may safely be asserted that the chief feeling in their ranks was a bitter
disappointment at being cheated out of the sack of Constantinople, a
prospect over which they had been gloating ever since they left Zara. They
spent the next three months in endeavouring to wring out of their
triumphant protégés, Isaac and Alexius, every bezant that could be scraped
together. The old emperor, already blind and gout-ridden, was driven to
imbecility by their demands: his son was a raw, inexperienced youth who
could neither be firm, nor frank, nor dignified in dealing with any one.
He angered the Franks by insincere diplomacy, and the Greeks by his
reckless schemes for extracting money from them. The winter of 1203-4 was
spent in ceaseless wrangling about the subsidy due to the Crusaders, till
Alexius, growing seriously frightened, began exactions on his subjects
which drove them to revolt. When he seized and melted down the golden
lamps and silver candelabra which formed the pride of St. Sophia, stripped
its eikonostasis of its rich metal plating, and requisitioned the jewelled
eikons and reliquaries of every church in the city, the populace would
stand his proceedings no longer. They would not serve an emperor who had
sold himself to the Franks, and only reigned in order to subject the
Eastern Church to Rome, and to pour the hoarded wealth of the ancient
empire into the coffers of the upstart Italian republics.
In January, 1204, the storm burst. The populace and troops shut the gates
of the city, and fell on the isolated Latins who were within the walls.
They were not long without a leader; a fierce and unscrupulous officer
named Alexius Ducas put himself at their head and determined to seize the
throne. Isaac II. died of fright in the midst of the tumult; his son
Alexius was caught and strangled by the usurper. Thus the Angeli ceased
out of the land, and Alexius V. reigned in their stead. He is less
frequently named by chroniclers under his family name of Ducas, than under
his nickname of “Murtzuphlus,” drawn from the bushy overhanging eyebrows
which formed the most prominent feature of his countenance.
Alexius Ducas had everything against him. He was a mere usurper, whose
authority was hardly recognized beyond the walls of Constantinople. The
Angeli had so drained the treasury that nothing remained in it. Twenty
years of indiscipline and disaster had spoilt the army; the fleet was
nonexistent, for the admirals of Alexius Angelus had laid up the vessels
in ordinary, and sold the stores to fill their own pockets. Nevertheless
Murtzuphlus made a far better fight than his despicable predecessor and
namesake. He collected a little money by confiscating the properties of
the unpopular courtiers and ministers of the Angeli, and used it to the
best advantage. The army received some of the arrears due to them, and
Alexius spent every spare moment in seeing to their drill and endeavouring
to improve their discipline. He strengthened the sea-wall, whose weakness
had been proved so fatally four months ago, by erecting wooden towers
along it, and building platforms for all the military engines that could
be found in the arsenal. He ordered, too, the enrolment of a national
militia, and compelled the nobles and burghers of Constantinople to take
arms and man the walls. To the discredit of the Byzantines this order was
received with many murmurs: the citizens complained that they paid taxes
to support the regular army, and that they therefore ought to be excused
personal service. Little good was got out of these new and raw levies;
they swelled the numbers of the garrison, but hardly added anything
appreciable to its strength.
Alexius Ducas himself with his cavalry scoured the country round the
Crusading camp every day, to cut off the foraging parties of the Franks,
and when not in the field, rode round the city superintending the works,
inspecting the guard-posts, and haranguing the soldiery. If courage and
energy command success, he ought to have held his own. But he could not
counteract the work of twenty years of decay and disorganization, and felt
that his throne rested on the most fragile of foundations.
The Crusaders took two months to prepare for their second assault on
Constantinople, which they felt would be a far more formidable affair than
the attack in the preceding autumn. They directed their chief efforts
against the sea-wall, which they had found vulnerable in the previous
siege, and left the formidable land-wall alone. The ships were told off
into groups, each destined to attack a particular section of the wall, and
covered with as many military engines as they could carry. Flying bridges
were again prepared, and landing parties were directed to leap ashore on
the narrow beach between the wall and the water, and get to work with rams
and scaling ladders. The attack was made on April 8th, at more than a
hundred points along two miles of sea-wall, but it was beaten off with
loss. Alexius Ducas had made his arrangements so well, that the fire of
his engines swept off all who attempted to gain a footing on the ramparts.
The ships were much damaged, and at noon the whole fleet gave back, and
retired as best it could to the opposite side of the Golden Horn.
Many of the Crusaders were now for returning; they thought their defeat
was a judgment for turning their arms against a Christian city, and wished
to sail for the Holy Land. But Dandolo and the Venetians insisted upon
repeating the assault. Three days were spent in repairing the fleet, and
on April 12th a second attack was delivered. This time the ships were
lashed together in pairs to secure stability, and the attack was
concentrated on a comparatively small front of wall. At last, after much
fighting, the military engines of the fleet and the bolts of its
crossbowmen cleared a single tower of its defenders. A bridge was
successfully lowered on to it, and a footing secured by a party of
Crusaders, who then threw open a postern gate and let the main body in.
After a short fight within the walls, the troops of Alexius Ducas retired
back into the streets. The Crusaders fired the city to cover their
advance, and by night were in possession of the north-west angle of
Constantinople, the quarter of the palace of Blachern.
[Illustration]
Byzantine Reliquary. (_From "L’Art Byzantin." Par C. Bayet. Paris,
Quantin, 1883._)
While the fire was keeping the combatants apart, the Emperor tried to
rally his troops and to prepare for a street-fight next day. But the army
was cowed; many regiments melted away; and the Varangian Guard, the best
corps in the garrison, chose this moment to demand that their arrears of
pay should be liquidated; they would not return to the fight without their
money! The twenty years of disorganization under the Angeli was now
bearing its fruit, and deeply was the empire to rue the next day.
Alexius Ducas, in despair at being unable to make his men fight, left the
city by night. He was soon followed by the last Greek officer who kept his
head, the general Theodore Lascaris, who endeavoured to make one final
attack on the Crusaders even after his master had departed. Next morning
the Franks found themselves in full possession of the city, though they
had been expecting to face a hard day of street-fighting before this end
could be attained.
In cold blood, twelve hours after all fighting had ended, the Crusaders
proceeded with great deliberation to sack the place. The leaders could not
or would not hold back their men, and every atrocity that attends the
storm of a great city was soon in full swing. Though no resistance was
made, the soldiery, and especially the Venetians, took life recklessly,
and three or four thousand unarmed citizens were slain. But there was no
general massacre; it was lust and greed rather than bloodthirstiness that
the army displayed. All the Western writers, no less than the Greeks,
testify to the horrors of the three days’ carnival of rape and plunder
that now set in. Every knight or soldier seized on the house that he liked
best, and dealt as he chose with its inmates. Churches and nunneries fared
no better than private dwellings; the orgies that were enacted in the
holiest places caused even the Pope to exclaim that no good could ever
come out of the conquest. The drunken soldiery enthroned a harlot in the
patriarchal chair in St. Sophia, and made her rehearse ribald songs and
indecent dances before the high altar. There were plenty of clergy with
the Crusading army, but instead of endeavouring to check the sacrilegious
doings of their countrymen, they devoted themselves to plundering the
treasuries of the churches of all the holy bones and relics that were
stored in them. “The Franks,” remarked a Greek writer who saw the sack of
Constantinople, “behaved far worse than Saracens; the infidels when a town
has surrendered at any rate respect churches and women.”
After private plunder had reigned unchecked for three days, the leaders of
the Crusaders collected such valuables as could be found for public
division. Though so much had been stolen and concealed, they were able to
produce no less than £800,000 in hard gold and silver for distribution.
The sum was afterwards supplemented by the use of a resource which makes
the modern historian add a special curse of his own to the account of the
Crusaders. Down to 1204 Constantinople still contained the monuments of
ancient Greek art in enormous numbers. In spite of the wear and tear of
900 years, her squares and palaces were still crowded with the
art-treasures that Constantine and his sons had stored up. Nicetas, who
was an eyewitness of all, has left us the list of the chief statues that
suffered. The Heracles of Lysippus, the great Hera of Samos, the brass
figures which Augustus set up after Actium, the ancient Roman bronze of
the Wolf with Romulus and Remus, Paris with the Golden Apple, Helen of
Troy, and dozens more all went into the melting-pot, to be recast into
wretched copper money. The monuments of Christian art fared no better; the
tombs of the emperors were carefully stripped of everything in metal, the
altars and screens of the churches scraped to the stone. Everything was
left bare and desolate.
Such was “the greatest conquest that was ever seen, greater than any made
by Alexander or Charlemagne, or by any that have lived before or after,”
as a Western chronicler wrote, while the Greeks grew hyperbolical in
lamentation, as they saw “the eye of the world, the ornament of nations,
the fairest sight on earth, the mother of churches, the spring whence
flowed the waters of faith, the mistress of Orthodox doctrine, the seat of
the sciences, draining the cup mixed for her by the hand of the Almighty,
and consumed by fires as devouring as those which ruined the five Cities
of the Plain.”
At last the Crusaders sat down to divide up their conquests. They elected
Baldwin of Flanders Emperor of the East, and handed over to him the ruined
city of Constantinople, half of it devoured by the flames of the
conflagrations that attended the two sieges, and all of it plundered from
cellar to attic. Four-fifths of the population had fled, and no one had
remained save beggars who had nothing to save by flight. With the capital
Baldwin was given Thrace and the Asiatic provinces—Bithynia, Mysia, and
Lydia, all of which had still to be conquered. His colleague, Boniface of
Montferrat, was made “King of Thessalonica,” and did homage to Baldwin for
a fief consisting of Macedonia, Thessaly, and inland Epirus. The Venetians
claimed “a quarter and half-a-quarter” of the empire, and took out their
share by receiving Crete, the Ionian Islands, the ports along the west
coast of Greece and Albania, nearly the whole of the islands of the
Aegean, and the land about the entrance of the Dardanelles. They seized on
every good harbour and strong sea-fortress, but left the inland alone;
commerce rather than annexation was their end. The rest of the empire was
parcelled out among the minor leaders of the Crusade; they had first to
conquer their fiefs, and were then to do homage for them to the Emperor
Baldwin. Most of them never lived to accomplish the scheme. Meanwhile a
Venetian prelate was appointed patriarch of Constantinople, and news was
sent to the Pope that the union of the Eastern and Western Churches was
accomplished, by the forcible extinction of the Greek patriarchate.
It only remains to speak of Alexius Ducas, the fugitive Greek emperor. He
fell into the hands of the Crusaders, was tried for the murder of the
young Alexius Angelus, and suffered death by being taken to the top of a
lofty pillar and hurled from it. The Greeks saw in this strange end the
fulfilment of an obscure prophecy about the last of the Caesars, which had
long puzzled the brains of the oracle-mongers.
XXIII. THE LATIN EMPIRE AND THE EMPIRE OF NICAEA. (1204-1261.)
Seldom has any state dragged out fifty-seven years in such constant misery
and danger as the Latin Empire experienced in the course of its inglorious
existence. The whole period was one protracted death-agony, and at no date
within it did there appear any reasonable prospect of recovery. Thirty
thousand men can take a city, but they cannot subdue a realm 800 miles
long and 400 broad. Far more than any government which has since held sway
on the same spot did the Latin Empire of Romania deserve the name of “the
Sick Man.” It is not too much to say that but for the unequalled strength
of the walls of Constantinople the new power must have ceased to exist
within ten years of its establishment.
But once fortified within the ramparts of Byzantium the Franks enjoyed the
inestimable advantage which their Greek predecessors had possessed: they
were masters of a fortress which—as military science then stood—was
practically impregnable, if only it was defended with ordinary skill, and
adequately guarded on the front facing the sea. As long as the Venetians
kept up their naval supremacy in Eastern waters, the city was safe on that
side, and even the very limited force which the Latin emperor could put
into the field sufficed, when joined to the armed burghers of the Italian
quarters, to defend the tremendous land wall.
From the first year of its existence the Latin Empire was marked out by
unfailing signs as a power not destined to continue. The intention of its
founders had been to replace the centralized despotism which they had
overthrown by a great feudal state, corresponding in territorial extent to
its predecessor. But within a few months it became evident that the
conquest of the broad provinces which the Crusaders had distributed among
themselves by anticipation, was not to be carried out. The new emperor
himself was the first to discover this. He set out with his chivalry to
drive from Northern Thrace the Bulgarian hordes, who had flocked down into
the plains to profit by the plunder of the dismembered realm. But near
Adrianople he met Joannicios, the Bulgarian king, with a vast army at his
back. The Franks charged gallantly enough, but they were simply
overwhelmed by numbers. The larger part of the army was cut to pieces, and
Baldwin himself was taken prisoner. The Bulgarian kept him in chains for
some months, and then put him to death, after he had worn the imperial
crown only one year [1205].
Henry of Flanders, the brother of Baldwin, became his successor. He was an
honest and able man, but he could do nothing towards conquering the
provinces of Asia, pushing the Bulgarians back over the Balkans, or
conciliating the subject Greek population. All his reign he had to fight
on the defensive against his neighbours to the north and south. By the
time that he died the empire was practically confined to a narrow slip of
land along the Propontis, reaching from Gallipoli to Constantinople. Nor
was the chief of the minor Latin states any better off; Boniface of
Montferrat had fallen in 1207, slain in battle by the same Bulgarian
hordes which had cut off the army of his suzerain Baldwin. With his death
it became evident that the kingdom of Thessalonica was no more able to
conquer all the old Byzantine provinces in its neighbourhood than was the
empire of Constantinople. Boniface’s son and heir was a mere infant;
during his minority the lands of his kingdom were lopped away, one after
another, by the Greek despot of Epirus, the able Theodore Angelus. At last
the capital itself was retaken by the Greeks in 1222, and the kingdom of
Thessalonica came to an end.
The Latin states in the southern parts of the Balkan Peninsula fared
somewhat better. William of Champlitte had contrived to hew out for
himself a principality in the western parts of the Peloponnesus, and had
organized there a small state with twelve baronies and 136 knights fees.
The resistance of the natives in this district was particularly weak, and
one battle sufficed to give William all the coast-plain of Elis and
Messenia. Yet he did not succeed in subduing the mountaineers of the
peninsula of Maina, or the coast towns of Argolis and Laconia, so that the
Greeks still had some foothold in the peninsula.
Another small Latin state was set up by Otho de la Roche in Central
Greece, where as “Duke of Athens” he ruled Attica and Boeotia. He treated
his Greek subjects with more consideration than any of his fellow
Crusaders, and was rewarded by obtaining a degree of respect and deference
which was not found in any other Latin state. Though the smallest, the
duchy of Athens was undoubtedly the most prosperous of the new creations
of the conquest of 1204.
Meanwhile it is time to speak of the fortunes of those parts of the
Eastern Empire which the Franks did not succeed in seizing when
Constantinople fell. The provinces had hitherto been accustomed to accept
without a murmur the ruler whom the capital obeyed. But in 1204 it was
found that the centralization of the Byzantine Empire, great as it was,
had not so thoroughly crushed the individuality of the provinces as to
make them submit without resistance to the Latin yoke. Wherever the
provincials found a leader, whether a member of one of the ex-imperial
houses, or an energetic governor, or a landholder of local influence, they
stood up to defend themselves. The Byzantine Empire, like some creature of
low organism, showed every sign of life in its limbs, though its head had
been shorn off. Wherever a centre of resistance could be found the people
refused to submit to the piratical Frank, and to his yet more hated
companions the priests of the Roman Church.
Of the nine or ten leaders who put themselves at the head of provincial
risings three were destined to carve out kingdoms for themselves. Of these
the most important was Theodore Lascaris, the last officer who had
attempted to strike a blow against the Franks when Constantinople
fell.(30) He might claim some shadow of hereditary right to the imperial
crown as he had married the daughter of the imbecile Alexius III., but his
true title was his well-approved courage and energy. The wrecks of the old
Byzantine army rallied around him, the cities of Bithynia opened their
gates, and when the Latins crossed into Asia to divide up the land into
baronies and knights fees, they found Theodore waiting to receive them
with the sword. His defence of the strong town of Prusa, which
successfully repelled Henry of Flanders, put a limit to the extension of
the Frank Empire; beyond a few castles on the Bithynian coast they made no
conquests. Having thus checked the invaders, Theodore had himself solemnly
crowned at Nicaea, and assumed imperial state [1206].
[Illustration]
Finial From A Byzantine MS. (_From "L’Art Byzantin." Par C. Bayet. Paris,
Quantin, 1883._)
Having beaten off the Latins, Theodore had to cope with another who
aspired like himself to pose as the rightful heir to the imperial throne.
Alexius Comnenus, a grandson of the wicked emperor Andronicus I., had
betaken himself to the Eastern frontiers of the empire when Constantinople
fell, and obtained possession of Trebizond and the long slip of coast-land
at the south-east corner of the Black Sea, from the mouth of the Phasis to
Sinope. He aspired to conquer the whole of Byzantine Asia, and sent his
brother David Comnenus to attack Bithynia. But Theodore defended his newly
won realm with success; Comnenus gained no territory from him, and was
constrained to content himself with the narrow bounds of his Pontic realm,
where his descendants reigned in obscurity for three hundred years as
emperors of Trebizond. A greater danger beset the empire of Nicaea when
the warlike sultan of the Seljouks came down from his plateau to ravage
its borders. But the valour of Theodore Lascaris triumphed over this enemy
also. In the battle of Antioch-on-Maeander he slew Sultan Kaikhosru with
his own hand in single combat, and the Turks were beaten back with such
slaughter that they left the empire alone for a generation.
Meanwhile a third Greek state had sprung into existence in the far West.
Michael Angelus, a cousin of Alexius III. and Isaac II., put in a claim to
their heritage, though he was disqualified by his illegitimate birth. He
was recognized as ruler by the cities of Epirus, and proclaimed himself
“despot” of that land. Raising an army among the warlike tribes of
Albania, he maintained his position with success, and discomfited the
Franks of Athens and Thessalonica when they took arms against him. He died
early, but left a compact heritage to his brother Theodore, who succeeded
him on the throne, and within a few years conquered the whole of the Frank
kingdom of Thessalonica.
It was soon evident that there would be a trial of strength between the
two Greek emperors who claimed to succeed to the rights of the
dispossessed Angeli. The Latin Empire was obviously destined to fall
before one of them. The only doubt was, whether the Epirot or the Nicene
was to be its conqueror. This question was not settled till 1241, when the
two powers met in decisive conflict.
By this time Theodore Lascaris had been succeeded in Asia by his
son-in-law John Ducas,(31) and Theodore of Thessalonica by his son John
Angelus. At Constantinople the succession of Latin emperors had been much
more rapid. Henry of Flanders had died in 1216; he was followed by Peter
of Courtenay, who was slain by the Epirots in less than a year. To him
succeeded Robert his son, and when Robert died in 1228 his brother Baldwin
II., reigned in his stead. The young Courtenays were both thoroughly
incapable, and saw their empire melt away from them till nothing was left
beyond the walls of Constantinople itself.
John III. of Nicaea was an excellent sovereign, a very worthy heir to his
gallant father-in-law. Not only was he a good soldier and an able
administrator, but by constant supervision and strict frugality he had got
the financial condition of his empire into a more hopeful condition—a
state of things which had never been seen in Romania since the time of
John Comnenus, a hundred years before. In 1230 the troops of Nicaea
crossed into Europe, and drove the Franks out of Southern Thrace, while in
1235 John Ducas laid siege to Constantinople itself. But the time of its
fall was not yet arrived, and when a Venetian fleet approached to succour
it the Emperor was constrained to raise the siege.
[Illustration]
Fountain In The Court Of St. Sophia.
Recognizing that Constantinople was not yet ripe for its fall, John Ducas
resolved to measure himself with his rivals the Angeli of Thessalonica. He
beat their forces out of the field, and laid siege to their capital in
1341. Then John Angelus engaged to resign the title of emperor, call
himself no more than “despot of Epirus,” and to acknowledge himself as the
vassal of the ruler of Nicaea. This satisfied Ducas for a time, but when
Angelus died, four years later, he seized Thessalonica and united it to
the imperial crown. The heir of the Angeli escaped to Albania and
succeeded in retaining a small fraction only of his ancestral dominions
[1246].
John Ducas died in 1254, leaving the throne of Nicaea to his son Theodore
II., who bid fair to continue the prosperous career of his father and
grandfather. He drove the Bulgarians out of Macedonia, and penned the
Albanians into their hills. But he became subject to epileptic fits, and
died after a reign of only four years, before he had reached the age of
thirty-eight [1258].