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 CÊsar'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]
[Footnote 31: 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.)]
[Footnote 32: 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.)]
[Footnote 321: 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.]
[Footnote 33: 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.)]
[Footnote 34: 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.]
[Footnote 35: 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]
[Footnote 36: 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.]
[Footnote 37: 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 Êra 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]
[Footnote 38: 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.]
[Footnote 39: 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 MachabÊus: [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]
[Footnote 40: Rex igitur FranciÊ, deliberatione habit‚, respondit
nuntiis, se daturum hominem SyriÊ 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.]
[Footnote 41: 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.]
[Footnote 42: 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.]
[Footnote 421: 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.]
[Footnote 43: 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.]
[Footnote 44: 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.