Chapter LXI: Partition Of The Empire By The French And Venetians.—Part II.
Chapter LXI: Partition Of The Empire By The French And Venetians.—Part III.
Chapter LXI: Partition Of The Empire By The French And Venetians.—Part IV.
Chapter LXII: Greek Emperors Of Nice And Constantinople.—Part I.
Chapter LXII: Greek Emperors Of Nice And Constantinople.—Part II.
Chapter LXII: Greek Emperors Of Nice And Constantinople.—Part III.
Chapter LXIII: Civil Wars And The Ruin Of The Greek Empire.—Part I.
Chapter LXIII: Civil Wars And The Ruin Of The Greek Empire.—Part II.
Chapter LXIV: Moguls, Ottoman Turks.—Part I.
Chapter LXIV: Moguls, Ottoman Turks.—Part II.
Chapter LXIV: Moguls, Ottoman Turks.—Part III.
Chapter LXIV: Moguls, Ottoman Turks.—Part IV.
Chapter LXV: Elevation Of Timour Or Tamerlane, And His Death.—Part I.
Chapter LXV: Elevation Of Timour Or Tamerlane, And His Death.—Part II.
Chapter LXV: Elevation Of Timour Or Tamerlane, And His Death.—Part III.
Chapter LXVI: Union Of The Greek And Latin Churches.—Part I.
Chapter LXVI: Union Of The Greek And Latin Churches.—Part II.
Chapter LXVI: Union Of The Greek And Latin Churches.—Part III.
Chapter LXVI: Union Of The Greek And Latin Churches.—Part IV.
Chapter LXVII: Schism Of The Greeks And Latins.—Part I.
Chapter LXVII: Schism Of The Greeks And Latins.—Part II.
Chapter LXVIII: Reign Of Mahomet The Second, Extinction Of Eastern Empire.—Part I.
Chapter LXVIII: Reign Of Mahomet The Second, Extinction Of Eastern Empire.—Part II.
Chapter LXVIII: Reign Of Mahomet The Second, Extinction Of Eastern Empire.—Part III.
Chapter LXVIII: Reign Of Mahomet The Second, Extinction Of Eastern Empire.—Part IV.
Chapter LXIX: State Of Rome From The Twelfth Century.—Part I.
Chapter LXIX: State Of Rome From The Twelfth Century.—Part II.
Chapter LXIX: State Of Rome From The Twelfth Century.—Part III.
Chapter LXIX: State Of Rome From The Twelfth Century.—Part IV.
Chapter LXX: Final Settlement Of The Ecclesiastical State.—Part I.
Chapter LXX: Final Settlement Of The Ecclesiastical State.—Part II.
Chapter LXX: Final Settlement Of The Ecclesiastical State.—Part III.
Chapter LXX: Final Settlement Of The Ecclesiastical State.—Part IV.
Chapter LXXI: Prospect Of The Ruins Of Rome In The Fifteenth Century.—Part I.
Chapter LXXI: Prospect Of The Ruins Of Rome In The Fifteenth Century.—Part II.
Chapter LIX: The Crusades.—Part I.
Preservation Of The Greek Empire.—Numbers, Passage, And Event, Of
The Second And Third Crusades.—St. Bernard.— Reign Of Saladin In
Egypt And Syria.—His Conquest Of Jerusalem.—Naval
Crusades.—Richard The First Of England.— Pope Innocent The Third;
And The Fourth And Fifth Crusades.— The Emperor Frederic The
Second.—Louis The Ninth Of France; And The Two Last
Crusades.—Expulsion Of The Latins Or Franks By The Mamelukes.
In a style less grave than that of history, I should perhaps
compare the emperor Alexius 1 to the jackal, who is said to
follow the steps, and to devour the leavings, of the lion.
Whatever had been his fears and toils in the passage of the first
crusade, they were amply recompensed by the subsequent benefits
which he derived from the exploits of the Franks. His dexterity
and vigilance secured their first conquest of Nice; and from this
threatening station the Turks were compelled to evacuate the
neighborhood of Constantinople. While the crusaders, with blind
valor, advanced into the midland countries of Asia, the crafty
Greek improved the favorable occasion when the emirs of the
sea-coast were recalled to the standard of the sultan. The Turks
were driven from the Isles of Rhodes and Chios: the cities of
Ephesus and Smyrna, of Sardes, Philadelphia, and Laodicea, were
restored to the empire, which Alexius enlarged from the
Hellespont to the banks of the Mæander, and the rocky shores of
Pamphylia. The churches resumed their splendor: the towns were
rebuilt and fortified; and the desert country was peopled with
colonies of Christians, who were gently removed from the more
distant and dangerous frontier. In these paternal cares, we may
forgive Alexius, if he forgot the deliverance of the holy
sepulchre; but, by the Latins, he was stigmatized with the foul
reproach of treason and desertion. They had sworn fidelity and
obedience to his throne; but _he_ had promised to assist their
enterprise in person, or, at least, with his troops and
treasures: his base retreat dissolved their obligations; and the
sword, which had been the instrument of their victory, was the
pledge and title of their just independence. It does not appear
that the emperor attempted to revive his obsolete claims over the
kingdom of Jerusalem; 2 but the borders of Cilicia and Syria were
more recent in his possession, and more accessible to his arms.
The great army of the crusaders was annihilated or dispersed; the
principality of Antioch was left without a head, by the surprise
and captivity of Bohemond; his ransom had oppressed him with a
heavy debt; and his Norman followers were insufficient to repel
the hostilities of the Greeks and Turks. In this distress,
Bohemond embraced a magnanimous resolution, of leaving the
defence of Antioch to his kinsman, the faithful Tancred; of
arming the West against the Byzantine empire; and of executing
the design which he inherited from the lessons and example of his
father Guiscard. His embarkation was clandestine: and, if we may
credit a tale of the princess Anne, he passed the hostile sea
closely secreted in a coffin. 3 But his reception in France was
dignified by the public applause, and his marriage with the
king’s daughter: his return was glorious, since the bravest
spirits of the age enlisted under his veteran command; and he
repassed the Adriatic at the head of five thousand horse and
forty thousand foot, assembled from the most remote climates of
Europe. 4 The strength of Durazzo, and prudence of Alexius, the
progress of famine and approach of winter, eluded his ambitious
hopes; and the venal confederates were seduced from his standard.
A treaty of peace 5 suspended the fears of the Greeks; and they
were finally delivered by the death of an adversary, whom neither
oaths could bind, nor dangers could appal, nor prosperity could
satiate. His children succeeded to the principality of Antioch;
but the boundaries were strictly defined, the homage was clearly
stipulated, and the cities of Tarsus and Malmistra were restored
to the Byzantine emperors. Of the coast of Anatolia, they
possessed the entire circuit from Trebizond to the Syrian gates.
The Seljukian dynasty of Roum 6 was separated on all sides from
the sea and their Mussulman brethren; the power of the sultan was
shaken by the victories and even the defeats of the Franks; and
after the loss of Nice, they removed their throne to Cogni or
Iconium, an obscure and in land town above three hundred miles
from Constantinople. 7 Instead of trembling for their capital,
the Comnenian princes waged an offensive war against the Turks,
and the first crusade prevented the fall of the declining empire.
1 (return) [ Anna Comnena relates her father’s conquests in Asia
Minor Alexiad, l. xi. p. 321—325, l. xiv. p. 419; his Cilician
war against Tancred and Bohemond, p. 328—324; the war of Epirus,
with tedious prolixity, l. xii. xiii. p. 345—406; the death of
Bohemond, l. xiv. p. 419.]
2 (return) [ The kings of Jerusalem submitted, however, to a
nominal dependence, and in the dates of their inscriptions, (one
is still legible in the church of Bethlem,) they respectfully
placed before their own the name of the reigning emperor,
(Ducange, Dissertations sur Joinville xxvii. p. 319.)]
3 (return) [ Anna Comnena adds, that, to complete the imitation,
he was shut up with a dead cock; and condescends to wonder how
the Barbarian could endure the confinement and putrefaction. This
absurd tale is unknown to the Latins. * Note: The Greek writers,
in general, Zonaras, p. 2, 303, and Glycas, p. 334 agree in this
story with the princess Anne, except in the absurd addition of
the dead cock. Ducange has already quoted some instances where a
similar stratagem had been adopted by _Norman_ princes. On this
authority Wilken inclines to believe the fact. Appendix to vol.
ii. p. 14.—M.]
4 (return) [ Ἀπὸ Θύλης, in the Byzantine geography, must mean
England; yet we are more credibly informed, that our Henry I.
would not suffer him to levy any troops in his kingdom, (Ducange,
Not. ad Alexiad. p. 41.)]
5 (return) [ The copy of the treaty (Alexiad. l. xiii. p.
406—416) is an original and curious piece, which would require,
and might afford, a good map of the principality of Antioch.]
6 (return) [ See, in the learned work of M. De Guignes, (tom. ii.
part ii.,) the history of the Seljukians of Iconium, Aleppo, and
Damascus, as far as it may be collected from the Greeks, Latins,
and Arabians. The last are ignorant or regardless of the affairs
of _Roum_.]
7 (return) [ Iconium is mentioned as a station by Xenophon, and
by Strabo, with an ambiguous title of Κωμόπολις, (Cellarius, tom.
ii. p. 121.) Yet St. Paul found in that place a multitude
(πλῆθος) of Jews and Gentiles. under the corrupt name of
_Kunijah_, it is described as a great city, with a river and
garden, three leagues from the mountains, and decorated (I know
not why) with Plato’s tomb, (Abulfeda, tabul. xvii. p. 303 vers.
Reiske; and the Index Geographicus of Schultens from Ibn Said.)]
In the twelfth century, three great emigrations marched by land
from the West for the relief of Palestine. The soldiers and
pilgrims of Lombardy, France, and Germany were excited by the
example and success of the first crusade. 8 Forty-eight years
after the deliverance of the holy sepulchre, the emperor, and the
French king, Conrad the Third and Louis the Seventh, undertook
the second crusade to support the falling fortunes of the Latins.
9 A grand division of the third crusade was led by the emperor
Frederic Barbarossa, 10 who sympathized with his brothers of
France and England in the common loss of Jerusalem. These three
expeditions may be compared in their resemblance of the greatness
of numbers, their passage through the Greek empire, and the
nature and event of their Turkish warfare, and a brief parallel
may save the repetition of a tedious narrative. However splendid
it may seem, a regular story of the crusades would exhibit the
perpetual return of the same causes and effects; and the frequent
attempts for the defence or recovery of the Holy Land would
appear so many faint and unsuccessful copies of the original.
8 (return) [ For this supplement to the first crusade, see Anna
Comnena, (Alexias, l. xi. p. 331, &c., and the viiith book of
Albert Aquensis.)]
9 (return) [ For the second crusade, of Conrad III. and Louis
VII., see William of Tyre, (l. xvi. c. 18—19,) Otho of Frisingen,
(l. i. c. 34—45 59, 60,) Matthew Paris, (Hist. Major. p. 68,)
Struvius, (Corpus Hist Germanicæ, p. 372, 373,) Scriptores Rerum
Francicarum à Duchesne tom. iv.: Nicetas, in Vit. Manuel, l. i.
c. 4, 5, 6, p. 41—48, Cinnamus l. ii. p. 41—49.]
10 (return) [ For the third crusade, of Frederic Barbarossa, see
Nicetas in Isaac Angel. l. ii. c. 3—8, p. 257—266. Struv.
(Corpus. Hist. Germ. p. 414,) and two historians, who probably
were spectators, Tagino, (in Scriptor. Freher. tom. i. p.
406—416, edit Struv.,) and the Anonymus de Expeditione Asiaticâ
Fred. I. (in Canisii Antiq. Lection. tom. iii. p. ii. p. 498—526,
edit. Basnage.)]
I. Of the swarms that so closely trod in the footsteps of the
first pilgrims, the chiefs were equal in rank, though unequal in
fame and merit, to Godfrey of Bouillon and his
fellow-adventurers. At their head were displayed the banners of
the dukes of Burgundy, Bavaria, and Aquitain; the first a
descendant of Hugh Capet, the second, a father of the Brunswick
line: the archbishop of Milan, a temporal prince, transported,
for the benefit of the Turks, the treasures and ornaments of his
church and palace; and the veteran crusaders, Hugh the Great and
Stephen of Chartres, returned to consummate their unfinished vow.
The huge and disorderly bodies of their followers moved forward
in two columns; and if the first consisted of two hundred and
sixty thousand persons, the second might possibly amount to sixty
thousand horse and one hundred thousand foot. 11 111 The armies
of the second crusade might have claimed the conquest of Asia;
the nobles of France and Germany were animated by the presence of
their sovereigns; and both the rank and personal character of
Conrad and Louis gave a dignity to their cause, and a discipline
to their force, which might be vainly expected from the feudatory
chiefs. The cavalry of the emperor, and that of the king, was
each composed of seventy thousand knights, and their immediate
attendants in the field; 12 and if the light-armed troops, the
peasant infantry, the women and children, the priests and monks,
be rigorously excluded, the full account will scarcely be
satisfied with four hundred thousand souls. The West, from Rome
to Britain, was called into action; the kings of Poland and
Bohemia obeyed the summons of Conrad; and it is affirmed by the
Greeks and Latins, that, in the passage of a strait or river, the
Byzantine agents, after a tale of nine hundred thousand, desisted
from the endless and formidable computation. 13 In the third
crusade, as the French and English preferred the navigation of
the Mediterranean, the host of Frederic Barbarossa was less
numerous. Fifteen thousand knights, and as many squires, were the
flower of the German chivalry: sixty thousand horse, and one
hundred thousand foot, were mustered by the emperor in the plains
of Hungary; and after such repetitions, we shall no longer be
startled at the six hundred thousand pilgrims, which credulity
has ascribed to this last emigration. 14 Such extravagant
reckonings prove only the astonishment of contemporaries; but
their astonishment most strongly bears testimony to the existence
of an enormous, though indefinite, multitude. The Greeks might
applaud their superior knowledge of the arts and stratagems of
war, but they confessed the strength and courage of the French
cavalry, and the infantry of the Germans; 15 and the strangers
are described as an iron race, of gigantic stature, who darted
fire from their eyes, and spilt blood like water on the ground.
Under the banners of Conrad, a troop of females rode in the
attitude and armor of men; and the chief of these Amazons, from
her gilt spurs and buskins, obtained the epithet of the
Golden-footed Dame.
11 (return) [ Anne, who states these later swarms at 40,000 horse
and 100,000 foot, calls them Normans, and places at their head
two brothers of Flanders. The Greeks were strangely ignorant of
the names, families, and possessions of the Latin princes.]
111 (return) [ It was this army of pilgrims, the first body of
which was headed by the archbishop of Milan and Count Albert of
Blandras, which set forth on the wild, yet, with a more
disciplined army, not impolitic, enterprise of striking at the
heart of the Mahometan power, by attacking the sultan in Bagdad.
For their adventures and fate, see Wilken, vol. ii. p. 120, &c.,
Michaud, book iv.—M.]
12 (return) [ William of Tyre, and Matthew Paris, reckon 70,000
loricati in each of the armies.]
13 (return) [ The imperfect enumeration is mentioned by Cinnamus,
(ennenhkonta muriadeV,) and confirmed by Odo de Diogilo apud
Ducange ad Cinnamum, with the more precise sum of 900,556. Why
must therefore the version and comment suppose the modest and
insufficient reckoning of 90,000? Does not Godfrey of Viterbo
(Pantheon, p. xix. in Muratori, tom. vii. p. 462) exclaim?
——Numerum si poscere quæras, Millia millena militis agmen erat.]
14 (return) [ This extravagant account is given by Albert of
Stade, (apud Struvium, p. 414;) my calculation is borrowed from
Godfrey of Viterbo, Arnold of Lubeck, apud eundem, and Bernard
Thesaur. (c. 169, p. 804.) The original writers are silent. The
Mahometans gave him 200,000, or 260,000, men, (Bohadin, in Vit.
Saladin, p. 110.)]
15 (return) [ I must observe, that, in the second and third
crusades, the subjects of Conrad and Frederic are styled by the
Greeks and Orientals _Alamanni_. The Lechi and Tzechi of Cinnamus
are the Poles and Bohemians; and it is for the French that he
reserves the ancient appellation of Germans. He likewise names
the Brittioi, or Britannoi. * Note: * He names both—Brittioi te
kai Britanoi.—M.]
II. The number and character of the strangers was an object of
terror to the effeminate Greeks, and the sentiment of fear is
nearly allied to that of hatred. This aversion was suspended or
softened by the apprehension of the Turkish power; and the
invectives of the Latins will not bias our more candid belief,
that the emperor Alexius dissembled their insolence, eluded their
hostilities, counselled their rashness, and opened to their ardor
the road of pilgrimage and conquest. But when the Turks had been
driven from Nice and the sea-coast, when the Byzantine princes no
longer dreaded the distant sultans of Cogni, they felt with purer
indignation the free and frequent passage of the western
Barbarians, who violated the majesty, and endangered the safety,
of the empire. The second and third crusades were undertaken
under the reign of Manuel Comnenus and Isaac Angelus. Of the
former, the passions were always impetuous, and often malevolent;
and the natural union of a cowardly and a mischievous temper was
exemplified in the latter, who, without merit or mercy, could
punish a tyrant, and occupy his throne. It was secretly, and
perhaps tacitly, resolved by the prince and people to destroy, or
at least to discourage, the pilgrims, by every species of injury
and oppression; and their want of prudence and discipline
continually afforded the pretence or the opportunity. The Western
monarchs had stipulated a safe passage and fair market in the
country of their Christian brethren; the treaty had been ratified
by oaths and hostages; and the poorest soldier of Frederic’s army
was furnished with three marks of silver to defray his expenses
on the road. But every engagement was violated by treachery and
injustice; and the complaints of the Latins are attested by the
honest confession of a Greek historian, who has dared to prefer
truth to his country. 16 Instead of a hospitable reception, the
gates of the cities, both in Europe and Asia, were closely barred
against the crusaders; and the scanty pittance of food was let
down in baskets from the walls. Experience or foresight might
excuse this timid jealousy; but the common duties of humanity
prohibited the mixture of chalk, or other poisonous ingredients,
in the bread; and should Manuel be acquitted of any foul
connivance, he is guilty of coining base money for the purpose of
trading with the pilgrims. In every step of their march they were
stopped or misled: the governors had private orders to fortify
the passes and break down the bridges against them: the
stragglers were pillaged and murdered: the soldiers and horses
were pierced in the woods by arrows from an invisible hand; the
sick were burnt in their beds; and the dead bodies were hung on
gibbets along the highways. These injuries exasperated the
champions of the cross, who were not endowed with evangelical
patience; and the Byzantine princes, who had provoked the unequal
conflict, promoted the embarkation and march of these formidable
guests. On the verge of the Turkish frontier Barbarossa spared
the guilty Philadelphia, 17 rewarded the hospitable Laodicea, and
deplored the hard necessity that had stained his sword with any
drops of Christian blood. In their intercourse with the monarchs
of Germany and France, the pride of the Greeks was exposed to an
anxious trial. They might boast that on the first interview the
seat of Louis was a low stool, beside the throne of Manuel; 18
but no sooner had the French king transported his army beyond the
Bosphorus, than he refused the offer of a second conference,
unless his brother would meet him on equal terms, either on the
sea or land. With Conrad and Frederic, the ceremonial was still
nicer and more difficult: like the successors of Constantine,
they styled themselves emperors of the Romans; 19 and firmly
maintained the purity of their title and dignity. The first of
these representatives of Charlemagne would only converse with
Manuel on horseback in the open field; the second, by passing the
Hellespont rather than the Bosphorus, declined the view of
Constantinople and its sovereign. An emperor, who had been
crowned at Rome, was reduced in the Greek epistles to the humble
appellation of _Rex_, or prince, of the Alemanni; and the vain
and feeble Angelus affected to be ignorant of the name of one of
the greatest men and monarchs of the age. While they viewed with
hatred and suspicion the Latin pilgrims the Greek emperors
maintained a strict, though secret, alliance with the Turks and
Saracens. Isaac Angelus complained, that by his friendship for
the great Saladin he had incurred the enmity of the Franks; and a
mosque was founded at Constantinople for the public exercise of
the religion of Mahomet. 20
16 (return) [ Nicetas was a child at the second crusade, but in
the third he commanded against the Franks the important post of
Philippopolis. Cinnamus is infected with national prejudice and
pride.]
17 (return) [ The conduct of the Philadelphians is blamed by
Nicetas, while the anonymous German accuses the rudeness of his
countrymen, (culpâ nostrâ.) History would be pleasant, if we were
embarrassed only by _such_ contradictions. It is likewise from
Nicetas, that we learn the pious and humane sorrow of Frederic.]
18 (return) [ Cqamalh edra, which Cinnamus translates into Latin
by the word Sellion. Ducange works very hard to save his king and
country from such ignominy, (sur Joinville, dissertat. xxvii. p.
317—320.) Louis afterwards insisted on a meeting in mari ex æquo,
not ex equo, according to the laughable readings of some MSS.]
19 (return) [ Ego Romanorum imperator sum, ille Romaniorum,
(Anonym Canis. p. 512.) The public and historical style of the
Greeks was Ριξ... _princeps_. Yet Cinnamus owns, that Ἰμπεράτορ
is synonymous to Βασιλεὺς.]
20 (return) [ In the Epistles of Innocent III., (xiii. p. 184,)
and the History of Bohadin, (p. 129, 130,) see the views of a
pope and a cadhi on this _singular_toleration.]
III. The swarms that followed the first crusade were destroyed in
Anatolia by famine, pestilence, and the Turkish arrows; and the
princes only escaped with some squadrons of horse to accomplish
their lamentable pilgrimage. A just opinion may be formed of
their knowledge and humanity; of their knowledge, from the design
of subduing Persia and Chorasan in their way to Jerusalem; 201 of
their humanity, from the massacre of the Christian people, a
friendly city, who came out to meet them with palms and crosses
in their hands. The arms of Conrad and Louis were less cruel and
imprudent; but the event of the second crusade was still more
ruinous to Christendom; and the Greek Manuel is accused by his
own subjects of giving seasonable intelligence to the sultan, and
treacherous guides to the Latin princes. Instead of crushing the
common foe, by a double attack at the same time but on different
sides, the Germans were urged by emulation, and the French were
retarded by jealousy. Louis had scarcely passed the Bosphorus
when he was met by the returning emperor, who had lost the
greater part of his army in glorious, but unsuccessful, actions
on the banks of the Mæander. The contrast of the pomp of his
rival hastened the retreat of Conrad: 202 the desertion of his
independent vassals reduced him to his hereditary troops; and he
borrowed some Greek vessels to execute by sea the pilgrimage of
Palestine. Without studying the lessons of experience, or the
nature of the war, the king of France advanced through the same
country to a similar fate. The vanguard, which bore the royal
banner and the oriflamme of St. Denys, 21 had doubled their march
with rash and inconsiderate speed; and the rear, which the king
commanded in person, no longer found their companions in the
evening camp. In darkness and disorder, they were encompassed,
assaulted, and overwhelmed, by the innumerable host of Turks,
who, in the art of war, were superior to the Christians of the
twelfth century. 211 Louis, who climbed a tree in the general
discomfiture, was saved by his own valor and the ignorance of his
adversaries; and with the dawn of day he escaped alive, but
almost alone, to the camp of the vanguard. But instead of
pursuing his expedition by land, he was rejoiced to shelter the
relics of his army in the friendly seaport of Satalia. From
thence he embarked for Antioch; but so penurious was the supply
of Greek vessels, that they could only afford room for his
knights and nobles; and the plebeian crowd of infantry was left
to perish at the foot of the Pamphylian hills. The emperor and
the king embraced and wept at Jerusalem; their martial trains,
the remnant of mighty armies, were joined to the Christian powers
of Syria, and a fruitless siege of Damascus was the final effort
of the second crusade. Conrad and Louis embarked for Europe with
the personal fame of piety and courage; but the Orientals had
braved these potent monarchs of the Franks, with whose names and
military forces they had been so often threatened. 22 Perhaps
they had still more to fear from the veteran genius of Frederic
the First, who in his youth had served in Asia under his uncle
Conrad. Forty campaigns in Germany and Italy had taught
Barbarossa to command; and his soldiers, even the princes of the
empire, were accustomed under his reign to obey. As soon as he
lost sight of Philadelphia and Laodicea, the last cities of the
Greek frontier, he plunged into the salt and barren desert, a
land (says the historian) of horror and tribulation. 23 During
twenty days, every step of his fainting and sickly march was
besieged by the innumerable hordes of Turkmans, 24 whose numbers
and fury seemed after each defeat to multiply and inflame. The
emperor continued to struggle and to suffer; and such was the
measure of his calamities, that when he reached the gates of
Iconium, no more than one thousand knights were able to serve on
horseback. By a sudden and resolute assault he defeated the
guards, and stormed the capital of the sultan, 25 who humbly sued
for pardon and peace. The road was now open, and Frederic
advanced in a career of triumph, till he was unfortunately
drowned in a petty torrent of Cilicia. 26 The remainder of his
Germans was consumed by sickness and desertion: and the emperor’s
son expired with the greatest part of his Swabian vassals at the
siege of Acre. Among the Latin heroes, Godfrey of Bouillon and
Frederic Barbarossa could alone achieve the passage of the Lesser
Asia; yet even their success was a warning; and in the last and
most experienced age of the crusades, every nation preferred the
sea to the toils and perils of an inland expedition. 27
201 (return) [ This was the design of the pilgrims under the
archbishop of Milan. See note, p. 102.—M.]
202 (return) [ Conrad had advanced with part of his army along a
central road, between that on the coast and that which led to
Iconium. He had been betrayed by the Greeks, his army destroyed
without a battle. Wilken, vol. iii. p. 165. Michaud, vol. ii. p.
156. Conrad advanced again with Louis as far as Ephesus, and from
thence, at the invitation of Manuel, returned to Constantinople.
It was Louis who, at the passage of the Mæander, was engaged in a
“glorious action.” Wilken, vol. iii. p. 179. Michaud vol. ii. p.
160. Gibbon followed Nicetas.—M.]
21 (return) [ As counts of Vexin, the kings of France were the
vassals and advocates of the monastery of St. Denys. The saint’s
peculiar banner, which they received from the abbot, was of a
square form, and a red or _flaming_ color. The _oriflamme_
appeared at the head of the French armies from the xiith to the
xvth century, (Ducange sur Joinville, Dissert. xviii. p.
244—253.)]
211 (return) [ They descended the heights to a beautiful valley
which by beneath them. The Turks seized the heights which
separated the two divisions of the army. The modern historians
represent differently the act to which Louis owed his safety,
which Gibbon has described by the undignified phrase, “he climbed
a tree.” According to Michaud, vol. ii. p. 164, the king got upon
a rock, with his back against a tree; according to Wilken, vol.
iii., he dragged himself up to the top of the rock by the roots
of a tree, and continued to defend himself till nightfall.—M.]
22 (return) [ The original French histories of the second crusade
are the Gesta Ludovici VII. published in the ivth volume of
Duchesne’s collection. The same volume contains many original
letters of the king, of Suger his minister, &c., the best
documents of authentic history.]
23 (return) [ Terram horroris et salsuginis, terram siccam
sterilem, inamnam. Anonym. Canis. p. 517. The emphatic language
of a sufferer.]
24 (return) [ Gens innumera, sylvestris, indomita, prædones sine
ductore. The sultan of Cogni might sincerely rejoice in their
defeat. Anonym. Canis. p. 517, 518.]
25 (return) [ See, in the anonymous writer in the Collection of
Canisius, Tagino and Bohadin, (Vit. Saladin. p. 119, 120,) the
ambiguous conduct of Kilidge Arslan, sultan of Cogni, who hated
and feared both Saladin and Frederic.]
26 (return) [ The desire of comparing two great men has tempted
many writers to drown Frederic in the River Cydnus, in which
Alexander so imprudently bathed, (Q. Curt. l. iii c. 4, 5.) But,
from the march of the emperor, I rather judge, that his Saleph is
the Calycadnus, a stream of less fame, but of a longer course. *
Note: * It is now called the Girama: its course is described in
M’Donald Kinneir’s Travels.—M.]
27 (return) [ Marinus Sanutus, A.D. 1321, lays it down as a
precept, Quod stolus ecclesiæ per terram nullatenus est ducenda.
He resolves, by the divine aid, the objection, or rather
exception, of the first crusade, (Secreta Fidelium Crucis, l. ii.
pars ii. c. i. p. 37.)]
The enthusiasm of the first crusade is a natural and simple
event, while hope was fresh, danger untried, and enterprise
congenial to the spirit of the times. But the obstinate
perseverance of Europe may indeed excite our pity and admiration;
that no instruction should have been drawn from constant and
adverse experience; that the same confidence should have
repeatedly grown from the same failures; that six succeeding
generations should have rushed headlong down the precipice that
was open before them; and that men of every condition should have
staked their public and private fortunes on the desperate
adventure of possessing or recovering a tombstone two thousand
miles from their country. In a period of two centuries after the
council of Clermont, each spring and summer produced a new
emigration of pilgrim warriors for the defence of the Holy Land;
but the seven great armaments or crusades were excited by some
impending or recent calamity: the nations were moved by the
authority of their pontiffs, and the example of their kings:
their zeal was kindled, and their reason was silenced, by the
voice of their holy orators; and among these, Bernard, 28 the
monk, or the saint, may claim the most honorable place. 281 About
eight years before the first conquest of Jerusalem, he was born
of a noble family in Burgundy; at the age of three-and-twenty he
buried himself in the monastery of Citeaux, then in the primitive
fervor of the institution; at the end of two years he led forth
her third colony, or daughter, to the valley of Clairvaux 29 in
Champagne; and was content, till the hour of his death, with the
humble station of abbot of his own community. A philosophic age
has abolished, with too liberal and indiscriminate disdain, the
honors of these spiritual heroes. The meanest among them are
distinguished by some energies of the mind; they were at least
superior to their votaries and disciples; and, in the race of
superstition, they attained the prize for which such numbers
contended. In speech, in writing, in action, Bernard stood high
above his rivals and contemporaries; his compositions are not
devoid of wit and eloquence; and he seems to have preserved as
much reason and humanity as may be reconciled with the character
of a saint. In a secular life, he would have shared the seventh
part of a private inheritance; by a vow of poverty and penance,
by closing his eyes against the visible world, 30 by the refusal
of all ecclesiastical dignities, the abbot of Clairvaux became
the oracle of Europe, and the founder of one hundred and sixty
convents. Princes and pontiffs trembled at the freedom of his
apostolical censures: France, England, and Milan, consulted and
obeyed his judgment in a schism of the church: the debt was
repaid by the gratitude of Innocent the Second; and his
successor, Eugenius the Third, was the friend and disciple of the
holy Bernard. It was in the proclamation of the second crusade
that he shone as the missionary and prophet of God, who called
the nations to the defence of his holy sepulchre. 31 At the
parliament of Vezelay he spoke before the king; and Louis the
Seventh, with his nobles, received their crosses from his hand.
The abbot of Clairvaux then marched to the less easy conquest of
the emperor Conrad: 311 a phlegmatic people, ignorant of his
language, was transported by the pathetic vehemence of his tone
and gestures; and his progress, from Constance to Cologne, was
the triumph of eloquence and zeal. Bernard applauds his own
success in the depopulation of Europe; affirms that cities and
castles were emptied of their inhabitants; and computes, that
only one man was left behind for the consolation of seven widows.
32 The blind fanatics were desirous of electing him for their
general; but the example of the hermit Peter was before his eyes;
and while he assured the crusaders of the divine favor, he
prudently declined a military command, in which failure and
victory would have been almost equally disgraceful to his
character. 33 Yet, after the calamitous event, the abbot of
Clairvaux was loudly accused as a false prophet, the author of
the public and private mourning; his enemies exulted, his friends
blushed, and his apology was slow and unsatisfactory. He
justifies his obedience to the commands of the pope; expatiates
on the mysterious ways of Providence; imputes the misfortunes of
the pilgrims to their own sins; and modestly insinuates, that his
mission had been approved by signs and wonders. 34 Had the fact
been certain, the argument would be decisive; and his faithful
disciples, who enumerate twenty or thirty miracles in a day,
appeal to the public assemblies of France and Germany, in which
they were performed. 35 At the present hour, such prodigies will
not obtain credit beyond the precincts of Clairvaux; but in the
preternatural cures of the blind, the lame, and the sick, who
were presented to the man of God, it is impossible for us to
ascertain the separate shares of accident, of fancy, of
imposture, and of fiction.
28 (return) [ The most authentic information of St. Bernard must
be drawn from his own writings, published in a correct edition by
Père Mabillon, and reprinted at Venice, 1750, in six volumes in
folio. Whatever friendship could recollect, or superstition could
add, is contained in the two lives, by his disciples, in the vith
volume: whatever learning and criticism could ascertain, may be
found in the prefaces of the Benedictine editor.]
281 (return) [ Gibbon, whose account of the crusades is perhaps
the least accurate and satisfactory chapter in his History, has
here failed in that lucid arrangement, which in general gives
perspicuity to his most condensed and crowded narratives. He has
unaccountably, and to the great perplexity of the reader, placed
the preaching of St Bernard after the second crusade to which i
led.—M.]
29 (return) [ Clairvaux, surnamed the valley of Absynth, is
situate among the woods near Bar sur Aube in Champagne. St.
Bernard would blush at the pomp of the church and monastery; he
would ask for the library, and I know not whether he would be
much edified by a tun of 800 muids, (914 1-7 hogsheads,) which
almost rivals that of Heidelberg, (Mélanges tirés d’une Grande
Bibliothèque, tom. xlvi. p. 15—20.)]
30 (return) [ The disciples of the saint (Vit. ima, l. iii. c. 2,
p. 1232. Vit. iida, c. 16, No. 45, p. 1383) record a marvellous
example of his pious apathy. Juxta lacum etiam Lausannensem
totius diei itinere pergens, penitus non attendit aut se videre
non vidit. Cum enim vespere facto de eodem lacû socii
colloquerentur, interrogabat eos ubi lacus ille esset, et mirati
sunt universi. To admire or despise St. Bernard as he ought, the
reader, like myself, should have before the windows of his
library the beauties of that incomparable landscape.]
31 (return) [ Otho Frising. l. i. c. 4. Bernard. Epist. 363, ad
Francos Orientales Opp. tom. i. p. 328. Vit. ima, l. iii. c. 4,
tom. vi. p. 1235.]
311 (return) [ Bernard had a nobler object in his expedition into
Germany—to arrest the fierce and merciless persecution of the
Jews, which was preparing, under the monk Radulph, to renew the
frightful scenes which had preceded the first crusade, in the
flourishing cities on the banks of the Rhine. The Jews
acknowledge the Christian intervention of St. Bernard. See the
curious extract from the History of Joseph ben Meir. Wilken, vol.
iii. p. 1. and p. 63.—M.]
32 (return) [ Mandastis et obedivi.... multiplicati sunt super
numerum; vacuantur urbes et castella; et _pene_ jam non inveniunt
quem apprehendant septem mulieres unum virum; adeo ubique viduæ
vivis remanent viris. Bernard. Epist. p. 247. We must be careful
not to construe _pene_ as a substantive.]
33 (return) [ Quis ego sum ut disponam acies, ut egrediar ante
facies armatorum, aut quid tam remotum a professione meâ, si
vires, si peritia, &c. Epist. 256, tom. i. p. 259. He speaks with
contempt of the hermit Peter, vir quidam, Epist. 363.]
34 (return) [ Sic dicunt forsitan isti, unde scimus quòd a Domino
sermo egressus sit? Quæ signa tu facis ut credamus tibi? Non est
quod ad ista ipse respondeam; parcendum verecundiæ meæ, responde
tu pro me, et pro te ipso, secundum quæ vidisti et audisti, et
secundum quod te inspiraverit Deus. Consolat. l. ii. c. 1. Opp.
tom. ii. p. 421—423.]
35 (return) [ See the testimonies in Vita ima, l. iv. c. 5, 6.
Opp. tom. vi. p. 1258—1261, l. vi. c. 1—17, p. 1286—1314.]
Omnipotence itself cannot escape the murmurs of its discordant
votaries; since the same dispensation which was applauded as a
deliverance in Europe, was deplored, and perhaps arraigned, as a
calamity in Asia. After the loss of Jerusalem, the Syrian
fugitives diffused their consternation and sorrow; Bagdad mourned
in the dust; the cadhi Zeineddin of Damascus tore his beard in
the caliph’s presence; and the whole divan shed tears at his
melancholy tale. 36 But the commanders of the faithful could only
weep; they were themselves captives in the hands of the Turks:
some temporal power was restored to the last age of the
Abbassides; but their humble ambition was confined to Bagdad and
the adjacent province. Their tyrants, the Seljukian sultans, had
followed the common law of the Asiatic dynasties, the unceasing
round of valor, greatness, discord, degeneracy, and decay; their
spirit and power were unequal to the defence of religion; and, in
his distant realm of Persia, the Christians were strangers to the
name and the arms of Sangiar, the last hero of his race. 37 While
the sultans were involved in the silken web of the harem, the
pious task was undertaken by their slaves, the Atabeks, 38 a
Turkish name, which, like the Byzantine patricians, may be
translated by Father of the Prince. Ascansar, a valiant Turk, had
been the favorite of Malek Shaw, from whom he received the
privilege of standing on the right hand of the throne; but, in
the civil wars that ensued on the monarch’s death, he lost his
head and the government of Aleppo. His domestic emirs persevered
in their attachment to his son Zenghi, who proved his first arms
against the Franks in the defeat of Antioch: thirty campaigns in
the service of the caliph and sultan established his military
fame; and he was invested with the command of Mosul, as the only
champion that could avenge the cause of the prophet. The public
hope was not disappointed: after a siege of twenty-five days, he
stormed the city of Edessa, and recovered from the Franks their
conquests beyond the Euphrates: 39 the martial tribes of
Curdistan were subdued by the independent sovereign of Mosul and
Aleppo: his soldiers were taught to behold the camp as their only
country; they trusted to his liberality for their rewards; and
their absent families were protected by the vigilance of Zenghi.
At the head of these veterans, his son Noureddin gradually united
the Mahometan powers; 391 added the kingdom of Damascus to that
of Aleppo, and waged a long and successful war against the
Christians of Syria; he spread his ample reign from the Tigris to
the Nile, and the Abbassides rewarded their faithful servant with
all the titles and prerogatives of royalty. The Latins themselves
were compelled to own the wisdom and courage, and even the
justice and piety, of this implacable adversary. 40 In his life
and government the holy warrior revived the zeal and simplicity
of the first caliphs. Gold and silk were banished from his
palace; the use of wine from his dominions; the public revenue
was scrupulously applied to the public service; and the frugal
household of Noureddin was maintained from his legitimate share
of the spoil which he vested in the purchase of a private estate.
His favorite sultana sighed for some female object of expense.
“Alas,” replied the king, “I fear God, and am no more than the
treasurer of the Moslems. Their property I cannot alienate; but I
still possess three shops in the city of Hems: these you may
take; and these alone can I bestow.” His chamber of justice was
the terror of the great and the refuge of the poor. Some years
after the sultan’s death, an oppressed subject called aloud in
the streets of Damascus, “O Noureddin, Noureddin, where art thou
now? Arise, arise, to pity and protect us!” A tumult was
apprehended, and a living tyrant blushed or trembled at the name
of a departed monarch.
36 (return) [ Abulmahasen apud de Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom.
ii. p. ii. p. 99.]
37 (return) [ See his _article_ in the Bibliothèque Orientale of
D’Herbelot, and De Guignes, tom. ii. p. i. p. 230—261. Such was
his valor, that he was styled the second Alexander; and such the
extravagant love of his subjects, that they prayed for the sultan
a year after his decease. Yet Sangiar might have been made
prisoner by the Franks, as well as by the Uzes. He reigned near
fifty years, (A.D. 1103—1152,) and was a munificent patron of
Persian poetry.]
38 (return) [ See the Chronology of the Atabeks of Irak and
Syria, in De Guignes, tom. i. p. 254; and the reigns of Zenghi
and Noureddin in the same writer, (tom. ii. p. ii. p. 147—221,)
who uses the Arabic text of Benelathir, Ben Schouna and Abulfeda;
the Bibliothèque Orientale, under the articles _Atabeks_ and
_Noureddin_, and the Dynasties of Abulpharagius, p. 250—267,
vers. Pocock.]
39 (return) [ William of Tyre (l. xvi. c. 4, 5, 7) describes the
loss of Edessa, and the death of Zenghi. The corruption of his
name into _Sanguin_, afforded the Latins a comfortable allusion
to his _sanguinary_ character and end, fit sanguine
sanguinolentus.]
391 (return) [ On Noureddin’s conquest of Damascus, see extracts
from Arabian writers prefixed to the second part of the third
volume of Wilken.—M.]
40 (return) [ Noradinus (says William of Tyre, l. xx. 33) maximus
nominis et fidei Christianæ persecutor; princeps tamen justus,
vafer, providus’ et secundum gentis suæ traditiones religiosus.
To this Catholic witness we may add the primate of the Jacobites,
(Abulpharag. p. 267,) quo non alter erat inter reges vitæ ratione
magis laudabili, aut quæ pluribus justitiæ experimentis
abundaret. The true praise of kings is after their death, and
from the mouth of their enemies.]
Chapter LIX: The Crusades.—Part II.
By the arms of the Turks and Franks, the Fatimites had been
deprived of Syria. In Egypt the decay of their character and
influence was still more essential. Yet they were still revered
as the descendants and successors of the prophet; they maintained
their invisible state in the palace of Cairo; and their person
was seldom violated by the profane eyes of subjects or strangers.
The Latin ambassadors 41 have described their own introduction,
through a series of gloomy passages, and glittering porticos: the
scene was enlivened by the warbling of birds and the murmur of
fountains: it was enriched by a display of rich furniture and
rare animals; of the Imperial treasures, something was shown, and
much was supposed; and the long order of unfolding doors was
guarded by black soldiers and domestic eunuchs. The sanctuary of
the presence chamber was veiled with a curtain; and the vizier,
who conducted the ambassadors, laid aside the cimeter, and
prostrated himself three times on the ground; the veil was then
removed; and they beheld the commander of the faithful, who
signified his pleasure to the first slave of the throne. But this
slave was his master: the viziers or sultans had usurped the
supreme administration of Egypt; the claims of the rival
candidates were decided by arms; and the name of the most worthy,
of the strongest, was inserted in the royal patent of command.
The factions of Dargham and Shawer alternately expelled each
other from the capital and country; and the weaker side implored
the dangerous protection of the sultan of Damascus, or the king
of Jerusalem, the perpetual enemies of the sect and monarchy of
the Fatimites. By his arms and religion the Turk was most
formidable; but the Frank, in an easy, direct march, could
advance from Gaza to the Nile; while the intermediate situation
of his realm compelled the troops of Noureddin to wheel round the
skirts of Arabia, a long and painful circuit, which exposed them
to thirst, fatigue, and the burning winds of the desert. The
secret zeal and ambition of the Turkish prince aspired to reign
in Egypt under the name of the Abbassides; but the restoration of
the suppliant Shawer was the ostensible motive of the first
expedition; and the success was intrusted to the emir Shiracouh,
a valiant and veteran commander. Dargham was oppressed and slain;
but the ingratitude, the jealousy, the just apprehensions, of his
more fortunate rival, soon provoked him to invite the king of
Jerusalem to deliver Egypt from his insolent benefactors. To this
union the forces of Shiracouh were unequal: he relinquished the
premature conquest; and the evacuation of Belbeis or Pelusium was
the condition of his safe retreat. As the Turks defiled before
the enemy, and their general closed the rear, with a vigilant
eye, and a battle axe in his hand, a Frank presumed to ask him if
he were not afraid of an attack. “It is doubtless in your power
to begin the attack,” replied the intrepid emir; “but rest
assured, that not one of my soldiers will go to paradise till he
has sent an infidel to hell.” His report of the riches of the
land, the effeminacy of the natives, and the disorders of the
government, revived the hopes of Noureddin; the caliph of Bagdad
applauded the pious design; and Shiracouh descended into Egypt a
second time with twelve thousand Turks and eleven thousand Arabs.
Yet his forces were still inferior to the confederate armies of
the Franks and Saracens; and I can discern an unusual degree of
military art, in his passage of the Nile, his retreat into
Thebais, his masterly evolutions in the battle of Babain, the
surprise of Alexandria, and his marches and countermarches in the
flats and valley of Egypt, from the tropic to the sea. His
conduct was seconded by the courage of his troops, and on the eve
of action a Mamaluke 42 exclaimed, “If we cannot wrest Egypt from
the Christian dogs, why do we not renounce the honors and rewards
of the sultan, and retire to labor with the peasants, or to spin
with the females of the harem?” Yet, after all his efforts in the
field, 43 after the obstinate defence of Alexandria 44 by his
nephew Saladin, an honorable capitulation and retreat 441
concluded the second enterprise of Shiracouh; and Noureddin
reserved his abilities for a third and more propitious occasion.
It was soon offered by the ambition and avarice of Amalric or
Amaury, king of Jerusalem, who had imbibed the pernicious maxim,
that no faith should be kept with the enemies of God. 442 A
religious warrior, the great master of the hospital, encouraged
him to proceed; the emperor of Constantinople either gave, or
promised, a fleet to act with the armies of Syria; and the
perfidious Christian, unsatisfied with spoil and subsidy, aspired
to the conquest of Egypt. In this emergency, the Moslems turned
their eyes towards the sultan of Damascus; the vizier, whom
danger encompassed on all sides, yielded to their unanimous
wishes, and Noureddin seemed to be tempted by the fair offer of
one third of the revenue of the kingdom. The Franks were already
at the gates of Cairo; but the suburbs, the old city, were burnt
on their approach; they were deceived by an insidious
negotiation, and their vessels were unable to surmount the
barriers of the Nile. They prudently declined a contest with the
Turks in the midst of a hostile country; and Amaury retired into
Palestine with the shame and reproach that always adhere to
unsuccessful injustice. After this deliverance, Shiracouh was
invested with a robe of honor, which he soon stained with the
blood of the unfortunate Shawer. For a while, the Turkish emirs
condescended to hold the office of vizier; but this foreign
conquest precipitated the fall of the Fatimites themselves; and
the bloodless change was accomplished by a message and a word.
The caliphs had been degraded by their own weakness and the
tyranny of the viziers: their subjects blushed, when the
descendant and successor of the prophet presented his naked hand
to the rude gripe of a Latin ambassador; they wept when he sent
the hair of his women, a sad emblem of their grief and terror, to
excite the pity of the sultan of Damascus. By the command of
Noureddin, and the sentence of the doctors, the holy names of
Abubeker, Omar, and Othman, were solemnly restored: the caliph
Mosthadi, of Bagdad, was acknowledged in the public prayers as
the true commander of the faithful; and the green livery of the
sons of Ali was exchanged for the black color of the Abbassides.
The last of his race, the caliph Adhed, who survived only ten
days, expired in happy ignorance of his fate; his treasures
secured the loyalty of the soldiers, and silenced the murmurs of
the sectaries; and in all subsequent revolutions, Egypt has never
departed from the orthodox tradition of the Moslems. 45
41 (return) [ From the ambassador, William of Tyre (l. xix. c.
17, 18,) describes the palace of Cairo. In the caliph’s treasure
were found a pearl as large as a pigeon’s egg, a ruby weighing
seventeen Egyptian drams, an emerald a palm and a half in length,
and many vases of crystal and porcelain of China, (Renaudot, p.
536.)]
42 (return) [ _Mamluc_, plur. _Mamalic_, is defined by Pocock,
(Prolegom. ad Abulpharag. p. 7,) and D’Herbelot, (p. 545,) servum
emptitium, seu qui pretio numerato in domini possessionem cedit.
They frequently occur in the wars of Saladin, (Bohadin, p. 236,
&c.;) and it was only the _Bahartie_ Mamalukes that were first
introduced into Egypt by his descendants.]
43 (return) [ Jacobus à Vitriaco (p. 1116) gives the king of
Jerusalem no more than 374 knights. Both the Franks and the
Moslems report the superior numbers of the enemy; a difference
which may be solved by counting or omitting the unwarlike
Egyptians.]
44 (return) [ It was the Alexandria of the Arabs, a middle term
in extent and riches between the period of the Greeks and Romans,
and that of the Turks, (Savary, Lettres sur l’Egypte, tom. i. p.
25, 26.)]
441 (return) [ The treaty stipulated that both the Christians and
the Arabs should withdraw from Egypt. Wilken, vol. iii. part ii.
p. 113.—M.]
442 (return) [ The Knights Templars, abhorring the perfidious
breach of treaty partly, perhaps, out of jealousy of the
Hospitallers, refused to join in this enterprise. Will. Tyre c.
xx. p. 5. Wilken, vol. iii. part ii. p. 117.—M.]
45 (return) [ For this great revolution of Egypt, see William of
Tyre, (l. xix. 5, 6, 7, 12—31, xx. 5—12,) Bohadin, (in Vit.
Saladin, p. 30—39,) Abulfeda, (in Excerpt. Schultens, p. 1—12,)
D’Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orient. _Adhed_, _Fathemah_, but very
incorrect,) Renaudot, (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 522—525,
532—537,) Vertot, (Hist. des Chevaliers de Malthe, tom. i. p.
141—163, in 4to.,) and M. de Guignes, (tom. ii. p. 185—215.)]
The hilly country beyond the Tigris is occupied by the pastoral
tribes of the Curds; 46 a people hardy, strong, savage impatient
of the yoke, addicted to rapine, and tenacious of the government
of their national chiefs. The resemblance of name, situation, and
manners, seems to identify them with the Carduchians of the
Greeks; 47 and they still defend against the Ottoman Porte the
antique freedom which they asserted against the successors of
Cyrus. Poverty and ambition prompted them to embrace the
profession of mercenary soldiers: the service of his father and
uncle prepared the reign of the great Saladin; 48 and the son of
Job or Ayud, a simple Curd, magnanimously smiled at his
pedigree, which flattery deduced from the Arabian caliphs. 49 So
unconscious was Noureddin of the impending ruin of his house,
that he constrained the reluctant youth to follow his uncle
Shiracouh into Egypt: his military character was established by
the defence of Alexandria; and, if we may believe the Latins, he
solicited and obtained from the Christian general the
_profane_honors of knighthood. 50 On the death of Shiracouh, the
office of grand vizier was bestowed on Saladin, as the youngest
and least powerful of the emirs; but with the advice of his
father, whom he invited to Cairo, his genius obtained the
ascendant over his equals, and attached the army to his person
and interest. While Noureddin lived, these ambitious Curds were
the most humble of his slaves; and the indiscreet murmurs of the
divan were silenced by the prudent Ayub, who loudly protested
that at the command of the sultan he himself would lead his sons
in chains to the foot of the throne. “Such language,” he added in
private, “was prudent and proper in an assembly of your rivals;
but we are now above fear and obedience; and the threats of
Noureddin shall not extort the tribute of a sugar-cane.” His
seasonable death relieved them from the odious and doubtful
conflict: his son, a minor of eleven years of age, was left for a
while to the emirs of Damascus; and the new lord of Egypt was
decorated by the caliph with every title 51 that could sanctify
his usurpation in the eyes of the people. Nor was Saladin long
content with the possession of Egypt; he despoiled the Christians
of Jerusalem, and the Atabeks of Damascus, Aleppo, and Diarbekir:
Mecca and Medina acknowledged him for their temporal protector:
his brother subdued the distant regions of Yemen, or the happy
Arabia; and at the hour of his death, his empire was spread from
the African Tripoli to the Tigris, and from the Indian Ocean to
the mountains of Armenia. In the judgment of his character, the
reproaches of treason and ingratitude strike forcibly on _our_
minds, impressed, as they are, with the principle and experience
of law and loyalty. But his ambition may in some measure be
excused by the revolutions of Asia, 52 which had erased every
notion of legitimate succession; by the recent example of the
Atabeks themselves; by his reverence to the son of his
benefactor; his humane and generous behavior to the collateral
branches; by _their_ incapacity and _his_ merit; by the
approbation of the caliph, the sole source of all legitimate
power; and, above all, by the wishes and interest of the people,
whose happiness is the first object of government. In _his_
virtues, and in those of his patron, they admired the singular
union of the hero and the saint; for both Noureddin and Saladin
are ranked among the Mahometan saints; and the constant
meditation of the holy war appears to have shed a serious and
sober color over their lives and actions. The youth of the latter
53 was addicted to wine and women: but his aspiring spirit soon
renounced the temptations of pleasure for the graver follies of
fame and dominion: the garment of Saladin was of coarse woollen;
water was his only drink; and, while he emulated the temperance,
he surpassed the chastity, of his Arabian prophet. Both in faith
and practice he was a rigid Mussulman: he ever deplored that the
defence of religion had not allowed him to accomplish the
pilgrimage of Mecca; but at the stated hours, five times each
day, the sultan devoutly prayed with his brethren: the
involuntary omission of fasting was scrupulously repaid; and his
perusal of the Koran, on horseback between the approaching
armies, may be quoted as a proof, however ostentatious, of piety
and courage. 54 The superstitious doctrine of the sect of Shafei
was the only study that he deigned to encourage: the poets were
safe in his contempt; but all profane science was the object of
his aversion; and a philosopher, who had invented some
speculative novelties, was seized and strangled by the command of
the royal saint. The justice of his divan was accessible to the
meanest suppliant against himself and his ministers; and it was
only for a kingdom that Saladin would deviate from the rule of
equity. While the descendants of Seljuk and Zenghi held his
stirrup and smoothed his garments, he was affable and patient
with the meanest of his servants. So boundless was his
liberality, that he distributed twelve thousand horses at the
siege of Acre; and, at the time of his death, no more than
forty-seven drams of silver and one piece of gold coin were found
in the treasury; yet, in a martial reign, the tributes were
diminished, and the wealthy citizens enjoyed, without fear or
danger, the fruits of their industry. Egypt, Syria, and Arabia,
were adorned by the royal foundations of hospitals, colleges, and
mosques; and Cairo was fortified with a wall and citadel; but his
works were consecrated to public use: 55 nor did the sultan
indulge himself in a garden or palace of private luxury. In a
fanatic age, himself a fanatic, the genuine virtues of Saladin
commanded the esteem of the Christians; the emperor of Germany
gloried in his friendship; 56 the Greek emperor solicited his
alliance; 57 and the conquest of Jerusalem diffused, and perhaps
magnified, his fame both in the East and West.
46 (return) [ For the Curds, see De Guignes, tom. ii. p. 416,
417, the Index Geographicus of Schultens and Tavernier, Voyages,
p. i. p. 308, 309. The Ayoubites descended from the tribe of the
Rawadiæi, one of the noblest; but as _they_ were infected with
the heresy of the Metempsychosis, the orthodox sultans insinuated
that their descent was only on the mother’s side, and that their
ancestor was a stranger who settled among the Curds.]
47 (return) [ See the ivth book of the Anabasis of Xenophon. The
ten thousand suffered more from the arrows of the free
Carduchians, than from the splendid weakness of the great king.]
48 (return) [ We are indebted to the professor Schultens (Lugd.
Bat, 1755, in folio) for the richest and most authentic
materials, a life of Saladin by his friend and minister the Cadhi
Bohadin, and copious extracts from the history of his kinsman the
prince Abulfeda of Hamah. To these we may add, the article of
_Salaheddin_ in the Bibliothèque Orientale, and all that may be
gleaned from the Dynasties of Abulpharagius.]
49 (return) [ Since Abulfeda was himself an Ayoubite, he may
share the praise, for imitating, at least tacitly, the modesty of
the founder.]
50 (return) [ Hist. Hierosol. in the Gesta Dei per Francos, p.
1152. A similar example may be found in Joinville, (p. 42,
edition du Louvre;) but the pious St. Louis refused to dignify
infidels with the order of Christian knighthood, (Ducange,
Observations, p 70.)]
51 (return) [ In these Arabic titles, _religionis_ must always be
understood; _Noureddin_, lumen r.; _Ezzodin_, decus; _Amadoddin_,
columen: our hero’s proper name was Joseph, and he was styled
_Salahoddin_, salus; _Al Malichus_, _Al Nasirus_, rex defensor;
_Abu Modaffer_, pater victoriæ, Schultens, Præfat.]
52 (return) [ Abulfeda, who descended from a brother of Saladin,
observes, from many examples, that the founders of dynasties took
the guilt for themselves, and left the reward to their innocent
collaterals, (Excerpt p. 10.)]
53 (return) [ See his life and character in Renaudot, p.
537—548.]
54 (return) [ His civil and religious virtues are celebrated in
the first chapter of Bohadin, (p. 4—30,) himself an eye-witness,
and an honest bigot.]
55 (return) [ In many works, particularly Joseph’s well in the
castle of Cairo, the Sultan and the Patriarch have been
confounded by the ignorance of natives and travellers.]
56 (return) [ Anonym. Canisii, tom. iii. p. ii. p. 504.]
57 (return) [ Bohadin, p. 129, 130.]
During its short existence, the kingdom of Jerusalem 58 was
supported by the discord of the Turks and Saracens; and both the
Fatimite caliphs and the sultans of Damascus were tempted to
sacrifice the cause of their religion to the meaner
considerations of private and present advantage. But the powers
of Egypt, Syria, and Arabia, were now united by a hero, whom
nature and fortune had armed against the Christians. All without
now bore the most threatening aspect; and all was feeble and
hollow in the internal state of Jerusalem. After the two first
Baldwins, the brother and cousin of Godfrey of Bouillon, the
sceptre devolved by female succession to Melisenda, daughter of
the second Baldwin, and her husband Fulk, count of Anjou, the
father, by a former marriage, of our English Plantagenets. Their
two sons, Baldwin the Third, and Amaury, waged a strenuous, and
not unsuccessful, war against the infidels; but the son of
Amaury, Baldwin the Fourth, was deprived, by the leprosy, a gift
of the crusades, of the faculties both of mind and body. His
sister Sybilla, the mother of Baldwin the Fifth, was his natural
heiress: after the suspicious death of her child, she crowned her
second husband, Guy of Lusignan, a prince of a handsome person,
but of such base renown, that his own brother Jeffrey was heard
to exclaim, “Since they have made _him_ a king, surely they would
have made _me_ a god!” The choice was generally blamed; and the
most powerful vassal, Raymond count of Tripoli, who had been
excluded from the succession and regency, entertained an
implacable hatred against the king, and exposed his honor and
conscience to the temptations of the sultan. Such were the
guardians of the holy city; a leper, a child, a woman, a coward,
and a traitor: yet its fate was delayed twelve years by some
supplies from Europe, by the valor of the military orders, and by
the distant or domestic avocations of their great enemy. At
length, on every side, the sinking state was encircled and
pressed by a hostile line: and the truce was violated by the
Franks, whose existence it protected. A soldier of fortune,
Reginald of Chatillon, had seized a fortress on the edge of the
desert, from whence he pillaged the caravans, insulted Mahomet,
and threatened the cities of Mecca and Medina. Saladin
condescended to complain; rejoiced in the denial of justice, and
at the head of fourscore thousand horse and foot invaded the Holy
Land. The choice of Tiberias for his first siege was suggested by
the count of Tripoli, to whom it belonged; and the king of
Jerusalem was persuaded to drain his garrison, and to arm his
people, for the relief of that important place. 59 By the advice
of the perfidious Raymond, the Christians were betrayed into a
camp destitute of water: he fled on the first onset, with the
curses of both nations: 60 Lusignan was overthrown, with the loss
of thirty thousand men; and the wood of the true cross (a dire
misfortune!) was left in the power of the infidels. 601 The royal
captive was conducted to the tent of Saladin; and as he fainted
with thirst and terror, the generous victor presented him with a
cup of sherbet, cooled in snow, without suffering his companion,
Reginald of Chatillon, to partake of this pledge of hospitality
and pardon. “The person and dignity of a king,” said the sultan,
“are sacred, but this impious robber must instantly acknowledge
the prophet, whom he has blasphemed, or meet the death which he
has so often deserved.” On the proud or conscientious refusal of
the Christian warrior, Saladin struck him on the head with his
cimeter, and Reginald was despatched by the guards. 61 The
trembling Lusignan was sent to Damascus, to an honorable prison
and speedy ransom; but the victory was stained by the execution
of two hundred and thirty knights of the hospital, the intrepid
champions and martyrs of their faith. The kingdom was left
without a head; and of the two grand masters of the military
orders, the one was slain and the other was a prisoner. From all
the cities, both of the sea-coast and the inland country, the
garrisons had been drawn away for this fatal field: Tyre and
Tripoli alone could escape the rapid inroad of Saladin; and three
months after the battle of Tiberias, he appeared in arms before
the gates of Jerusalem. 62
58 (return) [ For the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, see William of
Tyre, from the ixth to the xxiid book. Jacob a Vitriaco, Hist.
Hierosolem l i., and Sanutus Secreta Fidelium Crucis, l. iii. p.
vi. vii. viii. ix.]
59 (return) [ Templarii ut apes bombabant et Hospitalarii ut
venti stridebant, et barones se exitio offerebant, et Turcopuli
(the Christian light troops) semet ipsi in ignem injiciebant,
(Ispahani de Expugnatione Kudsiticâ, p. 18, apud Schultens;) a
specimen of Arabian eloquence, somewhat different from the style
of Xenophon!]
60 (return) [ The Latins affirm, the Arabians insinuate, the
treason of Raymond; but had he really embraced their religion, he
would have been a saint and a hero in the eyes of the latter.]
601 (return) [ Raymond’s advice would have prevented the
abandonment of a secure camp abounding with water near Sepphoris.
The rash and insolent valor of the master of the order of Knights
Templars, which had before exposed the Christians to a fatal
defeat at the brook Kishon, forced the feeble king to annul the
determination of a council of war, and advance to a camp in an
enclosed valley among the mountains, near Hittin, without water.
Raymond did not fly till the battle was irretrievably lost, and
then the Saracens seem to have opened their ranks to allow him
free passage. The charge of suggesting the siege of Tiberias
appears ungrounded Raymond, no doubt, played a double part: he
was a man of strong sagacity, who foresaw the desperate nature of
the contest with Saladin, endeavored by every means to maintain
the treaty, and, though he joined both his arms and his still
more valuable counsels to the Christian army, yet kept up a kind
of amicable correspondence with the Mahometans. See Wilken, vol.
iii. part ii. p. 276, et seq. Michaud, vol. ii. p. 278, et seq.
M. Michaud is still more friendly than Wilken to the memory of
Count Raymond, who died suddenly, shortly after the battle of
Hittin. He quotes a letter written in the name of Saladin by the
caliph Alfdel, to show that Raymond was considered by the
Mahometans their most dangerous and detested enemy. “No person of
distinction among the Christians escaped, except the count, (of
Tripoli) whom God curse. God made him die shortly afterwards, and
sent him from the kingdom of death to hell.”—M.]
61 (return) [ Benaud, Reginald, or Arnold de Chatillon, is
celebrated by the Latins in his life and death; but the
circumstances of the latter are more distinctly related by
Bohadin and Abulfeda; and Joinville (Hist. de St. Louis, p. 70)
alludes to the practice of Saladin, of never putting to death a
prisoner who had tasted his bread and salt. Some of the
companions of Arnold had been slaughtered, and almost sacrificed,
in a valley of Mecca, ubi sacrificia mactantur, (Abulfeda, p.
32.)]
62 (return) [ Vertot, who well describes the loss of the kingdom
and city (Hist. des Chevaliers de Malthe, tom. i. l. ii. p.
226—278,) inserts two original epistles of a Knight Templar.]
He might expect that the siege of a city so venerable on earth
and in heaven, so interesting to Europe and Asia, would rekindle
the last sparks of enthusiasm; and that, of sixty thousand
Christians, every man would be a soldier, and every soldier a
candidate for martyrdom. But Queen Sybilla trembled for herself
and her captive husband; and the barons and knights, who had
escaped from the sword and chains of the Turks, displayed the
same factious and selfish spirit in the public ruin. The most
numerous portion of the inhabitants was composed of the Greek and
Oriental Christians, whom experience had taught to prefer the
Mahometan before the Latin yoke; 63 and the holy sepulchre
attracted a base and needy crowd, without arms or courage, who
subsisted only on the charity of the pilgrims. Some feeble and
hasty efforts were made for the defence of Jerusalem: but in the
space of fourteen days, a victorious army drove back the sallies
of the besieged, planted their engines, opened the wall to the
breadth of fifteen cubits, applied their scaling-ladders, and
erected on the breach twelve banners of the prophet and the
sultan. It was in vain that a barefoot procession of the queen,
the women, and the monks, implored the Son of God to save his
tomb and his inheritance from impious violation. Their sole hope
was in the mercy of the conqueror, and to their first suppliant
deputation that mercy was sternly denied. “He had sworn to avenge
the patience and long-suffering of the Moslems; the hour of
forgiveness was elapsed, and the moment was now arrived to
expiate, in blood, the innocent blood which had been spilt by
Godfrey and the first crusaders.” But a desperate and successful
struggle of the Franks admonished the sultan that his triumph was
not yet secure; he listened with reverence to a solemn adjuration
in the name of the common Father of mankind; and a sentiment of
human sympathy mollified the rigor of fanaticism and conquest. He
consented to accept the city, and to spare the inhabitants. The
Greek and Oriental Christians were permitted to live under his
dominion, but it was stipulated, that in forty days all the
Franks and Latins should evacuate Jerusalem, and be safely
conducted to the seaports of Syria and Egypt; that ten pieces of
gold should be paid for each man, five for each woman, and one
for every child; and that those who were unable to purchase their
freedom should be detained in perpetual slavery. Of some writers
it is a favorite and invidious theme to compare the humanity of
Saladin with the massacre of the first crusade. The difference
would be merely personal; but we should not forget that the
Christians had offered to capitulate, and that the Mahometans of
Jerusalem sustained the last extremities of an assault and storm.
Justice is indeed due to the fidelity with which the Turkish
conqueror fulfilled the conditions of the treaty; and he may be
deservedly praised for the glance of pity which he cast on the
misery of the vanquished. Instead of a rigorous exaction of his
debt, he accepted a sum of thirty thousand byzants, for the
ransom of seven thousand poor; two or three thousand more were
dismissed by his gratuitous clemency; and the number of slaves
was reduced to eleven or fourteen thousand persons. In this
interview with the queen, his words, and even his tears suggested
the kindest consolations; his liberal alms were distributed among
those who had been made orphans or widows by the fortune of war;
and while the knights of the hospital were in arms against him,
he allowed their more pious brethren to continue, during the term
of a year, the care and service of the sick. In these acts of
mercy the virtue of Saladin deserves our admiration and love: he
was above the necessity of dissimulation, and his stern
fanaticism would have prompted him to dissemble, rather than to
affect, this profane compassion for the enemies of the Koran.
After Jerusalem had been delivered from the presence of the
strangers, the sultan made his triumphal entry, his banners
waving in the wind, and to the harmony of martial music. The
great mosque of Omar, which had been converted into a church, was
again consecrated to one God and his prophet Mahomet: the walls
and pavement were purified with rose-water; and a pulpit, the
labor of Noureddin, was erected in the sanctuary. But when the
golden cross that glittered on the dome was cast down, and
dragged through the streets, the Christians of every sect uttered
a lamentable groan, which was answered by the joyful shouts of
the Moslems. In four ivory chests the patriarch had collected the
crosses, the images, the vases, and the relics of the holy place;
they were seized by the conqueror, who was desirous of presenting
the caliph with the trophies of Christian idolatry. He was
persuaded, however, to intrust them to the patriarch and prince
of Antioch; and the pious pledge was redeemed by Richard of
England, at the expense of fifty-two thousand byzants of gold. 64
63 (return) [ Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 545.]
64 (return) [ For the conquest of Jerusalem, Bohadin (p. 67—75)
and Abulfeda (p. 40—43) are our Moslem witnesses. Of the
Christian, Bernard Thesaurarius (c. 151—167) is the most copious
and authentic; see likewise Matthew Paris, (p. 120—124.)]
The nations might fear and hope the immediate and final expulsion
of the Latins from Syria; which was yet delayed above a century
after the death of Saladin. 65 In the career of victory, he was
first checked by the resistance of Tyre; the troops and
garrisons, which had capitulated, were imprudently conducted to
the same port: their numbers were adequate to the defence of the
place; and the arrival of Conrad of Montferrat inspired the
disorderly crowd with confidence and union. His father, a
venerable pilgrim, had been made prisoner in the battle of
Tiberias; but that disaster was unknown in Italy and Greece, when
the son was urged by ambition and piety to visit the inheritance
of his royal nephew, the infant Baldwin. The view of the Turkish
banners warned him from the hostile coast of Jaffa; and Conrad
was unanimously hailed as the prince and champion of Tyre, which
was already besieged by the conqueror of Jerusalem. The firmness
of his zeal, and perhaps his knowledge of a generous foe, enabled
him to brave the threats of the sultan, and to declare, that
should his aged parent be exposed before the walls, he himself
would discharge the first arrow, and glory in his descent from a
Christian martyr. 66 The Egyptian fleet was allowed to enter the
harbor of Tyre; but the chain was suddenly drawn, and five
galleys were either sunk or taken: a thousand Turks were slain in
a sally; and Saladin, after burning his engines, concluded a
glorious campaign by a disgraceful retreat to Damascus. He was
soon assailed by a more formidable tempest. The pathetic
narratives, and even the pictures, that represented in lively
colors the servitude and profanation of Jerusalem, awakened the
torpid sensibility of Europe: the emperor Frederic Barbarossa,
and the kings of France and England, assumed the cross; and the
tardy magnitude of their armaments was anticipated by the
maritime states of the Mediterranean and the Ocean. The skilful
and provident Italians first embarked in the ships of Genoa,
Pisa, and Venice. They were speedily followed by the most eager
pilgrims of France, Normandy, and the Western Isles. The powerful
succor of Flanders, Frise, and Denmark, filled near a hundred
vessels: and the Northern warriors were distinguished in the
field by a lofty stature and a ponderous battle-axe. 67 Their
increasing multitudes could no longer be confined within the
walls of Tyre, or remain obedient to the voice of Conrad. They
pitied the misfortunes, and revered the dignity, of Lusignan, who
was released from prison, perhaps, to divide the army of the
Franks. He proposed the recovery of Ptolemais, or Acre, thirty
miles to the south of Tyre; and the place was first invested by
two thousand horse and thirty thousand foot under his nominal
command. I shall not expatiate on the story of this memorable
siege; which lasted near two years, and consumed, in a narrow
space, the forces of Europe and Asia. Never did the flame of
enthusiasm burn with fiercer and more destructive rage; nor could
the true believers, a common appellation, who consecrated their
own martyrs, refuse some applause to the mistaken zeal and
courage of their adversaries. At the sound of the holy trumpet,
the Moslems of Egypt, Syria, Arabia, and the Oriental provinces,
assembled under the servant of the prophet: 68 his camp was
pitched and removed within a few miles of Acre; and he labored,
night and day, for the relief of his brethren and the annoyance
of the Franks. Nine battles, not unworthy of the name, were
fought in the neighborhood of Mount Carmel, with such vicissitude
of fortune, that in one attack, the sultan forced his way into
the city; that in one sally, the Christians penetrated to the
royal tent. By the means of divers and pigeons, a regular
correspondence was maintained with the besieged; and, as often as
the sea was left open, the exhausted garrison was withdrawn, and
a fresh supply was poured into the place. The Latin camp was
thinned by famine, the sword and the climate; but the tents of
the dead were replenished with new pilgrims, who exaggerated the
strength and speed of their approaching countrymen. The vulgar
was astonished by the report, that the pope himself, with an
innumerable crusade, was advanced as far as Constantinople. The
march of the emperor filled the East with more serious alarms:
the obstacles which he encountered in Asia, and perhaps in
Greece, were raised by the policy of Saladin: his joy on the
death of Barbarossa was measured by his esteem; and the
Christians were rather dismayed than encouraged at the sight of
the duke of Swabia and his way-worn remnant of five thousand
Germans. At length, in the spring of the second year, the royal
fleets of France and England cast anchor in the Bay of Acre, and
the siege was more vigorously prosecuted by the youthful
emulation of the two kings, Philip Augustus and Richard
Plantagenet. After every resource had been tried, and every hope
was exhausted, the defenders of Acre submitted to their fate; a
capitulation was granted, but their lives and liberties were
taxed at the hard conditions of a ransom of two hundred thousand
pieces of gold, the deliverance of one hundred nobles, and
fifteen hundred inferior captives, and the restoration of the
wood of the holy cross. Some doubts in the agreement, and some
delay in the execution, rekindled the fury of the Franks, and
three thousand Moslems, almost in the sultan’s view, were
beheaded by the command of the sanguinary Richard. 69 By the
conquest of Acre, the Latin powers acquired a strong town and a
convenient harbor; but the advantage was most dearly purchased.
The minister and historian of Saladin computes, from the report
of the enemy, that their numbers, at different periods, amounted
to five or six hundred thousand; that more than one hundred
thousand Christians were slain; that a far greater number was
lost by disease or shipwreck; and that a small portion of this
mighty host could return in safety to their native countries. 70
65 (return) [ The sieges of Tyre and Acre are most copiously
described by Bernard Thesaurarius, (de Acquisitione Terræ Sanctæ,
c. 167—179,) the author of the Historia Hierosolymitana, (p.
1150—1172, in Bongarsius,) Abulfeda, (p. 43—50,) and Bohadin, (p.
75—179.)]
66 (return) [ I have followed a moderate and probable
representation of the fact; by Vertot, who adopts without
reluctance a romantic tale the old marquis is actually exposed to
the darts of the besieged.]
67 (return) [ Northmanni et Gothi, et cæteri populi insularum quæ
inter occidentem et septentrionem sitæ sunt, gentes bellicosæ,
corporis proceri mortis intrepidæ, bipennibus armatæ, navibus
rotundis, quæ Ysnachiæ dicuntur, advectæ.]
68 (return) [ The historian of Jerusalem (p. 1108) adds the
nations of the East from the Tigris to India, and the swarthy
tribes of Moors and Getulians, so that Asia and Africa fought
against Europe.]
69 (return) [ Bohadin, p. 180; and this massacre is neither
denied nor blamed by the Christian historians. Alacriter jussa
complentes, (the English soldiers,) says Galfridus à Vinesauf,
(l. iv. c. 4, p. 346,) who fixes at 2700 the number of victims;
who are multiplied to 5000 by Roger Hoveden, (p. 697, 698.) The
humanity or avarice of Philip Augustus was persuaded to ransom
his prisoners, (Jacob à Vitriaco, l. i. c. 98, p. 1122.)]
70 (return) [ Bohadin, p. 14. He quotes the judgment of Balianus,
and the prince of Sidon, and adds, ex illo mundo quasi hominum
paucissimi redierunt. Among the Christians who died before St.
John d’Acre, I find the English names of De Ferrers earl of
Derby, (Dugdale, Baronage, part i. p. 260,) Mowbray, (idem, p.
124,) De Mandevil, De Fiennes, St. John, Scrope, Bigot, Talbot,
&c.]
Chapter LIX: The Crusades.—Part III.
Philip Augustus, and Richard the First, are the only kings of
France and England who have fought under the same banners; but
the holy service in which they were enlisted was incessantly
disturbed by their national jealousy; and the two factions, which
they protected in Palestine, were more averse to each other than
to the common enemy. In the eyes of the Orientals; the French
monarch was superior in dignity and power; and, in the emperor’s
absence, the Latins revered him as their temporal chief. 71 His
exploits were not adequate to his fame. Philip was brave, but the
statesman predominated in his character; he was soon weary of
sacrificing his health and interest on a barren coast: the
surrender of Acre became the signal of his departure; nor could
he justify this unpopular desertion, by leaving the duke of
Burgundy with five hundred knights and ten thousand foot, for the
service of the Holy Land. The king of England, though inferior in
dignity, surpassed his rival in wealth and military renown; 72
and if heroism be confined to brutal and ferocious valor, Richard
Plantagenet will stand high among the heroes of the age. The
memory of _Cur de Lion_, of the lion-hearted prince, was long
dear and glorious to his English subjects; and, at the distance
of sixty years, it was celebrated in proverbial sayings by the
grandsons of the Turks and Saracens, against whom he had fought:
his tremendous name was employed by the Syrian mothers to silence
their infants; and if a horse suddenly started from the way, his
rider was wont to exclaim, “Dost thou think King Richard is in
that bush?” 73 His cruelty to the Mahometans was the effect of
temper and zeal; but I cannot believe that a soldier, so free and
fearless in the use of his lance, would have descended to whet a
dagger against his valiant brother Conrad of Montferrat, who was
slain at Tyre by some secret assassins. 74 After the surrender of
Acre, and the departure of Philip, the king of England led the
crusaders to the recovery of the sea-coast; and the cities of
Cæsarea and Jaffa were added to the fragments of the kingdom of
Lusignan. A march of one hundred miles from Acre to Ascalon was a
great and perpetual battle of eleven days. In the disorder of his
troops, Saladin remained on the field with seventeen guards,
without lowering his standard, or suspending the sound of his
brazen kettle-drum: he again rallied and renewed the charge; and
his preachers or heralds called aloud on the _unitarians_,
manfully to stand up against the Christian idolaters. But the
progress of these idolaters was irresistible; and it was only by
demolishing the walls and buildings of Ascalon, that the sultan
could prevent them from occupying an important fortress on the
confines of Egypt. During a severe winter, the armies slept; but
in the spring, the Franks advanced within a day’s march of
Jerusalem, under the leading standard of the English king; and
his active spirit intercepted a convoy, or caravan, of seven
thousand camels. Saladin 75 had fixed his station in the holy
city; but the city was struck with consternation and discord: he
fasted; he prayed; he preached; he offered to share the dangers
of the siege; but his Mamalukes, who remembered the fate of their
companions at Acre, pressed the sultan with loyal or seditious
clamors, to reserve _his_ person and _their_ courage for the
future defence of the religion and empire. 76 The Moslems were
delivered by the sudden, or, as they deemed, the miraculous,
retreat of the Christians; 77 and the laurels of Richard were
blasted by the prudence, or envy, of his companions. The hero,
ascending a hill, and veiling his face, exclaimed with an
indignant voice, “Those who are unwilling to rescue, are unworthy
to view, the sepulchre of Christ!” After his return to Acre, on
the news that Jaffa was surprised by the sultan, he sailed with
some merchant vessels, and leaped foremost on the beach: the
castle was relieved by his presence; and sixty thousand Turks and
Saracens fled before his arms. The discovery of his weakness,
provoked them to return in the morning; and they found him
carelessly encamped before the gates with only seventeen knights
and three hundred archers. Without counting their numbers, he
sustained their charge; and we learn from the evidence of his
enemies, that the king of England, grasping his lance, rode
furiously along their front, from the right to the left wing,
without meeting an adversary who dared to encounter his career.
78 Am I writing the history of Orlando or Amadis?
71 (return) [ Magnus hic apud eos, interque reges eorum tum
virtute tum majestate eminens.... summus rerum arbiter, (Bohadin,
p. 159.) He does not seem to have known the names either of
Philip or Richard.]
72 (return) [ Rex Angliæ, præstrenuus.... rege Gallorum minor
apud eos censebatur ratione regni atque dignitatis; sed tum
divitiis florentior, tum bellicâ virtute multo erat celebrior,
(Bohadin, p. 161.) A stranger might admire those riches; the
national historians will tell with what lawless and wasteful
oppression they were collected.]
73 (return) [ Joinville, p. 17. Cuides-tu que ce soit le roi
Richart?]
74 (return) [ Yet he was guilty in the opinion of the Moslems,
who attest the confession of the assassins, that they were sent
by the king of England, (Bohadin, p. 225;) and his only defence
is an absurd and palpable forgery, (Hist. de l’Académie des
Inscriptions, tom. xv. p. 155—163,) a pretended letter from the
prince of the assassins, the Sheich, or old man of the mountain,
who justified Richard, by assuming to himself the guilt or merit
of the murder. *
Note: * Von Hammer (Geschichte der Assassinen, p. 202) sums up
against Richard, Wilken (vol. iv. p. 485) as strongly for
acquittal. Michaud (vol. ii. p. 420) delivers no decided opinion.
This crime was also attributed to Saladin, who is said, by an
Oriental authority, (the continuator of Tabari,) to have employed
the assassins to murder both Conrad and Richard. It is a
melancholy admission, but it must be acknowledged, that such an
act would be less inconsistent with the character of the
Christian than of the Mahometan king.—M.]
75 (return) [ See the distress and pious firmness of Saladin, as
they are described by Bohadin, (p. 7—9, 235—237,) who himself
harangued the defenders of Jerusalem; their fears were not
unknown to the enemy, (Jacob. à Vitriaco, l. i. c. 100, p. 1123.
Vinisauf, l. v. c. 50, p. 399.)]
76 (return) [ Yet unless the sultan, or an Ayoubite prince,
remained in Jerusalem, nec Curdi Turcis, nec Turci essent
obtemperaturi Curdis, (Bohadin, p. 236.) He draws aside a corner
of the political curtain.]
77 (return) [ Bohadin, (p. 237,) and even Jeffrey de Vinisauf,
(l. vi. c. 1—8, p. 403—409,) ascribe the retreat to Richard
himself; and Jacobus à Vitriaco observes, that in his impatience
to depart, in alterum virum mutatus est, (p. 1123.) Yet
Joinville, a French knight, accuses the envy of Hugh duke of
Burgundy, (p. 116,) without supposing, like Matthew Paris, that
he was bribed by Saladin.]
78 (return) [ The expeditions to Ascalon, Jerusalem, and Jaffa,
are related by Bohadin (p. 184—249) and Abulfeda, (p. 51, 52.)
The author of the Itinerary, or the monk of St. Alban’s, cannot
exaggerate the cadhi’s account of the prowess of Richard,
(Vinisauf, l. vi. c. 14—24, p. 412—421. Hist. Major, p. 137—143;)
and on the whole of this war there is a marvellous agreement
between the Christian and Mahometan writers, who mutually praise
the virtues of their enemies.]
During these hostilities, a languid and tedious negotiation 79
between the Franks and Moslems was started, and continued, and
broken, and again resumed, and again broken. Some acts of royal
courtesy, the gift of snow and fruit, the exchange of Norway
hawks and Arabian horses, softened the asperity of religious war:
from the vicissitude of success, the monarchs might learn to
suspect that Heaven was neutral in the quarrel; nor, after the
trial of each other, could either hope for a decisive victory. 80
The health both of Richard and Saladin appeared to be in a
declining state; and they respectively suffered the evils of
distant and domestic warfare: Plantagenet was impatient to punish
a perfidious rival who had invaded Normandy in his absence; and
the indefatigable sultan was subdued by the cries of the people,
who was the victim, and of the soldiers, who were the
instruments, of his martial zeal. The first demands of the king
of England were the restitution of Jerusalem, Palestine, and the
true cross; and he firmly declared, that himself and his brother
pilgrims would end their lives in the pious labor, rather than
return to Europe with ignominy and remorse. But the conscience of
Saladin refused, without some weighty compensation, to restore
the idols, or promote the idolatry, of the Christians; he
asserted, with equal firmness, his religious and civil claim to
the sovereignty of Palestine; descanted on the importance and
sanctity of Jerusalem; and rejected all terms of the
establishment, or partition of the Latins. The marriage which
Richard proposed, of his sister with the sultan’s brother, was
defeated by the difference of faith; the princess abhorred the
embraces of a Turk; and Adel, or Saphadin, would not easily
renounce a plurality of wives. A personal interview was declined
by Saladin, who alleged their mutual ignorance of each other’s
language; and the negotiation was managed with much art and delay
by their interpreters and envoys. The final agreement was equally
disapproved by the zealots of both parties, by the Roman pontiff
and the caliph of Bagdad. It was stipulated that Jerusalem and
the holy sepulchre should be open, without tribute or vexation,
to the pilgrimage of the Latin Christians; that, after the
demolition of Ascalon, they should inclusively possess the
sea-coast from Jaffa to Tyre; that the count of Tripoli and the
prince of Antioch should be comprised in the truce; and that,
during three years and three months, all hostilities should
cease. The principal chiefs of the two armies swore to the
observance of the treaty; but the monarchs were satisfied with
giving their word and their right hand; and the royal majesty was
excused from an oath, which always implies some suspicion of
falsehood and dishonor. Richard embarked for Europe, to seek a
long captivity and a premature grave; and the space of a few
months concluded the life and glories of Saladin. The Orientals
describe his edifying death, which happened at Damascus; but they
seem ignorant of the equal distribution of his alms among the
three religions, 81 or of the display of a shroud, instead of a
standard, to admonish the East of the instability of human
greatness. The unity of empire was dissolved by his death; his
sons were oppressed by the stronger arm of their uncle Saphadin;
the hostile interests of the sultans of Egypt, Damascus, and
Aleppo, 82 were again revived; and the Franks or Latins stood and
breathed, and hoped, in their fortresses along the Syrian coast.
79 (return) [ See the progress of negotiation and hostility in
Bohadin, (p. 207—260,) who was himself an actor in the treaty.
Richard declared his intention of returning with new armies to
the conquest of the Holy Land; and Saladin answered the menace
with a civil compliment, (Vinisauf l. vi. c. 28, p. 423.)]
80 (return) [ The most copious and original account of this holy
war is Galfridi à Vinisauf, Itinerarium Regis Anglorum Richardi
et aliorum in Terram Hierosolymorum, in six books, published in
the iid volume of Gale’s Scriptores Hist. Anglicanæ, (p.
247—429.) Roger Hoveden and Matthew Paris afford likewise many
valuable materials; and the former describes, with accuracy, the
discipline and navigation of the English fleet.]
81 (return) [ Even Vertot (tom. i. p. 251) adopts the foolish
notion of the indifference of Saladin, who professed the Koran
with his last breath.]
82 (return) [ See the succession of the Ayoubites, in
Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 277, &c.,) and the tables of M. De
Guignes, l’Art de Vérifier les Dates, and the Bibliothèque
Orientale.]
The noblest monument of a conqueror’s fame, and of the terror
which he inspired, is the Saladine tenth, a general tax which was
imposed on the laity, and even the clergy, of the Latin church,
for the service of the holy war. The practice was too lucrative
to expire with the occasion: and this tribute became the
foundation of all the tithes and tenths on ecclesiastical
benefices, which have been granted by the Roman pontiffs to
Catholic sovereigns, or reserved for the immediate use of the
apostolic see. 83 This pecuniary emolument must have tended to
increase the interest of the popes in the recovery of Palestine:
after the death of Saladin, they preached the crusade, by their
epistles, their legates, and their missionaries; and the
accomplishment of the pious work might have been expected from
the zeal and talents of Innocent the Third. 84 Under that young
and ambitious priest, the successors of St. Peter attained the
full meridian of their greatness: and in a reign of eighteen
years, he exercised a despotic command over the emperors and
kings, whom he raised and deposed; over the nations, whom an
interdict of months or years deprived, for the offence of their
rulers, of the exercise of Christian worship. In the council of
the Lateran he acted as the ecclesiastical, almost as the
temporal, sovereign of the East and West. It was at the feet of
his legate that John of England surrendered his crown; and
Innocent may boast of the two most signal triumphs over sense and
humanity, the establishment of transubstantiation, and the origin
of the inquisition. At his voice, two crusades, the fourth and
the fifth, were undertaken; but, except a king of Hungary, the
princes of the second order were at the head of the pilgrims: the
forces were inadequate to the design; nor did the effects
correspond with the hopes and wishes of the pope and the people.
The fourth crusade was diverted from Syria to Constantinople; and
the conquest of the Greek or Roman empire by the Latins will form
the proper and important subject of the next chapter. In the
fifth, 85 two hundred thousand Franks were landed at the eastern
mouth of the Nile. They reasonably hoped that Palestine must be
subdued in Egypt, the seat and storehouse of the sultan; and,
after a siege of sixteen months, the Moslems deplored the loss of
Damietta. But the Christian army was ruined by the pride and
insolence of the legate Pelagius, who, in the pope’s name,
assumed the character of general: the sickly Franks were
encompassed by the waters of the Nile and the Oriental forces;
and it was by the evacuation of Damietta that they obtained a
safe retreat, some concessions for the pilgrims, and the tardy
restitution of the doubtful relic of the true cross. The failure
may in some measure be ascribed to the abuse and multiplication
of the crusades, which were preached at the same time against the
Pagans of Livonia, the Moors of Spain, the Albigeois of France,
and the kings of Sicily of the Imperial family. 86 In these
meritorious services, the volunteers might acquire at home the
same spiritual indulgence, and a larger measure of temporal
rewards; and even the popes, in their zeal against a domestic
enemy, were sometimes tempted to forget the distress of their
Syrian brethren. From the last age of the crusades they derived
the occasional command of an army and revenue; and some deep
reasoners have suspected that the whole enterprise, from the
first synod of Placentia, was contrived and executed by the
policy of Rome. The suspicion is not founded, either in nature or
in fact. The successors of St. Peter appear to have followed,
rather than guided, the impulse of manners and prejudice; without
much foresight of the seasons, or cultivation of the soil, they
gathered the ripe and spontaneous fruits of the superstition of
the times. They gathered these fruits without toil or personal
danger: in the council of the Lateran, Innocent the Third
declared an ambiguous resolution of animating the crusaders by
his example; but the pilot of the sacred vessel could not abandon
the helm; nor was Palestine ever blessed with the presence of a
Roman pontiff. 87
83 (return) [ Thomassin (Discipline de l’Eglise, tom. iii. p.
311—374) has copiously treated of the origin, abuses, and
restrictions of these _tenths_. A theory was started, but not
pursued, that they were rightfully due to the pope, a tenth of
the Levite’s tenth to the high priest, (Selden on Tithes; see his
Works, vol. iii. p. ii. p. 1083.)]
84 (return) [ See the Gesta Innocentii III. in Murat. Script.
Rer. Ital., (tom. iii. p. 486—568.)]
85 (return) [ See the vth crusade, and the siege of Damietta, in
Jacobus à Vitriaco, (l. iii. p. 1125—1149, in the Gesta Dei of
Bongarsius,) an eye-witness, Bernard Thesaurarius, (in Script.
Muratori, tom. vii. p. 825—846, c. 190—207,) a contemporary, and
Sanutus, (Secreta Fidel Crucis, l. iii. p. xi. c. 4—9,) a
diligent compiler; and of the Arabians Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p.
294,) and the Extracts at the end of Joinville, (p. 533, 537,
540, 547, &c.)]
86 (return) [ To those who took the cross against Mainfroy, the
pope (A.D. 1255) granted plenissimam peccatorum remissionem.
Fideles mirabantur quòd tantum eis promitteret pro sanguine
Christianorum effundendo quantum pro cruore infidelium aliquando,
(Matthew Paris p. 785.) A high flight for the reason of the
xiiith century.]
87 (return) [ This simple idea is agreeable to the good sense of
Mosheim, (Institut. Hist. Ecclés. p. 332,) and the fine
philosophy of Hume, (Hist. of England, vol. i. p. 330.)]
The persons, the families, and estates of the pilgrims, were
under the immediate protection of the popes; and these spiritual
patrons soon claimed the prerogative of directing their
operations, and enforcing, by commands and censures, the
accomplishment of their vow. Frederic the Second, 88 the grandson
of Barbarossa, was successively the pupil, the enemy, and the
victim of the church. At the age of twenty-one years, and in
obedience to his guardian Innocent the Third, he assumed the
cross; the same promise was repeated at his royal and imperial
coronations; and his marriage with the heiress of Jerusalem
forever bound him to defend the kingdom of his son Conrad. But as
Frederic advanced in age and authority, he repented of the rash
engagements of his youth: his liberal sense and knowledge taught
him to despise the phantoms of superstition and the crowns of
Asia: he no longer entertained the same reverence for the
successors of Innocent: and his ambition was occupied by the
restoration of the Italian monarchy from Sicily to the Alps. But
the success of this project would have reduced the popes to their
primitive simplicity; and, after the delays and excuses of twelve
years, they urged the emperor, with entreaties and threats, to
fix the time and place of his departure for Palestine. In the
harbors of Sicily and Apulia, he prepared a fleet of one hundred
galleys, and of one hundred vessels, that were framed to
transport and land two thousand five hundred knights, with their
horses and attendants; his vassals of Naples and Germany formed a
powerful army; and the number of English crusaders was magnified
to sixty thousand by the report of fame. But the inevitable or
affected slowness of these mighty preparations consumed the
strength and provisions of the more indigent pilgrims: the
multitude was thinned by sickness and desertion; and the sultry
summer of Calabria anticipated the mischiefs of a Syrian
campaign. At length the emperor hoisted sail at Brundusium, with
a fleet and army of forty thousand men: but he kept the sea no
more than three days; and his hasty retreat, which was ascribed
by his friends to a grievous indisposition, was accused by his
enemies as a voluntary and obstinate disobedience. For suspending
his vow was Frederic excommunicated by Gregory the Ninth; for
presuming, the next year, to accomplish his vow, he was again
excommunicated by the same pope. 89 While he served under the
banner of the cross, a crusade was preached against him in Italy;
and after his return he was compelled to ask pardon for the
injuries which he had suffered. The clergy and military orders of
Palestine were previously instructed to renounce his communion
and dispute his commands; and in his own kingdom, the emperor was
forced to consent that the orders of the camp should be issued in
the name of God and of the Christian republic. Frederic entered
Jerusalem in triumph; and with his own hands (for no priest would
perform the office) he took the crown from the altar of the holy
sepulchre. But the patriarch cast an interdict on the church
which his presence had profaned; and the knights of the hospital
and temple informed the sultan how easily he might be surprised
and slain in his unguarded visit to the River Jordan. In such a
state of fanaticism and faction, victory was hopeless, and
defence was difficult; but the conclusion of an advantageous
peace may be imputed to the discord of the Mahometans, and their
personal esteem for the character of Frederic. The enemy of the
church is accused of maintaining with the miscreants an
intercourse of hospitality and friendship unworthy of a
Christian; of despising the barrenness of the land; and of
indulging a profane thought, that if Jehovah had seen the kingdom
of Naples he never would have selected Palestine for the
inheritance of his chosen people. Yet Frederic obtained from the
sultan the restitution of Jerusalem, of Bethlem and Nazareth, of
Tyre and Sidon; the Latins were allowed to inhabit and fortify
the city; an equal code of civil and religious freedom was
ratified for the sectaries of Jesus and those of Mahomet; and,
while the former worshipped at the holy sepulchre, the latter
might pray and preach in the mosque of the temple, 90 from whence
the prophet undertook his nocturnal journey to heaven. The clergy
deplored this scandalous toleration; and the weaker Moslems were
gradually expelled; but every rational object of the crusades was
accomplished without bloodshed; the churches were restored, the
monasteries were replenished; and, in the space of fifteen years,
the Latins of Jerusalem exceeded the number of six thousand. This
peace and prosperity, for which they were ungrateful to their
benefactor, was terminated by the irruption of the strange and
savage hordes of Carizmians. 91 Flying from the arms of the
Moguls, those shepherds 911 of the Caspian rolled headlong on
Syria; and the union of the Franks with the sultans of Aleppo,
Hems, and Damascus, was insufficient to stem the violence of the
torrent. Whatever stood against them was cut off by the sword, or
dragged into captivity: the military orders were almost
exterminated in a single battle; and in the pillage of the city,
in the profanation of the holy sepulchre, the Latins confess and
regret the modesty and discipline of the Turks and Saracens.
88 (return) [ The original materials for the crusade of Frederic
II. may be drawn from Richard de St. Germano (in Muratori,
Script. Rerum Ital. tom. vii. p. 1002—1013) and Matthew Paris,
(p. 286, 291, 300, 302, 304.) The most rational moderns are
Fleury, (Hist. Ecclés. tom. xvi.,) Vertot, (Chevaliers de Malthe,
tom. i. l. iii.,) Giannone, (Istoria Civile di Napoli, tom. ii.
l. xvi.,) and Muratori, (Annali d’ Italia, tom. x.)]
89 (return) [ Poor Muratori knows what to think, but knows not
what to say: “Chino qui il capo,” &c. p. 322.]
90 (return) [ The clergy artfully confounded the mosque or church
of the temple with the holy sepulchre, and their wilful error has
deceived both Vertot and Muratori.]
91 (return) [ The irruption of the Carizmians, or Corasmins, is
related by Matthew Paris, (p. 546, 547,) and by Joinville,
Nangis, and the Arabians, (p. 111, 112, 191, 192, 528, 530.)]
911 (return) [ They were in alliance with Eyub, sultan of Syria.
Wilken vol. vi. p. 630.—M.]
Of the seven crusades, the two last were undertaken by Louis the
Ninth, king of France; who lost his liberty in Egypt, and his
life on the coast of Africa. Twenty-eight years after his death,
he was canonized at Rome; and sixty-five miracles were readily
found, and solemnly attested, to justify the claim of the royal
saint. 92 The voice of history renders a more honorable
testimony, that he united the virtues of a king, a hero, and a
man; that his martial spirit was tempered by the love of private
and public justice; and that Louis was the father of his people,
the friend of his neighbors, and the terror of the infidels.
Superstition alone, in all the extent of her baleful influence,
93 corrupted his understanding and his heart: his devotion
stooped to admire and imitate the begging friars of Francis and
Dominic: he pursued with blind and cruel zeal the enemies of the
faith; and the best of kings twice descended from his throne to
seek the adventures of a spiritual knight-errant. A monkish
historian would have been content to applaud the most despicable
part of his character; but the noble and gallant Joinville, 94
who shared the friendship and captivity of Louis, has traced with
the pencil of nature the free portrait of his virtues as well as
of his failings. From this intimate knowledge we may learn to
suspect the political views of depressing their great vassals,
which are so often imputed to the royal authors of the crusades.
Above all the princes of the middle ages, Louis the Ninth
successfully labored to restore the prerogatives of the crown;
but it was at home and not in the East, that he acquired for
himself and his posterity: his vow was the result of enthusiasm
and sickness; and if he were the promoter, he was likewise the
victim, of his holy madness. For the invasion of Egypt, France
was exhausted of her troops and treasures; he covered the sea of
Cyprus with eighteen hundred sails; the most modest enumeration
amounts to fifty thousand men; and, if we might trust his own
confession, as it is reported by Oriental vanity, he disembarked
nine thousand five hundred horse, and one hundred and thirty
thousand foot, who performed their pilgrimage under the shadow of
his power. 95
92 (return) [ Read, if you can, the Life and Miracles of St.
Louis, by the confessor of Queen Margaret, (p. 291—523.
Joinville, du Louvre.)]
93 (return) [ He believed all that mother church taught,
(Joinville, p. 10,) but he cautioned Joinville against disputing
with infidels. “L’omme lay (said he in his old language) quand il
ot medire de la loi Crestienne, ne doit pas deffendre la loi
Crestienne ne mais que de l’espée, dequoi il doit donner parmi le
ventre dedens, tant comme elle y peut entrer” (p. 12.)]
94 (return) [ I have two editions of Joinville, the one (Paris,
1668) most valuable for the observations of Ducange; the other
(Paris, au Louvre, 1761) most precious for the pure and authentic
text, a MS. of which has been recently discovered. The last
edition proves that the history of St. Louis was finished A.D.
1309, without explaining, or even admiring, the age of the
author, which must have exceeded ninety years, (Preface, p. x.
Observations de Ducange, p. 17.)]
95 (return) [ Joinville, p. 32. Arabic Extracts, p. 549. *
Note: * Compare Wilken, vol. vii. p. 94.—M.]
In complete armor, the oriflamme waving before him, Louis leaped
foremost on the beach; and the strong city of Damietta, which had
cost his predecessors a siege of sixteen months, was abandoned on
the first assault by the trembling Moslems. But Damietta was the
first and the last of his conquests; and in the fifth and sixth
crusades, the same causes, almost on the same ground, were
productive of similar calamities. 96 After a ruinous delay, which
introduced into the camp the seeds of an epidemic disease, the
Franks advanced from the sea-coast towards the capital of Egypt,
and strove to surmount the unseasonable inundation of the Nile,
which opposed their progress. Under the eye of their intrepid
monarch, the barons and knights of France displayed their
invincible contempt of danger and discipline: his brother, the
count of Artois, stormed with inconsiderate valor the town of
Massoura; and the carrier pigeons announced to the inhabitants of
Cairo that all was lost. But a soldier, who afterwards usurped
the sceptre, rallied the flying troops: the main body of the
Christians was far behind the vanguard; and Artois was
overpowered and slain. A shower of Greek fire was incessantly
poured on the invaders; the Nile was commanded by the Egyptian
galleys, the open country by the Arabs; all provisions were
intercepted; each day aggravated the sickness and famine; and
about the same time a retreat was found to be necessary and
impracticable. The Oriental writers confess, that Louis might
have escaped, if he would have deserted his subjects; he was made
prisoner, with the greatest part of his nobles; all who could not
redeem their lives by service or ransom were inhumanly massacred;
and the walls of Cairo were decorated with a circle of Christian
heads. 97 The king of France was loaded with chains; but the
generous victor, a great-grandson of the brother of Saladin, sent
a robe of honor to his royal captive, and his deliverance, with
that of his soldiers, was obtained by the restitution of Damietta
98 and the payment of four hundred thousand pieces of gold. In a
soft and luxurious climate, the degenerate children of the
companions of Noureddin and Saladin were incapable of resisting
the flower of European chivalry: they triumphed by the arms of
their slaves or Mamalukes, the hardy natives of Tartary, who at a
tender age had been purchased of the Syrian merchants, and were
educated in the camp and palace of the sultan. But Egypt soon
afforded a new example of the danger of prætorian bands; and the
rage of these ferocious animals, who had been let loose on the
strangers, was provoked to devour their benefactor. In the pride
of conquest, Touran Shaw, the last of his race, was murdered by
his Mamalukes; and the most daring of the assassins entered the
chamber of the captive king, with drawn cimeters, and their hands
imbrued in the blood of their sultan. The firmness of Louis
commanded their respect; 99 their avarice prevailed over cruelty
and zeal; the treaty was accomplished; and the king of France,
with the relics of his army, was permitted to embark for
Palestine. He wasted four years within the walls of Acre, unable
to visit Jerusalem, and unwilling to return without glory to his
native country.
96 (return) [ The last editors have enriched their Joinville with
large and curious extracts from the Arabic historians, Macrizi,
Abulfeda, &c. See likewise Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 322—325,)
who calls him by the corrupt name of _Redefrans_. Matthew Paris
(p. 683, 684) has described the rival folly of the French and
English who fought and fell at Massoura.]
97 (return) [ Savary, in his agreeable Letters sur L’Egypte, has
given a description of Damietta, (tom. i. lettre xxiii. p.
274—290,) and a narrative of the exposition of St. Louis, (xxv.
p. 306—350.)]
98 (return) [ For the ransom of St. Louis, a million of byzants
was asked and granted; but the sultan’s generosity reduced that
sum to 800,000 byzants, which are valued by Joinville at 400,000
French livres of his own time, and expressed by Matthew Paris by
100,000 marks of silver, (Ducange, Dissertation xx. sur
Joinville.)]
99 (return) [ The idea of the emirs to choose Louis for their
sultan is seriously attested by Joinville, (p. 77, 78,) and does
not appear to me so absurd as to M. de Voltaire, (Hist. Générale,
tom. ii. p. 386, 387.) The Mamalukes themselves were strangers,
rebels, and equals: they had felt his valor, they hoped his
conversion; and such a motion, which was not seconded, might be
made, perhaps by a secret Christian in their tumultuous assembly.
*
Note: * Wilken, vol. vii. p. 257, thinks the proposition could
not have been made in earnest.—M.]
The memory of his defeat excited Louis, after sixteen years of
wisdom and repose, to undertake the seventh and last of the
crusades. His finances were restored, his kingdom was enlarged; a
new generation of warriors had arisen, and he advanced with fresh
confidence at the head of six thousand horse and thirty thousand
foot. The loss of Antioch had provoked the enterprise; a wild
hope of baptizing the king of Tunis tempted him to steer for the
African coast; and the report of an immense treasure reconciled
his troops to the delay of their voyage to the Holy Land. Instead
of a proselyte, he found a siege: the French panted and died on
the burning sands: St. Louis expired in his tent; and no sooner
had he closed his eyes, than his son and successor gave the
signal of the retreat. 100 “It is thus,” says a lively writer,
“that a Christian king died near the ruins of Carthage, waging
war against the sectaries of Mahomet, in a land to which Dido had
introduced the deities of Syria.” 101
100 (return) [ See the expedition in the annals of St. Louis, by
William de Nangis, p. 270—287; and the Arabic extracts, p. 545,
555, of the Louvre edition of Joinville.]
101 (return) [ Voltaire, Hist. Générale, tom. ii. p. 391.]
A more unjust and absurd constitution cannot be devised than that
which condemns the natives of a country to perpetual servitude,
under the arbitrary dominion of strangers and slaves. Yet such
has been the state of Egypt above five hundred years. The most
illustrious sultans of the Baharite and Borgite dynasties 102
were themselves promoted from the Tartar and Circassian bands;
and the four-and-twenty beys, or military chiefs, have ever been
succeeded, not by their sons, but by their servants. They produce
the great charter of their liberties, the treaty of Selim the
First with the republic: 103 and the Othman emperor still accepts
from Egypt a slight acknowledgment of tribute and subjection.
With some breathing intervals of peace and order, the two
dynasties are marked as a period of rapine and bloodshed: 104 but
their throne, however shaken, reposed on the two pillars of
discipline and valor: their sway extended over Egypt, Nubia,
Arabia, and Syria: their Mamalukes were multiplied from eight
hundred to twenty-five thousand horse; and their numbers were
increased by a provincial militia of one hundred and seven
thousand foot, and the occasional aid of sixty-six thousand
Arabs. 105 Princes of such power and spirit could not long endure
on their coast a hostile and independent nation; and if the ruin
of the Franks was postponed about forty years, they were indebted
to the cares of an unsettled reign, to the invasion of the
Moguls, and to the occasional aid of some warlike pilgrims. Among
these, the English reader will observe the name of our first
Edward, who assumed the cross in the lifetime of his father
Henry. At the head of a thousand soldiers the future conqueror of
Wales and Scotland delivered Acre from a siege; marched as far as
Nazareth with an army of nine thousand men; emulated the fame of
his uncle Richard; extorted, by his valor, a ten years’ truce;
1051 and escaped, with a dangerous wound, from the dagger of a
fanatic _assassin_. 106 1061 Antioch, 107 whose situation had
been less exposed to the calamities of the holy war, was finally
occupied and ruined by Bondocdar, or Bibars, sultan of Egypt and
Syria; the Latin principality was extinguished; and the first
seat of the Christian name was dispeopled by the slaughter of
seventeen, and the captivity of one hundred, thousand of her
inhabitants. The maritime towns of Laodicea, Gabala, Tripoli,
Berytus, Sidon, Tyre and Jaffa, and the stronger castles of the
Hospitallers and Templars, successively fell; and the whole
existence of the Franks was confined to the city and colony of
St. John of Acre, which is sometimes described by the more
classic title of Ptolemais.
102 (return) [ The chronology of the two dynasties of Mamalukes,
the Baharites, Turks or Tartars of Kipzak, and the Borgites,
Circassians, is given by Pocock (Prolegom. ad Abulpharag. p.
6—31) and De Guignes (tom. i. p. 264—270;) their history from
Abulfeda, Macrizi, &c., to the beginning of the xvth century, by
the same M. De Guignes, (tom. iv. p. 110—328.)]
103 (return) [ Savary, Lettres sur l’Egypte, tom. ii. lettre xv.
p. 189—208. I much question the authenticity of this copy; yet it
is true, that Sultan Selim concluded a treaty with the
Circassians or Mamalukes of Egypt, and left them in possession of
arms, riches, and power. See a new Abrégé de l’Histoire Ottomane,
composed in Egypt, and translated by M. Digeon, (tom. i. p.
55—58, Paris, 1781,) a curious, authentic, and national history.]
104 (return) [ Si totum quo regnum occupârunt tempus respicias,
præsertim quod fini propius, reperies illud bellis, pugnis,
injuriis, ac rapinis refertum, (Al Jannabi, apud Pocock, p. 31.)
The reign of Mohammed (A.D. 1311—1341) affords a happy exception,
(De Guignes, tom. iv. p. 208—210.)]
105 (return) [ They are now reduced to 8500: but the expense of
each Mamaluke may be rated at a hundred louis: and Egypt groans
under the avarice and insolence of these strangers, (Voyages de
Volney, tom. i. p. 89—187.)]
1051 (return) [ Gibbon colors rather highly the success of
Edward. Wilken is more accurate vol. vii. p. 593, &c.—M.]
106 (return) [ See Carte’s History of England, vol. ii. p.
165—175, and his original authors, Thomas Wikes and Walter
Hemingford, (l. iii. c. 34, 35,) in Gale’s Collection, (tom. ii.
p. 97, 589—592.) They are both ignorant of the princess Eleanor’s
piety in sucking the poisoned wound, and saving her husband at
the risk of her own life.]
1061 (return) [ The sultan Bibars was concerned in this attempt
at assassination Wilken, vol. vii. p. 602. Ptolemæus Lucensis is
the earliest authority for the devotion of Eleanora. Ibid.
605.—M.]
107 (return) [ Sanutus, Secret. Fidelium Crucis, 1. iii. p. xii.
c. 9, and De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. iv. p. 143, from the
Arabic historians.]
After the loss of Jerusalem, Acre, 108 which is distant about
seventy miles, became the metropolis of the Latin Christians, and
was adorned with strong and stately buildings, with aqueducts, an
artificial port, and a double wall. The population was increased
by the incessant streams of pilgrims and fugitives: in the pauses
of hostility the trade of the East and West was attracted to this
convenient station; and the market could offer the produce of
every clime and the interpreters of every tongue. But in this
conflux of nations, every vice was propagated and practised: of
all the disciples of Jesus and Mahomet, the male and female
inhabitants of Acre were esteemed the most corrupt; nor could the
abuse of religion be corrected by the discipline of law. The city
had many sovereigns, and no government. The kings of Jerusalem
and Cyprus, of the house of Lusignan, the princes of Antioch, the
counts of Tripoli and Sidon, the great masters of the hospital,
the temple, and the Teutonic order, the republics of Venice,
Genoa, and Pisa, the pope’s legate, the kings of France and
England, assumed an independent command: seventeen tribunals
exercised the power of life and death; every criminal was
protected in the adjacent quarter; and the perpetual jealousy of
the nations often burst forth in acts of violence and blood. Some
adventurers, who disgraced the ensign of the cross, compensated
their want of pay by the plunder of the Mahometan villages:
nineteen Syrian merchants, who traded under the public faith,
were despoiled and hanged by the Christians; and the denial of
satisfaction justified the arms of the sultan Khalil. He marched
against Acre, at the head of sixty thousand horse and one hundred
and forty thousand foot: his train of artillery (if I may use the
word) was numerous and weighty: the separate timbers of a single
engine were transported in one hundred wagons; and the royal
historian Abulfeda, who served with the troops of Hamah, was
himself a spectator of the holy war. Whatever might be the vices
of the Franks, their courage was rekindled by enthusiasm and
despair; but they were torn by the discord of seventeen chiefs,
and overwhelmed on all sides by the powers of the sultan. After a
siege of thirty three days, the double wall was forced by the
Moslems; the principal tower yielded to their engines; the
Mamalukes made a general assault; the city was stormed; and death
or slavery was the lot of sixty thousand Christians. The convent,
or rather fortress, of the Templars resisted three days longer;
but the great master was pierced with an arrow; and, of five
hundred knights, only ten were left alive, less happy than the
victims of the sword, if they lived to suffer on a scaffold, in
the unjust and cruel proscription of the whole order. The king of
Jerusalem, the patriarch and the great master of the hospital,
effected their retreat to the shore; but the sea was rough, the
vessels were insufficient; and great numbers of the fugitives
were drowned before they could reach the Isle of Cyprus, which
might comfort Lusignan for the loss of Palestine. By the command
of the sultan, the churches and fortifications of the Latin
cities were demolished: a motive of avarice or fear still opened
the holy sepulchre to some devout and defenceless pilgrims; and a
mournful and solitary silence prevailed along the coast which had
so long resounded with the world’s debate. 109
108 (return) [ The state of Acre is represented in all the
chronicles of te times, and most accurately in John Villani, l.
vii. c. 144, in Muratori, Scriptores Rerum Italicarum, tom. xiii.
337, 338.]
109 (return) [ See the final expulsion of the Franks, in Sanutus,
l. iii. p. xii. c. 11—22; Abulfeda, Macrizi, &c., in De Guignes,
tom. iv. p. 162, 164; and Vertot, tom. i. l. iii. p. 307—428. *
Note: * After these chapters of Gibbon, the masterly prize
composition, “Essai sur ‘Influence des Croisades sur l’Europe,”
par A H. L. Heeren: traduit de l’Allemand par Charles Villars,
Paris, 1808,’ or the original German, in Heeren’s “Vermischte
Schriften,” may be read with great advantage.—M.]
Chapter LX: The Fourth Crusade.—Part I.
Schism Of The Greeks And Latins.—State Of Constantinople.— Revolt
Of The Bulgarians.—Isaac Angelus Dethroned By His Brother
Alexius.—Origin Of The Fourth Crusade.—Alliance Of The French And
Venetians With The Son Of Isaac.—Their Naval Expedition To
Constantinople.—The Two Sieges And Final Conquest Of The City By
The Latins.
The restoration of the Western empire by Charlemagne was speedily
followed by the separation of the Greek and Latin churches. 1 A
religious and national animosity still divides the two largest
communions of the Christian world; and the schism of
Constantinople,
by alienating her most useful allies, and provoking her most
dangerous
enemies, has precipitated the decline and fall of the Roman
empire in the East.
1 (return) [ In the successive centuries, from the ixth to the
xviiith, Mosheim traces the schism of the Greeks with learning,
clearness, and impartiality; the _filioque_ (Institut. Hist.
Ecclés. p. 277,) Leo III. p. 303 Photius, p. 307, 308. Michael
Cerularius, p. 370, 371, &c.]
In the course of the present History, the aversion of the Greeks
for the Latins has been often visible and conspicuous. It was
originally derived from the disdain of servitude, inflamed, after
the time of Constantine, by the pride of equality or dominion;
and finally exasperated by the preference which their rebellious
subjects had given to the alliance of the Franks. In every age
the Greeks were proud of their superiority in profane and
religious knowledge: they had first received the light of
Christianity; they had pronounced the decrees of the seven
general councils; they alone possessed the language of Scripture
and philosophy; nor should the Barbarians, immersed in the
darkness of the West, 2 presume to argue on the high and
mysterious questions of theological science. Those Barbarians
despised in then turn the restless and subtile levity of the
Orientals, the authors of every heresy; and blessed their own
simplicity, which was content to hold the tradition of the
apostolic church. Yet in the seventh century, the synods of
Spain, and afterwards of France, improved or corrupted the Nicene
creed, on the mysterious subject of the third person of the
Trinity. 3 In the long controversies of the East, the nature and
generation of the Christ had been scrupulously defined; and the
well-known relation of father and son seemed to convey a faint
image to the human mind. The idea of birth was less analogous to
the Holy Spirit, who, instead of a divine gift or attribute, was
considered by the Catholics as a substance, a person, a god; he
was not begotten, but in the orthodox style he _proceeded_. Did
he proceed from the Father alone, perhaps _by_ the Son? or from
the Father _and_ the Son? The first of these opinions was
asserted by the Greeks, the second by the Latins; and the
addition to the Nicene creed of the word _filioque_, kindled the
flame of discord between the Oriental and the Gallic churches. In
the origin of the disputes the Roman pontiffs affected a
character of neutrality and moderation: 4 they condemned the
innovation, but they acquiesced in the sentiment, of their
Transalpine brethren: they seemed desirous of casting a veil of
silence and charity over the superfluous research; and in the
correspondence of Charlemagne and Leo the Third, the pope assumes
the liberality of a statesman, and the prince descends to the
passions and prejudices of a priest. 5 But the orthodoxy of Rome
spontaneously obeyed the impulse of the temporal policy; and the
_filioque_, which Leo wished to erase, was transcribed in the
symbol and chanted in the liturgy of the Vatican. The Nicene and
Athanasian creeds are held as the Catholic faith, without which
none can be saved; and both Papists and Protestants must now
sustain and return the anathemas of the Greeks, who deny the
procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son, as well as from the
Father. Such articles of faith are not susceptible of treaty; but
the rules of discipline will vary in remote and independent
churches; and the reason, even of divines, might allow, that the
difference is inevitable and harmless. The craft or superstition
of Rome has imposed on her priests and deacons the rigid
obligation of celibacy; among the Greeks it is confined to the
bishops; the loss is compensated by dignity or annihilated by
age; and the parochial clergy, the papas, enjoy the conjugal
society of the wives whom they have married before their entrance
into holy orders. A question concerning the _Azyms_ was fiercely
debated in the eleventh century, and the essence of the Eucharist
was supposed in the East and West to depend on the use of
leavened or unleavened bread. Shall I mention in a serious
history the furious reproaches that were urged against the
Latins, who for a long while remained on the defensive? They
neglected to abstain, according to the apostolical decree, from
things strangled, and from blood: they fasted (a Jewish
observance!) on the Saturday of each week: during the first week
of Lent they permitted the use of milk and cheese; 6 their infirm
monks were indulged in the taste of flesh; and animal grease was
substituted for the want of vegetable oil: the holy chrism or
unction in baptism was reserved to the episcopal order: the
bishops, as the bridegrooms of their churches, were decorated
with rings; their priests shaved their faces, and baptized by a
single immersion. Such were the crimes which provoked the zeal of
the patriarchs of Constantinople; and which were justified with
equal zeal by the doctors of the Latin church. 7
2 (return) [ ''AndreV dussebeiV kai apotropaioi, andreV ek sktouV
anadunteV, thV gar 'Esperiou moiraV uphrcon gennhmata, (Phot.
Epist. p. 47, edit. Montacut.) The Oriental patriarch continues
to apply the images of thunder, earthquake, hail, wild boar,
precursors of Antichrist, &c., &c.]
3 (return) [ The mysterious subject of the procession of the Holy
Ghost is discussed in the historical, theological, and
controversial sense, or nonsense, by the Jesuit Petavius.
(Dogmata Theologica, tom. ii. l. vii. p. 362—440.)]
4 (return) [ Before the shrine of St. Peter he placed two shields
of the weight of 94 1/2 pounds of pure silver; on which he
inscribed the text of both creeds, (utroque symbolo,) pro amore
et _cautelâ_ orthodoxæ fidei, (Anastas. in Leon. III. in
Muratori, tom. iii. pars. i. p. 208.) His language most clearly
proves, that neither the _filioque_, nor the Athanasian creed
were received at Rome about the year 830.]
5 (return) [ The Missi of Charlemagne pressed him to declare,
that all who rejected the _filioque_, or at least the doctrine,
must be damned. All, replies the pope, are not capable of
reaching the altiora mysteria qui potuerit, et non voluerit,
salvus esse non potest, (Collect. Concil. tom. ix. p. 277—286.)
The _potuerit_ would leave a large loophole of salvation!]
6 (return) [ In France, after some harsher laws, the
ecclesiastical discipline is now relaxed: milk, cheese, and
butter, are become a perpetual, and eggs an annual, indulgence in
Lent, (Vie privée des François, tom. ii. p. 27—38.)]
7 (return) [ The original monuments of the schism, of the charges
of the Greeks against the Latins, are deposited in the epistles
of Photius, (Epist Encyclica, ii. p. 47—61,) and of Michael
Cerularius, (Canisii Antiq. Lectiones, tom. iii. p. i. p.
281—324, edit. Basnage, with the prolix answer of Cardinal
Humbert.)]
Bigotry and national aversion are powerful magnifiers of every
object of dispute; but the immediate cause of the schism of the
Greeks may be traced in the emulation of the leading prelates,
who maintained the supremacy of the old metropolis superior to
all, and of the reigning capital, inferior to none, in the
Christian world. About the middle of the ninth century, Photius,
8 an ambitious layman, the captain of the guards and principal
secretary, was promoted by merit and favor to the more desirable
office of patriarch of Constantinople. In science, even
ecclesiastical science, he surpassed the clergy of the age; and
the purity of his morals has never been impeached: but his
ordination was hasty, his rise was irregular; and Ignatius, his
abdicated predecessor, was yet supported by the public compassion
and the obstinacy of his adherents. They appealed to the tribunal
of Nicholas the First, one of the proudest and most aspiring of
the Roman pontiffs, who embraced the welcome opportunity of
judging and condemning his rival of the East. Their quarrel was
embittered by a conflict of jurisdiction over the king and nation
of the Bulgarians; nor was their recent conversion to
Christianity of much avail to either prelate, unless he could
number the proselytes among the subjects of his power. With the
aid of his court the Greek patriarch was victorious; but in the
furious contest he deposed in his turn the successor of St.
Peter, and involved the Latin church in the reproach of heresy
and schism. Photius sacrificed the peace of the world to a short
and precarious reign: he fell with his patron, the Cæsar Bardas;
and Basil the Macedonian performed an act of justice in the
restoration of Ignatius, whose age and dignity had not been
sufficiently respected. From his monastery, or prison, Photius
solicited the favor of the emperor by pathetic complaints and
artful flattery; and the eyes of his rival were scarcely closed,
when he was again restored to the throne of Constantinople. After
the death of Basil he experienced the vicissitudes of courts and
the ingratitude of a royal pupil: the patriarch was again
deposed, and in his last solitary hours he might regret the
freedom of a secular and studious life. In each revolution, the
breath, the nod, of the sovereign had been accepted by a
submissive clergy; and a synod of three hundred bishops was
always prepared to hail the triumph, or to stigmatize the fall,
of the holy, or the execrable, Photius. 9 By a delusive promise
of succor or reward, the popes were tempted to countenance these
various proceedings; and the synods of Constantinople were
ratified by their epistles or legates. But the court and the
people, Ignatius and Photius, were equally adverse to their
claims; their ministers were insulted or imprisoned; the
procession of the Holy Ghost was forgotten; Bulgaria was forever
annexed to the Byzantine throne; and the schism was prolonged by
their rigid censure of all the multiplied ordinations of an
irregular patriarch. The darkness and corruption of the tenth
century suspended the intercourse, without reconciling the minds,
of the two nations. But when the Norman sword restored the
churches of Apulia to the jurisdiction of Rome, the departing
flock was warned, by a petulant epistle of the Greek patriarch,
to avoid and abhor the errors of the Latins. The rising majesty
of Rome could no longer brook the insolence of a rebel; and
Michael Cerularius was excommunicated in the heart of
Constantinople by the pope’s legates. Shaking the dust from their
feet, they deposited on the altar of St. Sophia a direful
anathema, 10 which enumerates the seven mortal heresies of the
Greeks, and devotes the guilty teachers, and their unhappy
sectaries, to the eternal society of the devil and his angels.
According to the emergencies of the church and state, a friendly
correspondence was some times resumed; the language of charity
and concord was sometimes affected; but the Greeks have never
recanted their errors; the popes have never repealed their
sentence; and from this thunderbolt we may date the consummation
of the schism. It was enlarged by each ambitious step of the
Roman pontiffs: the emperors blushed and trembled at the
ignominious fate of their royal brethren of Germany; and the
people were scandalized by the temporal power and military life
of the Latin clergy. 11
8 (return) [ The xth volume of the Venice edition of the Councils
contains all the acts of the synods, and history of Photius: they
are abridged, with a faint tinge of prejudice or prudence, by
Dupin and Fleury.]
9 (return) [ The synod of Constantinople, held in the year 869,
is the viiith of the general councils, the last assembly of the
East which is recognized by the Roman church. She rejects the
synods of Constantinople of the years 867 and 879, which were,
however, equally numerous and noisy; but they were favorable to
Photius.]
10 (return) [ See this anathema in the Councils, tom. xi. p.
1457—1460.]
11 (return) [ Anna Comnena (Alexiad, l. i. p. 31—33) represents
the abhorrence, not only of the church, but of the palace, for
Gregory VII., the popes and the Latin communion. The style of
Cinnamus and Nicetas is still more vehement. Yet how calm is the
voice of history compared with that of polemics!]
The aversion of the Greeks and Latins was nourished and
manifested in the three first expeditions to the Holy Land.
Alexius Comnenus contrived the absence at least of the formidable
pilgrims: his successors, Manuel and Isaac Angelus, conspired
with the Moslems for the ruin of the greatest princes of the
Franks; and their crooked and malignant policy was seconded by
the active and voluntary obedience of every order of their
subjects. Of this hostile temper, a large portion may doubtless
be ascribed to the difference of language, dress, and manners,
which severs and alienates the nations of the globe. The pride,
as well as the prudence, of the sovereign was deeply wounded by
the intrusion of foreign armies, that claimed a right of
traversing his dominions, and passing under the walls of his
capital: his subjects were insulted and plundered by the rude
strangers of the West: and the hatred of the pusillanimous Greeks
was sharpened by secret envy of the bold and pious enterprises of
the Franks. But these profane causes of national enmity were
fortified and inflamed by the venom of religious zeal. Instead of
a kind embrace, a hospitable reception from their Christian
brethren of the East, every tongue was taught to repeat the names
of schismatic and heretic, more odious to an orthodox ear than
those of pagan and infidel: instead of being loved for the
general conformity of faith and worship, they were abhorred for
some rules of discipline, some questions of theology, in which
themselves or their teachers might differ from the Oriental
church. In the crusade of Louis the Seventh, the Greek clergy
washed and purified the altars which had been defiled by the
sacrifice of a French priest. The companions of Frederic
Barbarossa deplore the injuries which they endured, both in word
and deed, from the peculiar rancor of the bishops and monks.
Their prayers and sermons excited the people against the impious
Barbarians; and the patriarch is accused of declaring, that the
faithful might obtain the redemption of all their sins by the
extirpation of the schismatics. 12 An enthusiast, named
Dorotheus, alarmed the fears, and restored the confidence, of the
emperor, by a prophetic assurance, that the German heretic, after
assaulting the gate of Blachernes, would be made a signal example
of the divine vengeance. The passage of these mighty armies were
rare and perilous events; but the crusades introduced a frequent
and familiar intercourse between the two nations, which enlarged
their knowledge without abating their prejudices. The wealth and
luxury of Constantinople demanded the productions of every
climate; these imports were balanced by the art and labor of her
numerous inhabitants; her situation invites the commerce of the
world; and, in every period of her existence, that commerce has
been in the hands of foreigners. After the decline of Amalphi,
the Venetians, Pisans, and Genoese, introduced their factories
and settlements into the capital of the empire: their services
were rewarded with honors and immunities; they acquired the
possession of lands and houses; their families were multiplied by
marriages with the natives; and, after the toleration of a
Mahometan mosque, it was impossible to interdict the churches of
the Roman rite. 13 The two wives of Manuel Comnenus 14 were of
the race of the Franks: the first, a sister-in-law of the emperor
Conrad; the second, a daughter of the prince of Antioch: he
obtained for his son Alexius a daughter of Philip Augustus, king
of France; and he bestowed his own daughter on a marquis of
Montferrat, who was educated and dignified in the palace of
Constantinople. The Greek encountered the arms, and aspired to
the empire, of the West: he esteemed the valor, and trusted the
fidelity, of the Franks; 15 their military talents were unfitly
recompensed by the lucrative offices of judges and treasures; the
policy of Manuel had solicited the alliance of the pope; and the
popular voice accused him of a partial bias to the nation and
religion of the Latins. 16 During his reign, and that of his
successor Alexius, they were exposed at Constantinople to the
reproach of foreigners, heretics, and favorites; and this triple
guilt was severely expiated in the tumult, which announced the
return and elevation of Andronicus. 17 The people rose in arms:
from the Asiatic shore the tyrant despatched his troops and
galleys to assist the national revenge; and the hopeless
resistance of the strangers served only to justify the rage, and
sharpen the daggers, of the assassins. Neither age, nor sex, nor
the ties of friendship or kindred, could save the victims of
national hatred, and avarice, and religious zeal; the Latins were
slaughtered in their houses and in the streets; their quarter was
reduced to ashes; the clergy were burnt in their churches, and
the sick in their hospitals; and some estimate may be formed of
the slain from the clemency which sold above four thousand
Christians in perpetual slavery to the Turks. The priests and
monks were the loudest and most active in the destruction of the
schismatics; and they chanted a thanksgiving to the Lord, when
the head of a Roman cardinal, the pope’s legate, was severed from
his body, fastened to the tail of a dog, and dragged, with savage
mockery, through the city. The more diligent of the strangers had
retreated, on the first alarm, to their vessels, and escaped
through the Hellespont from the scene of blood. In their flight,
they burnt and ravaged two hundred miles of the sea-coast;
inflicted a severe revenge on the guiltless subjects of the
empire; marked the priests and monks as their peculiar enemies;
and compensated, by the accumulation of plunder, the loss of
their property and friends. On their return, they exposed to
Italy and Europe the wealth and weakness, the perfidy and malice,
of the Greeks, whose vices were painted as the genuine characters
of heresy and schism. The scruples of the first crusaders had
neglected the fairest opportunities of securing, by the
possession of Constantinople, the way to the Holy Land: domestic
revolution invited, and almost compelled, the French and
Venetians to achieve the conquest of the Roman empire of the
East.
12 (return) [ His anonymous historian (de Expedit. Asiat. Fred.
I. in Canisii Lection. Antiq. tom. iii. pars ii. p. 511, edit.
Basnage) mentions the sermons of the Greek patriarch, quomodo
Græcis injunxerat in remissionem peccatorum peregrinos occidere
et delere de terra. Tagino observes, (in Scriptores Freher. tom.
i. p. 409, edit. Struv.,) Græci hæreticos nos appellant: clerici
et monachi dictis et factis persequuntur. We may add the
declaration of the emperor Baldwin fifteen years afterwards: Hæc
est (_gens_) quæ Latinos omnes non hominum nomine, sed canum
dignabatur; quorum sanguinem effundere penè inter merita
reputabant, (Gesta Innocent. III., c. 92, in Muratori, Script.
Rerum Italicarum, tom. iii. pars i. p. 536.) There may be some
exaggeration, but it was as effectual for the action and reaction
of hatred.]
13 (return) [ See Anna Comnena, (Alexiad, l. vi. p. 161, 162,)
and a remarkable passage of Nicetas, (in Manuel, l. v. c. 9,) who
observes of the Venetians, kata smhnh kai jratriaV thn
Kwnstantinou polin thV oikeiaV hllaxanto, &c.]
14 (return) [ Ducange, Fam. Byzant. p. 186, 187.]
15 (return) [ Nicetas in Manuel. l. vii. c. 2. Regnante enim
(Manuele).... apud eum tantam Latinus populus repererat gratiam
ut neglectis Græculis suis tanquam viris mollibus et
effminatis,.... solis Latinis grandia committeret negotia....
erga eos profusâ liberalitate abundabat.... ex omni orbe ad eum
tanquam ad benefactorem nobiles et ignobiles concurrebant.
Willelm. Tyr. xxii. c. 10.]
16 (return) [ The suspicions of the Greeks would have been
confirmed, if they had seen the political epistles of Manuel to
Pope Alexander III., the enemy of his enemy Frederic I., in which
the emperor declares his wish of uniting the Greeks and Latins as
one flock under one shepherd, &c (See Fleury, Hist. Ecclés. tom.
xv. p. 187, 213, 243.)]
17 (return) [ See the Greek and Latin narratives in Nicetas (in
Alexio Comneno, c. 10) and William of Tyre, (l. xxii. c. 10, 11,
12, 13;) the first soft and concise, the second loud, copious,
and tragical.]
In the series of the Byzantine princes, I have exhibited the
hypocrisy and ambition, the tyranny and fall, of Andronicus, the
last male of the Comnenian family who reigned at Constantinople.
The revolution, which cast him headlong from the throne, saved
and exalted Isaac Angelus, 18 who descended by the females from
the same Imperial dynasty. The successor of a second Nero might
have found it an easy task to deserve the esteem and affection of
his subjects; they sometimes had reason to regret the
administration of Andronicus. The sound and vigorous mind of the
tyrant was capable of discerning the connection between his own
and the public interest; and while he was feared by all who could
inspire him with fear, the unsuspected people, and the remote
provinces, might bless the inexorable justice of their master.
But his successor was vain and jealous of the supreme power,
which he wanted courage and abilities to exercise: his vices were
pernicious, his virtues (if he possessed any virtues) were
useless, to mankind; and the Greeks, who imputed their calamities
to his negligence, denied him the merit of any transient or
accidental benefits of the times. Isaac slept on the throne, and
was awakened only by the sound of pleasure: his vacant hours were
amused by comedians and buffoons, and even to these buffoons the
emperor was an object of contempt: his feasts and buildings
exceeded the examples of royal luxury: the number of his eunuchs
and domestics amounted to twenty thousand; and a daily sum of
four thousand pounds of silver would swell to four millions
sterling the annual expense of his household and table. His
poverty was relieved by oppression; and the public discontent was
inflamed by equal abuses in the collection, and the application,
of the revenue. While the Greeks numbered the days of their
servitude, a flattering prophet, whom he rewarded with the
dignity of patriarch, assured him of a long and victorious reign
of thirty-two years; during which he should extend his sway to
Mount Libanus, and his conquests beyond the Euphrates. But his
only step towards the accomplishment of the prediction was a
splendid and scandalous embassy to Saladin, 19 to demand the
restitution of the holy sepulchre, and to propose an offensive
and defensive league with the enemy of the Christian name. In
these unworthy hands, of Isaac and his brother, the remains of
the Greek empire crumbled into dust. The Island of Cyprus, whose
name excites the ideas of elegance and pleasure, was usurped by
his namesake, a Comnenian prince; and by a strange concatenation
of events, the sword of our English Richard bestowed that kingdom
on the house of Lusignan, a rich compensation for the loss of
Jerusalem.
18 (return) [ The history of the reign of Isaac Angelus is
composed, in three books, by the senator Nicetas, (p. 228—290;)
and his offices of logothete, or principal secretary, and judge
of the veil or palace, could not bribe the impartiality of the
historian. He wrote, it is true, after the fall and death of his
benefactor.]
19 (return) [ See Bohadin, Vit. Saladin. p. 129—131, 226, vers.
Schultens. The ambassador of Isaac was equally versed in the
Greek, French, and Arabic languages; a rare instance in those
times. His embassies were received with honor, dismissed without
effect, and reported with scandal in the West.]
The honor of the monarchy and the safety of the capital were
deeply wounded by the revolt of the Bulgarians and Walachians.
Since the victory of the second Basil, they had supported, above
a hundred and seventy years, the loose dominion of the Byzantine
princes; but no effectual measures had been adopted to impose the
yoke of laws and manners on these savage tribes. By the command
of Isaac, their sole means of subsistence, their flocks and
herds, were driven away, to contribute towards the pomp of the
royal nuptials; and their fierce warriors were exasperated by the
denial of equal rank and pay in the military service. Peter and
Asan, two powerful chiefs, of the race of the ancient kings, 20
asserted their own rights and the national freedom; their
dæmoniac impostors proclaimed to the crowd, that their glorious
patron St. Demetrius had forever deserted the cause of the
Greeks; and the conflagration spread from the banks of the Danube
to the hills of Macedonia and Thrace. After some faint efforts,
Isaac Angelus and his brother acquiesced in their independence;
and the Imperial troops were soon discouraged by the bones of
their fellow-soldiers, that were scattered along the passes of
Mount Hæmus. By the arms and policy of John or Joannices, the
second kingdom of Bulgaria was firmly established. The subtle
Barbarian sent an embassy to Innocent the Third, to acknowledge
himself a genuine son of Rome in descent and religion, 21 and
humbly received from the pope the license of coining money, the
royal title, and a Latin archbishop or patriarch. The Vatican
exulted in the spiritual conquest of Bulgaria, the first object
of the schism; and if the Greeks could have preserved the
prerogatives of the church, they would gladly have resigned the
rights of the monarchy.
20 (return) [ Ducange, Familiæ, Dalmaticæ, p. 318, 319, 320. The
original correspondence of the Bulgarian king and the Roman
pontiff is inscribed in the Gesta Innocent. III. c. 66—82, p.
513—525.]
21 (return) [ The pope acknowledges his pedigree, a nobili urbis
Romæ prosapiâ genitores tui originem traxerunt. This tradition,
and the strong resemblance of the Latin and Walachian idioms, is
explained by M. D’Anville, (Etats de l’Europe, p. 258—262.) The
Italian colonies of the Dacia of Trajan were swept away by the
tide of emigration from the Danube to the Volga, and brought back
by another wave from the Volga to the Danube. Possible, but
strange!]
The Bulgarians were malicious enough to pray for the long life of
Isaac Angelus, the surest pledge of their freedom and prosperity.
Yet their chiefs could involve in the same indiscriminate
contempt the family and nation of the emperor. “In all the
Greeks,” said Asan to his troops, “the same climate, and
character, and education, will be productive of the same fruits.
Behold my lance,” continued the warrior, “and the long streamers
that float in the wind. They differ only in color; they are
formed of the same silk, and fashioned by the same workman; nor
has the stripe that is stained in purple any superior price or
value above its fellows.” 22 Several of these candidates for the
purple successively rose and fell under the empire of Isaac; a
general, who had repelled the fleets of Sicily, was driven to
revolt and ruin by the ingratitude of the prince; and his
luxurious repose was disturbed by secret conspiracies and popular
insurrections. The emperor was saved by accident, or the merit of
his servants: he was at length oppressed by an ambitious brother,
who, for the hope of a precarious diadem, forgot the obligations
of nature, of loyalty, and of friendship. 23 While Isaac in the
Thracian valleys pursued the idle and solitary pleasures of the
chase, his brother, Alexius Angelus, was invested with the
purple, by the unanimous suffrage of the camp; the capital and
the clergy subscribed to their choice; and the vanity of the new
sovereign rejected the name of his fathers for the lofty and
royal appellation of the Comnenian race. On the despicable
character of Isaac I have exhausted the language of contempt, and
can only add, that, in a reign of eight years, the baser Alexius
24 was supported by the masculine vices of his wife Euphrosyne.
The first intelligence of his fall was conveyed to the late
emperor by the hostile aspect and pursuit of the guards, no
longer his own: he fled before them above fifty miles, as far as
Stagyra, in Macedonia; but the fugitive, without an object or a
follower, was arrested, brought back to Constantinople, deprived
of his eyes, and confined in a lonesome tower, on a scanty
allowance of bread and water. At the moment of the revolution,
his son Alexius, whom he educated in the hope of empire, was
twelve years of age. He was spared by the usurper, and reduced to
attend his triumph both in peace and war; but as the army was
encamped on the sea-shore, an Italian vessel facilitated the
escape of the royal youth; and, in the disguise of a common
sailor, he eluded the search of his enemies, passed the
Hellespont, and found a secure refuge in the Isle of Sicily.
After saluting the threshold of the apostles, and imploring the
protection of Pope Innocent the Third, Alexius accepted the kind
invitation of his sister Irene, the wife of Philip of Swabia,
king of the Romans. But in his passage through Italy, he heard
that the flower of Western chivalry was assembled at Venice for
the deliverance of the Holy Land; and a ray of hope was kindled
in his bosom, that their invincible swords might be employed in
his father’s restoration.
22 (return) [ This parable is in the best savage style; but I
wish the Walach had not introduced the classic name of Mysians,
the experiment of the magnet or loadstone, and the passage of an
old comic poet, (Nicetas in Alex. Comneno, l. i. p. 299, 300.)]
23 (return) [ The Latins aggravate the ingratitude of Alexius, by
supposing that he had been released by his brother Isaac from
Turkish captivity This pathetic tale had doubtless been repeated
at Venice and Zara but I do not readily discover its grounds in
the Greek historians.]
24 (return) [ See the reign of Alexius Angelus, or Comnenus, in
the three books of Nicetas, p. 291—352.]
About ten or twelve years after the loss of Jerusalem, the nobles
of France were again summoned to the holy war by the voice of a
third prophet, less extravagant, perhaps, than Peter the hermit,
but far below St. Bernard in the merit of an orator and a
statesman. An illiterate priest of the neighborhood of Paris,
Fulk of Neuilly, 25 forsook his parochial duty, to assume the
more flattering character of a popular and itinerant missionary.
The fame of his sanctity and miracles was spread over the land;
he declaimed, with severity and vehemence, against the vices of
the age; and his sermons, which he preached in the streets of
Paris, converted the robbers, the usurers, the prostitutes, and
even the doctors and scholars of the university. No sooner did
Innocent the Third ascend the chair of St. Peter, than he
proclaimed in Italy, Germany, and France, the obligation of a new
crusade. 26 The eloquent pontiff described the ruin of Jerusalem,
the triumph of the Pagans, and the shame of Christendom; his
liberality proposed the redemption of sins, a plenary indulgence
to all who should serve in Palestine, either a year in person, or
two years by a substitute; 27 and among his legates and orators
who blew the sacred trumpet, Fulk of Neuilly was the loudest and
most successful. The situation of the principal monarchs was
averse to the pious summons. The emperor Frederic the Second was
a child; and his kingdom of Germany was disputed by the rival
houses of Brunswick and Swabia, the memorable factions of the
Guelphs and Ghibelines. Philip Augustus of France had performed,
and could not be persuaded to renew, the perilous vow; but as he
was not less ambitious of praise than of power, he cheerfully
instituted a perpetual fund for the defence of the Holy Land.
Richard of England was satiated with the glory and misfortunes of
his first adventure; and he presumed to deride the exhortations
of Fulk of Neuilly, who was not abashed in the presence of kings.
“You advise me,” said Plantagenet, “to dismiss my three
daughters, pride, avarice, and incontinence: I bequeath them to
the most deserving; my pride to the knights templars, my avarice
to the monks of Cisteaux, and my incontinence to the prelates.”
But the preacher was heard and obeyed by the great vassals, the
princes of the second order; and Theobald, or Thibaut, count of
Champagne, was the foremost in the holy race. The valiant youth,
at the age of twenty-two years, was encouraged by the domestic
examples of his father, who marched in the second crusade, and of
his elder brother, who had ended his days in Palestine with the
title of King of Jerusalem; two thousand two hundred knights owed
service and homage to his peerage; 28 the nobles of Champagne
excelled in all the exercises of war; 29 and, by his marriage
with the heiress of Navarre, Thibaut could draw a band of hardy
Gascons from either side of the Pyrenæan mountains. His companion
in arms was Louis, count of Blois and Chartres; like himself of
regal lineage, for both the princes were nephews, at the same
time, of the kings of France and England. In a crowd of prelates
and barons, who imitated their zeal, I distinguish the birth and
merit of Matthew of Montmorency; the famous Simon of Montfort,
the scourge of the Albigeois; and a valiant noble, Jeffrey of
Villehardouin, 30 marshal of Champagne, 31 who has condescended,
in the rude idiom of his age and country, 32 to write or dictate
33 an original narrative of the councils and actions in which he
bore a memorable part. At the same time, Baldwin, count of
Flanders, who had married the sister of Thibaut, assumed the
cross at Bruges, with his brother Henry, and the principal
knights and citizens of that rich and industrious province. 34
The vow which the chiefs had pronounced in churches, they
ratified in tournaments; the operations of the war were debated
in full and frequent assemblies; and it was resolved to seek the
deliverance of Palestine in Egypt, a country, since Saladin’s
death, which was almost ruined by famine and civil war. But the
fate of so many royal armies displayed the toils and perils of a
land expedition; and if the Flemings dwelt along the ocean, the
French barons were destitute of ships and ignorant of navigation.
They embraced the wise resolution of choosing six deputies or
representatives, of whom Villehardouin was one, with a
discretionary trust to direct the motions, and to pledge the
faith, of the whole confederacy. The maritime states of Italy
were alone possessed of the means of transporting the holy
warriors with their arms and horses; and the six deputies
proceeded to Venice, to solicit, on motives of piety or interest,
the aid of that powerful republic.
25 (return) [ See Fleury, Hist. Ecclés. tom. xvi. p. 26, &c., and
Villehardouin, No. 1, with the observations of Ducange, which I
always mean to quote with the original text.]
26 (return) [ The contemporary life of Pope Innocent III.,
published by Baluze and Muratori, (Scriptores Rerum Italicarum,
tom. iii. pars i. p. 486—568), is most valuable for the important
and original documents which are inserted in the text. The bull
of the crusade may be read, c. 84, 85.]
27 (return) [ Por-ce que cil pardon, fut issi gran, si s’en
esmeurent mult li cuers des genz, et mult s’en croisierent, porce
que li pardons ere si gran. Villehardouin, No. 1. Our
philosophers may refine on the causes of the crusades, but such
were the genuine feelings of a French knight.]
28 (return) [ This number of fiefs (of which 1800 owed liege
homage) was enrolled in the church of St. Stephen at Troyes, and
attested A.D. 1213, by the marshal and butler of Champagne,
(Ducange, Observ. p. 254.)]
29 (return) [ Campania.... militiæ privilegio singularius
excellit.... in tyrociniis.... prolusione armorum, &c., Duncage,
p. 249, from the old Chronicle of Jerusalem, A.D. 1177—1199.]
30 (return) [ The name of Villehardouin was taken from a village
and castle in the diocese of Troyes, near the River Aube, between
Bar and Arcis. The family was ancient and noble; the elder branch
of our historian existed after the year 1400, the younger, which
acquired the principality of Achaia, merged in the house of
Savoy, (Ducange, p. 235—245.)]
31 (return) [ This office was held by his father and his
descendants; but Ducange has not hunted it with his usual
sagacity. I find that, in the year 1356, it was in the family of
Conflans; but these provincial have been long since eclipsed by
the national marshals of France.]
32 (return) [ This language, of which I shall produce some
specimens, is explained by Vigenere and Ducange, in a version and
glossary. The president Des Brosses (Méchanisme des Langues, tom.
ii. p. 83) gives it as the example of a language which has ceased
to be French, and is understood only by grammarians.]
33 (return) [ His age, and his own expression, moi qui ceste uvre
_dicta_, (No. 62, &c.,) may justify the suspicion (more probable
than Mr. Wood’s on Homer) that he could neither read nor write.
Yet Champagne may boast of the two first historians, the noble
authors of French prose, Villehardouin and Joinville.]
34 (return) [ The crusade and reigns of the counts of Flanders,
Baldwin and his brother Henry, are the subject of a particular
history by the Jesuit Doutremens, (Constantinopolis Belgica;
Turnaci, 1638, in 4to.,) which I have only seen with the eyes of
Ducange.]
In the invasion of Italy by Attila, I have mentioned 35 the
flight of the Venetians from the fallen cities of the continent,
and their obscure shelter in the chain of islands that line the
extremity of the Adriatic Gulf. In the midst of the waters, free,
indigent, laborious, and inaccessible, they gradually coalesced
into a republic: the first foundations of Venice were laid in the
Island of Rialto; and the annual election of the twelve tribunes
was superseded by the permanent office of a duke or doge. On the
verge of the two empires, the Venetians exult in the belief of
primitive and perpetual independence. 36 Against the Latins,
their antique freedom has been asserted by the sword, and may be
justified by the pen. Charlemagne himself resigned all claims of
sovereignty to the islands of the Adriatic Gulf: his son Pepin
was repulsed in the attacks of the _lagunas_ or canals, too deep
for the cavalry, and too shallow for the vessels; and in every
age, under the German Cæsars, the lands of the republic have been
clearly distinguished from the kingdom of Italy. But the
inhabitants of Venice were considered by themselves, by
strangers, and by their sovereigns, as an inalienable portion of
the Greek empire: 37 in the ninth and tenth centuries, the proofs
of their subjection are numerous and unquestionable; and the vain
titles, the servile honors, of the Byzantine court, so
ambitiously solicited by their dukes, would have degraded the
magistrates of a free people. But the bands of this dependence,
which was never absolute or rigid, were imperceptibly relaxed by
the ambition of Venice and the weakness of Constantinople.
Obedience was softened into respect, privilege ripened into
prerogative, and the freedom of domestic government was fortified
by the independence of foreign dominion. The maritime cities of
Istria and Dalmatia bowed to the sovereigns of the Adriatic; and
when they armed against the Normans in the cause of Alexius, the
emperor applied, not to the duty of his subjects, but to the
gratitude and generosity of his faithful allies. The sea was
their patrimony: 38 the western parts of the Mediterranean, from
Tuscany to Gibraltar, were indeed abandoned to their rivals of
Pisa and Genoa; but the Venetians acquired an early and lucrative
share of the commerce of Greece and Egypt. Their riches increased
with the increasing demand of Europe; their manufactures of silk
and glass, perhaps the institution of their bank, are of high
antiquity; and they enjoyed the fruits of their industry in the
magnificence of public and private life. To assert her flag, to
avenge her injuries, to protect the freedom of navigation, the
republic could launch and man a fleet of a hundred galleys; and
the Greeks, the Saracens, and the Normans, were encountered by
her naval arms. The Franks of Syria were assisted by the
Venetians in the reduction of the sea coast; but their zeal was
neither blind nor disinterested; and in the conquest of Tyre,
they shared the sovereignty of a city, the first seat of the
commerce of the world. The policy of Venice was marked by the
avarice of a trading, and the insolence of a maritime, power; yet
her ambition was prudent: nor did she often forget that if armed
galleys were the effect and safeguard, merchant vessels were the
cause and supply, of her greatness. In her religion, she avoided
the schisms of the Greeks, without yielding a servile obedience
to the Roman pontiff; and a free intercourse with the infidels of
every clime appears to have allayed betimes the fever of
superstition. Her primitive government was a loose mixture of
democracy and monarchy; the doge was elected by the votes of the
general assembly; as long as he was popular and successful, he
reigned with the pomp and authority of a prince; but in the
frequent revolutions of the state, he was deposed, or banished,
or slain, by the justice or injustice of the multitude. The
twelfth century produced the first rudiments of the wise and
jealous aristocracy, which has reduced the doge to a pageant, and
the people to a cipher. 39
35 (return) [ History, &c., vol. iii. p. 446, 447.]
36 (return) [ The foundation and independence of Venice, and
Pepin’s invasion, are discussed by Pagi (Critica, tom. iii. A.D.
81, No. 4, &c.) and Beretti, (Dissert. Chorograph. Italiæ Medii
Ævi, in Muratori, Script. tom. x. p. 153.) The two critics have a
slight bias, the Frenchman adverse, the Italian favorable, to the
republic.]
37 (return) [ When the son of Charlemagne asserted his right of
sovereignty, he was answered by the loyal Venetians, oti hmeiV
douloi Jelomen einai tou 'Rwmaiwn basilewV, (Constantin.
Porphyrogenit. de Administrat. Imperii, pars ii. c. 28, p. 85;)
and the report of the ixth establishes the fact of the xth
century, which is confirmed by the embassy of Liutprand of
Cremona. The annual tribute, which the emperor allows them to pay
to the king of Italy, alleviates, by doubling, their servitude;
but the hateful word douloi must be translated, as in the charter
of 827, (Laugier, Hist. de Venice, tom. i. p. 67, &c.,) by the
softer appellation of _subditi_, or _fideles_.]
38 (return) [ See the xxvth and xxxth dissertations of the
Antiquitates Medii Ævi of Muratori. From Anderson’s History of
Commerce, I understand that the Venetians did not trade to
England before the year 1323. The most flourishing state of their
wealth and commerce, in the beginning of the xvth century, is
agreeably described by the Abbé Dubos, (Hist. de la Ligue de
Cambray, tom. ii. p. 443—480.)]
39 (return) [ The Venetians have been slow in writing and
publishing their history. Their most ancient monuments are, 1.
The rude Chronicle (perhaps) of John Sagorninus, (Venezia, 1765,
in octavo,) which represents the state and manners of Venice in
the year 1008. 2. The larger history of the doge, (1342—1354,)
Andrew Dandolo, published for the first time in the xiith tom. of
Muratori, A.D. 1728. The History of Venice by the Abbé Laugier,
(Paris, 1728,) is a work of some merit, which I have chiefly used
for the constitutional part. * Note: It is scarcely necessary to
mention the valuable work of Count Daru, “History de Venise,” of
which I hear that an Italian translation has been published, with
notes defensive of the ancient republic. I have not yet seen this
work.—M.]
Chapter LX: The Fourth Crusade.—Part II.
When the six ambassadors of the French pilgrims arrived at
Venice, they were hospitably entertained in the palace of St.
Mark, by the reigning duke; his name was Henry Dandolo; 40 and he
shone in the last period of human life as one of the most
illustrious characters of the times. Under the weight of years,
and after the loss of his eyes, 41 Dandolo retained a sound
understanding and a manly courage: the spirit of a hero,
ambitious to signalize his reign by some memorable exploits; and
the wisdom of a patriot, anxious to build his fame on the glory
and advantage of his country. He praised the bold enthusiasm and
liberal confidence of the barons and their deputies: in such a
cause, and with such associates, he should aspire, were he a
private man, to terminate his life; but he was the servant of the
republic, and some delay was requisite to consult, on this
arduous business, the judgment of his colleagues. The proposal of
the French was first debated by the six _sages_ who had been
recently appointed to control the administration of the doge: it
was next disclosed to the forty members of the council of state;
and finally communicated to the legislative assembly of four
hundred and fifty representatives, who were annually chosen in
the six quarters of the city. In peace and war, the doge was
still the chief of the republic; his legal authority was
supported by the personal reputation of Dandolo: his arguments of
public interest were balanced and approved; and he was authorized
to inform the ambassadors of the following conditions of the
treaty. 42 It was proposed that the crusaders should assemble at
Venice, on the feast of St. John of the ensuing year; that
flat-bottomed vessels should be prepared for four thousand five
hundred horses, and nine thousand squires, with a number of ships
sufficient for the embarkation of four thousand five hundred
knights, and twenty thousand foot; that during a term of nine
months they should be supplied with provisions, and transported
to whatsoever coast the service of God and Christendom should
require; and that the republic should join the armament with a
squadron of fifty galleys. It was required, that the pilgrims
should pay, before their departure, a sum of eighty-five thousand
marks of silver; and that all conquests, by sea and land, should
be equally divided between the confederates. The terms were hard;
but the emergency was pressing, and the French barons were not
less profuse of money than of blood. A general assembly was
convened to ratify the treaty: the stately chapel and place of
St. Mark were filled with ten thousand citizens; and the noble
deputies were taught a new lesson of humbling themselves before
the majesty of the people. “Illustrious Venetians,” said the
marshal of Champagne, “we are sent by the greatest and most
powerful barons of France to implore the aid of the masters of
the sea for the deliverance of Jerusalem. They have enjoined us
to fall prostrate at your feet; nor will we rise from the ground
till you have promised to avenge with us the injuries of Christ.”
The eloquence of their words and tears, 43 their martial aspect,
and suppliant attitude, were applauded by a universal shout; as
it were, says Jeffrey, by the sound of an earthquake. The
venerable doge ascended the pulpit to urge their request by those
motives of honor and virtue, which alone can be offered to a
popular assembly: the treaty was transcribed on parchment,
attested with oaths and seals, mutually accepted by the weeping
and joyful representatives of France and Venice; and despatched
to Rome for the approbation of Pope Innocent the Third. Two
thousand marks were borrowed of the merchants for the first
expenses of the armament. Of the six deputies, two repassed the
Alps to announce their success, while their four companions made
a fruitless trial of the zeal and emulation of the republics of
Genoa and Pisa.
40 (return) [ Henry Dandolo was eighty-four at his election,
(A.D. 1192,) and ninety-seven at his death, (A.D. 1205.) See the
Observations of Ducange sur Villehardouin, No. 204. But this
_extraordinary_ longevity is not observed by the original
writers, nor does there exist another example of a hero near a
hundred years of age. Theophrastus might afford an instance of a
writer of ninety-nine; but instead of ennenhkonta, (Prom. ad
Character.,)I am much inclined to read ebdomhkonta, with his last
editor Fischer, and the first thoughts of Casaubon. It is
scarcely possible that the powers of the mind and body should
support themselves till such a period of life.]
41 (return) [ The modern Venetians (Laugier, tom. ii. p. 119)
accuse the emperor Manuel; but the calumny is refuted by
Villehardouin and the older writers, who suppose that Dandolo
lost his eyes by a wound, (No. 31, and Ducange.) * Note: The
accounts differ, both as to the extent and the cause of his
blindness According to Villehardouin and others, the sight was
totally lost; according to the Chronicle of Andrew Dandolo.
(Murat. tom. xii. p. 322,) he was vise debilis. See Wilken, vol.
v. p. 143.—M.]
42 (return) [ See the original treaty in the Chronicle of Andrew
Dandolo, p. 323—326.]
43 (return) [ A reader of Villehardouin must observe the frequent
tears of the marshal and his brother knights. Sachiez que la ot
mainte lerme plorée de pitié, (No. 17;) mult plorant, (ibid.;)
mainte lerme plorée, (No. 34;) si orent mult pitié et plorerent
mult durement, (No. 60;) i ot mainte lerme plorée de pitié, (No.
202.) They weep on every occasion of grief, joy, or devotion.]
The execution of the treaty was still opposed by unforeseen
difficulties and delays. The marshal, on his return to Troyes,
was embraced and approved by Thibaut count of Champagne, who had
been unanimously chosen general of the confederates. But the
health of that valiant youth already declined, and soon became
hopeless; and he deplored the untimely fate, which condemned him
to expire, not in a field of battle, but on a bed of sickness. To
his brave and numerous vassals, the dying prince distributed his
treasures: they swore in his presence to accomplish his vow and
their own; but some there were, says the marshal, who accepted
his gifts and forfeited their words. The more resolute champions
of the cross held a parliament at Soissons for the election of a
new general; but such was the incapacity, or jealousy, or
reluctance, of the princes of France, that none could be found
both able and willing to assume the conduct of the enterprise.
They acquiesced in the choice of a stranger, of Boniface marquis
of Montferrat, descended of a race of heroes, and himself of
conspicuous fame in the wars and negotiations of the times; 44
nor could the piety or ambition of the Italian chief decline this
honorable invitation. After visiting the French court, where he
was received as a friend and kinsman, the marquis, in the church
of Soissons, was invested with the cross of a pilgrim and the
staff of a general; and immediately repassed the Alps, to prepare
for the distant expedition of the East. About the festival of the
Pentecost he displayed his banner, and marched towards Venice at
the head of the Italians: he was preceded or followed by the
counts of Flanders and Blois, and the most respectable barons of
France; and their numbers were swelled by the pilgrims of
Germany, 45 whose object and motives were similar to their own.
The Venetians had fulfilled, and even surpassed, their
engagements: stables were constructed for the horses, and
barracks for the troops: the magazines were abundantly
replenished with forage and provisions; and the fleet of
transports, ships, and galleys, was ready to hoist sail as soon
as the republic had received the price of the freight and
armament. But that price far exceeded the wealth of the crusaders
who were assembled at Venice. The Flemings, whose obedience to
their count was voluntary and precarious, had embarked in their
vessels for the long navigation of the ocean and Mediterranean;
and many of the French and Italians had preferred a cheaper and
more convenient passage from Marseilles and Apulia to the Holy
Land. Each pilgrim might complain, that after he had furnished
his own contribution, he was made responsible for the deficiency
of his absent brethren: the gold and silver plate of the chiefs,
which they freely delivered to the treasury of St. Marks, was a
generous but inadequate sacrifice; and after all their efforts,
thirty-four thousand marks were still wanting to complete the
stipulated sum. The obstacle was removed by the policy and
patriotism of the doge, who proposed to the barons, that if they
would join their arms in reducing some revolted cities of
Dalmatia, he would expose his person in the holy war, and obtain
from the republic a long indulgence, till some wealthy conquest
should afford the means of satisfying the debt. After much
scruple and hesitation, they chose rather to accept the offer
than to relinquish the enterprise; and the first hostilities of
the fleet and army were directed against Zara, 46 a strong city
of the Sclavonian coast, which had renounced its allegiance to
Venice, and implored the protection of the king of Hungary. 47
The crusaders burst the chain or boom of the harbor; landed their
horses, troops, and military engines; and compelled the
inhabitants, after a defence of five days, to surrender at
discretion: their lives were spared, but the revolt was punished
by the pillage of their houses and the demolition of their walls.
The season was far advanced; the French and Venetians resolved to
pass the winter in a secure harbor and plentiful country; but
their repose was disturbed by national and tumultuous quarrels of
the soldiers and mariners. The conquest of Zara had scattered the
seeds of discord and scandal: the arms of the allies had been
stained in their outset with the blood, not of infidels, but of
Christians: the king of Hungary and his new subjects were
themselves enlisted under the banner of the cross; and the
scruples of the devout were magnified by the fear of lassitude of
the reluctant pilgrims. The pope had excommunicated the false
crusaders who had pillaged and massacred their brethren, 48 and
only the marquis Boniface and Simon of Montfort 481 escaped these
spiritual thunders; the one by his absence from the siege, the
other by his final departure from the camp. Innocent might
absolve the simple and submissive penitents of France; but he was
provoked by the stubborn reason of the Venetians, who refused to
confess their guilt, to accept their pardon, or to allow, in
their temporal concerns, the interposition of a priest.
44 (return) [ By a victory (A.D. 1191) over the citizens of Asti,
by a crusade to Palestine, and by an embassy from the pope to the
German princes, (Muratori, Annali d’Italia, tom. x. p. 163,
202.)]
45 (return) [ See the crusade of the Germans in the Historia C.
P. of Gunther, (Canisii Antiq. Lect. tom. iv. p. v.—viii.,) who
celebrates the pilgrimage of his abbot Martin, one of the
preaching rivals of Fulk of Neuilly. His monastery, of the
Cistercian order, was situate in the diocese of Basil.]
46 (return) [ Jadera, now Zara, was a Roman colony, which
acknowledged Augustus for its parent. It is now only two miles
round, and contains five or six thousand inhabitants; but the
fortifications are strong, and it is joined to the main land by a
bridge. See the travels of the two companions, Spon and Wheeler,
(Voyage de Dalmatie, de Grèce, &c., tom. i. p. 64—70. Journey
into Greece, p. 8—14;) the last of whom, by mistaking _Sestertia_
for _Sestertii_, values an arch with statues and columns at
twelve pounds. If, in his time, there were no trees near Zara,
the cherry-trees were not yet planted which produce our
incomparable _marasquin_.]
47 (return) [ Katona (Hist. Critica Reg. Hungariæ, Stirpis Arpad.
tom. iv. p. 536—558) collects all the facts and testimonies most
adverse to the conquerors of Zara.]
48 (return) [ See the whole transaction, and the sentiments of
the pope, in the Epistles of Innocent III. Gesta, c. 86, 87, 88.]
481 (return) [ Montfort protested against the siege. Guido, the
abbot of Vaux de Sernay, in the name of the pope, interdicted the
attack on a Christian city; and the immediate surrender of the
town was thus delayed for five days of fruitless resistance.
Wilken, vol. v. p. 167. See likewise, at length, the history of
the interdict issued by the pope. Ibid.—M.]
The assembly of such formidable powers by sea and land had
revived the hopes of young 49 Alexius; and both at Venice and
Zara, he solicited the arms of the crusaders, for his own
restoration and his father’s 50 deliverance. The royal youth was
recommended by Philip king of Germany: his prayers and presence
excited the compassion of the camp; and his cause was embraced
and pleaded by the marquis of Montferrat and the doge of Venice.
A double alliance, and the dignity of Cæsar, had connected with
the Imperial family the two elder brothers of Boniface: 51 he
expected to derive a kingdom from the important service; and the
more generous ambition of Dandolo was eager to secure the
inestimable benefits of trade and dominion that might accrue to
his country. 52 Their influence procured a favorable audience for
the ambassadors of Alexius; and if the magnitude of his offers
excited some suspicion, the motives and rewards which he
displayed might justify the delay and diversion of those forces
which had been consecrated to the deliverance of Jerusalem. He
promised in his own and his father’s name, that as soon as they
should be seated on the throne of Constantinople, they would
terminate the long schism of the Greeks, and submit themselves
and their people to the lawful supremacy of the Roman church. He
engaged to recompense the labors and merits of the crusaders, by
the immediate payment of two hundred thousand marks of silver; to
accompany them in person to Egypt; or, if it should be judged
more advantageous, to maintain, during a year, ten thousand men,
and, during his life, five hundred knights, for the service of
the Holy Land. These tempting conditions were accepted by the
republic of Venice; and the eloquence of the doge and marquis
persuaded the counts of Flanders, Blois, and St. Pol, with eight
barons of France, to join in the glorious enterprise. A treaty of
offensive and defensive alliance was confirmed by their oaths and
seals; and each individual, according to his situation and
character, was swayed by the hope of public or private advantage;
by the honor of restoring an exiled monarch; or by the sincere
and probable opinion, that their efforts in Palestine would be
fruitless and unavailing, and that the acquisition of
Constantinople must precede and prepare the recovery of
Jerusalem. But they were the chiefs or equals of a valiant band
of freemen and volunteers, who thought and acted for themselves:
the soldiers and clergy were divided; and, if a large majority
subscribed to the alliance, the numbers and arguments of the
dissidents were strong and respectable. 53 The boldest hearts
were appalled by the report of the naval power and impregnable
strength of Constantinople; and their apprehensions were
disguised to the world, and perhaps to themselves, by the more
decent objections of religion and duty. They alleged the sanctity
of a vow, which had drawn them from their families and homes to
the rescue of the holy sepulchre; nor should the dark and crooked
counsels of human policy divert them from a pursuit, the event of
which was in the hands of the Almighty. Their first offence, the
attack of Zara, had been severely punished by the reproach of
their conscience and the censures of the pope; nor would they
again imbrue their hands in the blood of their fellow-Christians.
The apostle of Rome had pronounced; nor would they usurp the
right of avenging with the sword the schism of the Greeks and the
doubtful usurpation of the Byzantine monarch. On these principles
or pretences, many pilgrims, the most distinguished for their
valor and piety, withdrew from the camp; and their retreat was
less pernicious than the open or secret opposition of a
discontented party, that labored, on every occasion, to separate
the army and disappoint the enterprise.
49 (return) [ A modern reader is surprised to hear of the valet
de Constantinople, as applied to young Alexius, on account of his
youth, like the _infants_ of Spain, and the _nobilissimus puer_
of the Romans. The pages and _valets_ of the knights were as
noble as themselves, (Villehardouin and Ducange, No. 36.)]
50 (return) [ The emperor Isaac is styled by Villehardouin,
_Sursac_, (No. 35, &c.,) which may be derived from the French
_Sire_, or the Greek Kur (kurioV?) melted into his proper name;
the further corruptions of Tursac and Conserac will instruct us
what license may have been used in the old dynasties of Assyria
and Egypt.]
51 (return) [ Reinier and Conrad: the former married Maria,
daughter of the emperor Manuel Comnenus; the latter was the
husband of Theodora Angela, sister of the emperors Isaac and
Alexius. Conrad abandoned the Greek court and princess for the
glory of defending Tyre against Saladin, (Ducange, Fam. Byzant.
p. 187, 203.)]
52 (return) [ Nicetas (in Alexio Comneno, l. iii. c. 9) accuses
the doge and Venetians as the first authors of the war against
Constantinople, and considers only as a kuma epi kumati, the
arrival and shameful offers of the royal exile. * Note: He
admits, however, that the Angeli had committed depredations on
the Venetian trade, and the emperor himself had refused the
payment of part of the stipulated compensation for the seizure of
the Venetian merchandise by the emperor Manuel. Nicetas, in
loc.—M.]
53 (return) [ Villehardouin and Gunther represent the sentiments
of the two parties. The abbot Martin left the army at Zara,
proceeded to Palestine, was sent ambassador to Constantinople,
and became a reluctant witness of the second siege.]
Notwithstanding this defection, the departure of the fleet and
army was vigorously pressed by the Venetians, whose zeal for the
service of the royal youth concealed a just resentment to his
nation and family. They were mortified by the recent preference
which had been given to Pisa, the rival of their trade; they had
a long arrear of debt and injury to liquidate with the Byzantine
court; and Dandolo might not discourage the popular tale, that he
had been deprived of his eyes by the emperor Manuel, who
perfidiously violated the sanctity of an ambassador. A similar
armament, for ages, had not rode the Adriatic: it was composed of
one hundred and twenty flat-bottomed vessels or _palanders_ for
the horses; two hundred and forty transports filled with men and
arms; seventy store-ships laden with provisions; and fifty stout
galleys, well prepared for the encounter of an enemy. 54 While
the wind was favorable, the sky serene, and the water smooth,
every eye was fixed with wonder and delight on the scene of
military and naval pomp which overspread the sea. 541 The shields
of the knights and squires, at once an ornament and a defence,
were arranged on either side of the ships; the banners of the
nations and families were displayed from the stern; our modern
artillery was supplied by three hundred engines for casting
stones and darts: the fatigues of the way were cheered with the
sound of music; and the spirits of the adventurers were raised by
the mutual assurance, that forty thousand Christian heroes were
equal to the conquest of the world. 55 In the navigation 56 from
Venice and Zara, the fleet was successfully steered by the skill
and experience of the Venetian pilots: at Durazzo, the
confederates first landed on the territories of the Greek empire:
the Isle of Corfu afforded a station and repose; they doubled,
without accident, the perilous cape of Malea, the southern point
of Peloponnesus or the Morea; made a descent in the islands of
Negropont and Andros; and cast anchor at Abydus on the Asiatic
side of the Hellespont. These preludes of conquest were easy and
bloodless: the Greeks of the provinces, without patriotism or
courage, were crushed by an irresistible force: the presence of
the lawful heir might justify their obedience; and it was
rewarded by the modesty and discipline of the Latins. As they
penetrated through the Hellespont, the magnitude of their navy
was compressed in a narrow channel, and the face of the waters
was darkened with innumerable sails. They again expanded in the
basin of the Propontis, and traversed that placid sea, till they
approached the European shore, at the abbey of St. Stephen, three
leagues to the west of Constantinople. The prudent doge dissuaded
them from dispersing themselves in a populous and hostile land;
and, as their stock of provisions was reduced, it was resolved,
in the season of harvest, to replenish their store-ships in the
fertile islands of the Propontis. With this resolution, they
directed their course: but a strong gale, and their own
impatience, drove them to the eastward; and so near did they run
to the shore and the city, that some volleys of stones and darts
were exchanged between the ships and the rampart. As they passed
along, they gazed with admiration on the capital of the East, or,
as it should seem, of the earth; rising from her seven hills, and
towering over the continents of Europe and Asia. The swelling
domes and lofty spires of five hundred palaces and churches were
gilded by the sun and reflected in the waters: the walls were
crowded with soldiers and spectators, whose numbers they beheld,
of whose temper they were ignorant; and each heart was chilled by
the reflection, that, since the beginning of the world, such an
enterprise had never been undertaken by such a handful of
warriors. But the momentary apprehension was dispelled by hope
and valor; and every man, says the marshal of Champagne, glanced
his eye on the sword or lance which he must speedily use in the
glorious conflict. 57 The Latins cast anchor before Chalcedon;
the mariners only were left in the vessels: the soldiers, horses,
and arms, were safely landed; and, in the luxury of an Imperial
palace, the barons tasted the first fruits of their success. On
the third day, the fleet and army moved towards Scutari, the
Asiatic suburb of Constantinople: a detachment of five hundred
Greek horse was surprised and defeated by fourscore French
knights; and in a halt of nine days, the camp was plentifully
supplied with forage and provisions.
54 (return) [ The birth and dignity of Andrew Dandolo gave him
the motive and the means of searching in the archives of Venice
the memorable story of his ancestor. His brevity seems to accuse
the copious and more recent narratives of Sanudo, (in Muratori,
Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. xxii.,) Blondus, Sabellicus, and
Rhamnusius.]
541 (return) [ This description rather belongs to the first
setting sail of the expedition from Venice, before the siege of
Zara. The armament did not return to Venice.—M.]
55 (return) [ Villehardouin, No. 62. His feelings and expressions
are original: he often weeps, but he rejoices in the glories and
perils of war with a spirit unknown to a sedentary writer.]
56 (return) [ In this voyage, almost all the geographical names
are corrupted by the Latins. The modern appellation of Chalcis,
and all Euba, is derived from its _Euripus_, _Evripo_,
_Negri-po_, _Negropont_, which dishonors our maps, (D’Anville,
Géographie Ancienne, tom. i. p. 263.)]
57 (return) [ Et sachiez que il ni ot si hardi cui le cuer ne
fremist, (c. 66.).. Chascuns regardoit ses armes.... que par tems
en arons mestier, (c. 67.) Such is the honesty of courage.]
In relating the invasion of a great empire, it may seem strange
that I have not described the obstacles which should have checked
the progress of the strangers. The Greeks, in truth, were an
unwarlike people; but they were rich, industrious, and subject to
the will of a single man: had that man been capable of fear, when
his enemies were at a distance, or of courage, when they
approached his person. The first rumor of his nephew’s alliance
with the French and Venetians was despised by the usurper
Alexius: his flatterers persuaded him, that in this contempt he
was bold and sincere; and each evening, in the close of the
banquet, he thrice discomfited the Barbarians of the West. These
Barbarians had been justly terrified by the report of his naval
power; and the sixteen hundred fishing boats of Constantinople 58
could have manned a fleet, to sink them in the Adriatic, or stop
their entrance in the mouth of the Hellespont. But all force may
be annihilated by the negligence of the prince and the venality
of his ministers. The great duke, or admiral, made a scandalous,
almost a public, auction of the sails, the masts, and the
rigging: the royal forests were reserved for the more important
purpose of the chase; and the trees, says Nicetas, were guarded
by the eunuchs, like the groves of religious worship. 59 From his
dream of pride, Alexius was awakened by the siege of Zara, and
the rapid advances of the Latins; as soon as he saw the danger
was real, he thought it inevitable, and his vain presumption was
lost in abject despondency and despair. He suffered these
contemptible Barbarians to pitch their camp in the sight of the
palace; and his apprehensions were thinly disguised by the pomp
and menace of a suppliant embassy. The sovereign of the Romans
was astonished (his ambassadors were instructed to say) at the
hostile appearance of the strangers. If these pilgrims were
sincere in their vow for the deliverance of Jerusalem, his voice
must applaud, and his treasures should assist, their pious design
but should they dare to invade the sanctuary of empire, their
numbers, were they ten times more considerable, should not
protect them from his just resentment. The answer of the doge and
barons was simple and magnanimous. “In the cause of honor and
justice,” they said, “we despise the usurper of Greece, his
threats, and his offers. _Our_ friendship and _his_ allegiance
are due to the lawful heir, to the young prince, who is seated
among us, and to his father, the emperor Isaac, who has been
deprived of his sceptre, his freedom, and his eyes, by the crime
of an ungrateful brother. Let that brother confess his guilt, and
implore forgiveness, and we ourselves will intercede, that he may
be permitted to live in affluence and security. But let him not
insult us by a second message; our reply will be made in arms, in
the palace of Constantinople.”
58 (return) [ Eandem urbem plus in solis navibus piscatorum
abundare, quam illos in toto navigio. Habebat enim mille et
sexcentas piscatorias naves..... Bellicas autem sive mercatorias
habebant infinitæ multitudinis et portum tutissimum. Gunther,
Hist. C. P. c. 8, p. 10.]
59 (return) [ Kaqaper iervn alsewn, eipein de kai Jeojuteutwn
paradeiswn ejeid?onto toutwni. Nicetas in Alex. Comneno, l. iii.
c. 9, p. 348.]
On the tenth day of their encampment at Scutari, the crusaders
prepared themselves, as soldiers and as Catholics, for the
passage of the Bosphorus. Perilous indeed was the adventure; the
stream was broad and rapid: in a calm the current of the Euxine
might drive down the liquid and unextinguishable fires of the
Greeks; and the opposite shores of Europe were defended by
seventy thousand horse and foot in formidable array. On this
memorable day, which happened to be bright and pleasant, the
Latins were distributed in six battles or divisions; the first,
or vanguard, was led by the count of Flanders, one of the most
powerful of the Christian princes in the skill and number of his
crossbows. The four successive battles of the French were
commanded by his brother Henry, the counts of St. Pol and Blois,
and Matthew of Montmorency; the last of whom was honored by the
voluntary service of the marshal and nobles of Champagne. The
sixth division, the rear-guard and reserve of the army, was
conducted by the marquis of Montferrat, at the head of the
Germans and Lombards. The chargers, saddled, with their long
caparisons dragging on the ground, were embarked in the flat
_palanders_; 60 and the knights stood by the side of their
horses, in complete armor, their helmets laced, and their lances
in their hands. The numerous train of sergeants 61 and archers
occupied the transports; and each transport was towed by the
strength and swiftness of a galley. The six divisions traversed
the Bosphorus, without encountering an enemy or an obstacle: to
land the foremost was the wish, to conquer or die was the
resolution, of every division and of every soldier. Jealous of
the preeminence of danger, the knights in their heavy armor
leaped into the sea, when it rose as high as their girdle; the
sergeants and archers were animated by their valor; and the
squires, letting down the draw-bridges of the palanders, led the
horses to the shore. Before their squadrons could mount, and
form, and couch their Lances, the seventy thousand Greeks had
vanished from their sight: the timid Alexius gave the example to
his troops; and it was only by the plunder of his rich pavilions
that the Latins were informed that they had fought against an
emperor. In the first consternation of the flying enemy, they
resolved, by a double attack, to open the entrance of the harbor.
The tower of Galata, 62 in the suburb of Pera, was attacked and
stormed by the French, while the Venetians assumed the more
difficult task of forcing the boom or chain that was stretched
from that tower to the Byzantine shore. After some fruitless
attempts, their intrepid perseverance prevailed: twenty ships of
war, the relics of the Grecian navy, were either sunk or taken:
the enormous and massy links of iron were cut asunder by the
shears, or broken by the weight, of the galleys; 63 and the
Venetian fleet, safe and triumphant, rode at anchor in the port
of Constantinople. By these daring achievements, a remnant of
twenty thousand Latins solicited the license of besieging a
capital which contained above four hundred thousand inhabitants,
64 able, though not willing, to bear arms in defence of their
country. Such an account would indeed suppose a population of
near two millions; but whatever abatement may be required in the
numbers of the Greeks, the _belief_ of those numbers will equally
exalt the fearless spirit of their assailants.
60 (return) [ From the version of Vignere I adopt the
well-sounding word _palander_, which is still used, I believe, in
the Mediterranean. But had I written in French, I should have
preserved the original and expressive denomination of _vessiers_
or _huissiers_, from the _huis_ or door which was let down as a
draw-bridge; but which, at sea, was closed into the side of the
ship, (see Ducange au Villehardouin, No. 14, and Joinville. p.
27, 28, edit. du Louvre.)]
61 (return) [ To avoid the vague expressions of followers, &c., I
use, after Villehardouin, the word _sergeants_ for all horsemen
who were not knights. There were sergeants at arms, and sergeants
at law; and if we visit the parade and Westminster Hall, we may
observe the strange result of the distinction, (Ducange, Glossar.
Latin, _Servientes_, &c., tom. vi. p. 226—231.)]
62 (return) [ It is needless to observe, that on the subject of
Galata, the chain, &c., Ducange is accurate and full. Consult
likewise the proper chapters of the C. P. Christiana of the same
author. The inhabitants of Galata were so vain and ignorant, that
they applied to themselves St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians.]
63 (return) [ The vessel that broke the chain was named the
Eagle, _Aquila_, (Dandolo, Chronicon, p. 322,) which Blondus (de
Gestis Venet.) has changed into _Aquilo_, the north wind. Ducange
(Observations, No. 83) maintains the latter reading; but he had
not seen the respectable text of Dandolo, nor did he enough
consider the topography of the harbor. The south-east would have
been a more effectual wind. (Note to Wilken, vol. v. p. 215.)]
64 (return) [ Quatre cens mil homes ou plus, (Villehardouin, No.
134,) must be understood of _men_ of a military age. Le Beau
(Hist. du. Bas Empire, tom. xx. p. 417) allows Constantinople a
million of inhabitants, of whom 60,000 horse, and an infinite
number of foot-soldiers. In its present decay, the capital of the
Ottoman empire may contain 400,000 souls, (Bell’s Travels, vol.
ii. p. 401, 402;) but as the Turks keep no registers, and as
circumstances are fallacious, it is impossible to ascertain
(Niebuhr, Voyage en Arabie, tom. i. p. 18, 19) the real
populousness of their cities.]
In the choice of the attack, the French and Venetians were
divided by their habits of life and warfare. The former affirmed
with truth, that Constantinople was most accessible on the side
of the sea and the harbor. The latter might assert with honor,
that they had long enough trusted their lives and fortunes to a
frail bark and a precarious element, and loudly demanded a trial
of knighthood, a firm ground, and a close onset, either on foot
or on horseback. After a prudent compromise, of employing the two
nations by sea and land, in the service best suited to their
character, the fleet covering the army, they both proceeded from
the entrance to the extremity of the harbor: the stone bridge of
the river was hastily repaired; and the six battles of the French
formed their encampment against the front of the capital, the
basis of the triangle which runs about four miles from the port
to the Propontis. 65 On the edge of a broad ditch, at the foot of
a lofty rampart, they had leisure to contemplate the difficulties
of their enterprise. The gates to the right and left of their
narrow camp poured forth frequent sallies of cavalry and
light-infantry, which cut off their stragglers, swept the country
of provisions, sounded the alarm five or six times in the course
of each day, and compelled them to plant a palisade, and sink an
intrenchment, for their immediate safety. In the supplies and
convoys the Venetians had been too sparing, or the Franks too
voracious: the usual complaints of hunger and scarcity were
heard, and perhaps felt their stock of flour would be exhausted
in three weeks; and their disgust of salt meat tempted them to
taste the flesh of their horses. The trembling usurper was
supported by Theodore Lascaris, his son-in-law, a valiant youth,
who aspired to save and to rule his country; the Greeks,
regardless of that country, were awakened to the defence of their
religion; but their firmest hope was in the strength and spirit
of the Varangian guards, of the Danes and English, as they are
named in the writers of the times. 66 After ten days’ incessant
labor, the ground was levelled, the ditch filled, the approaches
of the besiegers were regularly made, and two hundred and fifty
engines of assault exercised their various powers to clear the
rampart, to batter the walls, and to sap the foundations. On the
first appearance of a breach, the scaling-ladders were applied:
the numbers that defended the vantage ground repulsed and
oppressed the adventurous Latins; but they admired the resolution
of fifteen knights and sergeants, who had gained the ascent, and
maintained their perilous station till they were precipitated or
made prisoners by the Imperial guards. On the side of the harbor
the naval attack was more successfully conducted by the
Venetians; and that industrious people employed every resource
that was known and practiced before the invention of gunpowder. A
double line, three bow-shots in front, was formed by the galleys
and ships; and the swift motion of the former was supported by
the weight and loftiness of the latter, whose decks, and poops,
and turret, were the platforms of military engines, that
discharged their shot over the heads of the first line. The
soldiers, who leaped from the galleys on shore, immediately
planted and ascended their scaling-ladders, while the large
ships, advancing more slowly into the intervals, and lowering a
draw-bridge, opened a way through the air from their masts to the
rampart. In the midst of the conflict, the doge, a venerable and
conspicuous form, stood aloft in complete armor on the prow of
his galley. The great standard of St. Mark was displayed before
him; his threats, promises, and exhortations, urged the diligence
of the rowers; his vessel was the first that struck; and Dandolo
was the first warrior on the shore. The nations admired the
magnanimity of the blind old man, without reflecting that his age
and infirmities diminished the price of life, and enhanced the
value of immortal glory. On a sudden, by an invisible hand, (for
the standard-bearer was probably slain,) the banner of the
republic was fixed on the rampart: twenty-five towers were
rapidly occupied; and, by the cruel expedient of fire, the Greeks
were driven from the adjacent quarter. The doge had despatched
the intelligence of his success, when he was checked by the
danger of his confederates. Nobly declaring that he would rather
die with the pilgrims than gain a victory by their destruction,
Dandolo relinquished his advantage, recalled his troops, and
hastened to the scene of action. He found the six weary
diminutive _battles_ of the French encompassed by sixty squadrons
of the Greek cavalry, the least of which was more numerous than
the largest of their divisions. Shame and despair had provoked
Alexius to the last effort of a general sally; but he was awed by
the firm order and manly aspect of the Latins; and, after
skirmishing at a distance, withdrew his troops in the close of
the evening. The silence or tumult of the night exasperated his
fears; and the timid usurper, collecting a treasure of ten
thousand pounds of gold, basely deserted his wife, his people,
and his fortune; threw himself into a bark; stole through the
Bosphorus; and landed in shameful safety in an obscure harbor of
Thrace. As soon as they were apprised of his flight, the Greek
nobles sought pardon and peace in the dungeon where the blind
Isaac expected each hour the visit of the executioner. Again
saved and exalted by the vicissitudes of fortune, the captive in
his Imperial robes was replaced on the throne, and surrounded
with prostrate slaves, whose real terror and affected joy he was
incapable of discerning. At the dawn of day, hostilities were
suspended, and the Latin chiefs were surprised by a message from
the lawful and reigning emperor, who was impatient to embrace his
son, and to reward his generous deliverers. 67
65 (return) [ On the most correct plans of Constantinople, I know
not how to measure more than 4000 paces. Yet Villehardouin
computes the space at three leagues, (No. 86.) If his eye were
not deceived, he must reckon by the old Gallic league of 1500
paces, which might still be used in Champagne.]
66 (return) [ The guards, the Varangi, are styled by
Villehardouin, (No. 89, 95) Englois et Danois avec leurs haches.
Whatever had been their origin, a French pilgrim could not be
mistaken in the nations of which they were at that time
composed.]
67 (return) [ For the first siege and conquest of Constantinople,
we may read the original letter of the crusaders to Innocent
III., Gesta, c. 91, p. 533, 534. Villehardouin, No. 75—99.
Nicetas, in Alexio Comnen. l. iii. c. 10, p. 349—352. Dandolo, in
Chron. p. 322. Gunther, and his abbot Martin, were not yet
returned from their obstinate pilgrim age to Jerusalem, or St.
John d’Acre, where the greatest part of the company had died of
the plague.]
Chapter LX: The Fourth Crusade.—Part III.
But these generous deliverers were unwilling to release their
hostage, till they had obtained from his father the payment, or
at least the promise, of their recompense. They chose four
ambassadors, Matthew of Montmorency, our historian the marshal of
Champagne, and two Venetians, to congratulate the emperor. The
gates were thrown open on their approach, the streets on both
sides were lined with the battle axes of the Danish and English
guard: the presence-chamber glittered with gold and jewels, the
false substitute of virtue and power: by the side of the blind
Isaac his wife was seated, the sister of the king of Hungary: and
by her appearance, the noble matrons of Greece were drawn from
their domestic retirement, and mingled with the circle of
senators and soldiers. The Latins, by the mouth of the marshal,
spoke like men conscious of their merits, but who respected the
work of their own hands; and the emperor clearly understood, that
his son’s engagements with Venice and the pilgrims must be
ratified without hesitation or delay. Withdrawing into a private
chamber with the empress, a chamberlain, an interpreter, and the
four ambassadors, the father of young Alexius inquired with some
anxiety into the nature of his stipulations. The submission of
the Eastern empire to the pope, the succor of the Holy Land, and
a present contribution of two hundred thousand marks of
silver.—“These conditions are weighty,” was his prudent reply:
“they are hard to accept, and difficult to perform. But no
conditions can exceed the measure of your services and deserts.”
After this satisfactory assurance, the barons mounted on
horseback, and introduced the heir of Constantinople to the city
and palace: his youth and marvellous adventures engaged every
heart in his favor, and Alexius was solemnly crowned with his
father in the dome of St. Sophia. In the first days of his reign,
the people, already blessed with the restoration of plenty and
peace, was delighted by the joyful catastrophe of the tragedy;
and the discontent of the nobles, their regret, and their fears,
were covered by the polished surface of pleasure and loyalty The
mixture of two discordant nations in the same capital might have
been pregnant with mischief and danger; and the suburb of Galata,
or Pera, was assigned for the quarters of the French and
Venetians. But the liberty of trade and familiar intercourse was
allowed between the friendly nations: and each day the pilgrims
were tempted by devotion or curiosity to visit the churches and
palaces of Constantinople. Their rude minds, insensible perhaps
of the finer arts, were astonished by the magnificent scenery:
and the poverty of their native towns enhanced the populousness
and riches of the first metropolis of Christendom. 68 Descending
from his state, young Alexius was prompted by interest and
gratitude to repeat his frequent and familiar visits to his Latin
allies; and in the freedom of the table, the gay petulance of the
French sometimes forgot the emperor of the East. 69 In their most
serious conferences, it was agreed, that the reunion of the two
churches must be the result of patience and time; but avarice was
less tractable than zeal; and a larger sum was instantly
disbursed to appease the wants, and silence the importunity, of
the crusaders. 70 Alexius was alarmed by the approaching hour of
their departure: their absence might have relieved him from the
engagement which he was yet incapable of performing; but his
friends would have left him, naked and alone, to the caprice and
prejudice of a perfidious nation. He wished to bribe their stay,
the delay of a year, by undertaking to defray their expense, and
to satisfy, in their name, the freight of the Venetian vessels.
The offer was agitated in the council of the barons; and, after a
repetition of their debates and scruples, a majority of votes
again acquiesced in the advice of the doge and the prayer of the
young emperor. At the price of sixteen hundred pounds of gold, he
prevailed on the marquis of Montferrat to lead him with an army
round the provinces of Europe; to establish his authority, and
pursue his uncle, while Constantinople was awed by the presence
of Baldwin and his confederates of France and Flanders. The
expedition was successful: the blind emperor exulted in the
success of his arms, and listened to the predictions of his
flatterers, that the same Providence which had raised him from
the dungeon to the throne, would heal his gout, restore his
sight, and watch over the long prosperity of his reign. Yet the
mind of the suspicious old man was tormented by the rising
glories of his son; nor could his pride conceal from his envy,
that, while his own name was pronounced in faint and reluctant
acclamations, the royal youth was the theme of spontaneous and
universal praise. 71
68 (return) [ Compare, in the rude energy of Villehardouin, (No.
66, 100,) the inside and outside views of Constantinople, and
their impression on the minds of the pilgrims: cette ville (says
he) que de toutes les autres ere souveraine. See the parallel
passages of Fulcherius Carnotensis, Hist. Hierosol. l. i. c. 4,
and Will. Tyr. ii. 3, xx. 26.]
69 (return) [ As they played at dice, the Latins took off his
diadem, and clapped on his head a woollen or hairy cap, to
megaloprepeV kai pagkleiston katerrupainen onoma, (Nicetas, p.
358.) If these merry companions were Venetians, it was the
insolence of trade and a commonwealth.]
70 (return) [ Villehardouin, No. 101. Dandolo, p. 322. The doge
affirms, that the Venetians were paid more slowly than the
French; but he owns, that the histories of the two nations
differed on that subject. Had he read Villehardouin? The Greeks
complained, however, good totius Græciæ opes transtulisset,
(Gunther, Hist. C. P. c 13) See the lamentations and invectives
of Nicetas, (p. 355.)]
71 (return) [ The reign of Alexius Comnenus occupies three books
in Nicetas, p. 291—352. The short restoration of Isaac and his
son is despatched in five chapters, p. 352—362.]
By the recent invasion, the Greeks were awakened from a dream of
nine centuries; from the vain presumption that the capital of the
Roman empire was impregnable to foreign arms. The strangers of
the West had violated the city, and bestowed the sceptre, of
Constantine: their Imperial clients soon became as unpopular as
themselves: the well-known vices of Isaac were rendered still
more contemptible by his infirmities, and the young Alexius was
hated as an apostate, who had renounced the manners and religion
of his country. His secret covenant with the Latins was divulged
or suspected; the people, and especially the clergy, were
devoutly attached to their faith and superstition; and every
convent, and every shop, resounded with the danger of the church
and the tyranny of the pope. 72 An empty treasury could ill
supply the demands of regal luxury and foreign extortion: the
Greeks refused to avert, by a general tax, the impending evils of
servitude and pillage; the oppression of the rich excited a more
dangerous and personal resentment; and if the emperor melted the
plate, and despoiled the images, of the sanctuary, he seemed to
justify the complaints of heresy and sacrilege. During the
absence of Marquis Boniface and his Imperial pupil,
Constantinople was visited with a calamity which might be justly
imputed to the zeal and indiscretion of the Flemish pilgrims. 73
In one of their visits to the city, they were scandalized by the
aspect of a mosque or synagogue, in which one God was worshipped,
without a partner or a son. Their effectual mode of controversy
was to attack the infidels with the sword, and their habitation
with fire: but the infidels, and some Christian neighbors,
presumed to defend their lives and properties; and the flames
which bigotry had kindled, consumed the most orthodox and
innocent structures. During eight days and nights, the
conflagration spread above a league in front, from the harbor to
the Propontis, over the thickest and most populous regions of the
city. It is not easy to count the stately churches and palaces
that were reduced to a smoking ruin, to value the merchandise
that perished in the trading streets, or to number the families
that were involved in the common destruction. By this outrage,
which the doge and the barons in vain affected to disclaim, the
name of the Latins became still more unpopular; and the colony of
that nation, above fifteen thousand persons, consulted their
safety in a hasty retreat from the city to the protection of
their standard in the suburb of Pera. The emperor returned in
triumph; but the firmest and most dexterous policy would have
been insufficient to steer him through the tempest, which
overwhelmed the person and government of that unhappy youth. His
own inclination, and his father’s advice, attached him to his
benefactors; but Alexius hesitated between gratitude and
patriotism, between the fear of his subjects and of his allies.
74 By his feeble and fluctuating conduct he lost the esteem and
confidence of both; and, while he invited the marquis of
Monferrat to occupy the palace, he suffered the nobles to
conspire, and the people to arm, for the deliverance of their
country. Regardless of his painful situation, the Latin chiefs
repeated their demands, resented his delays, suspected his
intentions, and exacted a decisive answer of peace or war. The
haughty summons was delivered by three French knights and three
Venetian deputies, who girded their swords, mounted their horses,
pierced through the angry multitude, and entered, with a fearful
countenance, the palace and presence of the Greek emperor. In a
peremptory tone, they recapitulated their services and his
engagements; and boldly declared, that unless their just claims
were fully and immediately satisfied, they should no longer hold
him either as a sovereign or a friend. After this defiance, the
first that had ever wounded an Imperial ear, they departed
without betraying any symptoms of fear; but their escape from a
servile palace and a furious city astonished the ambassadors
themselves; and their return to the camp was the signal of mutual
hostility.
72 (return) [ When Nicetas reproaches Alexius for his impious
league, he bestows the harshest names on the pope’s new religion,
meizon kai atopwtaton... parektrophn pistewV... tvn tou Papa
pronomiwn kainismon,... metaqesin te kai metapoihsin tvn palaivn
'RwmaioiV?eqvn, (p. 348.) Such was the sincere language of every
Greek to the last gasp of the empire.]
73 (return) [ Nicetas (p. 355) is positive in the charge, and
specifies the Flemings, (FlamioneV,) though he is wrong in
supposing it an ancient name. Villehardouin (No. 107) exculpates
the barons, and is ignorant (perhaps affectedly ignorant) of the
names of the guilty.]
74 (return) [ Compare the suspicions and complaints of Nicetas
(p. 359—362) with the blunt charges of Baldwin of Flanders,
(Gesta Innocent III. c. 92, p. 534,) cum patriarcha et mole
nobilium, nobis promises perjurus et mendax.]
Among the Greeks, all authority and wisdom were overborne by the
impetuous multitude, who mistook their rage for valor, their
numbers for strength, and their fanaticism for the support and
inspiration of Heaven. In the eyes of both nations Alexius was
false and contemptible; the base and spurious race of the Angeli
was rejected with clamorous disdain; and the people of
Constantinople encompassed the senate, to demand at their hands a
more worthy emperor. To every senator, conspicuous by his birth
or dignity, they successively presented the purple: by each
senator the deadly garment was repulsed: the contest lasted three
days; and we may learn from the historian Nicetas, one of the
members of the assembly, that fear and weaknesses were the
guardians of their loyalty. A phantom, who vanished in oblivion,
was forcibly proclaimed by the crowd: 75 but the author of the
tumult, and the leader of the war, was a prince of the house of
Ducas; and his common appellation of Alexius must be
discriminated by the epithet of Mourzoufle, 76 which in the
vulgar idiom expressed the close junction of his black and shaggy
eyebrows. At once a patriot and a courtier, the perfidious
Mourzoufle, who was not destitute of cunning and courage, opposed
the Latins both in speech and action, inflamed the passions and
prejudices of the Greeks, and insinuated himself into the favor
and confidence of Alexius, who trusted him with the office of
great chamberlain, and tinged his buskins with the colors of
royalty. At the dead of night, he rushed into the bed-chamber
with an affrighted aspect, exclaiming, that the palace was
attacked by the people and betrayed by the guards. Starting from
his couch, the unsuspecting prince threw himself into the arms of
his enemy, who had contrived his escape by a private staircase.
But that staircase terminated in a prison: Alexius was seized,
stripped, and loaded with chains; and, after tasting some days
the bitterness of death, he was poisoned, or strangled, or beaten
with clubs, at the command, or in the presence, of the tyrant.
The emperor Isaac Angelus soon followed his son to the grave; and
Mourzoufle, perhaps, might spare the superfluous crime of
hastening the extinction of impotence and blindness.
75 (return) [ His name was Nicholas Canabus: he deserved the
praise of Nicetas and the vengeance of Mourzoufle, (p. 362.)]
76 (return) [ Villehardouin (No. 116) speaks of him as a
favorite, without knowing that he was a prince of the blood,
_Angelus_ and _Ducas_. Ducange, who pries into every corner,
believes him to be the son of Isaac Ducas Sebastocrator, and
second cousin of young Alexius.]
The death of the emperors, and the usurpation of Mourzoufle, had
changed the nature of the quarrel. It was no longer the
disagreement of allies who overvalued their services, or
neglected their obligations: the French and Venetians forgot
their complaints against Alexius, dropped a tear on the untimely
fate of their companion, and swore revenge against the perfidious
nation who had crowned his assassin. Yet the prudent doge was
still inclined to negotiate: he asked as a debt, a subsidy, or a
fine, fifty thousand pounds of gold, about two millions sterling;
nor would the conference have been abruptly broken, if the zeal,
or policy, of Mourzoufle had not refused to sacrifice the Greek
church to the safety of the state. 77 Amidst the invectives of
his foreign and domestic enemies, we may discern, that he was not
unworthy of the character which he had assumed, of the public
champion: the second siege of Constantinople was far more
laborious than the first; the treasury was replenished, and
discipline was restored, by a severe inquisition into the abuses
of the former reign; and Mourzoufle, an iron mace in his hand,
visiting the posts, and affecting the port and aspect of a
warrior, was an object of terror to his soldiers, at least, and
to his kinsmen. Before and after the death of Alexius, the Greeks
made two vigorous and well-conducted attempts to burn the navy in
the harbor; but the skill and courage of the Venetians repulsed
the fire-ships; and the vagrant flames wasted themselves without
injury in the sea. 78 In a nocturnal sally the Greek emperor was
vanquished by Henry, brother of the count of Flanders: the
advantages of number and surprise aggravated the shame of his
defeat: his buckler was found on the field of battle; and the
Imperial standard, 79 a divine image of the Virgin, was
presented, as a trophy and a relic to the Cistercian monks, the
disciples of St. Bernard. Near three months, without excepting
the holy season of Lent, were consumed in skirmishes and
preparations, before the Latins were ready or resolved for a
general assault. The land fortifications had been found
impregnable; and the Venetian pilots represented, that, on the
shore of the Propontis, the anchorage was unsafe, and the ships
must be driven by the current far away to the straits of the
Hellespont; a prospect not unpleasing to the reluctant pilgrims,
who sought every opportunity of breaking the army. From the
harbor, therefore, the assault was determined by the assailants,
and expected by the besieged; and the emperor had placed his
scarlet pavilions on a neighboring height, to direct and animate
the efforts of his troops. A fearless spectator, whose mind could
entertain the ideas of pomp and pleasure, might have admired the
long array of two embattled armies, which extended above half a
league, the one on the ships and galleys, the other on the walls
and towers raised above the ordinary level by several stages of
wooden turrets. Their first fury was spent in the discharge of
darts, stones, and fire, from the engines; but the water was
deep; the French were bold; the Venetians were skilful; they
approached the walls; and a desperate conflict of swords, spears,
and battle-axes, was fought on the trembling bridges that
grappled the floating, to the stable, batteries. In more than a
hundred places, the assault was urged, and the defence was
sustained; till the superiority of ground and numbers finally
prevailed, and the Latin trumpets sounded a retreat. On the
ensuing days, the attack was renewed with equal vigor, and a
similar event; and, in the night, the doge and the barons held a
council, apprehensive only for the public danger: not a voice
pronounced the words of escape or treaty; and each warrior,
according to his temper, embraced the hope of victory, or the
assurance of a glorious death. 80 By the experience of the former
siege, the Greeks were instructed, but the Latins were animated;
and the knowledge that Constantinople might be taken, was of more
avail than the local precautions which that knowledge had
inspired for its defence. In the third assault, two ships were
linked together to double their strength; a strong north wind
drove them on the shore; the bishops of Troyes and Soissons led
the van; and the auspicious names of the _pilgrim_ and the
_paradise_ resounded along the line. 81 The episcopal banners
were displayed on the walls; a hundred marks of silver had been
promised to the first adventurers; and if their reward was
intercepted by death, their names have been immortalized by fame.
811 Four towers were scaled; three gates were burst open; and the
French knights, who might tremble on the waves, felt themselves
invincible on horseback on the solid ground. Shall I relate that
the thousands who guarded the emperor’s person fled on the
approach, and before the lance, of a single warrior? Their
ignominious flight is attested by their countryman Nicetas: an
army of phantoms marched with the French hero, and he was
magnified to a giant in the eyes of the Greeks. 82 While the
fugitives deserted their posts and cast away their arms, the
Latins entered the city under the banners of their leaders: the
streets and gates opened for their passage; and either design or
accident kindled a third conflagration, which consumed in a few
hours the measure of three of the largest cities of France. 83 In
the close of evening, the barons checked their troops, and
fortified their stations: They were awed by the extent and
populousness of the capital, which might yet require the labor of
a month, if the churches and palaces were conscious of their
internal strength. But in the morning, a suppliant procession,
with crosses and images, announced the submission of the Greeks,
and deprecated the wrath of the conquerors: the usurper escaped
through the golden gate: the palaces of Blachernæ and Boucoleon
were occupied by the count of Flanders and the marquis of
Montferrat; and the empire, which still bore the name of
Constantine, and the title of Roman, was subverted by the arms of
the Latin pilgrims. 84
77 (return) [ This negotiation, probable in itself, and attested
by Nicetas, (p 65,) is omitted as scandalous by the delicacy of
Dandolo and Villehardouin. * Note: Wilken places it before the
death of Alexius, vol. v. p. 276.—M.]
78 (return) [ Baldwin mentions both attempts to fire the fleet,
(Gest. c. 92, p. 534, 535;) Villehardouin, (No. 113—15) only
describes the first. It is remarkable that neither of these
warriors observe any peculiar properties in the Greek fire.]
79 (return) [ Ducange (No. 119) pours forth a torrent of learning
on the _Gonfanon Imperial_. This banner of the Virgin is shown at
Venice as a trophy and relic: if it be genuine the pious doge
must have cheated the monks of Citeaux.]
80 (return) [ Villehardouin (No. 126) confesses, that mult ere
grant peril; and Guntherus (Hist. C. P. c. 13) affirms, that
nulla spes victoriæ arridere poterat. Yet the knight despises
those who thought of flight, and the monk praises his countrymen
who were resolved on death.]
81 (return) [ Baldwin, and all the writers, honor the names of
these two galleys, felici auspicio.]
811 (return) [ Pietro Alberti, a Venetian noble and Andrew
d’Amboise a French knight.—M.]
82 (return) [ With an allusion to Homer, Nicetas calls him
enneorguioV, nine orgyæ, or eighteen yards high, a stature which
would, indeed, have excused the terror of the Greek. On this
occasion, the historian seems fonder of the marvellous than of
his country, or perhaps of truth. Baldwin exclaims in the words
of the psalmist, persequitur unus ex nobis centum alienos.]
83 (return) [ Villehardouin (No. 130) is again ignorant of the
authors of _this_ more legitimate fire, which is ascribed by
Gunther to a quidam comes Teutonicus, (c. 14.) They seem ashamed,
the incendiaries!]
84 (return) [ For the second siege and conquest of
Constantinople, see Villehardouin (No. 113—132,) Baldwin’s iid
Epistle to Innocent III., (Gesta c. 92, p. 534—537,) with the
whole reign of Mourzoufle, in Nicetas, (p 363—375;) and borrowed
some hints from Dandolo (Chron. Venet. p. 323—330) and Gunther,
(Hist. C. P. c. 14—18,) who added the decorations of prophecy and
vision. The former produces an oracle of the Erythræan sibyl, of
a great armament on the Adriatic, under a blind chief, against
Byzantium, &c. Curious enough, were the prediction anterior to
the fact.]
Constantinople had been taken by storm; and no restraints, except
those of religion and humanity, were imposed on the conquerors by
the laws of war. Boniface, marquis of Montferrat, still acted as
their general; and the Greeks, who revered his name as that of
their future sovereign, were heard to exclaim in a lamentable
tone, “Holy marquis-king, have mercy upon us!” His prudence or
compassion opened the gates of the city to the fugitives; and he
exhorted the soldiers of the cross to spare the lives of their
fellow-Christians. The streams of blood that flowed down the
pages of Nicetas may be reduced to the slaughter of two thousand
of his unresisting countrymen; 85 and the greater part was
massacred, not by the strangers, but by the Latins, who had been
driven from the city, and who exercised the revenge of a
triumphant faction. Yet of these exiles, some were less mindful
of injuries than of benefits; and Nicetas himself was indebted
for his safety to the generosity of a Venetian merchant. Pope
Innocent the Third accuses the pilgrims for respecting, in their
lust, neither age nor sex, nor religious profession; and bitterly
laments that the deeds of darkness, fornication, adultery, and
incest, were perpetrated in open day; and that noble matrons and
holy nuns were polluted by the grooms and peasants of the
Catholic camp. 86 It is indeed probable that the license of
victory prompted and covered a multitude of sins: but it is
certain, that the capital of the East contained a stock of venal
or willing beauty, sufficient to satiate the desires of twenty
thousand pilgrims; and female prisoners were no longer subject to
the right or abuse of domestic slavery. The marquis of Montferrat
was the patron of discipline and decency; the count of Flanders
was the mirror of chastity: they had forbidden, under pain of
death, the rape of married women, or virgins, or nuns; and the
proclamation was sometimes invoked by the vanquished 87 and
respected by the victors. Their cruelty and lust were moderated
by the authority of the chiefs, and feelings of the soldiers; for
we are no longer describing an irruption of the northern savages;
and however ferocious they might still appear, time, policy, and
religion had civilized the manners of the French, and still more
of the Italians. But a free scope was allowed to their avarice,
which was glutted, even in the holy week, by the pillage of
Constantinople. The right of victory, unshackled by any promise
or treaty, had confiscated the public and private wealth of the
Greeks; and every hand, according to its size and strength, might
lawfully execute the sentence and seize the forfeiture. A
portable and universal standard of exchange was found in the
coined and uncoined metals of gold and silver, which each captor,
at home or abroad, might convert into the possessions most
suitable to his temper and situation. Of the treasures, which
trade and luxury had accumulated, the silks, velvets, furs, the
gems, spices, and rich movables, were the most precious, as they
could not be procured for money in the ruder countries of Europe.
An order of rapine was instituted; nor was the share of each
individual abandoned to industry or chance. Under the tremendous
penalties of perjury, excommunication, and death, the Latins were
bound to deliver their plunder into the common stock: three
churches were selected for the deposit and distribution of the
spoil: a single share was allotted to a foot-soldier; two for a
sergeant on horseback; four to a knight; and larger proportions
according to the rank and merit of the barons and princes. For
violating this sacred engagement, a knight belonging to the count
of St. Paul was hanged with his shield and coat of arms round his
neck; his example might render similar offenders more artful and
discreet; but avarice was more powerful than fear; and it is
generally believed that the secret far exceeded the acknowledged
plunder. Yet the magnitude of the prize surpassed the largest
scale of experience or expectation. 88 After the whole had been
equally divided between the French and Venetians, fifty thousand
marks were deducted to satisfy the debts of the former and the
demands of the latter. The residue of the French amounted to four
hundred thousand marks of silver, 89 about eight hundred thousand
pounds sterling; nor can I better appreciate the value of that
sum in the public and private transactions of the age, than by
defining it as seven times the annual revenue of the kingdom of
England. 90
85 (return) [ Ceciderunt tamen eâ die civium quasi duo millia,
&c., (Gunther, c. 18.) Arithmetic is an excellent touchstone to
try the amplifications of passion and rhetoric.]
86 (return) [ Quidam (says Innocent III., Gesta, c. 94, p. 538)
nec religioni, nec ætati, nec sexui pepercerunt: sed
fornicationes, adulteria, et incestus in oculis omnium
exercentes, non solûm maritatas et viduas, sed et matronas et
virgines Deoque dicatas, exposuerunt spurcitiis garcionum.
Villehardouin takes no notice of these common incidents.]
87 (return) [ Nicetas saved, and afterwards married, a noble
virgin, (p. 380,) whom a soldier, eti martusi polloiV onhdon
epibrimwmenoV, had almost violated in spite of the entolai,
entalmata eu gegonotwn.]
88 (return) [ Of the general mass of wealth, Gunther observes, ut
de pauperibus et advenis cives ditissimi redderentur, (Hist. C.
P. c. 18; (Villehardouin, (No. 132,) that since the creation, ne
fu tant gaaignié dans une ville; Baldwin, (Gesta, c. 92,) ut
tantum tota non videatur possidere Latinitas.]
89 (return) [ Villehardouin, No. 133—135. Instead of 400,000,
there is a various reading of 500,000. The Venetians had offered
to take the whole booty, and to give 400 marks to each knight,
200 to each priest and horseman, and 100 to each foot-soldier:
they would have been great losers, (Le Beau, Hist. du. Bas Empire
tom. xx. p. 506. I know not from whence.)]
90 (return) [ At the council of Lyons (A.D. 1245) the English
ambassadors stated the revenue of the crown as below that of the
foreign clergy, which amounted to 60,000 marks a year, (Matthew
Paris, p. 451 Hume’s Hist. of England, vol. ii. p. 170.)]
In this great revolution we enjoy the singular felicity of
comparing the narratives of Villehardouin and Nicetas, the
opposite feelings of the marshal of Champagne and the Byzantine
senator. 91 At the first view it should seem that the wealth of
Constantinople was only transferred from one nation to another;
and that the loss and sorrow of the Greeks is exactly balanced by
the joy and advantage of the Latins. But in the miserable account
of war, the gain is never equivalent to the loss, the pleasure to
the pain; the smiles of the Latins were transient and fallacious;
the Greeks forever wept over the ruins of their country; and
their real calamities were aggravated by sacrilege and mockery.
What benefits accrued to the conquerors from the three fires
which annihilated so vast a portion of the buildings and riches
of the city? What a stock of such things, as could neither be
used nor transported, was maliciously or wantonly destroyed! How
much treasure was idly wasted in gaming, debauchery, and riot!
And what precious objects were bartered for a vile price by the
impatience or ignorance of the soldiers, whose reward was stolen
by the base industry of the last of the Greeks! These alone, who
had nothing to lose, might derive some profit from the
revolution; but the misery of the upper ranks of society is
strongly painted in the personal adventures of Nicetas himself.
His stately palace had been reduced to ashes in the second
conflagration; and the senator, with his family and friends,
found an obscure shelter in another house which he possessed near
the church of St. Sophia. It was the door of this mean habitation
that his friend, the Venetian merchant, guarded in the disguise
of a soldier, till Nicetas could save, by a precipitate flight,
the relics of his fortune and the chastity of his daughter. In a
cold, wintry season, these fugitives, nursed in the lap of
prosperity, departed on foot; his wife was with child; the
desertion of their slaves compelled them to carry their baggage
on their own shoulders; and their women, whom they placed in the
centre, were exhorted to conceal their beauty with dirt, instead
of adorning it with paint and jewels Every step was exposed to
insult and danger: the threats of the strangers were less painful
than the taunts of the plebeians, with whom they were now
levelled; nor did the exiles breathe in safety till their
mournful pilgrimage was concluded at Selymbria, above forty miles
from the capital. On the way they overtook the patriarch, without
attendance and almost without apparel, riding on an ass, and
reduced to a state of apostolical poverty, which, had it been
voluntary, might perhaps have been meritorious. In the mean
while, his desolate churches were profaned by the licentiousness
and party zeal of the Latins. After stripping the gems and
pearls, they converted the chalices into drinking-cups; their
tables, on which they gamed and feasted, were covered with the
pictures of Christ and the saints; and they trampled under foot
the most venerable objects of the Christian worship. In the
cathedral of St. Sophia, the ample veil of the sanctuary was rent
asunder for the sake of the golden fringe; and the altar, a
monument of art and riches, was broken in pieces and shared among
the captors. Their mules and horses were laden with the wrought
silver and gilt carvings, which they tore down from the doors and
pulpit; and if the beasts stumbled under the burden, they were
stabbed by their impatient drivers, and the holy pavement
streamed with their impure blood. A prostitute was seated on the
throne of the patriarch; and that daughter of Belial, as she is
styled, sung and danced in the church, to ridicule the hymns and
processions of the Orientals. Nor were the repositories of the
royal dead secure from violation: in the church of the Apostles,
the tombs of the emperors were rifled; and it is said, that after
six centuries the corpse of Justinian was found without any signs
of decay or putrefaction. In the streets, the French and Flemings
clothed themselves and their horses in painted robes and flowing
head-dresses of linen; and the coarse intemperance of their
feasts 92 insulted the splendid sobriety of the East. To expose
the arms of a people of scribes and scholars, they affected to
display a pen, an inkhorn, and a sheet of paper, without
discerning that the instruments of science and valor were _alike_
feeble and useless in the hands of the modern Greeks.
91 (return) [ The disorders of the sack of Constantinople, and
his own adventures, are feelingly described by Nicetas, p.
367—369, and in the Status Urb. C. P. p. 375—384. His complaints,
even of sacrilege, are justified by Innocent III., (Gesta, c.
92;) but Villehardouin does not betray a symptom of pity or
remorse.]
92 (return) [ If I rightly apprehend the Greek of Nicetas’s
receipts, their favorite dishes were boiled buttocks of beef,
salt pork and peas, and soup made of garlic and sharp or sour
herbs, (p. 382.)]
Their reputation and their language encouraged them, however, to
despise the ignorance and to overlook the progress of the Latins.
93 In the love of the arts, the national difference was still
more obvious and real; the Greeks preserved with reverence the
works of their ancestors, which they could not imitate; and, in
the destruction of the statues of Constantinople, we are provoked
to join in the complaints and invectives of the Byzantine
historian. 94 We have seen how the rising city was adorned by the
vanity and despotism of the Imperial founder: in the ruins of
paganism, some gods and heroes were saved from the axe of
superstition; and the forum and hippodrome were dignified with
the relics of a better age. Several of these are described by
Nicetas, 95 in a florid and affected style; and from his
descriptions I shall select some interesting particulars. _1._
The victorious charioteers were cast in bronze, at their own or
the public charge, and fitly placed in the hippodrome: they stood
aloft in their chariots, wheeling round the goal: the spectators
could admire their attitude, and judge of the resemblance; and of
these figures, the most perfect might have been transported from
the Olympic stadium. _2._ The sphinx, river-horse, and crocodile,
denote the climate and manufacture of Egypt and the spoils of
that ancient province. _3._ The she-wolf suckling Romulus and
Remus, a subject alike pleasing to the _old_ and the _new_
Romans, but which could really be treated before the decline of
the Greek sculpture. _4._ An eagle holding and tearing a serpent
in his talons, a domestic monument of the Byzantines, which they
ascribed, not to a human artist, but to the magic power of the
philosopher Apollonius, who, by this talisman, delivered the city
from such venomous reptiles. _5._ An ass and his driver, which
were erected by Augustus in his colony of Nicopolis, to
commemorate a verbal omen of the victory of Actium. _6._ An
equestrian statue which passed, in the vulgar opinion, for
Joshua, the Jewish conqueror, stretching out his hand to stop the
course of the descending sun. A more classical tradition
recognized the figures of Bellerophon and Pegasus; and the free
attitude of the steed seemed to mark that he trod on air, rather
than on the earth. _7._ A square and lofty obelisk of brass; the
sides were embossed with a variety of picturesque and rural
scenes, birds singing; rustics laboring, or playing on their
pipes; sheep bleating; lambs skipping; the sea, and a scene of
fish and fishing; little naked cupids laughing, playing, and
pelting each other with apples; and, on the summit, a female
figure, turning with the slightest breath, and thence denominated
_the wind’s attendant_. _8._ The Phrygian shepherd presenting to
Venus the prize of beauty, the apple of discord. _9._ The
incomparable statue of Helen, which is delineated by Nicetas in
the words of admiration and love: her well-turned feet, snowy
arms, rosy lips, bewitching smiles, swimming eyes, arched
eyebrows, the harmony of her shape, the lightness of her drapery,
and her flowing locks that waved in the wind; a beauty that might
have moved her Barbarian destroyers to pity and remorse. _10._
The manly or divine form of Hercules, 96 as he was restored to
life by the masterhand of Lysippus; of such magnitude, that his
thumb was equal to his waist, his leg to the stature, of a common
man: 97 his chest ample, his shoulders broad, his limbs strong
and muscular, his hair curled, his aspect commanding. Without his
bow, or quiver, or club, his lion’s skin carelessly thrown over
him, he was seated on an osier basket, his right leg and arm
stretched to the utmost, his left knee bent, and supporting his
elbow, his head reclining on his left hand, his countenance
indignant and pensive. _11._ A colossal statue of Juno, which had
once adorned her temple of Samos, the enormous head by four yoke
of oxen was laboriously drawn to the palace. _12._ Another
colossus, of Pallas or Minerva, thirty feet in height, and
representing with admirable spirit the attributes and character
of the martial maid. Before we accuse the Latins, it is just to
remark, that this Pallas was destroyed after the first siege, by
the fear and superstition of the Greeks themselves. 98 The other
statues of brass which I have enumerated were broken and melted
by the unfeeling avarice of the crusaders: the cost and labor
were consumed in a moment; the soul of genius evaporated in
smoke; and the remnant of base metal was coined into money for
the payment of the troops. Bronze is not the most durable of
monuments: from the marble forms of Phidias and Praxiteles, the
Latins might turn aside with stupid contempt; 99 but unless they
were crushed by some accidental injury, those useless stones
stood secure on their pedestals. 100 The most enlightened of the
strangers, above the gross and sensual pursuits of their
countrymen, more piously exercised the right of conquest in the
search and seizure of the relics of the saints. 101 Immense was
the supply of heads and bones, crosses and images, that were
scattered by this revolution over the churches of Europe; and
such was the increase of pilgrimage and oblation, that no branch,
perhaps, of more lucrative plunder was imported from the East.
102 Of the writings of antiquity, many that still existed in the
twelfth century, are now lost. But the pilgrims were not
solicitous to save or transport the volumes of an unknown tongue:
the perishable substance of paper or parchment can only be
preserved by the multiplicity of copies; the literature of the
Greeks had almost centred in the metropolis; and, without
computing the extent of our loss, we may drop a tear over the
libraries that have perished in the triple fire of
Constantinople. 103
93 (return) [ Nicetas uses very harsh expressions, par
agrammatoiV BarbaroiV, kai teleon analfabhtoiV, (Fragment, apud
Fabric. Bibliot. Græc. tom. vi. p. 414.) This reproach, it is
true, applies most strongly to their ignorance of Greek and of
Homer. In their own language, the Latins of the xiith and xiiith
centuries were not destitute of literature. See Harris’s
Philological Inquiries, p. iii. c. 9, 10, 11.]
94 (return) [ Nicetas was of Chonæ in Phrygia, (the old Colossæ
of St. Paul:) he raised himself to the honors of senator, judge
of the veil, and great logothete; beheld the fall of the empire,
retired to Nice, and composed an elaborate history from the death
of Alexius Comnenus to the reign of Henry.]
95 (return) [ A manuscript of Nicetas in the Bodleian library
contains this curious fragment on the statues of Constantinople,
which fraud, or shame, or rather carelessness, has dropped in the
common editions. It is published by Fabricius, (Bibliot. Græc.
tom. vi. p. 405—416,) and immoderately praised by the late
ingenious Mr. Harris of Salisbury, (Philological Inquiries, p.
iii. c. 5, p. 301—312.)]
96 (return) [ To illustrate the statue of Hercules, Mr. Harris
quotes a Greek epigram, and engraves a beautiful gem, which does
not, however, copy the attitude of the statue: in the latter,
Hercules had not his club, and his right leg and arm were
extended.]
97 (return) [ I transcribe these proportions, which appear to me
inconsistent with each other; and may possibly show, that the
boasted taste of Nicetas was no more than affectation and
vanity.]
98 (return) [ Nicetas in Isaaco Angelo et Alexio, c. 3, p. 359.
The Latin editor very properly observes, that the historian, in
his bombast style, produces ex pulice elephantem.]
99 (return) [ In two passages of Nicetas (edit. Paris, p. 360.
Fabric. p. 408) the Latins are branded with the lively reproach
of oi tou kalou anerastoi barbaroi, and their avarice of brass is
clearly expressed. Yet the Venetians had the merit of removing
four bronze horses from Constantinople to the place of St. Mark,
(Sanuto, Vite del Dogi, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum,
tom. xxii. p. 534.)]
100 (return) [ Winckelman, Hist. de l’Art. tom. iii. p. 269,
270.]
101 (return) [ See the pious robbery of the abbot Martin, who
transferred a rich cargo to his monastery of Paris, diocese of
Basil, (Gunther, Hist. C. P. c. 19, 23, 24.) Yet in secreting
this booty, the saint incurred an excommunication, and perhaps
broke his oath. (Compare Wilken vol. v. p. 308.—M.)]
102 (return) [ Fleury, Hist. Eccles tom. xvi. p. 139—145.]
103 (return) [ I shall conclude this chapter with the notice of a
modern history, which illustrates the taking of Constantinople by
the Latins; but which has fallen somewhat late into my hands.
Paolo Ramusio, the son of the compiler of Voyages, was directed
by the senate of Venice to write the history of the conquest: and
this order, which he received in his youth, he executed in a
mature age, by an elegant Latin work, de Bello
Constantinopolitano et Imperatoribus Comnenis per Gallos et
Venetos restitutis, (Venet. 1635, in folio.) Ramusio, or
Rhamnusus, transcribes and translates, sequitur ad unguem, a MS.
of Villehardouin, which he possessed; but he enriches his
narrative with Greek and Latin materials, and we are indebted to
him for a correct state of the fleet, the names of the fifty
Venetian nobles who commanded the galleys of the republic, and
the patriot opposition of Pantaleon Barbus to the choice of the
doge for emperor.]
Chapter LXI: Partition Of The Empire By The French And
Venetians.—Part I.
Partition Of The Empire By The French And Venetians,—Five Latin
Emperors Of The Houses Of Flanders And Courtenay.— Their Wars
Against The Bulgarians And Greeks.—Weakness And Poverty Of The
Latin Empire.—Recovery Of Constantinople By The Greeks.—General
Consequences Of The Crusades.
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, note, 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, note 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.]