this violation of the peace. Orkhan excused his son, saying that it was
not force of arms which had opened the gates of the towns of the Greek
empire, but the divine will manifested by the earthquake. The Emperor
made representations that he was not agitating to know whether it was by
the gates or by the breaches that Suleiman had penetrated into the
places in question, but whether or not he possessed them legitimately.
Orkhan then asked a delay for reflection, and subsequently promised that
he would request his son to return the towns that he occupied, if
Cantacuzenus, on his side, would engage to pay him a sum of forty
thousand ducats. At the same time he invited him to an interview to meet
Suleiman on the Gulf of Nicomedia. But the Sultan pretending to be ill,
the Emperor returned to Byzantium, without having obtained anything.
Orkhan now found himself in one of the happiest of political situations.
The division of sovereign authority between Cantacuzenus and his pupil
John Palæologus, and their continual wars, allowed him to address one or
the other according as his interests and the circumstances demanded. It
was thus that John Palæeologus, ally of the Genoese, undertook to
deliver from captivity to Phoceus, the son of Orkhan, Khalil or Kasim,
whom the governor Calothes surrendered for a ransom of one hundred
thousand pieces of gold and the concession of the glorious title of
Panhypersebastos ("very venerable"). The service that John had rendered
did not prevent Orkhan from sending to Abydos a body of troops to rescue
the son of Cantacuzenus, Mathias, then at war with the Bulgarians.
From the epoch when the Ottomans made durable conquests in the Greek
empire, Asia each spring threw new hordes into Europe, until the time
when the successors of Orkhan had extended their domination from the
shores of the Sea of Marmora to those of the Danube.
The conquest of Gallipoli, which had opened the gate of the Greek empire
and the whole of the European continent to the Ottomans, was announced
by "letters of victory" to the neighboring princes of Orkhan, whose
father had divided with Osman the heritage of the Seljukian sultans. The
use of these "letters of victory" has been preserved to this day in
Turkey, and their style, already so pompous in the days of Orkhan, has
become so proudly emphatic that this kind of document to-day is not the
least curious of those which belong to the annals of the Turkish nation.
Orkhan left to his son, Suleiman Pacha, and Hadji-Ilbeki the charge of
preserving the conquests made in Europe; Suleiman established his
residence at Gallipoli, and Ilbeki at Konour. The first overran the
country as far as Demitoka; the second as far as Tschorli and Hireboli.
Adjebeg received in fief the valley which still bears his name.
But Suleiman enjoyed for only a few years the fruits of his conquests.
One day while hunting wild geese between Boulair and Sidi-Kawak, that is
to say near the palatine of the Cid, and following at a gallop the
flight of his falcon, he fell so violently from his horse (1359) as to
be instantly killed. His body was deposited, not in the mausoleum of
the Osman family at Prusa, where he had caused a mosque to be erected in
the quarter of the confectioners, but near the mosque of Boulair, also
founded by him. Orkhan, to perpetuate the exploits of his son, caused a
tomb to be built to his memory on the shore of the Hellespont, the only
one which, during more than a century, was erected in memory of an
Ottoman prince on Greek soil. Of all the sepulchres of Turkish heroes
which the national historians mention with holy respect, that of the
founder of the Ottoman power in Europe is the most venerated and the
most frequented by pilgrims. It is still to be seen to the north of the
embouchure of the Hellespont.
Tradition attributes yet another victory to Suleiman after his death. At
the head of a troop of celestial heroes, mounted on white horses,
encircled by a brilliant aureole, he is said to have vanquished an army
of infidels. The love of the marvellous, so general among orientals, the
leaning which all people have to make heaven intervene in the deeds
relating to their origin, alone can explain this tradition, for it would
be useless to seek any historic fact which could have given it birth.
According to this tradition, thirty thousand Christians appeared in the
Hellespont on a fleet of sixty-one vessels; one half disembarked at
Touzla and the other at Sidi-Kawak; it was this latter body which was
cut in pieces by the celestial troop led by Suleiman. The Ottoman
historians who relate this miracle have evidently borrowed the
apparition of these vessels from the First or the Second Crusade of the
Europeans against the Turks, and have transported them from the waters
of Smyrna to those of Gallipoli, for the greater glory of Suleiman
Pacha. Neither the history of Byzantium nor that of the crusades offers
the slightest trace of this event.
CONSPIRACY AND DEATH OF MARINO
FALIERI AT VENICE
A.D. 1355
MRS. MARGARET OLIPHANT
Marino Falieri was born at Venice about 1278, and was
elected doge in 1354. For many years the government of the
republic, under an oligarchy, had been arbitrarily dominated
by the Council of Ten, an assembly that, after serving a
special purpose for which it was created, was declared
permanent in 1325 and became a formidable tribunal.
Professing to guard the republic the Ten in fact destroyed
its liberties, disposed of its finances, overruled the
constitutional legislators, suppressed and excluded the
popular element from all voice in public affairs, and
finally reduced the nominal prince--the doge--to a mere
puppet or an ornamental functionary, still called "head of
the state."
At the time when Falieri entered upon his dogeship the city
in all quarters was pervaded by the spies of this great
oligarchy, which seized and imprisoned citizens, and even
put them to death, secretly, without itself being answerable
to any authority. The most notable event in the annals of
this extraordinary Venetian government is that which forms
the story of Marino Falieri himself. His conspiracy with the
plebeians to assassinate the oligarchs and make himself
actual ruler of the state had the double motive of a
personal grievance and the sense of a political wrong.
The fate of this old man has been made the subject of
tragedies by Byron (1820), Casimir Delavigne (1829), and
Swinburne (1885). The novel, _Doge und Dogaressa_, by Ernst
Theodor Hoffmann, was inspired by the same dramatic figure.
Of historical accounts, the following--in Mrs. Oliphant's
best manner--is justly regarded as the most impressive which
has hitherto appeared in English.
Marino Falieri had been an active servant of Venice through a long life.
He had filled almost all the great offices which were intrusted to her
nobles. He had governed her distant colonies, accompanied her armies in
that position of _proveditore_, omnipotent civilian critic of all the
movements of war, which so much disgusted the generals of the republic.
He had been ambassador at the courts of both emperor and pope, and was
serving his country in that capacity at Avignon when the news of his
election reached him.
It is thus evident that Falieri was not a man used to the position of a
lay figure, although at seventy-six the dignified retirement of a
throne, even when so encircled with restrictions, would seem not
inappropriate. That he was of a haughty and hasty temper seems apparent.
It is told of him that, after waiting long for a bishop to head a
procession at Treviso where he was _podesta_ ("chief magistrate"), he
astonished the tardy prelate by a box on the ear when he finally
appeared, a punishment for keeping the authorities waiting.
Old age to a statesman, however, is in many cases an advantage rather
than a defect, and Falieri was young in vigor and character, and still
full of life and strength. He was married a second time to presumably a
beautiful wife much younger than himself, though the chroniclers are not
agreed even on the subject of her name, whether she was a Gradenigo or a
Contarini. The well-known story of young Steno's insult to this lady and
to her old husband has found a place in all subsequent histories, but
there is no trace of it in the unpublished documents of the state.
The story goes that Michel Steno, one of those young and insubordinate
gallants who are a danger to every aristocratic state, having been
turned out of the presence of the Dogaressa for some unseemly freedom of
behavior, wrote upon the chair of the Doge in boyish petulance an
insulting taunt, such as might well rouse a high-tempered old man to
fury. According to Sanudo, the young man, on being brought before the
Forty,[56] confessed that he had thus avenged himself in a fit of
passion; and regard having been had to his age and the "heat of love"
which had been the cause of his original misdemeanor--a reason seldom
taken into account by the tribunals of the state--he was condemned to
prison for two months, and afterward to be banished for a year from
Venice.
The Doge took this light punishment greatly amiss, considering it,
indeed, as a further insult.
Sabellico says not a word of Michel Steno, or of this definite cause of
offence, and Romanin quotes the contemporary records to show that though
_Alcuni zovanelli fioli de gentiluomini di Venetia_ are supposed to have
affronted the Doge, no such story finds a place in any of them. But the
old man thus translated from active life and power, soon became bitterly
sensible in his new position that he was _senza parentado_, with few
relations, and flouted by the _giovinastri_, the dissolute young
gentlemen who swaggered about the Broglio in their finery, strong in the
support of fathers and uncles.
That he found himself, at the same time, shelved in his new rank,
powerless, and regarded as a nobody in the state where hitherto he had
been a potent signior--mastered in every action by the secret tribunal,
and presiding nominally in councils where his opinion was of little
consequence--is evident. And a man so well acquainted, and so long, with
all the proceedings of the state, who had seen consummated the shutting
out of the people, and since had watched through election after election
a gradual tightening of the bonds round the feet of the doge, would
naturally have many thoughts when he found himself the wearer of that
restricted and diminished crown.
He could not be unconscious of how the stream was going, nor unaware of
that gradual sapping of privilege and decreasing of power which even in
his own case had gone further than with his predecessor. Perhaps he had
noted with an indignant mind the new limits of the _promissione_, a
narrower charter than ever, when he was called upon to sign it. He had
no mind, we may well believe, to retire thus from the administration of
affairs. And when these giovinastri, other people's boys, the scum of
the gay world, flung their unsavory jests in the face of the old man who
had no son to come after him, the silly insults so lightly uttered, so
little thought of, the natural scoff of youth at old age, stung him to
the quick.
Old Falieri's heart burned within him at his own injuries and those of
his old comrades. How he was induced to head the conspiracy, and put his
crown, his life, and honor on the cast, there is no further information.
His fierce temper, and the fact that he had no powerful house behind him
to help to support his case, probably made him reckless. In April, 1355,
six months after his arrival in Venice as doge, the smouldering fire
broke out. Two of the conspirators were seized with compunction on the
eve of the catastrophe and betrayed the plot--one with a merciful motive
to serve a patrician he loved, the other with perhaps less noble
intentions--and, without a blow struck, the conspiracy collapsed. There
was no real heart in it, nothing to give it consistence; the hot passion
of a few men insulted, the variable gaseous excitement of wronged
commoners, and the ambition--if it was ambition--of one enraged and
affronted old man, without an heir to follow him or anything that could
make it worth his while to conquer.
An enterprise more wild was never undertaken. It was the passionate
stand of despair against force so overwhelming as to make mad the
helpless, yet not submissive, victims. The Doge, who no doubt in former
days had felt it to be a mere affair of the populace, a thing with which
a noble ambassador and proveditore had nothing to do, a struggle beneath
his notice, found himself at last, with fury and amazement, to be a
fellow-sufferer caught in the same toils. There seems no reason to
believe that Falieri consciously staked the remnant of his life on the
forlorn hope of overcoming that awful and pitiless power, with any real
hope of establishing his own supremacy. His aspect is rather that of a
man betrayed by passion, and wildly forgetful of all possibility in his
fierce attempt to free himself and get the upper hand. One cannot but
feel in that passion of helpless age and unfriendedness, something of
the terrible disappointment of one to whom the real situation of affairs
had never been revealed before; who had come home triumphant to reign
like the doges of old, and, only after the ducal cap was on his head and
the palace of the state had become his home, found out that the
doge--like the unconsidered plebeian--had been reduced to bondage; his
judgment and experience put aside in favor of the deliberations of a
secret tribunal, and the very boys, when they were nobles, at liberty to
jeer at his declining years.
The lesser conspirators, all men of the humbler sort--Calendario, the
architect, who was then at work upon the palace, a number of seamen, and
other little-known persons--were hanged; not like the greater criminals,
beheaded between the columns, but strung up--a horrible fringe--along
the side of the palazzo. The fate of Falieri himself is too generally
known to demand description. Calmed by the tragic touch of fate, the
Doge bore all the humiliations of his doom with dignity, and was
beheaded at the head of the stairs where he had sworn the promissione on
first assuming the office of doge.
What a contrast was this from that triumphant day when probably he felt
that his reward had come to him after the long and faithful service of
years. Death stills disappointment as well as rage, and Falieri is said
to have acknowledged the justice of his sentence. He had never made any
attempt to justify or defend himself, but frankly and at once avowed his
guilt and made no attempt to escape from its penalties. His body was
conveyed privately to the Church of St. Giovanni and St. Paolo, the
great "Zanipolo"--with which all visitors to Venice are familiar--and
was buried in secrecy and silence in the _atrio_ of a little chapel
behind the great church--where no doubt for centuries the pavement was
worn by many feet with little thought of those who lay below. Even from
that refuge his bones have been driven forth, but his name remains in
the corner of the Hall of the Great Council, where--with a certain
dramatic affectation--the painter-historians have painted a black veil
across the vacant place. "This is the place of Marino Falieri, beheaded
for his crimes," is all the record left of the Doge disgraced.
Was it a crime? The question is one which it is difficult to discuss
with any certainty. That Falieri desired to establish--as so many had
done in other cities--an independent despotism in Venice, seems entirely
unproved. It was the prevailing fear; the one suggestion which alarmed
everybody and made sentiment unanimous. But one of the special points
which are recorded by the chroniclers as working in him to madness, was
that he was _senza parentado_--without any backing of relationship or
allies--_i.e._, sonless, with no one to come after him. How little
likely then was an old man to embark on such a desperate venture for
self-aggrandizement merely. He had, indeed, a nephew who was involved in
his fate, but apparently not so deeply as to expose him to the last
penalty of the law.
The incident altogether points more to a sudden outbreak of the rage and
disappointment of an old public servant coming back from his weary
labors for the state in triumph and satisfaction to what seemed the
supreme reward; and finding himself no more than a puppet in the hands
of remorseless masters, subject to the scoffs of the younger generation,
with his eyes opened by his own suffering, perceiving for the first time
what justice there was in the oft-repeated protest of the people, and
how they and he alike were crushed under the iron heel of that oligarchy
to which the power of the people and that of the Prince were equally
obnoxious. The chroniclers of his time were so much at a loss to find
any reason for such an attempt on the part of a man, _non abbiando alcum
propinquo_, that they agree in attributing it to diabolical inspiration.
It was more probably that fury which springs from a sense of wrong,
which the sight of the wrongs of others raised to frenzy, and that
intolerable impatience of the impotent which is more harsh in its
hopelessness than the greatest hardihood. He could not but die for it,
but there seems no more reason to characterize this impossible attempt
as deliberate treason than to give the same name to many an alliance
formed between prince and people in other regions--the king and commons
of the early Stuarts, for example--against the intolerable exactions and
cruelty of an aristocracy too powerful to be faced alone by either.
CHARLES IV OF GERMANY PUBLISHES
HIS GOLDEN BULL
A.D. 1356
SIR ROBERT COMYN
The Golden Bull of Charles IV of Germany, Emperor of the
Holy Roman Empire, first published at the Diet of Nuremberg
in 1356, was a charter--sometimes called the "Magna Charta
of Germany"--regulating the election of the emperor. It was
called "golden" because the seal attached to the parchment
on which it was engrossed was of gold instead of the
customary lead. In a diet at Metz in the same year six
additional clauses were promulgated.
By some historians the origin of the imperial electoral
college is assigned to the year 1125, when at the election
of Lothair II certain of the nobles and church dignitaries
made a selection of candidates to be voted for. But until
the promulgation of the Golden Bull the constitution and
prerogatives of the college were never definitely
ascertained.
The personal traits and the languid reign of Charles IV have
been treated by historians with derision. He forgot the
general welfare of the empire in his eagerness to enrich his
own house and aggrandize his paternal kingdom of Bohemia.
The one remarkable law which emanated from him, and whereby
alone his reign is distinguished in the constitutional
history of the empire, is that embodied in the Golden Bull.
By this instrument the dignity of the electors was greatly
enhanced, and the disputes which had arisen between members
of the same house as to their right of suffrage were
terminated. The number of electors was absolutely restricted
to seven.
After a solemn invocation of the Trinity, a reprobation of the seven
deadly sins, and a pointed allusion to the seven candlesticks and the
seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, the Golden Bull proceeds to the subject
of the imperial election. It provides, in the first place, for the safe
conduct of the seven electors to and from Frankfort-on-the-Main, which
is fixed as the place of election; it directs the archbishop of Mainz to
summon the electors upon the death of the emperor, and regulates the
manner in which their proxies are to be appointed; it enjoins the
citizens of Frankfort to protect the assembled electors; and forbids
them to admit any stranger into the city during the election.
It next prescribes the form of oath to be taken by the electors; and
also forbids them to quit the city before the completion of the
election; and after thirty days restricts their diet to bread and water.
A majority of votes is to decide the election; and in case any elector
obtain three votes, his own vote is to be taken in his favor.
The precedence of the electors is thus settled: First, the archbishops
of Mainz, Cologne, and Treves; then the King of Bohemia, the Count
Palatine, the Duke of Saxony, and the Margrave of Brandenburg. The
Elector of Treves is to vote first; then the Elector of Cologne; then
the secular electors; and the Elector of Mainz is finally to collect the
votes and deliver his own.
The Elector of Cologne is to perform the coronation. At all feasts the
Margrave of Brandenburg, as grand chamberlain, is to present the Emperor
with water to wash; the King of Bohemia, as cup-bearer, is to offer the
goblet of wine; the Count Palatine, as grand steward, is to set the
first dish on the table; and the Duke of Saxony is to officiate as grand
marshal.
The Count Palatine and the Duke of Saxony are declared vicars of the
empire during the vacancy of the throne. An exclusive jurisdiction is
guaranteed to the electors; and their precedence over all other princes
of Germany is enforced.
The right of voting is vested in the eldest son of a deceased elector,
provided he have attained the age of eighteen; and during the minority,
the guardianship and vote are vested in the next kinsman of the
deceased.
If one of the lay electorates become vacant by default of heirs, it
shall revert to the Emperor, and be by him disposed of--Bohemia
excepted, where the vacancy is to be supplied by ancient mode of
election.
The electors are invested with the possession of all mines discovered
within their respective territories. They are authorized to give refuge
to the Jews, and to receive dues payable within their states. They are
also privileged to coin money, and to purchase lands subject to the
feudal rights of the sovereign.
A yearly assembly of the electors, in one of the imperial cities, is
enjoined.
All privileges granted to any city or community prejudicial to the
rights of the electors are revoked. All fraudulent resignations of fiefs
by vassals, with intent to attack their lords, are declared void. All
leagues, associations, and confederacies, not sanctioned by law, are
made punishable by fine; and all burgesses and subjects of princes and
nobles are to adhere to their original subjection, and not to claim any
rights or exemptions as burgesses of any city unless actually domiciled
therein.
Challenges, with design of destroying another's property or committing
any outrage, are prohibited; and all challenges are to be given three
days before the onset.
The forms of summoning electors, and of their delegation of proxies, are
laid down. And the right of voting, as well as all other rights, is
declared inseparably incident to the electoral principality.
On grand occasions the Duke of Saxony is to carry the sword; the Count
Palatine, the globe; the Margrave of Brandenburg, the sceptre. In
celebrating mass before the Emperor, the benedictions are to be
pronounced by the senior spiritual elector present.
All persons conspiring against the lives of the electors are declared
guilty of leze-majesty, and shall forfeit their lives and possessions.
The lives of their sons, though justly forfeited, are spared only by the
particular bounty of the Emperor; but they are declared incapable of
holding any property, honor, or dignity, and doomed to perpetual
poverty. The daughters are permitted to enjoy one-fourth of their
mother's succession.
The secular principalities, Bohemia, the Palatinate, the duchy of
Saxony, and the margravate of Brandenburg, are declared indivisible and
entire, descendible in the male line.
On all the solemn occasions the electors shall attend the Emperor, and
the arch-chancellors shall carry the seals. And the bull then proceeds
minutely to point out the manner in which the electors are to exercise
their ministerial functions at the imperial banquet; and regulates the
order and disposition of the imperial and electoral tables.
Frankfort is again declared as the place of election; Aix-la-Chapelle,
of coronation; and Nuremberg, for holding the first royal court.
The electors are exempted from all payments on receiving their fiefs
from their sovereign. But other princes are to pay certain fees, etc.,
to the imperial officers.
Lastly, the secular electors are enjoined to instruct their sons in the
Latin, Italian, and Slavonic tongues.