40 (return)
[ Rex igitur Franciæ,
deliberatione habitâ, respondit nuntiis, se daturum hominem Syriæ partibus
aptum; in armis probum (preux) in bellis securum, in agendis
providum, Johannem comitem Brennensem. Sanut. Secret. Fidelium, l. iii. p.
xi. c. 4, p. 205 Matthew Paris, p. 159.]
41 (return)
[ Giannone (Istoria
Civile, tom. ii. l. xvi. p. 380—385) discusses the marriage of
Frederic II. with the daughter of John of Brienne, and the double union of
the crowns of Naples and Jerusalem.]
42 (return)
[ Acropolita, c. 27. The
historian was at that time a boy, and educated at Constantinople. In 1233,
when he was eleven years old, his father broke the Latin chain, left a
splendid fortune, and escaped to the Greek court of Nice, where his son
was raised to the highest honors.]
421 (return)
[ John de Brienne,
elected emperor 1229, wasted two years in preparations, and did not arrive
at Constantinople till 1231. Two years more glided away in inglorious
inaction; he then made some ineffective warlike expeditions.
Constantinople was not besieged till 1234.—M.]
43 (return)
[ Philip Mouskes, bishop
of Tournay, (A.D. 1274—1282,) has composed a poem, or rather string
of verses, in bad old Flemish French, on the Latin emperors of
Constantinople, which Ducange has published at the end of Villehardouin;
see p. 38, for the prowess of John of Brienne.
44 (return)
[ See the reign of John de
Brienne, in Ducange, Hist. de C. P. l. ii. c. 13—26.]
In the double victory of John of Brienne, I cannot discover the name or exploits of his pupil Baldwin, who had attained the age of military service, and who succeeded to the imperial dignity on the decease of his adoptive father. 45 The royal youth was employed on a commission more suitable to his temper; he was sent to visit the Western courts, of the pope more especially, and of the king of France; to excite their pity by the view of his innocence and distress; and to obtain some supplies of men or money for the relief of the sinking empire. He thrice repeated these mendicant visits, in which he seemed to prolong his stay and postpone his return; of the five-and-twenty years of his reign, a greater number were spent abroad than at home; and in no place did the emperor deem himself less free and secure than in his native country and his capital. On some public occasions, his vanity might be soothed by the title of Augustus, and by the honors of the purple; and at the general council of Lyons, when Frederic the Second was excommunicated and deposed, his Oriental colleague was enthroned on the right hand of the pope. But how often was the exile, the vagrant, the Imperial beggar, humbled with scorn, insulted with pity, and degraded in his own eyes and those of the nations! In his first visit to England, he was stopped at Dover by a severe reprimand, that he should presume, without leave, to enter an independent kingdom. After some delay, Baldwin, however, was permitted to pursue his journey, was entertained with cold civility, and thankfully departed with a present of seven hundred marks. 46 From the avarice of Rome he could only obtain the proclamation of a crusade, and a treasure of indulgences; a coin whose currency was depreciated by too frequent and indiscriminate abuse. His birth and misfortunes recommended him to the generosity of his cousin Louis the Ninth; but the martial zeal of the saint was diverted from Constantinople to Egypt and Palestine; and the public and private poverty of Baldwin was alleviated, for a moment, by the alienation of the marquisate of Namur and the lordship of Courtenay, the last remains of his inheritance. 47 By such shameful or ruinous expedients, he once more returned to Romania, with an army of thirty thousand soldiers, whose numbers were doubled in the apprehension of the Greeks. His first despatches to France and England announced his victories and his hopes: he had reduced the country round the capital to the distance of three days' journey; and if he succeeded against an important, though nameless, city, (most probably Chiorli,) the frontier would be safe and the passage accessible. But these expectations (if Baldwin was sincere) quickly vanished like a dream: the troops and treasures of France melted away in his unskilful hands; and the throne of the Latin emperor was protected by a dishonorable alliance with the Turks and Comans. To secure the former, he consented to bestow his niece on the unbelieving sultan of Cogni; to please the latter, he complied with their Pagan rites; a dog was sacrificed between the two armies; and the contracting parties tasted each other's blood, as a pledge of their fidelity. 48 In the palace, or prison, of Constantinople, the successor of Augustus demolished the vacant houses for winter fuel, and stripped the lead from the churches for the daily expense of his family. Some usurious loans were dealt with a scanty hand by the merchants of Italy; and Philip, his son and heir, was pawned at Venice as the security for a debt. 49 Thirst, hunger, and nakedness, are positive evils: but wealth is relative; and a prince who would be rich in a private station, may be exposed by the increase of his wants to all the anxiety and bitterness of poverty.
45 (return)
[ See the reign of Baldwin
II. till his expulsion from Constantinople, in Ducange, Hist. de C. P. l.
iv. c. 1—34, the end l. v. c. 1—33.]
46 (return)
[ Matthew Paris relates
the two visits of Baldwin II. to the English court, p. 396, 637; his
return to Greece armatâ manû, p. 407 his letters of his nomen formidabile,
&c., p. 481, (a passage which has escaped Ducange;) his expulsion, p.
850.]
47 (return)
[ Louis IX. disapproved
and stopped the alienation of Courtenay (Ducange, l. iv. c. 23.) It is now
annexed to the royal demesne but granted for a term (engagé) to the
family of Boulainvilliers. Courtenay, in the election of Nemours in the
Isle de France, is a town of 900 inhabitants, with the remains of a
castle, (Mélanges tirés d'une Grande Bibliothèque, tom. xlv. p. 74—77.)]
48 (return)
[ Joinville, p. 104, edit.
du Louvre. A Coman prince, who died without baptism, was buried at the
gates of Constantinople with a live retinue of slaves and horses.]
49 (return)
[ Sanut. Secret. Fidel.
Crucis, l. ii. p. iv. c. 18, p. 73.]
But in this abject distress, the emperor and empire were still possessed of an ideal treasure, which drew its fantastic value from the superstition of the Christian world. The merit of the true cross was somewhat impaired by its frequent division; and a long captivity among the infidels might shed some suspicion on the fragments that were produced in the East and West. But another relic of the Passion was preserved in the Imperial chapel of Constantinople; and the crown of thorns which had been placed on the head of Christ was equally precious and authentic. It had formerly been the practice of the Egyptian debtors to deposit, as a security, the mummies of their parents; and both their honor and religion were bound for the redemption of the pledge. In the same manner, and in the absence of the emperor, the barons of Romania borrowed the sum of thirteen thousand one hundred and thirty-four pieces of gold 50 on the credit of the holy crown: they failed in the performance of their contract; and a rich Venetian, Nicholas Querini, undertook to satisfy their impatient creditors, on condition that the relic should be lodged at Venice, to become his absolute property, if it were not redeemed within a short and definite term. The barons apprised their sovereign of the hard treaty and impending loss and as the empire could not afford a ransom of seven thousand pounds sterling, Baldwin was anxious to snatch the prize from the Venetians, and to vest it with more honor and emolument in the hands of the most Christian king. 51 Yet the negotiation was attended with some delicacy. In the purchase of relics, the saint would have started at the guilt of simony; but if the mode of expression were changed, he might lawfully repay the debt, accept the gift, and acknowledge the obligation. His ambassadors, two Dominicans, were despatched to Venice to redeem and receive the holy crown which had escaped the dangers of the sea and the galleys of Vataces. On opening a wooden box, they recognized the seals of the doge and barons, which were applied on a shrine of silver; and within this shrine the monument of the Passion was enclosed in a golden vase. The reluctant Venetians yielded to justice and power: the emperor Frederic granted a free and honorable passage; the court of France advanced as far as Troyes in Champagne, to meet with devotion this inestimable relic: it was borne in triumph through Paris by the king himself, barefoot, and in his shirt; and a free gift of ten thousand marks of silver reconciled Baldwin to his loss. The success of this transaction tempted the Latin emperor to offer with the same generosity the remaining furniture of his chapel; 52 a large and authentic portion of the true cross; the baby-linen of the Son of God, the lance, the sponge, and the chain, of his Passion; the rod of Moses, and part of the skull of St. John the Baptist. For the reception of these spiritual treasures, twenty thousand marks were expended by St. Louis on a stately foundation, the holy chapel of Paris, on which the muse of Boileau has bestowed a comic immortality. The truth of such remote and ancient relics, which cannot be proved by any human testimony, must be admitted by those who believe in the miracles which they have performed. About the middle of the last age, an inveterate ulcer was touched and cured by a holy prickle of the holy crown: 53 the prodigy is attested by the most pious and enlightened Christians of France; nor will the fact be easily disproved, except by those who are armed with a general antidote against religious credulity. 54
50 (return)
[ Under the words Perparus,
Perpera, Hyperperum, Ducange is short and vague: Monetæ
genus. From a corrupt passage of Guntherus, (Hist. C. P. c. 8, p. 10,) I
guess that the Perpera was the nummus aureus, the fourth part of a mark of
silver, or about ten shillings sterling in value. In lead it would be too
contemptible.]
51 (return)
[ For the translation of
the holy crown, &c., from Constantinople to Paris, see Ducange (Hist.
de C. P. l. iv. c. 11—14, 24, 35) and Fleury, (Hist. Ecclés. tom.
xvii. p. 201—204.)]
52 (return)
[ Mélanges tirés d'une
Grande Bibliothèque, tom. xliii. p. 201—205. The Lutrin of Boileau
exhibits the inside, the soul and manners of the Sainte Chapelle;
and many facts relative to the institution are collected and explained by
his commentators, Brosset and De St. Marc.]
53 (return)
[ It was performed A.D.
1656, March 24, on the niece of Pascal; and that superior genius, with
Arnauld, Nicole, &c., were on the spot, to believe and attest a
miracle which confounded the Jesuits, and saved Port Royal, (uvres de
Racine, tom. vi. p. 176—187, in his eloquent History of Port
Royal.)]
54 (return)
[ Voltaire (Siécle de
Louis XIV. c. 37, uvres, tom. ix. p. 178, 179) strives to invalidate the
fact: but Hume, (Essays, vol. ii. p. 483, 484,) with more skill and
success, seizes the battery, and turns the cannon against his enemies.]
The Latins of Constantinople 55 were on all sides encompassed and pressed; their sole hope, the last delay of their ruin, was in the division of their Greek and Bulgarian enemies; and of this hope they were deprived by the superior arms and policy of Vataces, emperor of Nice. From the Propontis to the rocky coast of Pamphylia, Asia was peaceful and prosperous under his reign; and the events of every campaign extended his influence in Europe. The strong cities of the hills of Macedonia and Thrace were rescued from the Bulgarians; and their kingdom was circumscribed by its present and proper limits, along the southern banks of the Danube. The sole emperor of the Romans could no longer brook that a lord of Epirus, a Comnenian prince of the West, should presume to dispute or share the honors of the purple; and the humble Demetrius changed the color of his buskins, and accepted with gratitude the appellation of despot. His own subjects were exasperated by his baseness and incapacity; they implored the protection of their supreme lord. After some resistance, the kingdom of Thessalonica was united to the empire of Nice; and Vataces reigned without a competitor from the Turkish borders to the Adriatic Gulf. The princes of Europe revered his merit and power; and had he subscribed an orthodox creed, it should seem that the pope would have abandoned without reluctance the Latin throne of Constantinople. But the death of Vataces, the short and busy reign of Theodore his son, and the helpless infancy of his grandson John, suspended the restoration of the Greeks. In the next chapter, I shall explain their domestic revolutions; in this place, it will be sufficient to observe, that the young prince was oppressed by the ambition of his guardian and colleague, Michael Palæologus, who displayed the virtues and vices that belong to the founder of a new dynasty. The emperor Baldwin had flattered himself, that he might recover some provinces or cities by an impotent negotiation. His ambassadors were dismissed from Nice with mockery and contempt. At every place which they named, Palæologus alleged some special reason, which rendered it dear and valuable in his eyes: in the one he was born; in another he had been first promoted to military command; and in a third he had enjoyed, and hoped long to enjoy, the pleasures of the chase. "And what then do you propose to give us?" said the astonished deputies. "Nothing," replied the Greek, "not a foot of land. If your master be desirous of peace, let him pay me, as an annual tribute, the sum which he receives from the trade and customs of Constantinople. On these terms, I may allow him to reign. If he refuses, it is war. I am not ignorant of the art of war, and I trust the event to God and my sword." 56 An expedition against the despot of Epirus was the first prelude of his arms. If a victory was followed by a defeat; if the race of the Comneni or Angeli survived in those mountains his efforts and his reign; the captivity of Villehardouin, prince of Achaia, deprived the Latins of the most active and powerful vassal of their expiring monarchy. The republics of Venice and Genoa disputed, in the first of their naval wars, the command of the sea and the commerce of the East. Pride and interest attached the Venetians to the defence of Constantinople; their rivals were tempted to promote the designs of her enemies, and the alliance of the Genoese with the schismatic conqueror provoked the indignation of the Latin church. 57
55 (return)
[ The gradual losses of
the Latins may be traced in the third fourth, and fifth books of the
compilation of Ducange: but of the Greek conquests he has dropped many
circumstances, which may be recovered from the larger history of George
Acropolita, and the three first books of Nicephorus, Gregoras, two writers
of the Byzantine series, who have had the good fortune to meet with
learned editors Leo Allatius at Rome, and John Boivin in the Academy of
Inscriptions of Paris.]
56 (return)
[ George Acropolita, c.
78, p. 89, 90. edit. Paris.]
57 (return)
[ The Greeks, ashamed of
any foreign aid, disguise the alliance and succor of the Genoese: but the
fact is proved by the testimony of J Villani (Chron. l. vi. c. 71, in
Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. xiii. p. 202, 203) and William de
Nangis, (Annales de St. Louis, p. 248 in the Louvre Joinville,) two
impartial foreigners; and Urban IV threatened to deprive Genoa of her
archbishop.]
Intent on his great object, the emperor Michael visited in person and strengthened the troops and fortifications of Thrace. The remains of the Latins were driven from their last possessions: he assaulted without success the suburb of Galata; and corresponded with a perfidious baron, who proved unwilling, or unable, to open the gates of the metropolis. The next spring, his favorite general, Alexius Strategopulus, whom he had decorated with the title of Cæsar, passed the Hellespont with eight hundred horse and some infantry, 58 on a secret expedition. His instructions enjoined him to approach, to listen, to watch, but not to risk any doubtful or dangerous enterprise against the city. The adjacent territory between the Propontis and the Black Sea was cultivated by a hardy race of peasants and outlaws, exercised in arms, uncertain in their allegiance, but inclined by language, religion, and present advantage, to the party of the Greeks. They were styled the volunteers; 59 and by their free service the army of Alexius, with the regulars of Thrace and the Coman auxiliaries, 60 was augmented to the number of five-and-twenty thousand men. By the ardor of the volunteers, and by his own ambition, the Cæsar was stimulated to disobey the precise orders of his master, in the just confidence that success would plead his pardon and reward. The weakness of Constantinople, and the distress and terror of the Latins, were familiar to the observation of the volunteers; and they represented the present moment as the most propitious to surprise and conquest. A rash youth, the new governor of the Venetian colony, had sailed away with thirty galleys, and the best of the French knights, on a wild expedition to Daphnusia, a town on the Black Sea, at the distance of forty leagues; 601 and the remaining Latins were without strength or suspicion. They were informed that Alexius had passed the Hellespont; but their apprehensions were lulled by the smallness of his original numbers; and their imprudence had not watched the subsequent increase of his army. If he left his main body to second and support his operations, he might advance unperceived in the night with a chosen detachment. While some applied scaling-ladders to the lowest part of the walls, they were secure of an old Greek, who would introduce their companions through a subterraneous passage into his house; they could soon on the inside break an entrance through the golden gate, which had been long obstructed; and the conqueror would be in the heart of the city before the Latins were conscious of their danger. After some debate, the Cæsar resigned himself to the faith of the volunteers; they were trusty, bold, and successful; and in describing the plan, I have already related the execution and success. 61 But no sooner had Alexius passed the threshold of the golden gate, than he trembled at his own rashness; he paused, he deliberated; till the desperate volunteers urged him forwards, by the assurance that in retreat lay the greatest and most inevitable danger. Whilst the Cæsar kept his regulars in firm array, the Comans dispersed themselves on all sides; an alarm was sounded, and the threats of fire and pillage compelled the citizens to a decisive resolution. The Greeks of Constantinople remembered their native sovereigns; the Genoese merchants their recent alliance and Venetian foes; every quarter was in arms; and the air resounded with a general acclamation of "Long life and victory to Michael and John, the august emperors of the Romans!" Their rival, Baldwin, was awakened by the sound; but the most pressing danger could not prompt him to draw his sword in the defence of a city which he deserted, perhaps, with more pleasure than regret: he fled from the palace to the seashore, where he descried the welcome sails of the fleet returning from the vain and fruitless attempt on Daphnusia. Constantinople was irrecoverably lost; but the Latin emperor and the principal families embarked on board the Venetian galleys, and steered for the Isle of Euba, and afterwards for Italy, where the royal fugitive was entertained by the pope and Sicilian king with a mixture of contempt and pity. From the loss of Constantinople to his death, he consumed thirteen years, soliciting the Catholic powers to join in his restoration: the lesson had been familiar to his youth; nor was his last exile more indigent or shameful than his three former pilgrimages to the courts of Europe. His son Philip was the heir of an ideal empire; and the pretensions of his daughter Catherine were transported by her marriage to Charles of Valois, the brother of Philip the Fair, king of France. The house of Courtenay was represented in the female line by successive alliances, till the title of emperor of Constantinople, too bulky and sonorous for a private name, modestly expired in silence and oblivion. 62
58 (return)
[ Some precautions must be
used in reconciling the discordant numbers; the 800 soldiers of Nicetas,
the 25,000 of Spandugino, (apud Ducange, l. v. c. 24;) the Greeks and
Scythians of Acropolita; and the numerous army of Michael, in the Epistles
of Pope Urban IV. (i. 129.)]
59 (return)
[ Qelhmatarioi. They are
described and named by Pachymer, (l. ii. c. 14.)]
60 (return)
[ It is needless to seek
these Comans in the deserts of Tartary, or even of Moldavia. A part of the
horde had submitted to John Vataces, and was probably settled as a nursery
of soldiers on some waste lands of Thrace, (Cantacuzen. l. i. c. 2.)]
601 (return)
[ According to several
authorities, particularly Abulfaradj. Chron. Arab. p. 336, this was a
stratagem on the part of the Greeks to weaken the garrison of
Constantinople. The Greek commander offered to surrender the town on the
appearance of the Venetians.—M.]
61 (return)
[ The loss of
Constantinople is briefly told by the Latins: the conquest is described
with more satisfaction by the Greeks; by Acropolita, (c. 85,) Pachymer,
(l. ii. c. 26, 27,) Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. iv. c. 1, 2) See Ducange,
Hist. de C. P. l. v. c. 19—27.]
62 (return)
[ See the three last books
(l. v.—viii.) and the genealogical tables of Ducange. In the year
1382, the titular emperor of Constantinople was James de Baux, duke of
Andria in the kingdom of Naples, the son of Margaret, daughter of
Catherine de Valois, daughter of Catharine, daughter of Philip, son of
Baldwin II., (Ducange, l. viii. c. 37, 38.) It is uncertain whether he
left any posterity.]
After this narrative of the expeditions of the Latins to Palestine and Constantinople, I cannot dismiss the subject without resolving the general consequences on the countries that were the scene, and on the nations that were the actors, of these memorable crusades. 63 As soon as the arms of the Franks were withdrawn, the impression, though not the memory, was erased in the Mahometan realms of Egypt and Syria. The faithful disciples of the prophet were never tempted by a profane desire to study the laws or language of the idolaters; nor did the simplicity of their primitive manners receive the slightest alteration from their intercourse in peace and war with the unknown strangers of the West. The Greeks, who thought themselves proud, but who were only vain, showed a disposition somewhat less inflexible. In the efforts for the recovery of their empire, they emulated the valor, discipline, and tactics of their antagonists. The modern literature of the West they might justly despise; but its free spirit would instruct them in the rights of man; and some institutions of public and private life were adopted from the French. The correspondence of Constantinople and Italy diffused the knowledge of the Latin tongue; and several of the fathers and classics were at length honored with a Greek version. 64 But the national and religious prejudices of the Orientals were inflamed by persecution, and the reign of the Latins confirmed the separation of the two churches.
63 (return)
[ Abulfeda, who saw the
conclusion of the crusades, speaks of the kingdoms of the Franks, and
those of the Negroes, as equally unknown, (Prolegom. ad Geograph.) Had he
not disdained the Latin language, how easily might the Syrian prince have
found books and interpreters!]
64 (return)
[ A short and superficial
account of these versions from Latin into Greek is given by Huet, (de
Interpretatione et de claris Interpretibus p. 131—135.) Maximus
Planudes, a monk of Constantinople, (A.D. 1327—1353) has translated
Cæsar's Commentaries, the Somnium Scipionis, the Metamorphoses and
Heroides of Ovid, &c., (Fabric. Bib. Græc. tom. x. p. 533.)]
If we compare the æra of the crusades, the Latins of Europe with the Greeks and Arabians, their respective degrees of knowledge, industry, and art, our rude ancestors must be content with the third rank in the scale of nations. Their successive improvement and present superiority may be ascribed to a peculiar energy of character, to an active and imitative spirit, unknown to their more polished rivals, who at that time were in a stationary or retrograde state. With such a disposition, the Latins should have derived the most early and essential benefits from a series of events which opened to their eyes the prospect of the world, and introduced them to a long and frequent intercourse with the more cultivated regions of the East. The first and most obvious progress was in trade and manufactures, in the arts which are strongly prompted by the thirst of wealth, the calls of necessity, and the gratification of the sense or vanity. Among the crowd of unthinking fanatics, a captive or a pilgrim might sometimes observe the superior refinements of Cairo and Constantinople: the first importer of windmills 65 was the benefactor of nations; and if such blessings are enjoyed without any grateful remembrance, history has condescended to notice the more apparent luxuries of silk and sugar, which were transported into Italy from Greece and Egypt. But the intellectual wants of the Latins were more slowly felt and supplied; the ardor of studious curiosity was awakened in Europe by different causes and more recent events; and, in the age of the crusades, they viewed with careless indifference the literature of the Greeks and Arabians. Some rudiments of mathematical and medicinal knowledge might be imparted in practice and in figures; necessity might produce some interpreters for the grosser business of merchants and soldiers; but the commerce of the Orientals had not diffused the study and knowledge of their languages in the schools of Europe. 66 If a similar principle of religion repulsed the idiom of the Koran, it should have excited their patience and curiosity to understand the original text of the gospel; and the same grammar would have unfolded the sense of Plato and the beauties of Homer. Yet in a reign of sixty years, the Latins of Constantinople disdained the speech and learning of their subjects; and the manuscripts were the only treasures which the natives might enjoy without rapine or envy. Aristotle was indeed the oracle of the Western universities, but it was a barbarous Aristotle; and, instead of ascending to the fountain head, his Latin votaries humbly accepted a corrupt and remote version, from the Jews and Moors of Andalusia. The principle of the crusades was a savage fanaticism; and the most important effects were analogous to the cause. Each pilgrim was ambitious to return with his sacred spoils, the relics of Greece and Palestine; 67 and each relic was preceded and followed by a train of miracles and visions. The belief of the Catholics was corrupted by new legends, their practice by new superstitions; and the establishment of the inquisition, the mendicant orders of monks and friars, the last abuse of indulgences, and the final progress of idolatry, flowed from the baleful fountain of the holy war. The active spirit of the Latins preyed on the vitals of their reason and religion; and if the ninth and tenth centuries were the times of darkness, the thirteenth and fourteenth were the age of absurdity and fable.
65 (return)
[ Windmills, first
invented in the dry country of Asia Minor, were used in Normandy as early
as the year 1105, (Vie privée des François, tom. i. p. 42, 43. Ducange,
Gloss. Latin. tom. iv. p. 474.)]
66 (return)
[ See the complaints of
Roger Bacon, (Biographia Britannica, vol. i. p. 418, Kippis's edition.) If
Bacon himself, or Gerbert, understood someGreek, they were
prodigies, and owed nothing to the commerce of the East.]
67 (return)
[ Such was the opinion of
the great Leibnitz, (uvres de Fontenelle, tom. v. p. 458,) a master of the
history of the middle ages. I shall only instance the pedigree of the
Carmelites, and the flight of the house of Loretto, which were both
derived from Palestine.]
In the profession of Christianity, in the cultivation of a fertile land, the northern conquerors of the Roman empire insensibly mingled with the provincials, and rekindled the embers of the arts of antiquity. Their settlements about the age of Charlemagne had acquired some degree of order and stability, when they were overwhelmed by new swarms of invaders, the Normans, Saracens, 68 and Hungarians, who replunged the western countries of Europe into their former state of anarchy and barbarism. About the eleventh century, the second tempest had subsided by the expulsion or conversion of the enemies of Christendom: the tide of civilization, which had so long ebbed, began to flow with a steady and accelerated course; and a fairer prospect was opened to the hopes and efforts of the rising generations. Great was the increase, and rapid the progress, during the two hundred years of the crusades; and some philosophers have applauded the propitious influence of these holy wars, which appear to me to have checked rather than forwarded the maturity of Europe. 69 The lives and labors of millions, which were buried in the East, would have been more profitably employed in the improvement of their native country: the accumulated stock of industry and wealth would have overflowed in navigation and trade; and the Latins would have been enriched and enlightened by a pure and friendly correspondence with the climates of the East. In one respect I can indeed perceive the accidental operation of the crusades, not so much in producing a benefit as in removing an evil. The larger portion of the inhabitants of Europe was chained to the soil, without freedom, or property, or knowledge; and the two orders of ecclesiastics and nobles, whose numbers were comparatively small, alone deserved the name of citizens and men. This oppressive system was supported by the arts of the clergy and the swords of the barons. The authority of the priests operated in the darker ages as a salutary antidote: they prevented the total extinction of letters, mitigated the fierceness of the times, sheltered the poor and defenceless, and preserved or revived the peace and order of civil society. But the independence, rapine, and discord of the feudal lords were unmixed with any semblance of good; and every hope of industry and improvement was crushed by the iron weight of the martial aristocracy. Among the causes that undermined that Gothic edifice, a conspicuous place must be allowed to the crusades. The estates of the barons were dissipated, and their race was often extinguished, in these costly and perilous expeditions. Their poverty extorted from their pride those charters of freedom which unlocked the fetters of the slave, secured the farm of the peasant and the shop of the artificer, and gradually restored a substance and a soul to the most numerous and useful part of the community. The conflagration which destroyed the tall and barren trees of the forest gave air and scope to the vegetation of the smaller and nutritive plants of the soil. 691
68 (return)
[ If I rank the Saracens
with the Barbarians, it is only relative to their wars, or rather inroads,
in Italy and France, where their sole purpose was to plunder and destroy.]
69 (return)
[ On this interesting
subject, the progress of society in Europe, a strong ray of philosophical
light has broke from Scotland in our own times; and it is with private, as
well as public regard, that I repeat the names of Hume, Robertson, and
Adam Smith.]
691 (return)
[ On the consequences of
the crusades, compare the valuable Essay of Heeren, that of M. Choiseul
d'Aillecourt, and a chapter of Mr. Forster's "Mahometanism Unveiled." I
may admire this gentleman's learning and industry, without pledging myself
to his wild theory of prophets interpretation.—M.]
Digression On The Family Of Courtenay.
The purple of three emperors, who have reigned at Constantinople, will authorize or excuse a digression on the origin and singular fortunes of the house of Courtenay, 70 in the three principal branches: I. Of Edessa; II. Of France; and III. Of England; of which the last only has survived the revolutions of eight hundred years.
70 (return)
[ I have applied, but not
confined, myself to A genealogical History of the noble and illustrious
Family of Courtenay, by Ezra Cleaveland, Tutor to Sir William Courtenay,
and Rector of Honiton; Exon. 1735, in folio. The first part is
extracted from William of Tyre; the second from Bouchet's French history;
and the third from various memorials, public, provincial, and private, of
the Courtenays of Devonshire The rector of Honiton has more gratitude than
industry, and more industry than criticism.]
I. Before the introduction of trade, which scatters riches, and of knowledge, which dispels prejudice, the prerogative of birth is most strongly felt and most humbly acknowledged. In every age, the laws and manners of the Germans have discriminated the ranks of society; the dukes and counts, who shared the empire of Charlemagne, converted their office to an inheritance; and to his children, each feudal lord bequeathed his honor and his sword. The proudest families are content to lose, in the darkness of the middle ages, the tree of their pedigree, which, however deep and lofty, must ultimately rise from a plebeian root; and their historians must descend ten centuries below the Christian æra, before they can ascertain any lineal succession by the evidence of surnames, of arms, and of authentic records. With the first rays of light, 71 we discern the nobility and opulence of Atho, a French knight; his nobility, in the rank and title of a nameless father; his opulence, in the foundation of the castle of Courtenay in the district of Gatinois, about fifty-six miles to the south of Paris. From the reign of Robert, the son of Hugh Capet, the barons of Courtenay are conspicuous among the immediate vassals of the crown; and Joscelin, the grandson of Atho and a noble dame, is enrolled among the heroes of the first crusade. A domestic alliance (their mothers were sisters) attached him to the standard of Baldwin of Bruges, the second count of Edessa; a princely fief, which he was worthy to receive, and able to maintain, announces the number of his martial followers; and after the departure of his cousin, Joscelin himself was invested with the county of Edessa on both sides of the Euphrates. By economy in peace, his territories were replenished with Latin and Syrian subjects; his magazines with corn, wine, and oil; his castles with gold and silver, with arms and horses. In a holy warfare of thirty years, he was alternately a conqueror and a captive: but he died like a soldier, in a horse litter at the head of his troops; and his last glance beheld the flight of the Turkish invaders who had presumed on his age and infirmities. His son and successor, of the same name, was less deficient in valor than in vigilance; but he sometimes forgot that dominion is acquired and maintained by the same arms. He challenged the hostility of the Turks, without securing the friendship of the prince of Antioch; and, amidst the peaceful luxury of Turbessel, in Syria, 72 Joscelin neglected the defence of the Christian frontier beyond the Euphrates. In his absence, Zenghi, the first of the Atabeks, besieged and stormed his capital, Edessa, which was feebly defended by a timorous and disloyal crowd of Orientals: the Franks were oppressed in a bold attempt for its recovery, and Courtenay ended his days in the prison of Aleppo. He still left a fair and ample patrimony But the victorious Turks oppressed on all sides the weakness of a widow and orphan; and, for the equivalent of an annual pension, they resigned to the Greek emperor the charge of defending, and the shame of losing, the last relics of the Latin conquest. The countess-dowager of Edessa retired to Jerusalem with her two children; the daughter, Agnes, became the wife and mother of a king; the son, Joscelin the Third, accepted the office of seneschal, the first of the kingdom, and held his new estates in Palestine by the service of fifty knights. His name appears with honor in the transactions of peace and war; but he finally vanishes in the fall of Jerusalem; and the name of Courtenay, in this branch of Edessa, was lost by the marriage of his two daughters with a French and German baron. 73
71 (return)
[ The primitive record of
the family is a passage of the continuator of Aimoin, a monk of Fleury,
who wrote in the xiith century. See his Chronicle, in the Historians of
France, (tom. xi. p. 276.)]
72 (return)
[ Turbessel, or, as it is
now styled, Telbesher, is fixed by D'Anville four-and-twenty miles from
the great passage over the Euphrates at Zeugma.]
73 (return)
[ His possessions are
distinguished in the Assises of Jerusalem (c. B26) among the feudal
tenures of the kingdom, which must therefore have been collected between
the years 1153 and 1187. His pedigree may be found in the Lignages
d'Outremer, c. 16.]
II. While Joscelin reigned beyond the Euphrates, his elder brother Milo, the son of Joscelin, the son of Atho, continued, near the Seine, to possess the castle of their fathers, which was at length inherited by Rainaud, or Reginald, the youngest of his three sons. Examples of genius or virtue must be rare in the annals of the oldest families; and, in a remote age their pride will embrace a deed of rapine and violence; such, however, as could not be perpetrated without some superiority of courage, or, at least, of power. A descendant of Reginald of Courtenay may blush for the public robber, who stripped and imprisoned several merchants, after they had satisfied the king's duties at Sens and Orleans. He will glory in the offence, since the bold offender could not be compelled to obedience and restitution, till the regent and the count of Champagne prepared to march against him at the head of an army. 74 Reginald bestowed his estates on his eldest daughter, and his daughter on the seventh son of King Louis the Fat; and their marriage was crowned with a numerous offspring. We might expect that a private should have merged in a royal name; and that the descendants of Peter of France and Elizabeth of Courtenay would have enjoyed the titles and honors of princes of the blood. But this legitimate claim was long neglected, and finally denied; and the causes of their disgrace will represent the story of this second branch. 1. Of all the families now extant, the most ancient, doubtless, and the most illustrious, is the house of France, which has occupied the same throne above eight hundred years, and descends, in a clear and lineal series of males, from the middle of the ninth century. 75 In the age of the crusades, it was already revered both in the East and West. But from Hugh Capet to the marriage of Peter, no more than five reigns or generations had elapsed; and so precarious was their title, that the eldest sons, as a necessary precaution, were previously crowned during the lifetime of their fathers. The peers of France have long maintained their precedency before the younger branches of the royal line, nor had the princes of the blood, in the twelfth century, acquired that hereditary lustre which is now diffused over the most remote candidates for the succession. 2. The barons of Courtenay must have stood high in their own estimation, and in that of the world, since they could impose on the son of a king the obligation of adopting for himself and all his descendants the name and arms of their daughter and his wife. In the marriage of an heiress with her inferior or her equal, such exchange was often required and allowed: but as they continued to diverge from the regal stem, the sons of Louis the Fat were insensibly confounded with their maternal ancestors; and the new Courtenays might deserve to forfeit the honors of their birth, which a motive of interest had tempted them to renounce. 3. The shame was far more permanent than the reward, and a momentary blaze was followed by a long darkness. The eldest son of these nuptials, Peter of Courtenay, had married, as I have already mentioned, the sister of the counts of Flanders, the two first emperors of Constantinople: he rashly accepted the invitation of the barons of Romania; his two sons, Robert and Baldwin, successively held and lost the remains of the Latin empire in the East, and the granddaughter of Baldwin the Second again mingled her blood with the blood of France and of Valois. To support the expenses of a troubled and transitory reign, their patrimonial estates were mortgaged or sold: and the last emperors of Constantinople depended on the annual charity of Rome and Naples.
74 (return)
[ The rapine and
satisfaction of Reginald de Courtenay, are preposterously arranged in the
Epistles of the abbot and regent Suger, (cxiv. cxvi.,) the best memorials
of the age, (Duchesne, Scriptores Hist. Franc. tom. iv. p. 530.)]
75 (return)
[ In the beginning of the
xith century, after naming the father and grandfather of Hugh Capet, the
monk Glaber is obliged to add, cujus genus valde in-ante reperitur
obscurum. Yet we are assured that the great-grandfather of Hugh Capet was
Robert the Strong count of Anjou, (A.D. 863—873,) a noble Frank of
Neustria, Neustricus... generosæ stirpis, who was slain in the defence of
his country against the Normans, dum patriæ fines tuebatur. Beyond Robert,
all is conjecture or fable. It is a probable conjecture, that the third
race descended from the second by Childebrand, the brother of Charles
Martel. It is an absurd fable that the second was allied to the first by
the marriage of Ansbert, a Roman senator and the ancestor of St. Arnoul,
with Blitilde, a daughter of Clotaire I. The Saxon origin of the house of
France is an ancient but incredible opinion. See a judicious memoir of M.
de Foncemagne, (Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions, tom. xx. p. 548—579.)
He had promised to declare his own opinion in a second memoir, which has
never appeared.]
While the elder brothers dissipated their wealth in romantic adventures, and the castle of Courtenay was profaned by a plebeian owner, the younger branches of that adopted name were propagated and multiplied. But their splendor was clouded by poverty and time: after the decease of Robert, great butler of France, they descended from princes to barons; the next generations were confounded with the simple gentry; the descendants of Hugh Capet could no longer be visible in the rural lords of Tanlay and of Champignelles. The more adventurous embraced without dishonor the profession of a soldier: the least active and opulent might sink, like their cousins of the branch of Dreux, into the condition of peasants. Their royal descent, in a dark period of four hundred years, became each day more obsolete and ambiguous; and their pedigree, instead of being enrolled in the annals of the kingdom, must be painfully searched by the minute diligence of heralds and genealogists. It was not till the end of the sixteenth century, on the accession of a family almost as remote as their own, that the princely spirit of the Courtenays again revived; and the question of the nobility provoked them to ascertain the royalty of their blood. They appealed to the justice and compassion of Henry the Fourth; obtained a favorable opinion from twenty lawyers of Italy and Germany, and modestly compared themselves to the descendants of King David, whose prerogatives were not impaired by the lapse of ages or the trade of a carpenter. 76 But every ear was deaf, and every circumstance was adverse, to their lawful claims. The Bourbon kings were justified by the neglect of the Valois; the princes of the blood, more recent and lofty, disdained the alliance of his humble kindred: the parliament, without denying their proofs, eluded a dangerous precedent by an arbitrary distinction, and established St. Louis as the first father of the royal line. 77 A repetition of complaints and protests was repeatedly disregarded; and the hopeless pursuit was terminated in the present century by the death of the last male of the family. 78 Their painful and anxious situation was alleviated by the pride of conscious virtue: they sternly rejected the temptations of fortune and favor; and a dying Courtenay would have sacrificed his son, if the youth could have renounced, for any temporal interest, the right and title of a legitimate prince of the blood of France. 79
76 (return)
[ Of the various
petitions, apologies, &c., published by the princes of Courtenay, I
have seen the three following, all in octavo: 1. De Stirpe et Origine
Domus de Courtenay: addita sunt Responsa celeberrimorum Europæ
Jurisconsultorum; Paris, 1607. 2. Representation du Procedé tenû a
l'instance faicte devant le Roi, par Messieurs de Courtenay, pour la
conservation de l'Honneur et Dignité de leur Maison, branche de la royalle
Maison de France; à Paris, 1613. 3. Representation du subject qui a porté
Messieurs de Salles et de Fraville, de la Maison de Courtenay, à se
retirer hors du Royaume, 1614. It was a homicide, for which the Courtenays
expected to be pardoned, or tried, as princes of the blood.]
77 (return)
[ The sense of the
parliaments is thus expressed by Thuanus Principis nomen nusquam in Galliâ
tributum, nisi iis qui per mares e regibus nostris originem repetunt; qui
nunc tantum a Ludovico none beatæ memoriæ numerantur; nam Cortini
et Drocenses, a Ludovico crasso genus ducentes, hodie inter eos minime
recensentur. A distinction of expediency rather than justice. The sanctity
of Louis IX. could not invest him with any special prerogative, and all
the descendants of Hugh Capet must be included in his original compact
with the French nation.]
78 (return)
[ The last male of the
Courtenays was Charles Roger, who died in the year 1730, without leaving
any sons. The last female was Helene de Courtenay, who married Louis de
Beaufremont. Her title of Princesse du Sang Royal de France was suppressed
(February 7th, 1737) by an arrêt of the parliament of Paris.]
79 (return)
[ The singular anecdote to
which I allude is related in the Recueil des Pieces interessantes et peu
connues, (Maestricht, 1786, in 4 vols. 12mo.;) and the unknown editor
quotes his author, who had received it from Helene de Courtenay, marquise
de Beaufremont.]
III. According to the old register of Ford Abbey, the Courtenays of Devonshire are descended from Prince Florus, the second son of Peter, and the grandson of Louis the Fat. 80 This fable of the grateful or venal monks was too respectfully entertained by our antiquaries, Cambden 81 and Dugdale: 82 but it is so clearly repugnant to truth and time, that the rational pride of the family now refuses to accept this imaginary founder. Their most faithful historians believe, that, after giving his daughter to the king's son, Reginald of Courtenay abandoned his possessions in France, and obtained from the English monarch a second wife and a new inheritance. It is certain, at least, that Henry the Second distinguished in his camps and councils a Reginald, of the name and arms, and, as it may be fairly presumed, of the genuine race, of the Courtenays of France. The right of wardship enabled a feudal lord to reward his vassal with the marriage and estate of a noble heiress; and Reginald of Courtenay acquired a fair establishment in Devonshire, where his posterity has been seated above six hundred years. 83 From a Norman baron, Baldwin de Brioniis, who had been invested by the Conqueror, Hawise, the wife of Reginald, derived the honor of Okehampton, which was held by the service of ninety-three knights; and a female might claim the manly offices of hereditary viscount or sheriff, and of captain of the royal castle of Exeter. Their son Robert married the sister of the earl of Devon: at the end of a century, on the failure of the family of Rivers, 84 his great-grandson, Hugh the Second, succeeded to a title which was still considered as a territorial dignity; and twelve earls of Devonshire, of the name of Courtenay, have flourished in a period of two hundred and twenty years. They were ranked among the chief of the barons of the realm; nor was it till after a strenuous dispute, that they yielded to the fief of Arundel the first place in the parliament of England: their alliances were contracted with the noblest families, the Veres, Despensers, St. Johns, Talbots, Bohuns, and even the Plantagenets themselves; and in a contest with John of Lancaster, a Courtenay, bishop of London, and afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, might be accused of profane confidence in the strength and number of his kindred. In peace, the earls of Devon resided in their numerous castles and manors of the west; their ample revenue was appropriated to devotion and hospitality; and the epitaph of Edward, surnamed from his misfortune, the blind, from his virtues, the good, earl, inculcates with much ingenuity a moral sentence, which may, however, be abused by thoughtless generosity. After a grateful commemoration of the fifty-five years of union and happiness which he enjoyed with Mabe his wife, the good earl thus speaks from the tomb:—