius.]
11 (return)
[ In the year 1212, the
doge Peter Zani sent a colony to Candia, drawn from every quarter of
Venice. But in their savage manners and frequent rebellions, the Candiots
may be compared to the Corsicans under the yoke of Genoa; and when I
compare the accounts of Belon and Tournefort, I cannot discern much
difference between the Venetian and the Turkish island.]
12 (return)
[ Villehardouin (No. 159,
160, 173—177) and Nicetas (p. 387—394) describe the expedition
into Greece of the marquis Boniface. The Choniate might derive his
information from his brother Michael, archbishop of Athens, whom he paints
as an orator, a statesman, and a saint. His encomium of Athens, and the
description of Tempe, should be published from the Bodleian MS. of
Nicetas, (Fabric. Bibliot. Græc. tom. vi. p. 405,) and would have deserved
Mr. Harris's inquiries.]
13 (return)
[ Napoli de Romania, or
Nauplia, the ancient seaport of Argos, is still a place of strength and
consideration, situate on a rocky peninsula, with a good harbor,
(Chandler's Travels into Greece, p. 227.)]
14 (return)
[ I have softened the
expression of Nicetas, who strives to expose the presumption of the
Franks. See the Rebus post C. P. expugnatam, p. 375—384.]
15 (return)
[ A city surrounded by the
River Hebrus, and six leagues to the south of Adrianople, received from
its double wall the Greek name of Didymoteichos, insensibly corrupted into
Demotica and Dimot. I have preferred the more convenient and modern
appellation of Demotica. This place was the last Turkish residence of
Charles XII.]
16 (return)
[ Their quarrel is told by
Villehardouin (No. 146—158) with the spirit of freedom. The merit
and reputation of the marshal are so acknowledged by the Greek historian
(p. 387) mega para touV tvn Dauinwn dunamenou strateumasi: unlike some
modern heroes, whose exploits are only visible in their own memoirs. *
Note: William de Champlite, brother of the count of Dijon, assumed the
title of Prince of Achaia: on the death of his brother, he returned, with
regret, to France, to assume his paternal inheritance, and left
Villehardouin his "bailli," on condition that if he did not return
within a year Villehardouin was to retain an investiture. Brosset's Add.
to Le Beau, vol. xvii. p. 200. M. Brosset adds, from the Greek chronicler
edited by M. Buchon, the somewhat unknightly trick by which Villehardouin
disembarrassed himself from the troublesome claim of Robert, the cousin of
the count of Dijon. to the succession. He contrived that Robert should
arrive just fifteen days too late; and with the general concurrence of the
assembled knights was himself invested with the principality. Ibid. p.
283. M.]
Two fugitives, who had reigned at Constantinople, still asserted the title of emperor; and the subjects of their fallen throne might be moved to pity by the misfortunes of the elder Alexius, or excited to revenge by the spirit of Mourzoufle. A domestic alliance, a common interest, a similar guilt, and the merit of extinguishing his enemies, a brother and a nephew, induced the more recent usurper to unite with the former the relics of his power. Mourzoufle was received with smiles and honors in the camp of his father Alexius; but the wicked can never love, and should rarely trust, their fellow-criminals; he was seized in the bath, deprived of his eyes, stripped of his troops and treasures, and turned out to wander an object of horror and contempt to those who with more propriety could hate, and with more justice could punish, the assassin of the emperor Isaac and his son. As the tyrant, pursued by fear or remorse, was stealing over to Asia, he was seized by the Latins of Constantinople, and condemned, after an open trial, to an ignominious death. His judges debated the mode of his execution, the axe, the wheel, or the stake; and it was resolved that Mourzoufle 17 should ascend the Theodosian column, a pillar of white marble of one hundred and forty-seven feet in height. 18 From the summit he was cast down headlong, and dashed in pieces on the pavement, in the presence of innumerable spectators, who filled the forum of Taurus, and admired the accomplishment of an old prediction, which was explained by this singular event. 19 The fate of Alexius is less tragical: he was sent by the marquis a captive to Italy, and a gift to the king of the Romans; but he had not much to applaud his fortune, if the sentence of imprisonment and exile were changed from a fortress in the Alps to a monastery in Asia. But his daughter, before the national calamity, had been given in marriage to a young hero who continued the succession, and restored the throne, of the Greek princes. 20 The valor of Theodore Lascaris was signalized in the two sieges of Constantinople. After the flight of Mourzoufle, when the Latins were already in the city, he offered himself as their emperor to the soldiers and people; and his ambition, which might be virtuous, was undoubtedly brave. Could he have infused a soul into the multitude, they might have crushed the strangers under their feet: their abject despair refused his aid; and Theodore retired to breathe the air of freedom in Anatolia, beyond the immediate view and pursuit of the conquerors. Under the title, at first of despot, and afterwards of emperor, he drew to his standard the bolder spirits, who were fortified against slavery by the contempt of life; and as every means was lawful for the public safety implored without scruple the alliance of the Turkish sultan Nice, where Theodore established his residence, Prusa and Philadelphia, Smyrna and Ephesus, opened their gates to their deliverer: he derived strength and reputation from his victories, and even from his defeats; and the successor of Constantine preserved a fragment of the empire from the banks of the Mæander to the suburbs of Nicomedia, and at length of Constantinople. Another portion, distant and obscure, was possessed by the lineal heir of the Comneni, a son of the virtuous Manuel, a grandson of the tyrant Andronicus. His name was Alexius; and the epithet of great 201 was applied perhaps to his stature, rather than to his exploits. By the indulgence of the Angeli, he was appointed governor or duke of Trebizond: 21 211 his birth gave him ambition, the revolution independence; and, without changing his title, he reigned in peace from Sinope to the Phasis, along the coast of the Black Sea. His nameless son and successor 212 is described as the vassal of the sultan, whom he served with two hundred lances: that Comnenian prince was no more than duke of Trebizond, and the title of emperor was first assumed by the pride and envy of the grandson of Alexius. In the West, a third fragment was saved from the common shipwreck by Michael, a bastard of the house of Angeli, who, before the revolution, had been known as a hostage, a soldier, and a rebel. His flight from the camp of the marquis Boniface secured his freedom; by his marriage with the governor's daughter, he commanded the important place of Durazzo, assumed the title of despot, and founded a strong and conspicuous principality in Epirus, Ætolia, and Thessaly, which have ever been peopled by a warlike race. The Greeks, who had offered their service to their new sovereigns, were excluded by the haughty Latins 22 from all civil and military honors, as a nation born to tremble and obey. Their resentment prompted them to show that they might have been useful friends, since they could be dangerous enemies: their nerves were braced by adversity: whatever was learned or holy, whatever was noble or valiant, rolled away into the independent states of Trebizond, Epirus, and Nice; and a single patrician is marked by the ambiguous praise of attachment and loyalty to the Franks. The vulgar herd of the cities and the country would have gladly submitted to a mild and regular servitude; and the transient disorders of war would have been obliterated by some years of industry and peace. But peace was banished, and industry was crushed, in the disorders of the feudal system. The Roman emperors of Constantinople, if they were endowed with abilities, were armed with power for the protection of their subjects: their laws were wise, and their administration was simple. The Latin throne was filled by a titular prince, the chief, and often the servant, of his licentious confederates; the fiefs of the empire, from a kingdom to a castle, were held and ruled by the sword of the barons; and their discord, poverty, and ignorance, extended the ramifications of tyranny to the most sequestered villages. The Greeks were oppressed by the double weight of the priests, who were invested with temporal power, and of the soldier, who was inflamed by fanatic hatred; and the insuperable bar of religion and language forever separated the stranger and the native. As long as the crusaders were united at Constantinople, the memory of their conquest, and the terror of their arms, imposed silence on the captive land: their dispersion betrayed the smallness of their numbers and the defects of their discipline; and some failures and mischances revealed the secret, that they were not invincible. As the fears of the Greeks abated, their hatred increased. They murdered; they conspired; and before a year of slavery had elapsed, they implored, or accepted, the succor of a Barbarian, whose power they had felt, and whose gratitude they trusted. 23
17 (return)
[ See the fate of
Mourzoufle in Nicetas, (p. 393,) Villehardouin, (No. 141—145, 163,)
and Guntherus, (c. 20, 21.) Neither the marshal nor the monk afford a
grain of pity for a tyrant or rebel, whose punishment, however, was more
unexampled than his crime.]
18 (return)
[ The column of Arcadius,
which represents in basso relievo his victories, or those of his father
Theodosius, is still extant at Constantinople. It is described and
measured, Gyllius, (Topograph. iv. 7,) Banduri, (ad l. i. Antiquit. C. P.
p. 507, &c.,) and Tournefort, (Voyage du Levant, tom. ii. lettre xii.
p. 231.) (Compare Wilken, Cnote, vol. v p. 388.—M.)]
19 (return)
[ The nonsense of Gunther
and the modern Greeks concerning this columna fatidica, is unworthy
of notice; but it is singular enough, that fifty years before the Latin
conquest, the poet Tzetzes, (Chiliad, ix. 277) relates the dream of a
matron, who saw an army in the forum, and a man sitting on the column,
clapping his hands, and uttering a loud exclamation. * Note: We read in
the "Chronicle of the Conquest of Constantinople, and of the Establishment
of the French in the Morea," translated by J A Buchon, Paris, 1825, p. 64
that Leo VI., called the Philosopher, had prophesied that a perfidious
emperor should be precipitated from the top of this column. The crusaders
considered themselves under an obligation to fulfil this prophecy.
Brosset, Cnote on Le Beau, vol. xvii. p. 180. M Brosset announces that a
complete edition of this work, of which the original Greek of the first
book only has been published by M. Buchon in preparation, to form part of
the new series of the Byzantine historian.—M.]
20 (return)
[ The dynasties of Nice,
Trebizond, and Epirus (of which Nicetas saw the origin without much
pleasure or hope) are learnedly explored, and clearly represented, in the
Familiæ Byzantinæ of Ducange.]
201 (return)
[ This was a title, not
a personal appellation. Joinville speaks of the "Grant Comnenie, et sire
de Traffezzontes." Fallmerayer, p. 82.—M.]
21 (return)
[ Except some facts in
Pachymer and Nicephorus Gregoras, which will hereafter be used, the
Byzantine writers disdain to speak of the empire of Trebizond, or
principality of the Lazi; and among the Latins, it is conspicuous
only in the romancers of the xivth or xvth centuries. Yet the
indefatigable Ducange has dug out (Fam. Byz. p. 192) two authentic
passages in Vincent of Beauvais (l. xxxi. c. 144) and the prothonotary
Ogerius, (apud Wading, A.D. 1279, No. 4.)]
211 (return)
[ On the revolutions of
Trebizond under the later empire down to this period, see Fallmerayer,
Geschichte des Kaiserthums von Trapezunt, ch. iii. The wife of Manuel fled
with her infant sons and her treasure from the relentless enmity of Isaac
Angelus. Fallmerayer conjectures that her arrival enabled the Greeks of
that region to make head against the formidable Thamar, the Georgian queen
of Teflis, p. 42. They gradually formed a dominion on the banks of the
Phasis, which the distracted government of the Angeli neglected or were
unable to suppress. On the capture of Constantinople by the Latins,
Alexius was joined by many noble fugitives from Constantinople. He had
always retained the names of Cæsar and BasileuV. He now fixed the seat of
his empire at Trebizond; but he had never abandoned his pretensions to the
Byzantine throne, ch. iii. Fallmerayer appears to make out a triumphant
case as to the assumption of the royal title by Alexius the First. Since
the publication of M. Fallmerayer's work, (München, 1827,) M. Tafel has
published, at the end of the opuscula of Eustathius, a curious chronicle
of Trebizond by Michael Panaretas, (Frankfort, 1832.) It gives the
succession of the emperors, and some other curious circumstances of their
wars with the several Mahometan powers.—M.]
212 (return)
[ The successor of
Alexius was his son-in-law Andronicus I., of the Comnenian family,
surnamed Gidon. There were five successions between Alexius and John,
according to Fallmerayer, p. 103. The troops of Trebizond fought in the
army of Dschelaleddin, the Karismian, against Alaleddin, the Seljukian
sultan of Roum, but as allies rather than vassals, p. 107. It was after
the defeat of Dschelaleddin that they furnished their contingent to
Alai-eddin. Fallmerayer struggles in vain to mitigate this mark of the
subjection of the Comneni to the sultan. p. 116.—M.]
22 (return)
[ The portrait of the
French Latins is drawn in Nicetas by the hand of prejudice and resentment:
ouden tvn allwn eqnvn eiV ''AreoV?rga parasumbeblhsqai sjisin hneiconto
all' oude tiV tvn caritwn h tvn?mousvn para toiV barbaroiV toutoiV
epexenizeto, kai para touto oimai thn jusin hsan anhmeroi, kai ton xolon
eixon tou logou prstreconta. [P. 791 Ed. Bek.]
23 (return)
[ I here begin to use,
with freedom and confidence, the eight books of the Histoire de C. P. sous
l'Empire des François, which Ducange has given as a supplement to
Villehardouin; and which, in a barbarous style, deserves the praise of an
original and classic work.]
The Latin conquerors had been saluted with a solemn and early embassy from John, or Joannice, or Calo-John, the revolted chief of the Bulgarians and Walachians. He deemed himself their brother, as the votary of the Roman pontiff, from whom he had received the regal title and a holy banner; and in the subversion of the Greek monarchy, he might aspire to the name of their friend and accomplice. But Calo-John was astonished to find, that the Count of Flanders had assumed the pomp and pride of the successors of Constantine; and his ambassadors were dismissed with a haughty message, that the rebel must deserve a pardon, by touching with his forehead the footstool of the Imperial throne. His resentment 24 would have exhaled in acts of violence and blood: his cooler policy watched the rising discontent of the Greeks; affected a tender concern for their sufferings; and promised, that their first struggles for freedom should be supported by his person and kingdom. The conspiracy was propagated by national hatred, the firmest band of association and secrecy: the Greeks were impatient to sheathe their daggers in the breasts of the victorious strangers; but the execution was prudently delayed, till Henry, the emperor's brother, had transported the flower of his troops beyond the Hellespont. Most of the towns and villages of Thrace were true to the moment and the signal; and the Latins, without arms or suspicion, were slaughtered by the vile and merciless revenge of their slaves. From Demotica, the first scene of the massacre, the surviving vassals of the count of St. Pol escaped to Adrianople; but the French and Venetians, who occupied that city, were slain or expelled by the furious multitude: the garrisons that could effect their retreat fell back on each other towards the metropolis; and the fortresses, that separately stood against the rebels, were ignorant of each other's and of their sovereign's fate. The voice of fame and fear announced the revolt of the Greeks and the rapid approach of their Bulgarian ally; and Calo-John, not depending on the forces of his own kingdom, had drawn from the Scythian wilderness a body of fourteen thousand Comans, who drank, as it was said, the blood of their captives, and sacrificed the Christians on the altars of their gods. 25
24 (return)
[ In Calo-John's answer to
the pope we may find his claims and complaints, (Gesta Innocent III. c.
108, 109:) he was cherished at Rome as the prodigal son.]
25 (return)
[ The Comans were a Tartar
or Turkman horde, which encamped in the xiith and xiiith centuries on the
verge of Moldavia. The greater part were pagans, but some were Mahometans,
and the whole horde was converted to Christianity (A.D. 1370) by Lewis,
king of Hungary.]
Alarmed by this sudden and growing danger, the emperor despatched a swift messenger to recall Count Henry and his troops; and had Baldwin expected the return of his gallant brother, with a supply of twenty thousand Armenians, he might have encountered the invader with equal numbers and a decisive superiority of arms and discipline. But the spirit of chivalry could seldom discriminate caution from cowardice; and the emperor took the field with a hundred and forty knights, and their train of archers and sergeants. The marshal, who dissuaded and obeyed, led the vanguard in their march to Adrianople; the main body was commanded by the count of Blois; the aged doge of Venice followed with the rear; and their scanty numbers were increased from all sides by the fugitive Latins. They undertook to besiege the rebels of Adrianople; and such was the pious tendency of the crusades that they employed the holy week in pillaging the country for their subsistence, and in framing engines for the destruction of their fellow-Christians. But the Latins were soon interrupted and alarmed by the light cavalry of the Comans, who boldly skirmished to the edge of their imperfect lines: and a proclamation was issued by the marshal of Romania, that, on the trumpet's sound, the cavalry should mount and form; but that none, under pain of death, should abandon themselves to a desultory and dangerous pursuit. This wise injunction was first disobeyed by the count of Blois, who involved the emperor in his rashness and ruin. The Comans, of the Parthian or Tartar school, fled before their first charge; but after a career of two leagues, when the knights and their horses were almost breathless, they suddenly turned, rallied, and encompassed the heavy squadrons of the Franks. The count was slain on the field; the emperor was made prisoner; and if the one disdained to fly, if the other refused to yield, their personal bravery made a poor atonement for their ignorance, or neglect, of the duties of a general. 26
26 (return)
[ Nicetas, from ignorance
or malice, imputes the defeat to the cowardice of Dandolo, (p. 383;) but
Villehardouin shares his own glory with his venerable friend, qui viels
home ére et gote ne veoit, mais mult ére sages et preus et vigueros, (No.
193.) * Note: Gibbon appears to me to have misapprehended the passage of
Nicetas. He says, "that principal and subtlest mischief. that primary
cause of all the horrible miseries suffered by the Romans," i. e.
the Byzantines. It is an effusion of malicious triumph against the
Venetians, to whom he always ascribes the capture of Constantinople.—M.]
Proud of his victory and his royal prize, the Bulgarian advanced to relieve Adrianople and achieve the destruction of the Latins. They must inevitably have been destroyed, if the marshal of Romania had not displayed a cool courage and consummate skill; uncommon in all ages, but most uncommon in those times, when war was a passion, rather than a science. His grief and fears were poured into the firm and faithful bosom of the doge; but in the camp he diffused an assurance of safety, which could only be realized by the general belief. All day he maintained his perilous station between the city and the Barbarians: Villehardouin decamped in silence at the dead of night; and his masterly retreat of three days would have deserved the praise of Xenophon and the ten thousand. In the rear, the marshal supported the weight of the pursuit; in the front, he moderated the impatience of the fugitives; and wherever the Comans approached, they were repelled by a line of impenetrable spears. On the third day, the weary troops beheld the sea, the solitary town of Rodosta, 27 and their friends, who had landed from the Asiatic shore. They embraced, they wept; but they united their arms and counsels; and in his brother's absence, Count Henry assumed the regency of the empire, at once in a state of childhood and caducity. 28 If the Comans withdrew from the summer heats, seven thousand Latins, in the hour of danger, deserted Constantinople, their brethren, and their vows. Some partial success was overbalanced by the loss of one hundred and twenty knights in the field of Rusium; and of the Imperial domain, no more was left than the capital, with two or three adjacent fortresses on the shores of Europe and Asia. The king of Bulgaria was resistless and inexorable; and Calo-John respectfully eluded the demands of the pope, who conjured his new proselyte to restore peace and the emperor to the afflicted Latins. The deliverance of Baldwin was no longer, he said, in the power of man: that prince had died in prison; and the manner of his death is variously related by ignorance and credulity. The lovers of a tragic legend will be pleased to hear, that the royal captive was tempted by the amorous queen of the Bulgarians; that his chaste refusal exposed him to the falsehood of a woman and the jealousy of a savage; that his hands and feet were severed from his body; that his bleeding trunk was cast among the carcasses of dogs and horses; and that he breathed three days, before he was devoured by the birds of prey. 29 About twenty years afterwards, in a wood of the Netherlands, a hermit announced himself as the true Baldwin, the emperor of Constantinople, and lawful sovereign of Flanders. He related the wonders of his escape, his adventures, and his penance, among a people prone to believe and to rebel; and, in the first transport, Flanders acknowledged her long-lost sovereign. A short examination before the French court detected the impostor, who was punished with an ignominious death; but the Flemings still adhered to the pleasing error; and the countess Jane is accused by the gravest historians of sacrificing to her ambition the life of an unfortunate father. 30
27 (return)
[ The truth of geography,
and the original text of Villehardouin, (No. 194,) place Rodosto three
days' journey (trois jornées) from Adrianople: but Vigenere, in his
version, has most absurdly substituted trois heures; and this
error, which is not corrected by Ducange has entrapped several moderns,
whose names I shall spare.]
28 (return)
[ The reign and end of
Baldwin are related by Villehardouin and Nicetas, (p. 386—416;) and
their omissions are supplied by Ducange in his Observations, and to the
end of his first book.]
29 (return)
[ After brushing away all
doubtful and improbable circumstances, we may prove the death of Baldwin,
1. By the firm belief of the French barons, (Villehardouin, No. 230.) 2.
By the declaration of Calo-John himself, who excuses his not releasing the
captive emperor, quia debitum carnis exsolverat cum carcere teneretur,
(Gesta Innocent III. c. 109.) * Note: Compare Von Raumer. Geschichte der
Hohenstaufen, vol. ii. p. 237. Petitot, in his preface to Villehardouin in
the Collection des Mémoires, relatifs a l'Histoire de France, tom. i. p.
85, expresses his belief in the first part of the "tragic legend."—M.]
30 (return)
[ See the story of this
impostor from the French and Flemish writers in Ducange, Hist. de C. P.
iii. 9; and the ridiculous fables that were believed by the monks of St.
Alban's, in Matthew Paris, Hist. Major, p. 271, 272.]
In all civilized hostility, a treaty is established for the exchange or ransom of prisoners; and if their captivity be prolonged, their condition is known, and they are treated according to their rank with humanity or honor. 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 crusade retired from the world or from the war. The doge of Venice, the venerable Dandolo, in the fulness of years and glory, sunk 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 armor, 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 Calo-John, who enjoyed the honors, without the merit, of victory. It is here, at this melancholy event, that the pen or the voice of Jeffrey of Villehardouin seems to drop or to expire; 31 and if he still exercised his military office of marshal of Romania, his subsequent exploits are buried in oblivion. 32 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 a 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 Calo-John 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 Adrianople, 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 321 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 Calo-John inflicted or suffered: he was stabbed in 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. 33 After several victories, the prudence of Henry concluded an honorable peace with the successor of the tyrant, and with the Greek princes of Nice 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 intrusted 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 Nice and Epirus had already learned to seduce and employ the mercenary valor 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. 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: 34 and if we can believe that the same prince was poisoned by the Greeks themselves, we must entertain a contemptible idea of the sense and gratitude of mankind. His valor 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 the Third. 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. 35
31 (return)
[ Villehardouin, No. 257.
I quote, with regret, this lamentable conclusion, where we lose at once
the original history, and the rich illustrations of Ducange. The last
pages may derive some light from Henry's two epistles to Innocent III.,
(Gesta, c. 106, 107.)]
32 (return)
[ The marshal was alive in
1212, but he probably died soon afterwards, without returning to France,
(Ducange, Observations sur Villehardouin, p. 238.) His fief of Messinople,
the gift of Boniface, was the ancient Maximianopolis, which flourished in
the time of Ammianus Marcellinus, among the cities of Thrace, (No. 141.)]
321 (return)
[ There was no battle.
On the advance of the Latins, John suddenly broke up his camp and
retreated. The Latins considered this unexpected deliverance almost a
miracle. Le Beau suggests the probability that the detection of the
Comans, who usually quitted the camp during the heats of summer, may have
caused the flight of the Bulgarians. Nicetas, c. 8 Villebardouin, c. 225.
Le Beau, vol. xvii. p. 242.—M.]
33 (return)
[ The church of this
patron of Thessalonica was served by the canons of the holy sepulchre, and
contained a divine ointment which distilled daily and stupendous miracles,
(Ducange, Hist. de C. P. ii. 4.)]
34 (return)
[ Acropolita (c. 17)
observes the persecution of the legate, and the toleration of Henry,
('Erh, * as he calls him) kludwna katestorese. Note: Or rather 'ErrhV.—M.]
35 (return)
[ See the reign of Henry,
in Ducange, (Hist. de C. P. l. i. c. 35—41, l. ii. c. 1—22,)
who is much indebted to the Epistles of the Popes. Le Beau (Hist. du Bas
Empire, tom. xxi. p. 120—122) has found, perhaps in Doutreman, some
laws of Henry, which determined the service of fiefs, and the prerogatives
of the emperor.]
The virtuous Henry died at Thessalonica, in the defence of that kingdom, and of an infant, the son of his friend Boniface. In the two first emperors of Constantinople the male line of the counts of Flanders was extinct. But their sister Yolande was the wife of a French prince, the mother of a numerous progeny; and one of her daughters had married Andrew king of Hungary, a brave and pious champion of the cross. By seating him on the Byzantine throne, the barons of Romania would have acquired the forces of a neighboring and warlike kingdom; but the prudent Andrew revered the laws of succession; and the princess Yolande, with her husband Peter of Courtenay, count of Auxerre, was invited by the Latins to assume the empire of the East. The royal birth of his father, the noble origin of his mother, recommended to the barons of France the first cousin of their king. His reputation was fair, his possessions were ample, and in the bloody crusade against the Albigeois, the soldiers and the priests had been abundantly satisfied of his zeal and valor. Vanity might applaud the elevation of a French emperor of Constantinople; but prudence must pity, rather than envy, his treacherous and imaginary greatness. To assert and adorn his title, he was reduced to sell or mortgage the best of his patrimony. By these expedients, the liberality of his royal kinsman Philip Augustus, and the national spirit of chivalry, he was enabled to pass the Alps at the head of one hundred and forty knights, and five thousand five hundred sergeants and archers. After some hesitation, Pope Honorius the Third was persuaded to crown the successor of Constantine: but he performed the ceremony in a church without the walls, lest he should seem to imply or to bestow any right of sovereignty over the ancient capital of the empire. The Venetians had engaged to transport Peter and his forces beyond the Adriatic, and the empress, with her four children, to the Byzantine palace; but they required, as the price of their service, that he should recover Durazzo from the despot of Epirus. Michael Angelus, or Comnenus, the first of his dynasty, had bequeathed the succession of his power and ambition to Theodore, his legitimate brother, who already threatened and invaded the establishments of the Latins. After discharging his debt by a fruitless assault, the emperor raised the siege to prosecute a long and perilous journey over land from Durazzo to Thessalonica. He was soon lost in the mountains of Epirus: the passes were fortified; his provisions exhausted; he was delayed and deceived by a treacherous negotiation; and, after Peter of Courtenay and the Roman legate had been arrested in a banquet, the French troops, without leaders or hopes, were eager to exchange their arms for the delusive promise of mercy and bread. The Vatican thundered; and the impious Theodore was threatened with the vengeance of earth and heaven; but the captive emperor and his soldiers were forgotten, and the reproaches of the pope are confined to the imprisonment of his legate. No sooner was he satisfied by the deliverance of the priests and a promise of spiritual obedience, than he pardoned and protected the despot of Epirus. His peremptory commands suspended the ardor of the Venetians and the king of Hungary; and it was only by a natural or untimely death 36 that Peter of Courtenay was released from his hopeless captivity. 37
36 (return)
[ Acropolita (c. 14)
affirms, that Peter of Courtenay died by the sword, (ergon macairaV
genesqai;) but from his dark expressions, I should conclude a previous
captivity, wV pantaV ardhn desmwtaV poihsai sun pasi skeuesi. * The
Chronicle of Auxerre delays the emperor's death till the year 1219; and
Auxerre is in the neighborhood of Courtenay. Note: Whatever may have been
the fact, this can hardly be made out from the expressions of Acropolita.—M.]
37 (return)
[ See the reign and death
of Peter of Courtenay, in Ducange, (Hist. de C. P. l. ii. c. 22—28,)
who feebly strives to excuse the neglect of the emperor by Honorius III.]
The long ignorance of his fate, and the presence of the lawful sovereign, of Yolande, his wife or widow, delayed the proclamation of a new emperor. Before her death, and in the midst of her grief, she was delivered of a son, who was named Baldwin, the last and most unfortunate of the Latin princes of Constantinople. His birth endeared him to the barons of Romania; but his childhood would have prolonged the troubles of a minority, and his claims were superseded by the elder claims of his brethren. The first of these, Philip of Courtenay, who derived from his mother the inheritance of Namur, had the wisdom to prefer the substance of a marquisate to the shadow of an empire; and on his refusal, Robert, the second of the sons of Peter and Yolande, was called to the throne of Constantinople. Warned by his father's mischance, he pursued his slow and secure journey through Germany and along the Danube: a passage was opened by his sister's marriage with the king of Hungary; and the emperor Robert was crowned by the patriarch in the cathedral of St. Sophia. But his reign was an æra of calamity and disgrace; and the colony, as it was styled, of New France yielded on all sides to the Greeks of Nice and Epirus. After a victory, which he owed to his perfidy rather than his courage, Theodore Angelus entered the kingdom of Thessalonica, expelled the feeble Demetrius, the son of the marquis Boniface, erected his standard on the walls of Adrianople; and added, by his vanity, a third or a fourth name to the list of rival emperors. The relics of the Asiatic province were swept away by John Vataces, the son-in-law and successor of Theodore Lascaris, and who, in a triumphant reign of thirty-three years, displayed the virtues both of peace and war. Under his discipline, the swords of the French mercenaries were the most effectual instruments of his conquests, and their desertion from the service of their country was at once a symptom and a cause of the rising ascendant of the Greeks. By the construction of a fleet, he obtained the command of the Hellespont, reduced the islands of Lesbos and Rhodes, attacked the Venetians of Candia, and intercepted the rare and parsimonious succors of the West. Once, and once only, the Latin emperor sent an army against Vataces; and in the defeat of that army, the veteran knights, the last of the original conquerors, were left on the field of battle. But the success of a foreign enemy was less painful to the pusillanimous Robert than the insolence of his Latin subjects, who confounded the weakness of the emperor and of the empire. His personal misfortunes will prove the anarchy of the government and the ferociousness of the times. The amorous youth had neglected his Greek bride, the daughter of Vataces, to introduce into the palace a beautiful maid, of a private, though noble family of Artois; and her mother had been tempted by the lustre of the purple to forfeit her engagements with a gentleman of Burgundy. His love was converted into rage; he assembled his friends, forced the palace gates, threw the mother into the sea, and inhumanly cut off the nose and lips of the wife or concubine of the emperor. Instead of punishing the offender, the barons avowed and applauded the savage deed, 38 which, as a prince and as a man, it was impossible that Robert should forgive. He escaped from the guilty city to implore the justice or compassion of the pope: the emperor was coolly exhorted to return to his station; before he could obey, he sunk under the weight of grief, shame, and impotent resentment. 39
38 (return)
[ Marinus Sanutus (Secreta
Fidelium Crucis, l. ii. p. 4, c. 18, p. 73) is so much delighted with this
bloody deed, that he has transcribed it in his margin as a bonum exemplum.
Yet he acknowledges the damsel for the lawful wife of Robert.]
39 (return)
[ See the reign of Robert,
in Ducange, (Hist. de C. P. l. ii. c.—12.)]
It was only in the age of chivalry, that valor 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 John of Brienne, of a noble family in Champagne, by the public voice, and the judgment of Philip Augustus, who named him as the most worthy champion of the Holy Land. 40 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 Frederic the Second, 41 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 John of Brienne were still ready for the service of Christendom. In the seven years of his brother's reign, Baldwin of Courtenay 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 his 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 of 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. 42 But avarice, and the love of ease, appear to have chilled the ardor of enterprise: 421 his troops were disbanded, and two years rolled away without action or honor, till he was awakened by the dangerous alliance of Vataces emperor of Nice, and of Azan 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 one hundred and sixty knights, and a small addition of sergeants and archers. I tremble to relate, that instead of defending the city, the hero made a sally at the head of his cavalry; and that 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 harbor 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, John of Brienne is compared to Hector, Roland, and Judas Machabæus: 43 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. 44