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 MÊander 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, ∆tolia, 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 priest, 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]
[Footnote 17: 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.]
[Footnote 18: 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.)]
[Footnote 19: 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.]
[Footnote 20: 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 FamiliÊ ByzantinÊ of Ducange.]
[Footnote 201: This was a title, not a personal appellation. Joinville
speaks of the "Grant Comnenie, et sire de Traffezzontes." Fallmerayer,
p. 82.--M.]
[Footnote 21: 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.)]
[Footnote 211: 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 CÊsar 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, (M¸nchen, 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.]
[Footnote 212: 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.]
[Footnote 22: 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.]
[Footnote 23: I here begin to use, with freedom and confidence, the
eight books of the Histoire de C. P. sous l'Empire des FranÁois, 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]
[Footnote 24: 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.]
[Footnote 25: 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]
[Footnote 26: 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 Ère et gote ne veoit,
mais mult Ère 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.]
Chapter LXI: Partition Of The Empire By The French And 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]
[Footnote 27: The truth of geography, and the original text of
Villehardouin, (No. 194,) place Rodosto three days' journey (trois
jornÈes) 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.]
[Footnote 28: 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.]
[Footnote 29: 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 MÈmoires, relatifs a l'Histoire de France, tom. i. p. 85,
expresses his belief in the first part of the "tragic legend."--M.]
[Footnote 30: 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.]