monarchy; and mutual distrust had brought on another war with
Mithridates, successfully conducted by Lucullus. Out of this war arose a
struggle with Tigranes, on whom an overwhelming defeat was inflicted at
Tigranocerta. But the brilliant achievements of Lucullus were nullified
by the mutinous conduct of the troops, and the factious conduct of the
home government. The gross inefficiency of that government was shown by
the immense extension of organised piracy, and by the famous slave
revolt under Spartacus, which seriously endangered the state.
Pompeius on his return from Spain was barred on technical grounds from
the triumph and the consulship which he demanded. He was thus driven
into an alliance with the democratic party, and with Crassus. The result
was the fall of the Sullan constitution, and the restoration of checks
on the power of the senate. Pompeius might have grasped a military
despotism; he did not, but he did receive extraordinary powers for
dealing with the whole Eastern question, and when that work was settled
successfully, he would be able to dictate his own terms.
Pompeius began his task by a swift and crushing blow against the pirate
cities and fleets, which broke up the organisation. He crushed
Mithridates in one campaign, and received the submission of Tigranes;
Mithridates soon after fell by his own hand, the victim of an
insurrection. Anarchy in Syria warranted Pompeius in annexing the
Seleucid dominion. The whole of the nearer East was now a part of the
Roman empire; and was thenceforth ruled not as protectorates, but as a
group of provinces. Egypt alone was not incorporated.
Meanwhile, the democratic party at Rome were dominant, though their
policy was inconsistent and opportunist. Probably the leading men, such
as Crassus and the rising Gaius, Julius Cæsar, stood aside from the
wilder schemes, such as the Catilinarian conspiracies, but secretly
fostered them. Catiline's projects were betrayed, and the illegal
execution of the captured conspirators by the consul Cicero was hailed
by Cato and the senatorial party as a triumph of patriotic
statesmanship. Catiline himself was crushed in the field.
The definite fact emerged, that neither the senatorial nor the
democratic party could establish a strong government; that would be
possible only for a military monarchy--a statesman with a policy and an
irresistible, force at his back. But Pompeius lacked the courage and
skill. Cæsar, as yet, lacked the military force. Pompeius, on his return
from the East, again allied himself with Crassus and Cæsar, whose object
was to acquire for himself the opportunity which Pompeius would not
grasp. The alliance gave Pompeius the land allotments he required for
his soldiers, and to Cæsar the consulship followed by a prolonged
governorship of Gaul.
The conquest and organisation of Gaul was an end in itself, a necessary
defence against barbarian pressure. Cæsar's operations there were
invaluable to the empire; incidentally, they enabled him to become
master of it. Cæsar has left his own record. Gaul was transformed into a
barrier against the Teutonic migration. But Pompeius, nominally holding
a far greater position, proved incapable of controlling the situation in
Rome; he could not even suppress the demagogue Clodius, while the
prestige of his military exploits was waning. Fear of the power of the
Triumvirate was driving moderate men to the senatorial part; that party,
without an efficient leader, began to find in Pompeius rather in ally
against the more dangerous Cæsar than an enemy.
But they would not concede him the powers he required; which might yet
be turned to the uses of his colleagues in the Triumvirate; he could not
afford to challenge Cæsar; and Cæsar adroitly used the situation to
secure for himself a prolongation of his Gallic command. The completion
of his work there was to have precedence of his personal ambitions.
Crassus was sent to the Eastern command; and Pompeius remained in Italy,
while nominally appointed to Spain.
Pompeius, indeed, attained a predominance in Rome which enabled him to
secure temporarily dictatorial powers which were employed to counteract
the electoral machinery of the republican party; but he had not the
qualifications or the inclination to play the demagogue, and could not
unite his aspirations as a restorer of law and order with effective
party leadership. Crassus disappeared; his armies in the East met with a
complete disaster at Carrhæ, and he took his own life. Cæsar and
Pompeius were left; Pompeius was not content that Cæsar should stand on
a real equality with him, and the inevitable rupture came.
In effect Pompeius used his dictatorship to extend his own military
command and to curtail Cæsar's. The position resolved itself into a
rivalry between the two; Cæsar declaring as always for the democracy,
Pompeius now assuming the championship of the aristocracy, and the
guardianship of the constitution.
For Cæsar the vital point now was that his own command should not
terminate till he exchanged it for a fresh consulship. As the law now
stood, he could not obtain his election without resigning his command
beforehand. But he succeeded in forcing Pompeius to break the law; and
in making the official government responsible for declaring war. He
offered a compromise, perhaps, in the certainty that it would be
rejected--as it was. He was virtually declared a public enemy; and he
struck at once.
At the head of his devotedly loyal veterans he crossed the Rubicon. His
rapid and successful advance caused Pompeius to abandon Italy and fall
back on the Eastern Provinces. The discipline preserved, and the
moderation displayed by Cæsar won him unexpected favour. Having secured
Italy, he turned next on Spain, and secured that. Swift and decisive
action was pitted against inertness. When Cæsar entered Epirus the odds
against him on paper were enormous; but the triumphant victory of
Phansalus shattered the Pompeian coalition. Pompeius hurried to Egypt,
but was assassinated while landing. The struggle, however, was not over
till after the battle of Thapsus nearly two years after Phansalus.
Cæsar was now beyond question master of the whole Roman world. He had
made himself one of the mightiest of all masters of the art of war; but
he was even more emphatically unsurpassed as a statesman. In the brief
time that was left him he laid the foundation of the new monarchy which
replaced the ancient Republic of Rome.
* * * * *
Mediæval History
EDWARD GIBBON
The Holy Roman Empire
The third of Gibbon's divisions of his great history was
devoted to that period which is comprised between the
establishment of the Holy Roman Empire in 800 and the final
extinction of the Eastern Empire with the conquest of
Constantinople by Mahomet II. in 1453. Although this was the
longest period, Gibbon devoted much less space to it than to
the preceding parts of his history. This fact was partly due
to the gradual diminution of Roman interests, for the
dominions of the empire became contracted to the limits of a
single city, and also to the fact that the material which the
most painstaking search placed at his disposal was distinctly
limited. But though the conquest of the Normans, to instance
one section, has been dealt with inadequately in the light of
modern research, the wonderful panorama that Gibbon's genius
was able to present never fails in its effect or general
accuracy. The Holy Roman Empire is, of course, properly
classified under Mediæval History, which accounts for its
separation from the rest of Gibbon's work.
_I.--Birth and Sway of the Empire_
The Western Empire, or Holy Roman Empire, as it has been called, which
was re-established by Charlemagne (and lasted in shadow until the
abdication of Francis II. under the pressure of Napoleon in 1806), was
not unworthy of its title.
The personal and political importance of Charlemagne was magnified by
the distress and division of the rest of Europe. The Greek emperor was
addressed by him as brother instead of father; and as long as the
imperial dignity of the West was usurped by a hero, the Greeks
respectfully saluted the _august_ Charlemagne with the acclamations of
"Basileus" and "Emperor of the Romans." Lewis the Pious (814-840)
possessed the virtue of his father but not the power. When both power
and virtue were extinct, the Greeks despoiled Lewis II. of his
hereditary title, and with the barbarous appellation of _Rex_ degraded
him amongst the crowd of Latin princes.
The imperial title of the West remained in the family of Charlemagne
until the deposition of Charles the Fat in 884. His insanity dissolved
the empire into factions, and it was not until Otho, King of Germany,
laid claim to the title, with fire and sword, that the western empire
was restored (962). His conquest of Italy and delivery of the pope for
ever fixed the imperial crown in the name and nation of Germany. From
that memorable era two maxims of public jurisprudence were introduced by
force and ratified by time: (1) That the prince who was elected in the
German Diet acquired from that instant the subject kingdoms of Italy and
Rome; (2) but that he might not legally assume the titles of Emperor and
Augustus till he had received the crown from the hands of the Roman
pontiff.
The nominal power of the Western emperors was considerable. No pontiff
could be legally consecrated till the emperor, the advocate of the
Church, had graciously signified his approbation and consent. Gregory
VII., in 1073, usurped this power, and fixed for ever in the college of
cardinals the freedom and independence of election. Nominally, also, the
emperors held sway in Rome, but this supremacy was annihilated in the
thirteenth century. In the fourteenth century the power derived from his
title was still recognised in Europe; the hereditary monarchs confessed
the pre-eminence of his rank and dignity.
The persecution of images and their votaries in the East had
separated-Rome and Italy from the Byzantine throne, and prepared the way
for the conquests of the Franks. The rise and triumph of the Mahometans
still further diminished the empire of the East. The successful inroads
of the Bulgarians, Hungarians, and Russians, who assaulted by sea or by
land the provinces and the capital, seemed to advance the approach of
its final dissolution. The Norman adventurers, who founded a powerful
kingdom in Apulia and Sicily, shook the throne of Constantinople (1146),
and their hostile enterprises did not cease until the year 1185.
_II.--Latin Rulers of Constantinople_
Under the name of the Latins, the subjects of the pope, the nations of
the West, enlisted under the banner of the Cross for the recovery or the
release of the Holy Sepulchre. The Greek emperors were terrified and
preserved by the myriads of pilgrims who marched to Jerusalem with
Godfrey of Bouillon (1095-99) and the peers of Christendom. The second
(1147) and the third (1189) crusades trod in the footsteps of the first.
Asia and Europe were mingled in a sacred war of two hundred years; and
the Christian powers were bravely resisted and finally expelled (1291)
by Saladin (1171-93) and the Mamelukes of Egypt.
In these memorable crusades a fleet and army of French and Venetians
were diverted from Syria to the Thracian Bosphorus; they assaulted the
capital (1203), they subverted the Greek monarchy; and a dynasty of
Latin princes was seated near three-score years on the throne of
Constantine.
During this period of captivity and exile, which lasted from 1204 to
1261, the purple was preserved by a succession of four monarchs, who
maintained their title as the heirs of Augustus, though outcasts from
their capital. The _de facto_ sovereigns of Constantinople during this
period, the Latin emperors of the houses of Flanders and Courtenay,
provided five sovereigns for the usurped throne. By an agreement between
the allied conquerors, the emperor of the East was nominated by the vote
of twelve electors, chosen equally from the French and Venetians. To
him, with all the titles and prerogatives of the Byzantine throne, a
fourth part of the Greek monarchy was assigned; the remaining portions
were equally snared between the republic of Venice and the barons of
France.
Under this agreement, Baldwin, Count of Flanders and Hainault, was
created emperor (1204-05). The idea of the Roman system, which, despite
the passage of centuries devoted to the triumphs of the barbarians, had
impressed itself on Europe, was seen in the emperor's letter to the
Roman pontiff, in which he congratulated him on the restoration of his
authority in the East.
The defeat and captivity of Baldwin in a war against the Bulgarians, and
his subsequent death, placed the crown on the head of his brother Henry
(1205-16). With him the imperial house of Flanders became extinct, and
Peter of Courtenay, Count of Auxerre (1217-19), assumed the empire of
the East. Peter was taken captive by Theodore, the legitimate sovereign
of Constantinople, and his sons Robert (1221-28) and Baldwin II.
(1228-37) reigned in succession. The gradual recovery of their empire by
the legitimate sovereigns of the East culminated in the capture of
Constantinople by the Greeks (1261). The line of Latin sovereigns was
extinct. Baldwin lived the remainder of his life a royal fugitive,
soliciting the Catholic powers to join in his restoration. He died in
1272.
From the days of the Emperor Heraclius the Byzantine Empire had been
most tranquil and prosperous when it could acquiesce in hereditary
succession. Five dynasties--the Heraclian, Isaurian, Amorian, Basilian,
and Comnenian families--enjoyed and transmitted the royal patrimony
during their respective series of five, four, three, six, and four
generations. The imperial house of Comnenius, though its direct line in
male descent had expired with Andronicus I. (1185), had been perpetuated
by marriage in the female line, and had survived the exile from
Constantinople, in the persons of the descendants of Theodore Lascaris.
Michael Palæologus, who, through his mother, might claim perhaps a
prior right to the throne of the Comnenii, usurped the imperial dignity
on the recovery of Constantinople, cruelly blinded the young Emperor
John, the legitimate heir of Theodore Lascaris, and reigned until 1282.
His career of authority was notable for an attempt to unite the Greek
and Roman churches--a union which was dissolved in 1283--and his
instigation of the revolt in Sicily, which ended in the famous Sicilian
Vespers (March 30, 1282), when 8,000 French were exterminated in a
promiscuous massacre.
He saved his empire by involving the kingdoms of the West in rebellion
and blood. From these seeds of discord uprose a generation of iron men,
who assaulted and endangered the empire of his son, Andronicus the Elder
(1282-1332). Thousands of Genoese and Catalans, released from the wars
that Michael had aroused in the West, took service under his successor
against the Turks. Other mercenaries flocked to their standard, and,
under the name of the Great Company, they subverted the authority of the
emperor, defeated his troops, laid waste his territory, united
themselves with his enemies, and, finally, abandoning the banks of the
Hellespont, marched into Greece. Here they overthrew the remnant of the
Latin power, and for fourteen years (1311-1326) the Great Company was
the terror of the Grecian states.
Their factions drove them to acknowledge the sovereignity of the house
of Arragon; and, during the remainder of the fourteenth century, Athens
as a government or an appanage was successfully bestowed by the kings of
Sicily. Conquered in turn by the French and Catalans, Athens at length
became the capital of a state that extended over Thebes, Argos, Corinth,
Delphi, and a part of Thessaly, and was ruled by the family of Accaioli,
plebeians of Florence (1384-1456). The last duke of this dynasty was
strangled by Mahomet II., who educated his sons in the discipline of the
seraglio.
During the reign of John Palæologus, son of Andronicus the Younger,
which began in 1355, the eastern empire was nearly subverted by the
Genoese. On the return of the legitimate sovereign to Constantinople,
the Genoese, who had established their factories and industries in the
suburb of Galata, or Pera, were allowed to remain. During the civil wars
the Genoese forces took advantage of the disunion of the Greeks, and by
the skilful use of their power exacted a treaty by which they were
granted a monopoly of trade, and almost a right of dominions. The Roman
Empire (I smile in transcribing the name) might soon have sunk into a
province of Genoa if the ambition of the republic had not been checked
by the ruin of her freedom and naval power. Yet the spirit of commerce
survived that of conquest; and the colony of Pera still awed the capital
and navigated the Euxine till it was involved by the Turks in the final
servitude of Constantinople itself.
_III.--End of the Roman World_
Only three more sovereigns ruled the remnants of the Roman world after
the reign of John Palæologus, but the final downfall of the empire was
delayed above fifty years by a series of events that had sapped the
strength of the Mahometan empire. The rise and triumph of the Moguls and
Tartars under their emperors, descendants of Zingis Khan, had shaken the
globe from China to Poland and Greece (1206-1304). The sultans were
overthrown, and in the general disorder of the Mahometan world a veteran
and adventurous army, which included many Turkoman hordes, was dissolved
into factions who, under various chiefs, lived a life of rapine and
plunder. Some of these engaged in the service of Aladin (1219-1236),
Sultan of Iconium, and among these were the obscure fathers of the
Ottoman line.
Orchan ruled from 1326 to 1360, achieved the conquest of Bithynia, and
first led the Turks into Europe, and in 1353 established himself in the
Chersonesus, and occupied Gallipoli, the key of the Hellespont. Orchan
was succeeded by Amurath I. (1389-1403). Bajazet carried his victorious
arms from the Danube to the Euphrates, and the Roman world became
contracted to a corner of Thrace, between the Propontis and the Black
Sea, about fifty miles in length and thirty in breadth, a space of
ground not more extensive than the lesser principalities of Germany or
Italy, if the remains of Constantinople had not still represented the
wealth and populousness of a kingdom.
Under Manuel (1391-1425), the son and successor of John Palteologus,
Constantinople would have fallen before the might of the Sultan Bajazet
had not the Turkish Empire been oppressed by the revival of the Mogul
power under the victorious Timour, or Tamerlane. After achieving a
conquest of Persia (1380-1393), of Tartary (1370-1383), and Hindustan
(1398-1399), Timour, who aspired to the monarchy of the world, found
himself at length face to face with the Sultan Bajazet. Bajazet was
taken prisoner in the war that followed. Kept, probably only as a
precaution, in an iron cage, Bajazet attended the marches of his
conqueror, and died on March 9, 1403. Two years later, Timour also
passed away on the road to China. Of his empire to-day nothing remains.
Since the reign of his descendant Aurungzebe, his empire has been
dissolved (1659-1707); the treasures of Delhi have been rifled by a
Persian robber; and the riches of their kingdom is now possessed by the
Christians of a remote island in the northern ocean.
Far different was the fate of the Ottoman monarchy. The massive trunk
was bent to the ground, but no sooner did the hurricane pass away than
it again rose with fresh vigour and more lively vegetation. After a
period of civil war between the sons of Bajazet (1403-1421), the Ottoman
Empire was once more firmly established by his grandson, Amurath II.
(1421-1451).
One of the first expeditions undertaken by the new sultan was the siege
of Constantinople (1422), but the fortune rather than the genius of the
Emperor Manuel prevented the attempt. Amurath was recalled to Asia by a
domestic revolt, and the siege was raised.
While the sultan led his Janizaries to new conquests, the Byzantine
Empire was indulged in a servile and precarious respite of thirty years.
Manuel sank into the grave, and John Palæologus II. (1425-1448) was
permitted to reign for an annual tribute of 300,000 aspers and the
dereliction of almost all that he held beyond the suburbs of
Constantinople.
On November 1, 1448, Constantine, the last of the Roman emperors,
assumed the purple of the Cæsars. For three years he was allowed to
indulge himself in various private and public designs, the completion of
which were interrupted by a Turkish war, and finally buried in the ruins
of the empire.
_IV.--The Great Siege of Constantinople_
Mahomet II. succeeded his father Amurath on February 9, 1451. His
hostile designs against the capital were immediately seen in the
building of a fortress on the Bosphorus, which commanded the source
whence the city drew her supplies. In the following year a quarrel
between some Greeks and Turks gave him the excuse of declaring war. His
cannon--for the use of gunpowder, for some time the monopoly of the
Christian world, had been betrayed to Amurath by the Genoese--commanded
the port, and a tribute was exacted from all ships that entered the
harbour. But the actual siege was delayed until the ensuing spring of
1453.
Mahomet, in person, surveyed the city, encouraged his soldiers, and
discussed with his generals and engineers the best means of making the
assault. By his orders a huge cannon was built in Hadrianople. It fired
a ball one mile, and to convey it to its position before the walls, a
team of sixty oxen and the assistance of 200 men were employed. The
Emperor Constantine, unable to excite the sympathy of Europe, attempted
the best defence of which he was capable, with a force of 4,970 Romans
and 2,000 Genoese. A chain was drawn across the mouth of the harbour,
and whatever supplies arrived from Candia and the Black Sea were
detained for the public service.
The siege of Constantinople, in which scarcely 7,000 soldiers had to
defend a city sixteen miles in extent against the powers of the Ottoman
Empire, commenced on April 6, 1453. The last Constantine deserves the
name of a hero; his noble band of volunteers was inspired with Roman
virtue, and the foreign auxiliaries supported the honour of the Western
chivalry. But their inadequate stock of gunpowder was wasted in the
operations of each day. Their ordnance was not powerful either in size
or number; and if they possessed some heavy cannon, they feared to plant
them on the walls, lest the aged structure should be shaken and
overthrown by the explosion.
The great cannon of Mahomet could only be fired seven times in one day,
but the weight and repetition of the shots made some impression on the
walls. The Turks rushed to the edge of the ditch, attempted to fill the
enormous chasm and to build a road to the assault. In the attack, as
well as in the defence, ancient and modern artillery was employed.
Cannon and mechanical engines, the bullet and the battering-ram,
gunpowder and Greek fire, were engaged on both sides.
Christendom watched the struggle with coldness and apathy. Four ships,
which successfully forced an entrance into the harbour, were the limit
of their assistance. None the less, Mahomet meditated a retreat. Unless
the city could be attacked from the harbour, its reduction appeared to
be hopeless. In this perplexity the genius of Mahomet executed a plan of
a bold and marvellous cast. He transported his fleet over land for ten
miles. In the course of one night four-score light galleys and
brigantines painfully climbed the hill, steered over the plain, and were
launched from the declivity into the shallow waters of the harbour, far
above the molestation of the deeper vessels of the Greeks. A bridge, or
mole, hastily built, formed a base for one of his largest cannon. The
galleys, with troops and scaling ladders, approached the most accessible
side of the walls, and, after a siege of forty days, the diminutive
garrison, exhausted by a double attack, could hope no longer to avert
the fate of the capital.