Venetians.—Part II.
Proud of his victory and his royal prize, the Bulgarian advanced
to relieve Adrianople and achieve the destruction of the Latins.
They must inevitably have been destroyed, if the marshal of
Romania had not displayed a cool courage and consummate skill;
uncommon in all ages, but most uncommon in those times, when war
was a passion, rather than a science. His grief and fears were
poured into the firm and faithful bosom of the doge; but in the
camp he diffused an assurance of safety, which could only be
realized by the general belief. All day he maintained his
perilous station between the city and the Barbarians:
Villehardouin decamped in silence at the dead of night; and his
masterly retreat of three days would have deserved the praise of
Xenophon and the ten thousand. In the rear, the marshal supported
the weight of the pursuit; in the front, he moderated the
impatience of the fugitives; and wherever the Comans approached,
they were repelled by a line of impenetrable spears. On the third
day, the weary troops beheld the sea, the solitary town of
Rodosta, 27 and their friends, who had landed from the Asiatic
shore. They embraced, they wept; but they united their arms and
counsels; and in his brother’s absence, Count Henry assumed the
regency of the empire, at once in a state of childhood and
caducity. 28 If the Comans withdrew from the summer heats, seven
thousand Latins, in the hour of danger, deserted Constantinople,
their brethren, and their vows. Some partial success was
overbalanced by the loss of one hundred and twenty knights in the
field of Rusium; and of the Imperial domain, no more was left
than the capital, with two or three adjacent fortresses on the
shores of Europe and Asia. The king of Bulgaria was resistless
and inexorable; and Calo-John respectfully eluded the demands of
the pope, who conjured his new proselyte to restore peace and the
emperor to the afflicted Latins. The deliverance of Baldwin was
no longer, he said, in the power of man: that prince had died in
prison; and the manner of his death is variously related by
ignorance and credulity. The lovers of a tragic legend will be
pleased to hear, that the royal captive was tempted by the
amorous queen of the Bulgarians; that his chaste refusal exposed
him to the falsehood of a woman and the jealousy of a savage;
that his hands and feet were severed from his body; that his
bleeding trunk was cast among the carcasses of dogs and horses;
and that he breathed three days, before he was devoured by the
birds of prey. 29 About twenty years afterwards, in a wood of the
Netherlands, a hermit announced himself as the true Baldwin, the
emperor of Constantinople, and lawful sovereign of Flanders. He
related the wonders of his escape, his adventures, and his
penance, among a people prone to believe and to rebel; and, in
the first transport, Flanders acknowledged her long-lost
sovereign. A short examination before the French court detected
the impostor, who was punished with an ignominious death; but the
Flemings still adhered to the pleasing error; and the countess
Jane is accused by the gravest historians of sacrificing to her
ambition the life of an unfortunate father. 30
27 (return) [ The truth of geography, and the original text of
Villehardouin, (No. 194,) place Rodosto three days’ journey
(trois jornées) from Adrianople: but Vigenere, in his version,
has most absurdly substituted _trois heures_; and this error,
which is not corrected by Ducange has entrapped several moderns,
whose names I shall spare.]
28 (return) [ The reign and end of Baldwin are related by
Villehardouin and Nicetas, (p. 386—416;) and their omissions are
supplied by Ducange in his Observations, and to the end of his
first book.]
29 (return) [ After brushing away all doubtful and improbable
circumstances, we may prove the death of Baldwin, 1. By the firm
belief of the French barons, (Villehardouin, No. 230.) 2. By the
declaration of Calo-John himself, who excuses his not releasing
the captive emperor, quia debitum carnis exsolverat cum carcere
teneretur, (Gesta Innocent III. c. 109.) * Note: Compare Von
Raumer. Geschichte der Hohenstaufen, vol. ii. p. 237. Petitot, in
his preface to Villehardouin in the Collection des Mémoires,
relatifs a l’Histoire de France, tom. i. p. 85, expresses his
belief in the first part of the “tragic legend.”—M.]
30 (return) [ See the story of this impostor from the French and
Flemish writers in Ducange, Hist. de C. P. iii. 9; and the
ridiculous fables that were believed by the monks of St. Alban’s,
in Matthew Paris, Hist. Major, p. 271, 272.]
In all civilized hostility, a treaty is established for the
exchange or ransom of prisoners; and if their captivity be
prolonged, their condition is known, and they are treated
according to their rank with humanity or honor. But the savage
Bulgarian was a stranger to the laws of war: his prisons were
involved in darkness and silence; and above a year elapsed before
the Latins could be assured of the death of Baldwin, before his
brother, the regent Henry, would consent to assume the title of
emperor. His moderation was applauded by the Greeks as an act of
rare and inimitable virtue. Their light and perfidious ambition
was eager to seize or anticipate the moment of a vacancy, while a
law of succession, the guardian both of the prince and people,
was gradually defined and confirmed in the hereditary monarchies
of Europe. In the support of the Eastern empire, Henry was
gradually left without an associate, as the heroes of the crusade
retired from the world or from the war. The doge of Venice, the
venerable Dandolo, in the fulness of years and glory, sunk into
the grave. The marquis of Montferrat was slowly recalled from the
Peloponnesian war to the revenge of Baldwin and the defence of
Thessalonica. Some nice disputes of feudal homage and service
were reconciled in a personal interview between the emperor and
the king; they were firmly united by mutual esteem and the common
danger; and their alliance was sealed by the nuptials of Henry
with the daughter of the Italian prince. He soon deplored the
loss of his friend and father. At the persuasion of some faithful
Greeks, Boniface made a bold and successful inroad among the
hills of Rhodope: the Bulgarians fled on his approach; they
assembled to harass his retreat. On the intelligence that his
rear was attacked, without waiting for any defensive armor, he
leaped on horseback, couched his lance, and drove the enemies
before him; but in the rash pursuit he was pierced with a mortal
wound; and the head of the king of Thessalonica was presented to
Calo-John, who enjoyed the honors, without the merit, of victory.
It is here, at this melancholy event, that the pen or the voice
of Jeffrey of Villehardouin seems to drop or to expire; 31 and if
he still exercised his military office of marshal of Romania, his
subsequent exploits are buried in oblivion. 32 The character of
Henry was not unequal to his arduous situation: in the siege of
Constantinople, and beyond the Hellespont, he had deserved the
fame of a valiant knight and a skilful commander; and his courage
was tempered with a degree of prudence and mildness unknown to
his impetuous brother. In the double war against the Greeks of
Asia and the Bulgarians of Europe, he was ever the foremost on
shipboard or on horseback; and though he cautiously provided for
the success of his arms, the drooping Latins were often roused by
his example to save and to second their fearless emperor. But
such efforts, and some supplies of men and money from France,
were of less avail than the errors, the cruelty, and death, of
their most formidable adversary. When the despair of the Greek
subjects invited Calo-John as their deliverer, they hoped that he
would protect their liberty and adopt their laws: they were soon
taught to compare the degrees of national ferocity, and to
execrate the savage conqueror, who no longer dissembled his
intention of dispeopling Thrace, of demolishing the cities, and
of transplanting the inhabitants beyond the Danube. Many towns
and villages of Thrace were already evacuated: a heap of ruins
marked the place of Philippopolis, and a similar calamity was
expected at Demotica and Adrianople, by the first authors of the
revolt. They raised a cry of grief and repentance to the throne
of Henry; the emperor alone had the magnanimity to forgive and
trust them. No more than four hundred knights, with their
sergeants and archers, could be assembled under his banner; and
with this slender force he fought 321 and repulsed the Bulgarian,
who, besides his infantry, was at the head of forty thousand
horse. In this expedition, Henry felt the difference between a
hostile and a friendly country: the remaining cities were
preserved by his arms; and the savage, with shame and loss, was
compelled to relinquish his prey. The siege of Thessalonica was
the last of the evils which Calo-John inflicted or suffered: he
was stabbed in the night in his tent; and the general, perhaps
the assassin, who found him weltering in his blood, ascribed the
blow, with general applause, to the lance of St. Demetrius. 33
After several victories, the prudence of Henry concluded an
honorable peace with the successor of the tyrant, and with the
Greek princes of Nice and Epirus. If he ceded some doubtful
limits, an ample kingdom was reserved for himself and his
feudatories; and his reign, which lasted only ten years, afforded
a short interval of prosperity and peace. Far above the narrow
policy of Baldwin and Boniface, he freely intrusted to the Greeks
the most important offices of the state and army; and this
liberality of sentiment and practice was the more seasonable, as
the princes of Nice and Epirus had already learned to seduce and
employ the mercenary valor of the Latins. It was the aim of Henry
to unite and reward his deserving subjects, of every nation and
language; but he appeared less solicitous to accomplish the
impracticable union of the two churches. Pelagius, the pope’s
legate, who acted as the sovereign of Constantinople, had
interdicted the worship of the Greeks, and sternly imposed the
payment of tithes, the double procession of the Holy Ghost, and a
blind obedience to the Roman pontiff. As the weaker party, they
pleaded the duties of conscience, and implored the rights of
toleration: “Our bodies,” they said, “are Cæsar’s, but our souls
belong only to God.” The persecution was checked by the firmness
of the emperor: 34 and if we can believe that the same prince was
poisoned by the Greeks themselves, we must entertain a
contemptible idea of the sense and gratitude of mankind. His
valor was a vulgar attribute, which he shared with ten thousand
knights; but Henry possessed the superior courage to oppose, in a
superstitious age, the pride and avarice of the clergy. In the
cathedral of St. Sophia he presumed to place his throne on the
right hand of the patriarch; and this presumption excited the
sharpest censure of Pope Innocent the Third. By a salutary edict,
one of the first examples of the laws of mortmain, he prohibited
the alienation of fiefs: many of the Latins, desirous of
returning to Europe, resigned their estates to the church for a
spiritual or temporal reward; these holy lands were immediately
discharged from military service, and a colony of soldiers would
have been gradually transformed into a college of priests. 35
31 (return) [ Villehardouin, No. 257. I quote, with regret, this
lamentable conclusion, where we lose at once the original
history, and the rich illustrations of Ducange. The last pages
may derive some light from Henry’s two epistles to Innocent III.,
(Gesta, c. 106, 107.)]
32 (return) [ The marshal was alive in 1212, but he probably died
soon afterwards, without returning to France, (Ducange,
Observations sur Villehardouin, p. 238.) His fief of Messinople,
the gift of Boniface, was the ancient Maximianopolis, which
flourished in the time of Ammianus Marcellinus, among the cities
of Thrace, (No. 141.)]
321 (return) [ There was no battle. On the advance of the Latins,
John suddenly broke up his camp and retreated. The Latins
considered this unexpected deliverance almost a miracle. Le Beau
suggests the probability that the detection of the Comans, who
usually quitted the camp during the heats of summer, may have
caused the flight of the Bulgarians. Nicetas, c. 8 Villebardouin,
c. 225. Le Beau, vol. xvii. p. 242.—M.]
33 (return) [ The church of this patron of Thessalonica was
served by the canons of the holy sepulchre, and contained a
divine ointment which distilled daily and stupendous miracles,
(Ducange, Hist. de C. P. ii. 4.)]
34 (return) [ Acropolita (c. 17) observes the persecution of the
legate, and the toleration of Henry, ('Erh, * as he calls him)
kludwna katestorese. Note: Or rather 'ErrhV.—M.]
35 (return) [ See the reign of Henry, in Ducange, (Hist. de C. P.
l. i. c. 35—41, l. ii. c. 1—22,) who is much indebted to the
Epistles of the Popes. Le Beau (Hist. du Bas Empire, tom. xxi. p.
120—122) has found, perhaps in Doutreman, some laws of Henry,
which determined the service of fiefs, and the prerogatives of
the emperor.]
The virtuous Henry died at Thessalonica, in the defence of that
kingdom, and of an infant, the son of his friend Boniface. In the
two first emperors of Constantinople the male line of the counts
of Flanders was extinct. But their sister Yolande was the wife of
a French prince, the mother of a numerous progeny; and one of her
daughters had married Andrew king of Hungary, a brave and pious
champion of the cross. By seating him on the Byzantine throne,
the barons of Romania would have acquired the forces of a
neighboring and warlike kingdom; but the prudent Andrew revered
the laws of succession; and the princess Yolande, with her
husband Peter of Courtenay, count of Auxerre, was invited by the
Latins to assume the empire of the East. The royal birth of his
father, the noble origin of his mother, recommended to the barons
of France the first cousin of their king. His reputation was
fair, his possessions were ample, and in the bloody crusade
against the Albigeois, the soldiers and the priests had been
abundantly satisfied of his zeal and valor. Vanity might applaud
the elevation of a French emperor of Constantinople; but prudence
must pity, rather than envy, his treacherous and imaginary
greatness. To assert and adorn his title, he was reduced to sell
or mortgage the best of his patrimony. By these expedients, the
liberality of his royal kinsman Philip Augustus, and the national
spirit of chivalry, he was enabled to pass the Alps at the head
of one hundred and forty knights, and five thousand five hundred
sergeants and archers. After some hesitation, Pope Honorius the
Third was persuaded to crown the successor of Constantine: but he
performed the ceremony in a church without the walls, lest he
should seem to imply or to bestow any right of sovereignty over
the ancient capital of the empire. The Venetians had engaged to
transport Peter and his forces beyond the Adriatic, and the
empress, with her four children, to the Byzantine palace; but
they required, as the price of their service, that he should
recover Durazzo from the despot of Epirus. Michael Angelus, or
Comnenus, the first of his dynasty, had bequeathed the succession
of his power and ambition to Theodore, his legitimate brother,
who already threatened and invaded the establishments of the
Latins. After discharging his debt by a fruitless assault, the
emperor raised the siege to prosecute a long and perilous journey
over land from Durazzo to Thessalonica. He was soon lost in the
mountains of Epirus: the passes were fortified; his provisions
exhausted; he was delayed and deceived by a treacherous
negotiation; and, after Peter of Courtenay and the Roman legate
had been arrested in a banquet, the French troops, without
leaders or hopes, were eager to exchange their arms for the
delusive promise of mercy and bread. The Vatican thundered; and
the impious Theodore was threatened with the vengeance of earth
and heaven; but the captive emperor and his soldiers were
forgotten, and the reproaches of the pope are confined to the
imprisonment of his legate. No sooner was he satisfied by the
deliverance of the priests and a promise of spiritual obedience,
than he pardoned and protected the despot of Epirus. His
peremptory commands suspended the ardor of the Venetians and the
king of Hungary; and it was only by a natural or untimely death
36 that Peter of Courtenay was released from his hopeless
captivity. 37
36 (return) [ Acropolita (c. 14) affirms, that Peter of Courtenay
died by the sword, (ergon macairaV genesqai;) but from his dark
expressions, I should conclude a previous captivity, wV pantaV
ardhn desmwtaV poihsai sun pasi skeuesi. * The Chronicle of
Auxerre delays the emperor’s death till the year 1219; and
Auxerre is in the neighborhood of Courtenay. Note: Whatever may
have been the fact, this can hardly be made out from the
expressions of Acropolita.—M.]
37 (return) [ See the reign and death of Peter of Courtenay, in
Ducange, (Hist. de C. P. l. ii. c. 22—28,) who feebly strives to
excuse the neglect of the emperor by Honorius III.]
The long ignorance of his fate, and the presence of the lawful
sovereign, of Yolande, his wife or widow, delayed the
proclamation of a new emperor. Before her death, and in the midst
of her grief, she was delivered of a son, who was named Baldwin,
the last and most unfortunate of the Latin princes of
Constantinople. His birth endeared him to the barons of Romania;
but his childhood would have prolonged the troubles of a
minority, and his claims were superseded by the elder claims of
his brethren. The first of these, Philip of Courtenay, who
derived from his mother the inheritance of Namur, had the wisdom
to prefer the substance of a marquisate to the shadow of an
empire; and on his refusal, Robert, the second of the sons of
Peter and Yolande, was called to the throne of Constantinople.
Warned by his father’s mischance, he pursued his slow and secure
journey through Germany and along the Danube: a passage was
opened by his sister’s marriage with the king of Hungary; and the
emperor Robert was crowned by the patriarch in the cathedral of
St. Sophia. But his reign was an æra of calamity and disgrace;
and the colony, as it was styled, of New France yielded on all
sides to the Greeks of Nice and Epirus. After a victory, which he
owed to his perfidy rather than his courage, Theodore Angelus
entered the kingdom of Thessalonica, expelled the feeble
Demetrius, the son of the marquis Boniface, erected his standard
on the walls of Adrianople; and added, by his vanity, a third or
a fourth name to the list of rival emperors. The relics of the
Asiatic province were swept away by John Vataces, the son-in-law
and successor of Theodore Lascaris, and who, in a triumphant
reign of thirty-three years, displayed the virtues both of peace
and war. Under his discipline, the swords of the French
mercenaries were the most effectual instruments of his conquests,
and their desertion from the service of their country was at once
a symptom and a cause of the rising ascendant of the Greeks. By
the construction of a fleet, he obtained the command of the
Hellespont, reduced the islands of Lesbos and Rhodes, attacked
the Venetians of Candia, and intercepted the rare and
parsimonious succors of the West. Once, and once only, the Latin
emperor sent an army against Vataces; and in the defeat of that
army, the veteran knights, the last of the original conquerors,
were left on the field of battle. But the success of a foreign
enemy was less painful to the pusillanimous Robert than the
insolence of his Latin subjects, who confounded the weakness of
the emperor and of the empire. His personal misfortunes will
prove the anarchy of the government and the ferociousness of the
times. The amorous youth had neglected his Greek bride, the
daughter of Vataces, to introduce into the palace a beautiful
maid, of a private, though noble family of Artois; and her mother
had been tempted by the lustre of the purple to forfeit her
engagements with a gentleman of Burgundy. His love was converted
into rage; he assembled his friends, forced the palace gates,
threw the mother into the sea, and inhumanly cut off the nose and
lips of the wife or concubine of the emperor. Instead of
punishing the offender, the barons avowed and applauded the
savage deed, 38 which, as a prince and as a man, it was
impossible that Robert should forgive. He escaped from the guilty
city to implore the justice or compassion of the pope: the
emperor was coolly exhorted to return to his station; before he
could obey, he sunk under the weight of grief, shame, and
impotent resentment. 39
38 (return) [ Marinus Sanutus (Secreta Fidelium Crucis, l. ii. p.
4, c. 18, p. 73) is so much delighted with this bloody deed, that
he has transcribed it in his margin as a bonum exemplum. Yet he
acknowledges the damsel for the lawful wife of Robert.]
39 (return) [ See the reign of Robert, in Ducange, (Hist. de C.
P. l. ii. c.—12.)]
It was only in the age of chivalry, that valor could ascend from
a private station to the thrones of Jerusalem and Constantinople.
The titular kingdom of Jerusalem had devolved to Mary, the
daughter of Isabella and Conrad of Montferrat, and the
granddaughter of Almeric or Amaury. She was given to John of
Brienne, of a noble family in Champagne, by the public voice, and
the judgment of Philip Augustus, who named him as the most worthy
champion of the Holy Land. 40 In the fifth crusade, he led a
hundred thousand Latins to the conquest of Egypt: by him the
siege of Damietta was achieved; and the subsequent failure was
justly ascribed to the pride and avarice of the legate. After the
marriage of his daughter with Frederic the Second, 41 he was
provoked by the emperor’s ingratitude to accept the command of
the army of the church; and though advanced in life, and
despoiled of royalty, the sword and spirit of John of Brienne
were still ready for the service of Christendom. In the seven
years of his brother’s reign, Baldwin of Courtenay had not
emerged from a state of childhood, and the barons of Romania felt
the strong necessity of placing the sceptre in the hands of a man
and a hero. The veteran king of Jerusalem might have disdained
the name and office of regent; they agreed to invest him for his
life with the title and prerogatives of emperor, on the sole
condition that Baldwin should marry his second daughter, and
succeed at a mature age to the throne of Constantinople. The
expectation, both of the Greeks and Latins, was kindled by the
renown, the choice, and the presence of John of Brienne; and they
admired his martial aspect, his green and vigorous age of more
than fourscore years, and his size and stature, which surpassed
the common measure of mankind. 42 But avarice, and the love of
ease, appear to have chilled the ardor of enterprise: 421 his
troops were disbanded, and two years rolled away without action
or honor, till he was awakened by the dangerous alliance of
Vataces emperor of Nice, and of Azan king of Bulgaria. They
besieged Constantinople by sea and land, with an army of one
hundred thousand men, and a fleet of three hundred ships of war;
while the entire force of the Latin emperor was reduced to one
hundred and sixty knights, and a small addition of sergeants and
archers. I tremble to relate, that instead of defending the city,
the hero made a sally at the head of his cavalry; and that of
forty-eight squadrons of the enemy, no more than three escaped
from the edge of his invincible sword. Fired by his example, the
infantry and the citizens boarded the vessels that anchored close
to the walls; and twenty-five were dragged in triumph into the
harbor of Constantinople. At the summons of the emperor, the
vassals and allies armed in her defence; broke through every
obstacle that opposed their passage; and, in the succeeding year,
obtained a second victory over the same enemies. By the rude
poets of the age, John of Brienne is compared to Hector, Roland,
and Judas Machabæus: 43 but their credit, and his glory, receive
some abatement from the silence of the Greeks. The empire was
soon deprived of the last of her champions; and the dying monarch
was ambitious to enter paradise in the habit of a Franciscan
friar. 44
40 (return) [ Rex igitur Franciæ, deliberatione habitâ, respondit
nuntiis, se daturum hominem Syriæ partibus aptum; in armis probum
(_preux_) in bellis securum, in agendis providum, Johannem
comitem Brennensem. Sanut. Secret. Fidelium, l. iii. p. xi. c. 4,
p. 205 Matthew Paris, p. 159.]
41 (return) [ Giannone (Istoria Civile, tom. ii. l. xvi. p.
380—385) discusses the marriage of Frederic II. with the daughter
of John of Brienne, and the double union of the crowns of Naples
and Jerusalem.]
42 (return) [ Acropolita, c. 27. The historian was at that time a
boy, and educated at Constantinople. In 1233, when he was eleven
years old, his father broke the Latin chain, left a splendid
fortune, and escaped to the Greek court of Nice, where his son
was raised to the highest honors.]
421 (return) [ John de Brienne, elected emperor 1229, wasted two
years in preparations, and did not arrive at Constantinople till
1231. Two years more glided away in inglorious inaction; he then
made some ineffective warlike expeditions. Constantinople was not
besieged till 1234.—M.]
43 (return) [ Philip Mouskes, bishop of Tournay, (A.D.
1274—1282,) has composed a poem, or rather string of verses, in
bad old Flemish French, on the Latin emperors of Constantinople,
which Ducange has published at the end of Villehardouin; see p.
38, for the prowess of John of Brienne.
N’Aie, Ector, Roll’ ne Ogiers Ne Judas Machabeus li
fiers Tant ne fit d’armes en estors Com fist li Rois
Jehans cel jors Et il defors et il dedans La paru sa
force et ses sens Et li hardiment qu’il avoit.]
44 (return) [ See the reign of John de Brienne, in Ducange, Hist.
de C. P. l. ii. c. 13—26.]
In the double victory of John of Brienne, I cannot discover the
name or exploits of his pupil Baldwin, who had attained the age
of military service, and who succeeded to the imperial dignity on
the decease of his adoptive father. 45 The royal youth was
employed on a commission more suitable to his temper; he was sent
to visit the Western courts, of the pope more especially, and of
the king of France; to excite their pity by the view of his
innocence and distress; and to obtain some supplies of men or
money for the relief of the sinking empire. He thrice repeated
these mendicant visits, in which he seemed to prolong his stay
and postpone his return; of the five-and-twenty years of his
reign, a greater number were spent abroad than at home; and in no
place did the emperor deem himself less free and secure than in
his native country and his capital. On some public occasions, his
vanity might be soothed by the title of Augustus, and by the
honors of the purple; and at the general council of Lyons, when
Frederic the Second was excommunicated and deposed, his Oriental
colleague was enthroned on the right hand of the pope. But how
often was the exile, the vagrant, the Imperial beggar, humbled
with scorn, insulted with pity, and degraded in his own eyes and
those of the nations! In his first visit to England, he was
stopped at Dover by a severe reprimand, that he should presume,
without leave, to enter an independent kingdom. After some delay,
Baldwin, however, was permitted to pursue his journey, was
entertained with cold civility, and thankfully departed with a
present of seven hundred marks. 46 From the avarice of Rome he
could only obtain the proclamation of a crusade, and a treasure
of indulgences; a coin whose currency was depreciated by too
frequent and indiscriminate abuse. His birth and misfortunes
recommended him to the generosity of his cousin Louis the Ninth;
but the martial zeal of the saint was diverted from
Constantinople to Egypt and Palestine; and the public and private
poverty of Baldwin was alleviated, for a moment, by the
alienation of the marquisate of Namur and the lordship of
Courtenay, the last remains of his inheritance. 47 By such
shameful or ruinous expedients, he once more returned to Romania,
with an army of thirty thousand soldiers, whose numbers were
doubled in the apprehension of the Greeks. His first despatches
to France and England announced his victories and his hopes: he
had reduced the country round the capital to the distance of
three days’ journey; and if he succeeded against an important,
though nameless, city, (most probably Chiorli,) the frontier
would be safe and the passage accessible. But these expectations
(if Baldwin was sincere) quickly vanished like a dream: the
troops and treasures of France melted away in his unskilful
hands; and the throne of the Latin emperor was protected by a
dishonorable alliance with the Turks and Comans. To secure the
former, he consented to bestow his niece on the unbelieving
sultan of Cogni; to please the latter, he complied with their
Pagan rites; a dog was sacrificed between the two armies; and the
contracting parties tasted each other’s blood, as a pledge of
their fidelity. 48 In the palace, or prison, of Constantinople,
the successor of Augustus demolished the vacant houses for winter
fuel, and stripped the lead from the churches for the daily
expense of his family. Some usurious loans were dealt with a
scanty hand by the merchants of Italy; and Philip, his son and
heir, was pawned at Venice as the security for a debt. 49 Thirst,
hunger, and nakedness, are positive evils: but wealth is
relative; and a prince who would be rich in a private station,
may be exposed by the increase of his wants to all the anxiety
and bitterness of poverty.
45 (return) [ See the reign of Baldwin II. till his expulsion
from Constantinople, in Ducange, Hist. de C. P. l. iv. c. 1—34,
the end l. v. c. 1—33.]
46 (return) [ Matthew Paris relates the two visits of Baldwin II.
to the English court, p. 396, 637; his return to Greece armatâ
manû, p. 407 his letters of his nomen formidabile, &c., p. 481,
(a passage which has escaped Ducange;) his expulsion, p. 850.]
47 (return) [ Louis IX. disapproved and stopped the alienation of
Courtenay (Ducange, l. iv. c. 23.) It is now annexed to the royal
demesne but granted for a term (_engagé_) to the family of
Boulainvilliers. Courtenay, in the election of Nemours in the
Isle de France, is a town of 900 inhabitants, with the remains of
a castle, (Mélanges tirés d’une Grande Bibliothèque, tom. xlv. p.
74—77.)]
48 (return) [ Joinville, p. 104, edit. du Louvre. A Coman prince,
who died without baptism, was buried at the gates of
Constantinople with a live retinue of slaves and horses.]
49 (return) [ Sanut. Secret. Fidel. Crucis, l. ii. p. iv. c. 18,
p. 73.]