Constantinople, A.D. 718-1453: its increased
prosperity—Manufactures of Greece—System of taxation, and
of expenditure—Fleets, and mode of warfare—Struggle for
maritime supremacy—Scandinavians—Muscovites, their trade
and ships—Russians; their early commerce, and attempts to
capture Constantinople—Their ships—The Normans, and their
expeditions—Establish themselves in Italy, A.D. 1016—Amalfi—Futile
attempts of the Normans to take Constantinople, A.D.
1081-1084—Rise of Venice—The cause of its prosperity—Spread of
the Scythians, Huns, or Turks, A.D. 997-1028—The Crusades, A.D.
1095-1099—Siege of Acre, A.D. 1189—Armistice, A.D. 1192—Fourth
Crusade, A.D. 1202—The effect of the Crusades on the commerce
of Constantinople, and on its fall—Power of Venice, A.D. 1202;
her ships join in the Crusade, which was afterwards altered from
its original design—They besiege and take Constantinople, A.D.
1204—Commerce declines under the Latins, but revives on the
restoration of the Empire, A.D. 1261—Genoa—Genoese settlement at
Galata and Pera—Arrogance of the Genoese, who at last rebel, A.D.
1348, and declare war, A.D. 1349—The progress of the Turks, A.D.
1341-47—Their fleet—First use of gunpowder and of large cannon—The
Turks finally become masters of the Eastern capital, A.D. 1453.
[Sidenote: Constantinople, A.D. 718-1453: its increased prosperity.]
Although the Greeks had suffered considerable hardship during the
thirteen months they were besieged by the Saracens, the siege was
no sooner raised than they returned to their usual occupations with
increased energy. The losses they had sustained, by an interruption
to their maritime commerce, and the curtailment of their home
manufactures, required to be met with renewed vigour. Fresh commercial
projects were formed and carried into effect with remarkable energy;
circumstances favoured their efforts; trade rapidly increased,
manufactures flourished; and, as the cities of the West had fallen
with the decline of the ancient empire, Constantinople secured a
large portion of their commerce, and became a centre of commercial
intercourse, equalled only in wealth and influence by Baghdad, the
capital city of the Arabian Khalifs.
Nor was her prosperity transient in its nature. During nearly
three centuries Constantinople continued to be the principal seat
of commercial exchange, increasing in power and influence as the
Christians of Syria, Egypt, and Africa respectively shook off the yoke
of the Khalifs, and returned to their allegiance to the emperor of
the East. Those who had gone to settle in the capital took with them
whatever portion of their movable wealth had eluded the search of their
oppressors, and Constantinople thus acquired the fugitive trade of
Alexandria and Tyre. The chiefs of Armenia and Scythia, flying from
hostile or religious persecution, were alike hospitably entertained,
and their followers encouraged to build new cities, and to cultivate
waste lands within the limits and under the protection of the empire.
Increased facilities were afforded to persons engaged in trade and
manufactures, and some symptoms of a liberal policy may be traced in a
law exempting from personal taxes the mariners of the Peloponnesus, the
workmen in parchment and purple, and the manufacturers of linen, wool,
and silk. These arts not merely afforded employment to many persons in
Constantinople, but to a still greater number in Corinth, Thebes, and
Argos. Moreover, from the reign of Justinian to the twelfth century,
Greece was the only country in Christendom possessing silkworms, or
workmen familiar with the art of preparing their produce.
[Sidenote: Manufactures of Greece.]
Gibbon describes the manufactures of Greece, during the period of
Constantinople’s greatest prosperity, as unequalled in elegance and
fineness by any similar manufactures of either ancient or modern
times. “The gifts,” he states, “which a rich and generous matron of
Peloponnesus presented to the Emperor Basil, her adopted son, were
doubtless fabricated in the Grecian looms. Danielis bestowed a carpet
of fine wool, of a pattern which imitated the spots of a peacock’s
tail, of a magnitude to overspread the floor of a new church, erected
in the triple names of Christ, of Michael the Archangel, and of the
prophet Elijah. She gave six hundred pieces of silk and linen of
various use and denomination; the silk was _painted_ with the Tyrian
die, and adorned by the labours of the needle; and the linen was so
exquisitely fine, that an entire piece might be rolled in the hollow of
a cane.”[351] The value of these manufactures was estimated according
to the weight and quality of the article, the closeness of the texture,
and the beauty of the colours; some, too, of the embroidery is said to
have been of the most exquisite description.
[Sidenote: System of taxation, and of expenditure.]
But though the mariners and some of the manufacturers were relieved
from personal taxation, we have the authority of Benjamin of Tudela,
who visited Constantinople in the twelfth century, for the statement
that the taxes fell very heavily on the ordinary shopkeepers, and on
the merchants of foreign countries who frequented the capital.[352]
Nor, indeed, could this have been otherwise, where a system of pomp and
luxury was promoted by the imperial rulers, scarcely less than that
which had mainly caused the ruin of Rome.
[Sidenote: Fleets, and mode of warfare.]
But, besides this, vast sums of money were required to maintain the
army and navy, as the command of the Mediterranean, from the mouth of
the Tanais (Don) to the Columns of Hercules, was always claimed and
often possessed by the successors of Constantine. To secure an adequate
fleet, the capital was filled with naval stores and skilled artificers;
the native Greeks, from long practice among their own bays and islands,
formed excellent sailors; while the trade of Venice and Amalfi also
supplied an excellent nursery of seamen for the imperial squadrons.
[Sidenote: A.D. 960.]
“Some estimate,” remarks Gibbon,[353] “may be formed of the power of
the Greek emperors by the curious and minute detail of the armament
which was prepared for the reduction of Crete. A fleet of one hundred
and twelve galleys, and seventy-five vessels of the Pamphylian style,
was equipped in the capital, the islands of the Ægean Sea, and the
seaports of Asia, Macedonia, and Greece. It carried thirty-four
thousand mariners, seven thousand three hundred and forty soldiers,
seven hundred Russians, and five thousand and eighty-seven Mardaites,
whose fathers had been transplanted from the mountains of Libanus.
Their pay, most probably of a month, was computed at thirty-four
centenaries of gold, about one hundred and thirty-six thousand pounds
sterling. Our fancy is bewildered by the endless recapitulation of arms
and engines, of clothes and linen, of bread for the men and forage for
the horses, and of stores and utensils of every description, inadequate
to the conquest of a petty island, but amply sufficient for the
establishment of a flourishing colony.”
[Sidenote: Struggle for maritime supremacy.]
For several centuries of that period, often termed, though with some
injustice, “The Dark Ages,” the contests for the maritime supremacy of
the Black Sea and Mediterranean were incessant. One barbarous nation
succeeded another just as their lust for plunder was stimulated by the
wealth of peaceful and unwarlike communities. The Goths and Vandals
were followed by the Franks, the Bulgarians, and the Hungarians. Then
arose the Russians and Normans, each contending for the chief rule at
sea, or for the plunder such superiority enabled them to secure. After
these came the Turks, the onward wave of the Tatars and of the Mongols
of Central Asia, who, under various names and dynasties, overran
the eastern empire, at the period of the Crusades to the Holy Land.
Neither the Bulgarians nor the Hungarians were, however, a maritime
people. The former took possession of a district of country south of
the Danube; and the latter directed their attention to the conquest
of the territory, a portion of which they still occupy. Both tribes,
with the Turks, were descendants from the same races; and all of them
originally, while following pastoral pursuits, had been trained to a
military life. With tents made from the skins of their cattle, and
dressed in furs, the produce of the hunt, they were easily housed and
clothed. Possessing within themselves every want, and trained from
their infancy to the use of arms and horses, they were most formidable
opponents; the immense hordes with which they advanced generally
enabling them to carry all before them.
[Sidenote: Scandinavians;]
[Sidenote: Muscovites, their trade and ships.]
Previous to the tenth century all the nations, or rather tribes,
east of Germany were heterogeneously classed as Scythians. Being
almost entirely nomadic, they as a rule disdained commerce, and
held peaceful arts, the certain signs of civilization, in contempt.
Those of them who were accustomed to the sea made piracy their chief
occupation, and gloried in their marauding expeditions. Of these the
Scandinavians were among the most daring. Impatient of a bleak climate,
and narrow limits, they were ever ready to make the most distant and
hazardous voyages, exploring every coast that promised either spoil
or settlement. Though the Baltic was the first scene of their naval
achievements, they extended their operations far beyond those seas, and
were frequently found in the Euxine, where, with others of the northern
tribes, they committed considerable havoc, and, from their superiority
in arms and discipline, were greatly feared. About the tenth century
there, however, arose among these barbarous hordes of the north the
Slavonians, a tribe then occupying Lithuania, but soon better known as
the Muscovites, who directed their attention to commercial pursuits.
Occupying the chief ports of the Baltic, these people traded in
leather, wool, flax, hemp, lead, and amber, receiving in exchange wine,
manufactured iron, with dry goods, and a limited supply of silk in
the web. But, however intrepid and disposed to persevere in commercial
pursuits, their vessels were of the rudest description, and their
knowledge of maritime affairs, or of the science and art of navigation,
was far behind that of the most ignorant of the nations of the South.
Nevertheless the Muscovites extended their trading operations farther
to the south and east than any of the northern nations had hitherto
done; and, not satisfied with the limited markets on the shores of the
Baltic, they visited as traders the North or Arctic Ocean, and the
Black and Caspian Seas. The internal navigation of the rivers Dwina,
Don, and Volga, extending almost from Archangel to Astrakhan, afforded
an almost inexhaustible field for inland and maritime commerce. Every
year increased the demand from the western countries of Europe for
their furs, salt, dried fish, train oil, honey, flax, and caviare;
till at length they also started a trade with Persia by the Black Sea,
and with India by the Caspian, being thus the first of modern nations
to avail themselves of the ancient overland routes to the far East.
St. Petersburgh and Moscow still carry on a considerable commercial
intercourse with China by the same means.
[Sidenote: Russians: their early commerce, and attempts to capture
Constantinople.]
Although it was not until the ninth century that the Russians are
mentioned by name, their monarchy, within one century afterwards,
obtained an important place in the map of Constantine, Novgorod and
Kief being then considerable entrepôts of commerce. “Between the
sea and Novgorod,” remarks Gibbon,[354] “an easy intercourse was
discovered; in the summer through a gulf, a lake, and a navigable
river; in the winter season, over the hard and level surface of
boundless snows. From the neighbourhood of that city, the Russians
descended the streams that fall into the Borysthenes; their canoes,
of a single tree, were laden with slaves of every age, furs of every
species, the spoil of their bee-hives, and the hides of their cattle;
and the whole produce of the north was collected and discharged in
the magazines of Kiow.” Thence, after many perils, they ultimately
reached Constantinople, and exchanged their cargoes for the produce
and manufactures of Greece, and often for the spices of India. A few
of their countrymen settled in the capital and the provinces, under
full protection of their persons and effects; but they soon abused the
hospitality of the Greeks, by inciting those whom they had left behind
to make no less than four attacks on the capital city during the first
two hundred years of their settlement. They had seen, tasted, and
envied the wealth of Constantinople; and then, as in more recent times,
they hoped to revel in luxuries they were too barbarous to obtain by
honest trade.
[Sidenote: Their ships.]
The vessels used in their first onslaught were in the form of canoes,
scraped out of the long stem of a beech or willow tree. “This slight
and narrow foundation,” says Gibbon, “was raised and continued on
either side with planks, till it attained the length of sixty, and the
height of about twelve feet. These boats were built without a deck,
but with two rudders and a mast, to move with sails and oars, and to
contain from forty to seventy men, with their arms and provisions of
fresh water and salt fish.”[355] In their first enterprise, and with an
insignificant fleet of two hundred vessels, the Russians, under the
princes of Kief, passed the Straits without opposition, and occupied
for a short time the port of Constantinople, from which, however, they
soon retreated. In the second, they do not appear to have met with
any better success; and the third, though chosen when the Greeks were
greatly harassed, and when the naval powers of the empire were employed
against the Saracens, proved most disastrous to the Russians. “Fifteen
broken and decayed galleys were boldly launched against the enemy;
but instead of the single tube of Greek fire, usually planted on the
prow, the sides and stern of each vessel were abundantly supplied with
that liquid combustible. The engineers were dexterous; the weather was
propitious; many thousand Russians, who chose rather to be drowned than
burnt, leaped into the sea; and those who escaped to the Thracian shore
were inhumanly slaughtered by the peasants and soldiers.”[356]
[Sidenote: A.D. 865.]
[Sidenote: A.D. 904.]
[Sidenote: A.D. 941.]
These attempts at naval invasion continued at long intervals, and with
varied success; but the fourth and last, ending in the destruction of
twenty-four of the Greek galleys, was brought to a close by treaty.
The Greeks found that, though victorious, every advantage lay on the
side of the Russians; their savage enemy gave no quarter; their poverty
promised no spoil; while their impenetrable retreats deprived the
conqueror of the hopes of revenge. The Greeks were, therefore, not
unwilling to grant liberal terms to their invaders, the terror these
attacks caused being increased by a supposed prophecy. “By the vulgar
of every rank,” remarks Gibbon, “it was asserted and believed that an
equestrian statue in the square of Taurus was secretly inscribed with
a prophecy, how the Russians, in the last days, should become masters
of Constantinople,”[357]—a belief which, as we know, was still largely
shared in, even so recently as the Crimean war of 1854-6.
[Sidenote: The Normans and their expeditions.]
[Sidenote: A.D. 918.]
Towards the decline of the Saracen empires, the Greeks had to contend
with the Normans or Northmen, a race as daring and adventurous as
the Russians, and much more skilled in sea-faring pursuits. This
remarkable people had recently left their frozen homes in Norway and
adventured upon unknown and distant oceans, penetrating as far as the
Mediterranean with numerous fleets, and rendering themselves more
dreaded by their maritime genius than the Russians or Saracens had ever
been. Ravaging Flanders, France, Spain, and Italy, after an infinite
series of piratical exploits, they compelled Charles the Simple to cede
and assign to them the large territory now known as Normandy; and,
following up this success by various adventures in the south of Europe,
obtained for themselves a great name and influence. Thus the Norman
kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, during the eleventh century, played an
important part in the drama of the history of Italy and of the eastern
empire.
[Sidenote: Establish themselves in Italy, A.D. 1016.]
It is not our intention in this work to follow the Normans in their
conquests or defeats, except in so far as these bear on their maritime
exploits, and on their connection, limited though this may be, with
commerce. At first, a large number of them appear to have earned their
daily subsistence by the sword, having constantly mixed themselves up
in the domestic quarrels then incessantly raging between the rulers
and people of the southern states of Italy; till at length, chiefly
through the aid of the Duke of Naples, whose cause they had espoused,
they secured their first settlement in Italy. Within eight miles of his
residence, he built and fortified for their use the town of Aversa,
granting to them, also, a considerable tract of the fertile country in
the vicinity, over which they were vested with complete control. Year
by year numerous pilgrims from all parts of Europe, but especially from
the north, found shelter under the independent standard of Aversa, and
were quickly assimilated with the manners and language of the Gallic
colony. But the Norman power soon extended far beyond the infant and
limited colony of Aversa, and embraced the whole of the territory,
which for centuries, and, indeed, until the last few years, was known
as the kingdom of Naples. Within that territory, thirty miles from
Naples, stood the commercially celebrated republic of Amalfi.
[Sidenote: Amalfi.]
Although the port of Amalfi, from which the republic derived its name,
is now an obscure place, no western harbour then contained a more
enterprising maritime population. Its position, not unlike that of
Tyre, afforded great facilities for carrying on an extensive sea-borne
commerce. Hence it was that Amalfi, in its day, had a very extensive
intercourse with all parts of the then known world, and was among the
earliest of the Italian republics to hold in its hands the trade of
the Mediterranean. Long before the Venetians and Genoese had become
famous, this small but indefatigable republic assumed the office of
supplying the western world with the manufactures and productions of
the East, and that trade proved then, as has been the case in all
ages, a source of immense profit. Though the city contained only fifty
thousand inhabitants, its wealth was enormous, and its merchants, who
had correspondence with all parts of the coasts of the Mediterranean,
dealt largely in the commodities of both Arabia and India. Their
settlements in Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria,
acquired the privileges of independent colonies. No city or seaport
of those days contained more mariners who excelled in the theory or
practice of navigation and astronomy than Amalfi; indeed, it was long
supposed, that to the skill of one of the seamen of this city, the
world owed the discovery of the mariner’s compass.[358]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1137.]
But, after three hundred years of great prosperity, arising entirely
from the energetic, and, at the same time, honest pursuit of commerce,
Amalfi, oppressed by the arms of the Normans, was at last brought
under their rule. Shorn of its independence, and depressed in spirit,
the city was soon after attacked by the jealousy of Pisa, one of its
commercial rivals; but the ruined palaces of its merchants, and the
remains of an arsenal and cathedral, still attest its former splendour
and importance.[359]
Not satisfied with the possessions they had already secured in Italy
and with their conquest of Sicily, the Normans next resolved on the
conquest of Constantinople itself.
[Sidenote: Futile attempts of the Normans to take Constantinople, A.D.
1081-1084.]
Their first attempt was made from the port of Otranto, where, after a
preparation of two years, they had collected a fleet of one hundred
and fifty vessels, and thirty thousand men, including one thousand
five hundred Norman knights. But this expedition proved a calamitous
failure. The Normans were no longer the experienced or adventurous
mariners, who had explored unknown oceans, from Greenland to Africa;
hence, in a great storm they encountered at the mouth of the Adriatic,
many of their ships were shattered, while others were dashed on shore
and became hopeless wrecks. Besides, a new, and a naval, enemy had
arisen in the Venetians, who, at the solicitations and promises of
the Byzantine court, were ready enough to aid in the overthrow of the
hated Normans, and, with a view of tempting commercial advantages
for themselves, to assist in defending the capital of the East. And
so it befell, that what the storm had spared of the Norman fleet,
the Venetians and Greek fire destroyed; add to which, the Greek
populations, sallying from their towns along the southern shores of
Italy, carried slaughter and dismay to the tents of the chiefs of the
Norman invaders.
But three years afterwards, their indefatigable duke (Robert Guiscard)
resumed the design of his eastern conquests; preferring, on this
occasion, as the season was far advanced, the harbour of Brundusium to
the open road of Otranto for the assembling of his fleet of one hundred
and twenty vessels. However, in the interval Alexius, the emperor,
had assiduously laboured to restore the naval forces of the empire,
obtaining at the same time, at an exorbitant price, the aid from the
republic of Venice of thirty-six transports, fourteen galleys, and
nine galiots, or ships of unusual strength and magnitude. The goods
and merchandise of the rivals of the Venetians at Amalfi were taxed to
raise the required sum; and by granting special privileges, such as the
licence or monopoly of trade in the port of Constantinople, with the
gift of many shops and houses, Alexius propitiated the good will of the
Venetian merchants. But this expedition was so far successful, that
the Normans captured and destroyed many of the vessels of the combined
fleets; it failed, however, to take Constantinople, against which the
Normans relinquished any attempts worthy of notice after the death in
the following year of their prince, Guiscard.
[Sidenote: Rise of Venice.]
[Sidenote: A.D. 452.]
While the power and name of the Romans was passing away under the
imbecile rule of the Greek emperors, and commerce and navigation
shared in the general decay, a new maritime power, the State of
Venice, destined to become the greatest of the Italian republics,
was imperceptibly increasing in strength and renown. From the time
when the inhabitants of that portion of Italy, now known as Venetian
Lombardy, were driven by Alaric, the barbarian conqueror, to seek
refuge in the small islands of the Adriatic, near the mouth of the
Brenta, their progress had been one of almost uninterrupted prosperity.
Devoting their attention exclusively to the pursuits of commerce, and
avoiding, by every means in their power, interference with the affairs
of their neighbours, the Venetians drew towards their infant colony
all whose habits and tempers induced them to seek industrial pursuits.
Among these, many families of Aquileia, Padua, and other towns, fleeing
from the sword of the Huns and similar barbarous tribes, found a safe
but obscure refuge. A modern writer[360] has eloquently described
Venice as “immoveable on the bosom of the waters from which her
palaces emerge, contemplating the tides of continental convulsions and
invasions, the rise and fall of empires, and the change of dynasties;”
and certainly no description could be more true of the splendour and
position of Venice, and of the policy of its rulers, when at the height
of its prosperity.
[Sidenote: The cause of its prosperity.]
[Sidenote: A.D. 997.]
But many centuries elapsed from the time when the infant colony was
planted, before “the water fowl, who had fixed their nests on the bosom
of the waves,”[361] obtained a prominent and independent position as a
great maritime nation. Although in the early career of the Venetians
their independence was more especially due to their determination to
attend to their own affairs, and not to trouble themselves with those
of their neighbours, at a later period the western[362] and eastern
empires, in turn, claimed authority over them, and thus they were
invaded and at last conquered by Pepin, father of Charlemagne, though
ultimately restored to the Greek empire in the tenth century. The
Venetians therefore can hardly be considered as a really independent
republic till they had acquired the maritime cities of Dalmatia and
Istria, including the people of Ragusa, the posterity of the mariners
who, in classical times, owned and manned the fast sailing Liburnians.
The population of these coasts still retained the piratical habits
of their ancestors; and having in some respects identical interests
to defend, were not unwilling to place themselves under the strong
government of the Venetians. From that period the Venetians carried
on, for between four and five centuries, a most important commercial
intercourse with other nations, and exercised, as a trading people,
more influence than any other country had done before them. The long
duration of this enterprising republic, with its maritime greatness and
vast commerce, will, with the story of the sister republics of Genoa
and Pisa, form a subject to which we shall frequently have occasion
hereafter to refer. It is enough now to remark that these cities, all
favourably situated for conducting an extensive maritime commerce,
were among the first to revive the genuine spirit of trade in the
south of Europe after it had been almost annihilated by the repeated
inundations of the barbarians.
[Sidenote: Spread of the Scythians, Huns, or Turks, A.D. 997-1028. A.D.
1074-1084.]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1076-1096.]
[Sidenote: The Crusades, A.D. 1095-1099.]
The nomad Tatar, or so-called Scythian populations, have been already
slightly noticed; the rapidity with which they spread their arms over
Asia having been a matter of surprise to every historian who has
written on the subject. About the time of Mahmud of Ghazna, after
having overrun the West of India, an important section of them settled
in great force in Asia Minor. Opposed to the Greeks and their religion,
they became the most powerful enemies the eastern Roman empire had yet
encountered; and their occupation of the Holy Land, with their conquest
of Jerusalem, led to conflicts with the Greeks only less terrible than
had been the earlier wars between the Saracens and the nations of the
West. Their ignorance of navigation alone deferred for a time the fall
of the eastern empire, though internally weak and decrepid, chiefly
owing to the blow it received during the Crusades, and from which it
had never recovered.[363] The first Crusade, made about twenty years
after the conquest of Jerusalem, had for its object the recovery of
the Holy City from the infidel. To replace the Cross in Palestine,
where the Crescent had been impiously raised, was a duty the whole of
Christendom considered itself bound to accomplish. But the Christians
in their enthusiasm undertook a task as wild as it was disastrous, and
one, too, so miserably planned, that three hundred thousand of the
first Crusaders lost their lives, either by fatigue and hunger or by
disease and the weapons of the Saracens, before they rescued a single
city from their grasp.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1147.]
[Sidenote: Siege of Acre, A.D. 1189.]
[Sidenote: Armistice, A.D. 1192.]
The second Crusade called into action the whole of the West, from Rome
to Britain. At its head were displayed the banners of the dukes of
Burgundy, Bavaria, and Aquitaine; and the kings of Poland and Bohemia
obeyed the summons of the leader of an army estimated at more than four
hundred thousand men. But the numbers appear to have been still greater
in the third Crusade, which was made both by sea and land, and included
the siege of Acre, graphically described by Gibbon[364] in his “Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire.” After the surrender of Acre, and the
departure of Philip, Richard of England, whose name was long an object
of terror among the Saracens, led the Crusaders to the recovery of the
sea-coast; and the cities of Cæsarea and Jaffa, afterwards added to
the fragments of the kingdom of Guy de Lusignan, fell into his hands,
as Jerusalem would also have done, had he not been deceived by the
envy or the treachery of his companions. But Plantagenet and Saládin
became, in time, alike weary of a war so tedious and disastrous in
its results, especially as both had suffered in health. An agreement
between them was, after much delay, brought about, and was, naturally,
disapproved by the zealots of both parties alike—the Roman pontiff and
the Khalif of Baghdad. Its leading features were, that Jerusalem and
the Holy Sepulchre should be open, without hindrance or tribute, to
the pilgrimages of the Latin Christians; and that during three years
and three months all hostilities should cease. In the following year
Saládin died; and, immediately after the conclusion of the treaty,
Richard returned to Europe “to seek a long captivity and a premature
grave.”
[Sidenote: Fourth Crusade, A.D. 1202.]
But the spirit of religious warfare did not rest. Will it ever do so?
A fourth Crusade soon followed. In this case, however, the Crusade was
directed from Syria to Constantinople; and as there was an armistice
between the Crescent and the Cross, the self-constituted avengers of
the latter quarrelled among themselves—the restoration of the western
empire by Charlemagne having created differences between the Greek and
Latin Churches, which had in course of time become serious feuds, to
be settled only by bloodshed. The aversion existing between the Greeks
and Latins had been manifested in the three first expeditions. Though
alike opposed to the creed of the Muhammedans, the pride of the emperor
of the East was wounded by the intrusion of foreign armies, who claimed
the right of traversing his dominions, and of passing under the walls
of the capital. He urged, not without reason, that his subjects were
insulted and plundered by the rude strangers of the West; perhaps, too,
he secretly envied the bold enterprises of the Franks.
[Sidenote: The effect of the Crusades on the commerce of
Constantinople, A.D. 1148.]
While, however, the passage of vast armies in their pilgrimage to
the Holy Land roused feelings of animosity between the two great
sections of professing Christians, they very materially increased their
commercial intercourse, and enlarged their knowledge without abating
their religious prejudices. Constantinople proved, commercially, of
great importance to the West, as the then chief entrepôt of exchange
with the distant nations of the East, and as requiring for the wants
of her own wealthy and luxurious people the productions of every
climate. From her situation she invited the commerce of the world,
and the art and labour of her numerous inhabitants, while it balanced
the imports, afforded profitable employment to the number of foreign
merchants resident at Constantinople, and to their ships in which her
over-sea trade was chiefly conducted. After the decline of Amalfi, the
Venetians, Pisans, and Genoese, had introduced their factories and
settlements into the capital of the empire, had acquired possession of
land and houses, and had greatly increased in numbers, intermingling by
marriage, and in all the social relations of life, with the natives.
Constantinople was therefore largely indebted for her prosperity and
wealth to the foreign merchants resident in, or frequenting her port;
and, hence when these demanded the right of worshipping in accordance
with the Latin forms of Christianity, the emperor, who had tolerated
a Muhammedan mosque,[365] was unable to refuse the demand of the
Christians of the West.
[Sidenote: and on its fall.]
But his good intentions, and those of his successor, Alexius, were
stopped by a popular tumult, which ended in a terrible massacre of all
the Latins whom the vengeance of a mob, headed and applauded by the
Greek priesthood, could reach. Many, however, of the foreign merchants
had escaped on the first alarm to their vessels, and in these they
proceeded to the western ports to seek protection and redress for the
wrongs inflicted upon themselves and their countrymen.
[Sidenote: Power of Venice, A.D. 1202.]
Joined in their appeal by the son[366] of the dethroned monarch,
Alexius Angelus, who had escaped in the disguise of a common sailor on
board an Italian vessel, their case was at once promised consideration,
and was soon after brought under the notice of the leading pilgrims of
the West, Baldwin, Count of Flanders, and the Marquis of Montferrat,
then assembled at Venice, to negotiate with that republic for shipping
to convey them on the Fourth Crusade.[367] For many centuries the
inhabitants of Venice had been considered as a portion of the subjects
of the Greek empire; but when their power and influence had greatly
increased, notably by the acquisition of the cities on the coasts of
Istria and Dalmatia, the extent of their maritime commerce entitled
them to assume an independent position. “The sea was their patrimony;”
and with the chief command of the western shores of the Mediterranean,
the Venetian galleys had now secured the still more lucrative commerce
of Greece and Egypt.
Nor were they simply traders: Venetian glass and silk manufactures
had an early reputation; while their system of banking and of foreign
exchange, which they worked on a much more extensive scale than any
other nation, gave them a great commercial preponderance in the south
of Europe. To assert these rights and to protect the freedom of their
subjects, they are said to have been able to equip at very short notice
one hundred galleys; but their usual policy was essentially that of
merchants, and was almost wholly regulated by their trading interests.
In their religious dogmas the Venetians avoided the schism of the
Greeks without yielding a servile obedience to the Roman pontiff; while
an unrestrained intercourse with the Muhammedans, as well as with other
nations, encouraged in her people a spirit of toleration unknown to the
Crusaders.
[Sidenote: Her ships join in the Crusade, which was afterwards altered
from its original design.]
Venice was, therefore, in no haste to launch into a holy war, and the
appeal of the pilgrim ambassadors, “sent by the greatest and most
powerful barons of France, to implore the aid of the masters of the sea
for the deliverance of Jerusalem,” though ultimately successful, was
granted only with reservation and mainly on selfish conditions. The
Crusaders, after considering these (they had, indeed, little option),
determined to assemble at Venice, so as to start on their expedition
on the feast of St. John of the ensuing year; the Venetians, at the
same time, engaging to provide flat-bottomed vessels enough for the
conveyance of four thousand five hundred knights and twenty thousand
foot, with the necessary provisions for nine months, together with a
squadron of fifty galleys. The pilgrims, on the other hand, promised
to pay the Venetians, before their departure, eighty-four thousand
marks of silver; any conquests by sea and land to be equally divided
between the confederates. These exorbitant demands were acceded to,
the enthusiasm of the people enabling fifty-two thousand marks to be
collected and paid within a short time.
But the expedition was diverted from its original design. Thirty-two
thousand of the promised marks being still wanted to complete the
stipulated sum, the Doge, Henry Dandolo, offered to waive this claim,
provided the combined forces were first employed in the reduction of
Zara, a strong city on the opposite shores of the Adriatic, which had
recently thrown off its allegiance to Venice. After much discussion
and many differences of opinion this proposal was accepted, and proved
fully successful; but the sack of Zara scattered wide the seeds of
discord and scandal; and many were shocked that the arms of professing
Crusaders should have been first stained with the blood, not of the
Infidel, but of the Christian.
The presence of this great force revived the hopes of the young
Alexius, while the tale of the massacre of the Latins at Constantinople
seemed to demand a punishment adequate to its atrocity. The separate
interests of many and various parties supported his appeal; the Doge
hoped to increase the commercial power of Venice by humbling that of
the eastern capital; Alexius was warmly backed by Philip of Germany and
the Marquis of Montferrat; while the promises of the young man himself
were liberal enough to suggest more than a suspicion of his honesty.
In the end it was determined to make a further diversion of the hosts
originally consecrated to the deliverance of Jerusalem, and to employ
them on what to the miscellaneous multitude must have been the far
more congenial office of ravaging and plundering the Greek empire.
It can, indeed, hardly be supposed that many of the Crusaders could
have believed themselves bound to aid in the restoration of an exiled
prince as a step in any way necessary for the recovery of Jerusalem;
while the savage treatment the unfortunate Jews met with at their hands
in every city they passed through, shows how little their enthusiasm
for the Cross was tempered by anything resembling Christianity. The
large majority were, doubtless, mainly swayed by the hope or the
certainty of public plunder or private gain.
[Sidenote: They besiege and take Constantinople, A.D. 1204.]
Although the boldest hearts were appalled by the report of the naval
power and impregnable strength of Constantinople, the Venetians
vigorously urged on the scheme, seeing clearly that for them it was
now or never, and that, with the aid of the formidable forces at
their disposal, they would be able to avenge themselves for many
insults and injuries they had received from the Byzantine court.
No such armament had, indeed, for ages, if ever, assembled on the
waters of the Adriatic. Consisting of no less than one hundred and
twenty flat-bottomed vessels for the horses; of two hundred and forty
transports filled with men and arms; of seventy store ships laden with
provisions; and of fifty stout galleys prepared to encounter any enemy,
the expedition presented a most imposing appearance.
Favoured with fine weather and a fair wind the fleet made rapid
progress, and, without interruption or loss, anchored, after an
unusually quick passage, at Abydos, on the Asiatic side of the
Hellespont. But here a strong gale sprung up, and swept them to the
eastward, and so close were they brought to the city, that some volleys
of stones and darts were exchanged between them and the ramparts. Most
of the invaders then beheld, for the first time, the capital of the
East; and few cities can boast of so imposing an appearance; nor could
it fail to create a deep impression on the minds of the invaders. Vain,
indeed, would have been the attempt of the Crusaders to conquer such
a city had its people been united, or its ruler a man of ability and
honesty. The sixteen hundred fishing boats of Constantinople could in
themselves have manned a fleet, which, with their fire-ships, would
have been sufficient to have annihilated the forces of the Crusaders;
but the negligence of the prince, and the venality of his ministers
rendered the great city under their charge an easy prey. There was of
course a show of resistance, but it was so feeble that the tower of
Galata, in the suburb of Pera, was quickly stormed, and easily captured
by the French; while the Venetians forced the boom or chain that was
stretched from the tower to the Byzantine shores, captured or destroyed
twenty Grecian ships of war, and made themselves masters of the port of
Constantinople.
[Sidenote: Commerce declines under the Latins, but revives on the
restoration of the empire, A.D. 1261.]
During the sixty years that the Latins held in their hands the empire
of the East, the Greek emperors kept their court and maintained a
feeble dignity at Nicæa (Nice), the most important city in Bithynia.
Yet, though at that city a certain show of pomp and power was
maintained, the removal of the empire from Constantinople, and the sway
there of the Latin princes, produced the most disastrous effects on
the trade of the capital: a race alien in religion and language, and
anarchy withal, were not, indeed, likely to be favourable to peaceful
arts or commerce. When, however, the Greek empire was afterwards
restored in the person of Manuel, that wise monarch paid little heed to
the factions of the Venetians and of other republicans from Italy, but
encouraged their industry by many privileges, and allowed them full
use of their own customs. Thus the merchants resident at Constantinople
preserved their respective quarters in the city, trading thence whither
and how they pleased.
[Sidenote: Genoa.]
The early history of Genoa was not unlike that of Venice; in so far
at least, that, like it, Genoa had been for some centuries under the
control, if not the vassal, of the eastern empire: at the period,
however, to which we are now referring, the Genoese had a large colony
at the seaport town of Heraclea, in Thrace. From this place the
gratitude of the Greek emperor, Michael, recalled them, at the same
time giving them the exclusive privilege of the suburb of Galata—a
settlement whereby, more than by anything else, the commerce of the
Byzantine empire was revived.[368]
[Sidenote: Genoese settlement at Galata and Pera.]
Though indulged in the use of their own laws and magistrates, the
Genoese were required to submit to the duties of subjects, and
undertook, in case of a defensive war, to supply the Greek emperor with
fifty empty galleys and fifty more completely armed and equipped. In
consideration of these services, and to afford them protection from the
Venetian fleets, the Genoese were allowed the dangerous privilege of
surrounding Galata with a strong wall and wet ditch, with lofty towers
and engines of war on their ramparts. No wonder that, having secured
so much, they should seek to acquire more, and that, within a short
space of time, they had covered the adjacent hills with their villas
and castles, each fort being connected with the next, and protected
by new fortifications. Nor, as was natural, did they stop here; they
soon sought to possess themselves of the whole trade of the Black Sea,
long the especial patrimony of the emperors of Constantinople, and a
prerogative which, in the reign of Michael, had been acknowledged by
even Bibars, the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt.
[Sidenote: Arrogance of the Genoese, who at last rebel, A.D. 1348,]
Nor, having resolved on the end, were they long in hesitating about the
means to it; first, in seemingly friendly alliance with the Greeks,
they secured for their colonies at Galata and Pera the bulk of the corn
trade; while, at the same time, their fishermen supplied the wants
of the city, the salt fish largely required by the Catholic nations,
and caviare for the Russians. Next, they secured for themselves the
produce of the inland caravan trade with the remote East, which still,
as formerly, found its way by the waters of the Oxus and the Caspian to
the eastern shores of the Euxine. In almost every case, their course
of business was a strict monopoly, the Venetians and all other rivals
being carefully excluded from any participation in their trade. So
powerful, indeed, did they become, that, while they awed the Greeks
into a reluctant submission, they resisted effectually, at their chief
settlement, Caffa,[369] the inroad of the Tatar hosts. The demands of
the Genoese merchants were in proportion to their rapacity, and at last
they actually usurped the customs and even the tolls of the Bosphorus,
securing for themselves alone a revenue of two hundred thousand pieces
of gold, of which they reluctantly doled out to the emperor thirty
thousand.
The usurpations of the Genoese, which extended over nearly a century,
every year increasing in their arrogance, ended, as might have
been anticipated, with a demand for the empire itself. Having been
refused some commanding heights at Pera, on which to erect additional
fortifications, they embraced the opportunity of the emperor’s
temporary absence from his capital to rise in open rebellion. “A
Byzantine vessel,” remarks Gibbon,[370] “which had presumed to fish
at the mouth of the harbour, was sunk by these audacious strangers;
the fishermen were murdered. Instead of suing for pardon, the Genoese
demanded satisfaction; required in a haughty strain that the Greeks
should renounce the exercise of navigation; and encountered with
regular arms the first sallies of the popular indignation. They
instantly occupied the debatable land; and by the labour of a whole
people, of either sex and of every age, the wall was raised, and the
ditch was sunk with incredible speed. At the same time, they attacked
and burnt two Byzantine galleys; while the three others, the remainder
of the imperial navy, escaped from their hands; the habitations
without the gates or along the shore were pillaged and destroyed; and
the care of the regent, of the empress Irene, was confined to the
preservation of the city. The return of Cantacuzene dispelled the
public consternation; the emperor inclined to peaceful counsels, but he
yielded to the obstinacy of his enemies, who rejected all reasonable
terms, and to the ardour of his subjects, who threatened, in the style
of Scripture, ‘to break them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.’...
The merchants of the colony, who had believed that a few days would
terminate the war, already murmured at their losses; the succours from
their mother-country were delayed by the factions of Genoa; and the
most cautious embraced the opportunity of a Rhodian vessel to remove
their families and effects from the scene of hostility.”
[Sidenote: and declare war, A.D. 1349.]
The peaceful counsels of the emperor having proved of no avail, the
Byzantine fleet in the spring of the following year attacked Pera by
sea, while the Greek troops assaulted its walls and ramparts. The
attack, however, wholly failed; the Genoese carried all before them,
and, crowning their galleys with flowers, they added to this insult
the throwing, by means of their engines, of large stones into the very
heart of the imperial city. To insults such as these even Cantacuzene
could not submit; but, discerning clearly his own weakness, it occurred
to him that other and known enemies of Genoa might do for him what he
had not strength to do for himself: hence his appeal to Venice, as the
great naval rival of Genoa, and a yet more fatal coquetry with the
Turkish hosts, who by this time were in full possession of the wide
plains of Asia Minor.
Nor were the Venetians slow to accept an offer likely to lead to
the humbling of enemies so inveterate. The war assumed proportions
nowise foreseen, and fluctuated for more than a century with alternate
success, but with ultimate ruin to the Genoese, whose audacity had
provoked it. During the whole of this struggle the eastern empire
practically counted as nothing, and would, but for the intervention
of the Venetians, have sunk into a province of Genoa. The connection,
however, with the Turkish tribes led to more deplorable disasters, in
that, owing to the weakness of the emperor, an opportunity was now,
for the first time, afforded to them of obtaining a footing on the
sacred land of Europe itself.
[Sidenote: The progress of the Turks, A.D. 1341-1347.]
[Sidenote: Their fleet.]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1353.]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1360-1389.]
The time had indeed come when a Greek emperor, more fearful of his own
life than of the honour of his people, could seek the advice, if not
the direct aid, of the enemies of his faith and country. The Turks,
seeing the chance of great ultimate advantages, were not unwilling to
grant his requests. Under the pretence of protecting one of their race,
who had taken up his residence at the Greek court, they assembled at
Smyrna a fleet of three hundred vessels and twenty-nine thousand men,
in the depth of winter, and casting anchor at the mouth of the Hebrus,
under the further pretext of guarding their fleet, landed nine thousand
five hundred of their men; thus for the first time establishing
themselves on the continent of Europe. A position, however small, thus
obtained, the further spread of the Turkish arms was but a question of
time. In a few years they were settled in their new homes; a little
later, the whole province of Roumania and of Thrace fell into their
hands; and, in less than forty years from their first arrival, all the
country round Constantinople, including Adrianople, which they had made
their western capital, became subject to them. From this time the fate
of Constantinople was sealed, and the overthrow of the Cross by the
Crescent but a question of a few years.
[Sidenote: First use of gunpowder, and of large cannon.]
Various reasons, however, prevented the immediate capture of
Constantinople; nor was it till sixty years after the Turks had secured
Adrianople, that Muhammed II., who had unceasingly sighed for its
possession, resolved, by an attack of sufficient magnitude, and at
any cost, to make it the centre of the Muhammedan arms and religion,
and to haul down the Christian banner, which for more than a thousand
years had waved over its battlements. Nor was he unsupported by many
favouring accidents, of which the most valuable was the discovery of
gunpowder, as this engine of destruction rendered the Greek fire of
comparatively little advantage, and left success to those who had best
studied the qualities of the new explosive compound.[371] Muhammed at
once devoted himself to its serious study, the result being that the
cannon he cast for the siege of Constantinople are generally admitted
to have been greatly superior to any weapons of the class hitherto
invented.
While Muhammed threatened the capital of the East, the Greek emperor
implored in vain the assistance of the Christian powers of the
West, who were either too weak or too much engaged with their own
contentions, even where favourably disposed, to render him assistance.
Even the princes of the Morea and of the Greek islands affected a cold
neutrality, while the Sultan indulged the Genoese in the delusive hope
that they would still be allowed to retain the advantages they had
possessed under the empire as regarded their trade with the city and on
the Euxine.
[Sidenote: The Turks finally become masters of the Eastern capital,
A.D. 1453.]
But Constantinople did not fall without a desperate and bloody
struggle; and had the zeal and ability of its inhabitants equalled the
heroism of the last Constantine, the banner of the Cross might have
floated even until now over the great city of the Eastern Empire.
FOOTNOTES:
[351] Gibbon, ch. liii. Constantine, Vit. Basil. ch. lxxiv-lxxvi.
[352] Voyage of Benjamin of Tudela, book i. ch. v. p. 44-52.
[353] Gibbon, c. liii.
[354] Gibbon, c. lv.
[355] Gibbon, c. lv.
[356] Gibbon, c. lv.
[357] Gibbon, c. lv.
[358] There seems much doubt about the story of the invention of the
mariner’s compass by Flavio Gioga, an Amalfite, in A.D. 1307. The city
had ceased to have any commercial importance since its sack by the
Pisans in A.D. 1137 (Sismondi, i. p. 303); while, on the other hand,
Hallam shows that the compass was known as early as A.D. 1100 (Mid.
Ages, iii. 394); and Wachsmuth proves that it was used in Sweden in
A.D. 1250 (Ersch und Grüber’s Encycl. iii. 302). The Italian _bussola_,
from the French _boussole_, comes again from the Flemish _Boxel_
(box);—hence, probably, our term of “boxing” the compass. It was most
likely a northern discovery.
[359] Hallam remarks that “it was the singular fate of this city to
have filled up the interval between two periods of civilization, in
neither of which she was destined to be distinguished. Scarcely known
before the end of the sixth century, Amalfi ran a brilliant career as a
free and trading republic, which was checked by the arms of a conqueror
in the middle of the twelfth.”—Mid. Ages, iii. 300.
[360] Sismondi, Republ. Ital. du Moyen Age, i. p. 203.
[361] Cassiodor. Var. l. 12. Epist. 24.
[362] The power of Venice at this early period (A.D. 774) is well shown
by the aid it gave to Charlemagne, at his request, during his siege
of Pavia, of twenty-four galleons said to have carried six thousand
horse and foot. This fact has been recently illustrated by Mr. W. De
Gray Birch, of the MS. Room of the British Museum, who has published a
contemporary leaden tablet, in which it is recorded. (Archæol. xliv.
pp. 123-136. 1872.)
[363] Speaking of Timúr, Gibbon observes, “the lord of so many myriads
of horse was not master of a single galley,” c. lxv.
[364] Gibbon, c. lix.
[365] Gibbon, c. lix.
[366] Gibbon, c. lx.
[367] It seems worth while to append here a note concerning the results
of the principal Crusades.
_First Crusade._—Preached by Peter the Hermit, and led by Robert
Guiscard and Godfrey de Bouillon, chiefly against the Seljuk Turks,
A.D. 1096. Jerusalem taken, A.D. 1099.
_Second Crusade._—Preached by St. Bernard, and led by Louis VII. and
Conrad III., A.D. 1146. Stopped by the Seljuk Turks, by their victory
at Iconium (Konieh), A.D. 1147.
_Third Crusade._—To avenge the capture in A.D. 1187 of Jerusalem by
Saladin; and led by Frederick Barbarossa, Richard Cœur-de-Lion, and
Philip of France, A.D. 1188. Results: Acre, Joppa, and Askalon taken
from Saladin, A.D. 1192.
_Fourth Crusade._—Led by Baldwin, Count of Flanders, with aid from
Venice, A.D. 1202. Results: taking of Zara and of Constantinople, A.D.
1204.
The remaining Crusades were, comparatively, unimportant.
[368] Gibbon, ch. lxiii.
[369] So late as Chardin, four hundred sail of vessels were occupied at
Caffa during forty days in the corn and fish trade. (“Voy. en Pérse,”
i. pp. 46-48.) Clarke found it wholly demolished by the Russians
(“Travels,” i. p. 144)—and so it is now.
[370] Gibbon, ch. lxiii.
[371] The precise era of the invention and application of gunpowder
is involved in doubt, and has formed the subject of many learned
disquisitions, not the least interesting of which will be found in the
1st and 2nd vols. of Bishop Watson’s “Chemical Essays.”