prosperity if it had not been for two considerations. The first was the
rapid decline of Constantinople as a commercial centre, which was brought
about by the Crusades. When the Genoese and Venetians succeeded in
establishing themselves in the seaports of Syria, they began to visit
Constantinople far less than before. It paid them much better to conduct
their business at Acre or Tyre than on the Bosphorus. The king of
Jerusalem, the weakest of feudal sovereigns, could be more easily bullied
and defrauded than the powerful ruler of Constantinople. In his own
seaports he possessed hardly a shadow of authority: the Italians traded
there on such conditions as they chose. Hence the commerce of the West
with Persia, Egypt, Syria, and India, ceased to pass through the
Bosphorus. Genoa and Venice became the marts at which France, Italy, and
Germany, sought their Eastern goods. It is probable that the trade of
Constantinople fell off by a third or even a half in the fifty years that
followed the first Crusade. The effect of this decline on the coffers of
the state was deplorable, for it was ultimately on its commercial wealth
that the Byzantine state based its prosperity. All through the reigns of
Alexius and his two successors the complaints about the rapid fall in the
imperial revenue grew more and more noticeable.
This dangerous decay in the finances of the empire was rendered still more
fatal by the political devices of Alexius, who began to bestow excessive
commercial privileges to the Italian republics, in return for their aid in
war. This system commenced in 1081, when the Emperor, then in the full
stress of his first Norman war, granted the Venetians the free access to
most of the ports of his empire without the payment of any customs dues.
To give to foreigners a boon denied to his own subjects was the height of
economic lunacy; the native merchants complained that the Venetians were
enabled to undersell them in every market, owing to this exemption from
import and export duties. Matters were made yet worse in 1111, when
Alexius bestowed a similar, though less extensive, grant of immunities on
the Pisans.
When John II., the son of Alexius, succeeded in 1118 to the empire which
his father had saved, the fabric was less strong than it appeared to the
outward eye. Territorial extension seemed to imply increased strength, and
the rapid falling off in the financial resources of the realm attracted
little attention. John however was one of those prudent and economical
princes who stave off for years the inevitable day of distress. Of all the
rulers who ever sat upon the Byzantine throne, he is the only one of whom
no detractor has ever said an evil word. When we remember that he was his
father’s son, it is astonishing to find that his honesty and good faith
were no less notable than his courage and generosity. His subjects named
him “John the Good,” and their appreciation of his virtues was
sufficiently marked by the fact that no single rebellion(27) marred the
internal peace of his long reign. [1118-1143.]
John was a good soldier, and during his rule the frontier of the empire in
Asia continued to advance, at the expense of the Turks. But his strategy
would seem to have been at fault since he preferred to reconquer the coast
districts of Northern and Southern Asia Minor, rather than to strike at
the heart of the Seljouk power on the central table-land. When he had
reduced all Cilicia, Pisidia, and Pontus, his dominions became a narrow
fringe of coast, surrounding on three sides the realm of the Sultan, who
still retained all the Cappadocian and Lycaonian plateau. It should then
have been John’s task to finish the reconquest of Asia Minor, but he
preferred to plunge into Syria, where he forced the Frank prince of
Antioch and the Turkish Emir of Aleppo to pay him tribute, but left no
permanent monument of his conquests. He was preparing a formidable
expedition against the Franks of the kingdom of Jerusalem, when he
perished by accident while on a hunting expedition.(28)
John the Good was succeeded by his son Manuel, whose strength and weakness
combined to give a deathblow to the empire. Manuel was a mere
knight-errant, who loved fighting for fighting’s sake, and allowed his
passion for excitement and adventure to be his only guide. His whole reign
was one long series of wars, entered into and abandoned with equal levity.
Yet for the most part they were successful wars, for Manuel was a good
cavalry officer if he was but a reckless statesman, and his fiery courage
and untiring energy made him the idol of his troops. At the head of the
veteran squadrons of mercenary horsemen that formed the backbone of his
army, he swept off the field every enemy that ever dared to face him. He
overran Servia, invaded Hungary, to whose king he dictated terms of peace,
and beat off with success an invasion of Greece by the Normans of Sicily.
His most desperate struggle, however, was a naval war with Venice, in
which his fleet was successful enough, and drove the Doge and his galleys
out of the Ægean. But the damage done to the trade of Constantinople by
the Venetian privateers, who swarmed in the Levant after their main fleet
had been chased away, was so appalling that the Emperor concluded peace in
1174, restoring to the enemy all the disastrous commercial privileges
which his grandfather Alexius had granted them eight years before.
[Illustration]
Hunters. (_From a Byzantine MS._) (_From "L’Art Byzantin." Par Charles
Bayet, Paris, Quantin, 1883._)
The main fault of Manuel’s wars was that they were conducted in the most
reckless disregard of all financial considerations. With a realm which was
slowly growing poorer, and with a constantly dwindling revenue, he
persisted in piling war on war, and on devoting every bezant that could be
screwed out of his subjects to the support of the army alone. The civil
service fell into grave disorder, the administration of justice was
impaired, roads and bridges went to decay, docks and harbours were
neglected, while the money which should have supported them was wasted on
unprofitable expeditions to Egypt, Syria, or Italy. So long as the ranks
of his mercenaries were full and their pay forthcoming, the Emperor cared
not how his realm might fare.
Of all Manuel’s wars only one went ill, but that was the most important of
them all, the one necessary struggle to which he should have devoted all
his energies. This was the contest with the Seljouks, which ended in 1176
by a disastrous defeat at Myriokephalon in Phrygia, brought about by the
inexcusable carelessness of Manuel himself, who allowed his army to be
caught in a defile from which there was no exit, and routed piecemeal by
an enemy who could have made no stand on the open plains. Manuel then made
peace, and left the Seljouks alone for the rest of his reign.
In 1180 Manuel died, and with him died the good fortune of the House of
Comnenus. His son and heir, Alexius, was a boy of thirteen, and the
inevitable contest for the regency, which always accompanied a minority,
ensued. After two troubled years Andronicus Comnenus, a first cousin of
the Emperor Manuel, was proclaimed Caesar, and took over the guardianship
of the young Alexius. Andronicus was an unscrupulous ruffian, whose past
life should have been sufficient warning against putting any trust in his
professions. He had once attempted to assassinate Manuel, and twice
deserted to the Turks. But he was a consummate hypocrite, and won his way
to the throne by professions of piety and austere virtue. No sooner was he
seated by the side of Alexius II., and felt himself secure, than he seized
and strangled his young relative [1183].
But, like our own Richard III., Andronicus found that the moment of his
accession to sole power was the moment of the commencement of his
troubles. Rebels rose in arms all over the empire to avenge the murdered
Alexius, and the Normans of Sicily seized the opportunity of invading
Macedonia. Conspiracies were rife in the capital, and the executions which
followed their detection were so numerous and bloody that a perfect reign
of terror set in. The Emperor plunged into the most reckless cruelty, till
men almost began to believe that his mind was affected. Ere long the end
came. An inoffensive nobleman named Isaac Angelus, being accused of
treason, was arrested at his own door by the emissaries of the tyrant.
Instead of surrendering himself, Isaac drew his sword and cut down the
official who laid hands on him. A mob came to his aid, and met no
immediate opposition, for Andronicus was absent from the capital. The mob
swelled into a multitude, the guards would not fight, and when the Emperor
returned in haste, he was seized and torn to pieces without a sword being
drawn in his cause. Isaac Angelus reigned in his stead.
XXII. THE LATIN CONQUEST OF CONSTANTINOPLE.
The state which had been drained of its resources by the energetic but
wasteful Manuel, and disorganized by the rash and wicked Andronicus, now
passed into the hands of the two most feeble and despicable creatures who
ever sat upon the imperial throne—the brothers Isaac and Alexius Angelus,
whose reigns cover the years 1185-1204.
Among all the periods which we have hitherto described in the tale of the
East-Roman Empire, that covered by the reign of the two wretched Angeli
may be pronounced the most shameful. The peculiar disgrace of the period
lies in the fact that the condition of the empire was not hopeless at the
time. With ordinary courage and prudence it might have been held together,
for the attacks directed against it were not more formidable than others
which had been beaten off with ease. If the blow had fallen when a hero
like Leo III., or even a statesman like Alexius I. was on the throne,
there is no reason to doubt that it would have been parried. But it fell
in the times of two incompetent triflers, who conducted the state on the
principle of, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” Isaac and
Alexius felt in themselves no power of redeeming the empire from the evil
day, and resignedly fell back on personal enjoyment. Isaac’s taste lay in
the direction of gorgeous raiment and the collecting of miraculous
“eikons.” Alexius preferred the pleasures of the table. Considered as
sovereigns there was little to choose between them. Each was competent to
ruin an empire already verging on its decline.
The disaster which the Angeli brought on their realm was rendered possible
only by its complete military and financial disorganization. As a military
power the empire had never recovered the effects of the Seljouk invasions,
which had robbed it of its great recruiting-ground for its native troops
in Asia Minor. After that loss the use of mercenaries had become more and
more prevalent. The brilliant campaigns of Manuel Comnenus had been made
at the head of a soldiery of whom two-thirds were not born-subjects of the
empire. He, it is true, had kept them within the bounds of strict
discipline, and contrived at all costs to provide their pay. But the weak
and thriftless Angeli were able neither to find money nor to maintain
discipline. A state which relies for its defence on foreign mercenaries is
ruined, if it allows them to grow disorderly and inefficient. In times of
stress they mutiny instead of fighting.
The civil administration was in almost as deplorable a condition, while
those two “Earthly Angels” (as a contemporary chronicler called them) were
charged with its care. Isaac Angelus put the finishing touch to
administrative abuses, which had already been rife enough under the
Comneni, by exposing offices and posts to auction. Instead of paying his
officials he “sent them forth without purse or scrip, like the apostles of
old, to make what profit they could by extortion from the
provincials.”(29) His brother Alexius promised on his accession to make
all appointments on the ground of merit, but proved in reality as bad as
Isaac. He was surrounded by a ring of rapacious favourites, who managed
all patronage, and dispensed it in return for bribes. When high posts were
not sold, they were given as douceurs to men of local influence, whose
rebellion was dreaded.
The history of the twenty years covered by the reigns of the two Angeli is
cut into two equal halves at the deposition of Isaac by his brother in
1195. It is only necessary to point out how the responsibility for the
disasters of the period is to be divided between them.
Isaac’s share consists in the loss of Bulgaria and Cyprus. The former
country had now been in the hands of the Byzantines for nearly two hundred
years, since its conquest by Basil II. But the Bulgarians had not merged
in the general body of the subjects of the empire. They preserved their
national language and customs, and never forgot their ancient
independence. In 1187, three brothers named Peter, John, and Azan stirred
up rebellion among them. If firmly treated it might have been crushed with
ease by the regular troops of the empire. But Isaac first appointed
incompetent generals, who let the rebellion grow to a head, and when at
last he placed an able officer, Alexis Branas, in command, his lieutenant
took the opportunity of using his army for revolt. Branas marched against
Constantinople, and would have taken it, had not Isaac committed the
charge of the troops that remained faithful to him to stronger hands than
his own. He bribed an able adventurer from the West, Conrad, Marquis of
Montferrat, by the offer of his sister’s hand and a great sum of money to
become his saviour. The gallant Lombard routed the forces of Branas, slew
the usurper, and preserved the throne for his brother-in-law. But while
the civil war was going on, the Bulgarians were left unchecked, and made
such head that there was no longer much apparent chance of subduing them.
Isaac took the field against them in person, only to see the great towns
of Naissus, Sophia, and Varna taken before his eyes.
While a national revolt deprived the Emperor of Bulgaria, Cyprus was lost
to a meaner force. Isaac Comnenus, a distant relative of the Emperor
Manuel II., raised rebellion among the Cypriots and defeated the fleet and
army which his namesake of Constantinople sent against him. He held out
for six years, and appeared likely to establish a permanent kingdom in the
island. This revolt was of the worst augury to the empire. It had often
lost provinces by the invasion of barbarian hordes, or the rebellion of
subject nationalities. But that a native rebel should sever a civilized
Greek province from the empire, and reign as “Emperor of Cyprus,” was a
new phenomenon. By the imperial theory the idea of an independent “Empire
of Cyprus” was wholly monstrous and abnormal. The successful rebellion of
Isaac Comnenus pointed to the possibility of a general breaking up of the
Byzantine dominion into fragments, a danger that had never appeared
before. Till now the provinces had always obeyed the capital, and no
instance had been known of a rebel maintaining himself by any other way
than the capture of Constantinople. Isaac Comnenus might, however, have
founded a dynasty in Cyprus, if he had not quarrelled with Richard
Coeur-de-Lion, the crusading King of England. When he maltreated some
shipwrecked English crews, Richard punished him by landing his army in
Cyprus and seizing the whole island. Isaac was thrown into a dungeon, and
the English king gave his dominions to Guy of Lusignan, who called in
Frank adventurers to settle up the land, and made it into a feudal kingdom
of the usual Western type.
While Isaac II. was in the midst of his Bulgarian war, and misconducting
it with his usual fatuity, he was suddenly dethroned by a palace intrigue.
His own brother, Alexius Angelus, had hatched a plot against him, which
worked so successfully that Isaac was caught, blinded, and immured in a
monastery long before his adherents knew that he was in danger.
Alexius III. never showed any other proof of energy save this skilful
_coup d‘état_ aimed against his brother. He continued the Bulgarian war
with the same ill-success that had attended Isaac’s dealings with it. He
plunged into a disastrous struggle with the Seljouk Sultan of Iconium, and
he quarrelled with the Emperor Henry VI., who would certainly have invaded
his dominions if death had not intervened to prevent it. But as long as
Alexius was permitted to enjoy the pleasures of the table in his villas on
the Bosphorus, the ill-success abroad of his arms and his diplomacy vexed
him but little.
But in 1203, a new and unexpected danger arose to scare him from his
feasting. His blind brother Isaac had a young son named Alexius, who
escaped from Constantinople to Italy, and took refuge with Philip of
Suabia, the new Emperor of the West. Philip had married a daughter of
Isaac Angelus, and determined to do something to help his young
brother-in-law. The opportunity was not hard to seek. Just at this moment
a large body of French, Flemish, and Italian Crusaders, who had taken arms
at the command of the Pope, were lying idle at Venice. They had marched
down to the great Italian seaport with the intention of directing a blow
against Malek-Adel, Sultan of Egypt. The Venetians had contracted to
supply them with vessels for the Crusade, but for reasons of their own had
determined that the attack should not fall on the shore for which it had
been destined. They were on very good terms with the Egyptian sovereign,
who had granted them valuable commercial privileges at Alexandria, which
threw the whole trade with the distant realms of India into Venetian
hands. Accordingly they had determined to avert the blow from Egypt and
turn it against some other enemy of Christendom. The leaders of the Fourth
Crusade proved unable to pay the full sum which they had contracted to
give the Venetians as ship-hire, and this was made an excuse for keeping
them camped on the unhealthy islands in the Lagoons till their patience
and their stores were alike exhausted. Henry Dandolo, the aged but wily
doge, then proposed to the Crusaders that they should pay their way by
doing something in aid of Venice. The Dalmatian town of Zara had lately
revolted and done homage to the King of Hungary; if the Crusaders would
recover it, the Venetian state would wipe out their debts and transport
them whither they wished to go.
The Crusaders had taken arms for a holy war against the Moslems. They were
now invited to turn aside against a Christian town and interest themselves
in Venetian politics. Conscientious men would have refused to join in such
an unholy bargain, and would have insisted in carrying out their original
purpose against Egypt. But conscientious men had been growing more and
more rare among the Crusaders for the last hundred years. There were as
many greedy military adventurers among them as single-hearted pilgrims.
The more scrupulous chiefs were over-persuaded by their designing
companions, and the expedition against Zara was undertaken.
Zara fell, but another and a more important enterprise was then placed
before the Crusaders. While they wintered on the Dalmatian coast the young
Alexius Angelus appeared in their camp, escorted by the ambassadors of his
brother-in-law, the Emperor Philip of Suabia. The exiled prince besought
them to turn aside once more before they sailed to the East, and to rescue
his blind father from the dungeon into which he had been cast by his cruel
brother Alexius III. If they would drive out the usurper and restore the
rightful ruler to his throne, they should have anything that the Byzantine
Empire could afford to help them for their Crusade—money in plenty,
stores, a war fleet, a force of mercenary troops, and his own presence as
a helper in the war with Egypt.
Pope Innocent III. had already been storming at the adventurers for
shedding Christian blood at Zara, and tampering with their Crusader’s
oath. But the prospect of Byzantine gold seduced the needy Western barons,
and the desire of keeping the war away from Egypt ruled the minds of the
Venetians. They hesitated and began to treat with Alexius, though they
knew that thereby they were calling down on themselves the terrors of a
Papal excommunication. All now depended on the leaders, and among them the
abler minds were set on the acceptance of the proposal of the young
Byzantine exile. The three chiefs of the Crusade were the Doge Henry
Dandolo, Boniface Marquis of Montferrat, and Baldwin Count of Flanders. In
Dandolo the ruthless energy of the Italian Republics stood incarnate; he
was the one man in the crusading army who knew exactly what he wanted. Old
and blind, but clear-headed and inflexible, he was set on revenging an
ancient grudge against the Greeks, and on furthering, by any means, good
or evil, the fortunes of his native city. Baldwin and Boniface, the two
secondary figures in the camp of the Franks, are perfect representations
of the two types of crusader. The Fleming, gallant and generous, pious and
debonnair, worthy of a more righteous enterprise and a more honourable
death, was a true successor of Godfrey of Bouillon, and the heroes of the
First Crusade. The Lombard, a deep and hardy schemer, to whom force and
fraud seemed equally good, was simply seeking for wealth and fame in the
realms of the East. He cared little for the Holy Sepulchre, and much for
his own private advancement. Behind these three leaders we descry the
motley crowd of the feudal world; relic-hunting abbots in coats of mail,
wrangling barons and penniless knights, the half-piratical seamen of
Venice, and the brutal soldiery of the West.
[Illustration]
View Of Constantinople. (From The Side Of The Harbour.)
Boniface of Montferrat and Doge Dandolo gradually talked over the more
scrupulous Baldwin and his friends, and the crusading fleet was launched
against Constantinople, after a treaty had been signed which bound Alexius
Angelus and his blind father, Isaac II., to pay the Crusaders 200,000
marks of silver, send ten thousand men to Palestine, and acknowledge the
supremacy of the Pope over the Eastern Church. In these conditions lay the
germs of much future trouble.
The Crusading armament reached the Dardanelles without having to strike a
blow. The slothful and luxurious emperor let things slide, and had not
even a fleet ready to send against them in the Aegean. He shut himself up
in Constantinople, and trusted to the strength of its walls to deliver
him, as Heraclius and Leo III. and many more of his predecessors had been
delivered. If the siege had been conducted from the land side only, his
hopes might have been justified, for the Danes and English of the
Varangian Guard beat back the assault of the Franks on the land-wall. But
Alexius III., unlike earlier emperors, was attacked by a fleet to which he
could oppose no adequate naval resistance. Though the Crusaders were
driven off on shore, the Venetians stormed the sea-wall, by the expedient
of building light towers on the decks, and throwing flying bridges from
the towers on to the top of the Byzantine ramparts. The blind Doge pushed
his galley close under the wall, and urged on his men again and again till
they had won a lodgment in some towers on the port side of the sea-wall.
The Venetians then fired the city, and a fearful conflagration followed.
Hearing that the enemy was within the ramparts, the cowardly Alexius III.
mounted his horse and fled away into the inland of Thrace, leaving his
troops, who were not yet half beaten, without a leader or a cause to fight
for. The garrison bowed to necessity, and the chief officers of the army
drew the aged Isaac II. out of his cloister prison and proclaimed his
restoration to the throne. They sent to the Crusading camp to announce
that hostilities had ceased, and to beg Prince Alexius to enter the city
and join his father in the palace.