the insolence of a Barbarian. It was the right and duty, it might be
the interest and glory, of Manuel to restore the ancient majesty of the
empire, to recover the provinces of Italy and Sicily, and to chastise
this pretended king, the grandson of a Norman vassal. The natives of
Calabria were still attached to the Greek language and worship, which
had been inexorably proscribed by the Latin clergy: after the loss of
her dukes, Apulia was chained as a servile appendage to the crown of
Sicily; the founder of the monarchy had ruled by the sword; and his
death had abated the fear, without healing the discontent, of his
subjects: the feudal government was always pregnant with the seeds of
rebellion; and a nephew of Roger himself invited the enemies of his
family and nation. The majesty of the purple, and a series of Hungarian
and Turkish wars, prevented Manuel from embarking his person in the
Italian expedition. To the brave and noble PalÊologus, his lieutenant,
the Greek monarch intrusted a fleet and army: the siege of Bari was his
first exploit; and, in every operation, gold as well as steel was the
instrument of victory. Salerno, and some places along the western
coast, maintained their fidelity to the Norman king; but he lost in
two campaigns the greater part of his continental possessions; and the
modest emperor, disdaining all flattery and falsehood, was content
with the reduction of three hundred cities or villages of Apulia and
Calabria, whose names and titles were inscribed on all the walls of
the palace. The prejudices of the Latins were gratified by a genuine
or fictitious donation under the seal of the German CÊsars; but the
successor of Constantine soon renounced this ignominious pretence,
claimed the indefeasible dominion of Italy, and professed his design of
chasing the Barbarians beyond the Alps. By the artful speeches, liberal
gifts, and unbounded promises, of their Eastern ally, the free cities
were encouraged to persevere in their generous struggle against the
despotism of Frederic Barbarossa: the walls of Milan were rebuilt by the
contributions of Manuel; and he poured, says the historian, a river
of gold into the bosom of Ancona, whose attachment to the Greeks was
fortified by the jealous enmity of the Venetians. The situation and
trade of Ancona rendered it an important garrison in the heart of Italy:
it was twice besieged by the arms of Frederic; the imperial forces were
twice repulsed by the spirit of freedom; that spirit was animated by the
ambassador of Constantinople; and the most intrepid patriots, the
most faithful servants, were rewarded by the wealth and honors of the
Byzantine court. The pride of Manuel disdained and rejected a Barbarian
colleague; his ambition was excited by the hope of stripping the purple
from the German usurpers, and of establishing, in the West, as in the
East, his lawful title of sole emperor of the Romans. With this view, he
solicited the alliance of the people and the bishop of Rome. Several
of the nobles embraced the cause of the Greek monarch; the splendid
nuptials of his niece with Odo Frangipani secured the support of that
powerful family, and his royal standard or image was entertained with
due reverence in the ancient metropolis. During the quarrel between
Frederic and Alexander the Third, the pope twice received in the Vatican
the ambassadors of Constantinople. They flattered his piety by the
long-promised union of the two churches, tempted the avarice of
his venal court, and exhorted the Roman pontiff to seize the just
provocation, the favorable moment, to humble the savage insolence of the
Alemanni and to acknowledge the true representative of Constantine and
Augustus.
But these Italian conquests, this universal reign, soon escaped from the
hand of the Greek emperor. His first demands were eluded by the
prudence of Alexander the Third, who paused on this deep and momentous
revolution; nor could the pope be seduced by a personal dispute to
renounce the perpetual inheritance of the Latin name. After the reunion
with Frederic, he spoke a more peremptory language, confirmed the
acts of his predecessors, excommunicated the adherents of Manuel,
and pronounced the final separation of the churches, or at least the
empires, of Constantinople and Rome. The free cities of Lombardy no
longer remembered their foreign benefactor, and without preserving the
friendship of Ancona, he soon incurred the enmity of Venice. By his
own avarice, or the complaints of his subjects, the Greek emperor was
provoked to arrest the persons, and confiscate the effects, of the
Venetian merchants. This violation of the public faith exasperated a
free and commercial people: one hundred galleys were launched and armed
in as many days; they swept the coasts of Dalmatia and Greece: but after
some mutual wounds, the war was terminated by an agreement, inglorious
to the empire, insufficient for the republic; and a complete vengeance
of these and of fresh injuries was reserved for the succeeding
generation. The lieutenant of Manuel had informed his sovereign that he
was strong enough to quell any domestic revolt of Apulia and Calabria;
but that his forces were inadequate to resist the impending attack
of the king of Sicily. His prophecy was soon verified: the death of
PalÊologus devolved the command on several chiefs, alike eminent in
rank, alike defective in military talents; the Greeks were oppressed
by land and sea; and a captive remnant that escaped the swords of the
Normans and Saracens, abjured all future hostility against the person
or dominions of their conqueror. Yet the king of Sicily esteemed the
courage and constancy of Manuel, who had landed a second army on the
Italian shore; he respectfully addressed the new Justinian; solicited a
peace or truce of thirty years, accepted as a gift the regal title;
and acknowledged himself the military vassal of the Roman empire.
The Byzantine CÊsars acquiesced in this shadow of dominion, without
expecting, perhaps without desiring, the service of a Norman army; and
the truce of thirty years was not disturbed by any hostilities between
Sicily and Constantinople. About the end of that period, the throne of
Manuel was usurped by an inhuman tyrant, who had deserved the abhorrence
of his country and mankind: the sword of William the Second, the
grandson of Roger, was drawn by a fugitive of the Comnenian race; and
the subjects of Andronicus might salute the strangers as friends,
since they detested their sovereign as the worst of enemies. The Latin
historians expatiate on the rapid progress of the four counts who
invaded Romania with a fleet and army, and reduced many castles and
cities to the obedience of the king of Sicily. The Greeks accuse and
magnify the wanton and sacrilegious cruelties that were perpetrated
in the sack of Thessalonica, the second city of the empire. The former
deplore the fate of those invincible but unsuspecting warriors who were
destroyed by the arts of a vanquished foe. The latter applaud, in songs
of triumph, the repeated victories of their countrymen on the Sea of
Marmora or Propontis, on the banks of the Strymon, and under the walls
of Durazzo. A revolution which punished the crimes of Andronicus,
had united against the Franks the zeal and courage of the successful
insurgents: ten thousand were slain in battle, and Isaac Angelus, the
new emperor, might indulge his vanity or vengeance in the treatment of
four thousand captives. Such was the event of the last contest between
the Greeks and Normans: before the expiration of twenty years, the rival
nations were lost or degraded in foreign servitude; and the successors
of Constantine did not long survive to insult the fall of the Sicilian
monarchy.
The sceptre of Roger successively devolved to his son and grandson:
they might be confounded under the name of William: they are strongly
discriminated by the epithets of the _bad_ and the _good_; but these
epithets, which appear to describe the perfection of vice and virtue,
cannot strictly be applied to either of the Norman princes. When he was
roused to arms by danger and shame, the first William did not degenerate
from the valor of his race; but his temper was slothful; his manners
were dissolute; his passions headstrong and mischievous; and the monarch
is responsible, not only for his personal vices, but for those of Majo,
the great admiral, who abused the confidence, and conspired against the
life, of his benefactor. From the Arabian conquest, Sicily had imbibed a
deep tincture of Oriental manners; the despotism, the pomp, and even the
harem, of a sultan; and a Christian people was oppressed and insulted
by the ascendant of the eunuchs, who openly professed, or secretly
cherished, the religion of Mahomet. An eloquent historian of the times
has delineated the misfortunes of his country: the ambition and fall
of the ungrateful Majo; the revolt and punishment of his assassins; the
imprisonment and deliverance of the king himself; the private feuds that
arose from the public confusion; and the various forms of calamity and
discord which afflicted Palermo, the island, and the continent, during
the reign of William the First, and the minority of his son. The youth,
innocence, and beauty of William the Second, endeared him to the nation:
the factions were reconciled; the laws were revived; and from the
manhood to the premature death of that amiable prince, Sicily enjoyed a
short season of peace, justice, and happiness, whose value was enhanced
by the remembrance of the past and the dread of futurity. The legitimate
male posterity of Tancred of Hauteville was extinct in the person of
the second William; but his aunt, the daughter of Roger, had married
the most powerful prince of the age; and Henry the Sixth, the son of
Frederic Barbarossa, descended from the Alps to claim the Imperial crown
and the inheritance of his wife. Against the unanimous wish of a free
people, this inheritance could only be acquired by arms; and I am
pleased to transcribe the style and sense of the historian Falcandus,
who writes at the moment, and on the spot, with the feelings of a
patriot, and the prophetic eye of a statesman. "Constantia, the daughter
of Sicily, nursed from her cradle in the pleasures and plenty, and
educated in the arts and manners, of this fortunate isle, departed long
since to enrich the Barbarians with our treasures, and now returns, with
her savage allies, to contaminate the beauties of her venerable parent.
Already I behold the swarms of angry Barbarians: our opulent cities, the
places flourishing in a long peace, are shaken with fear, desolated by
slaughter, consumed by rapine, and polluted by intemperance and lust. I
see the massacre or captivity of our citizens, the rapes of our virgins
and matrons. In this extremity (he interrogates a friend) how must
the Sicilians act? By the unanimous election of a king of valor and
experience, Sicily and Calabria might yet be preserved; for in the
levity of the Apulians, ever eager for new revolutions, I can repose
neither confidence nor hope. Should Calabria be lost, the lofty towers,
the numerous youth, and the naval strength, of Messina, might guard the
passage against a foreign invader. If the savage Germans coalesce with
the pirates of Messina; if they destroy with fire the fruitful region,
so often wasted by the fires of Mount ∆tna, what resource will be left
for the interior parts of the island, these noble cities which should
never be violated by the hostile footsteps of a Barbarian? Catana has
again been overwhelmed by an earthquake: the ancient virtue of Syracuse
expires in poverty and solitude; but Palermo is still crowned with a
diadem, and her triple walls enclose the active multitudes of Christians
and Saracens. If the two nations, under one king, can unite for their
common safety, they may rush on the Barbarians with invincible arms. But
if the Saracens, fatigued by a repetition of injuries, should now
retire and rebel; if they should occupy the castles of the mountains and
sea-coast, the unfortunate Christians, exposed to a double attack,
and placed as it were between the hammer and the anvil, must resign
themselves to hopeless and inevitable servitude." We must not forget,
that a priest here prefers his country to his religion; and that the
Moslems, whose alliance he seeks, were still numerous and powerful in
the state of Sicily.
The hopes, or at least the wishes, of Falcandus were at first gratified
by the free and unanimous election of Tancred, the grandson of the first
king, whose birth was illegitimate, but whose civil and military virtues
shone without a blemish. During four years, the term of his life and
reign, he stood in arms on the farthest verge of the Apulian frontier,
against the powers of Germany; and the restitution of a royal captive,
of Constantia herself, without injury or ransom, may appear to surpass
the most liberal measure of policy or reason. After his decease, the
kingdom of his widow and infant son fell without a struggle; and Henry
pursued his victorious march from Capua to Palermo. The political
balance of Italy was destroyed by his success; and if the pope and the
free cities had consulted their obvious and real interest, they would
have combined the powers of earth and heaven to prevent the dangerous
union of the German empire with the kingdom of Sicily. But the subtle
policy, for which the Vatican has so often been praised or arraigned,
was on this occasion blind and inactive; and if it were true that
Celestine the Third had kicked away the Imperial crown from the head of
the prostrate Henry, such an act of impotent pride could serve only to
cancel an obligation and provoke an enemy. The Genoese, who enjoyed a
beneficial trade and establishment in Sicily, listened to the promise of
his boundless gratitude and speedy departure: their fleet commanded the
straits of Messina, and opened the harbor of Palermo; and the first
act of his government was to abolish the privileges, and to seize the
property, of these imprudent allies. The last hope of Falcandus was
defeated by the discord of the Christians and Mahometans: they fought
in the capital; several thousands of the latter were slain; but their
surviving brethren fortified the mountains, and disturbed above thirty
years the peace of the island. By the policy of Frederic the Second,
sixty thousand Saracens were transplanted to Nocera in Apulia. In their
wars against the Roman church, the emperor and his son Mainfroy were
strengthened and disgraced by the service of the enemies of Christ; and
this national colony maintained their religion and manners in the
heart of Italy, till they were extirpated, at the end of the thirteenth
century, by the zeal and revenge of the house of Anjou. All the
calamities which the prophetic orator had deplored were surpassed by
the cruelty and avarice of the German conqueror. He violated the royal
sepulchres, and explored the secret treasures of the palace, Palermo,
and the whole kingdom: the pearls and jewels, however precious, might
be easily removed; but one hundred and sixty horses were laden with the
gold and silver of Sicily. The young king, his mother and sisters, and
the nobles of both sexes, were separately confined in the fortresses of
the Alps; and, on the slightest rumor of rebellion, the captives were
deprived of life, of their eyes, or of the hope of posterity. Constantia
herself was touched with sympathy for the miseries of her country; and
the heiress of the Norman line might struggle to check her despotic
husband, and to save the patrimony of her new-born son, of an emperor so
famous in the next age under the name of Frederic the Second. Ten years
after this revolution, the French monarchs annexed to their crown
the duchy of Normandy: the sceptre of her ancient dukes had been
transmitted, by a granddaughter of William the Conqueror, to the house
of Plantagenet; and the adventurous Normans, who had raised so many
trophies in France, England, and Ireland, in Apulia, Sicily, and the
East, were lost, either in victory or servitude, among the vanquished
nations.
Chapter LVII: The Turks.--Part I.
The Turks Of The House Of Seljuk.--Their Revolt Against
Mahmud Conqueror Of Hindostan.--Togrul Subdues Persia, And
Protects The Caliphs.--Defeat And Captivity Of The Emperor
Romanus Diogenes By Alp Arslan.--Power And Magnificence Of
Malek Shah.--Conquest Of Asia Minor And Syria.--State And
Oppression Of Jerusalem.--Pilgrimages To The Holy Sepulchre.
From the Isle of Sicily, the reader must transport himself beyond the
Caspian Sea, to the original seat of the Turks or Turkmans, against whom
the first crusade was principally directed. Their Scythian empire of the
sixth century was long since dissolved; but the name was still famous
among the Greeks and Orientals; and the fragments of the nation, each
a powerful and independent people, were scattered over the desert from
China to the Oxus and the Danube: the colony of Hungarians was admitted
into the republic of Europe, and the thrones of Asia were occupied by
slaves and soldiers of Turkish extraction. While Apulia and Sicily
were subdued by the Norman lance, a swarm of these northern shepherds
overspread the kingdoms of Persia; their princes of the race of Seljuk
erected a splendid and solid empire from Samarcand to the confines of
Greece and Egypt; and the Turks have maintained their dominion in Asia
Minor, till the victorious crescent has been planted on the dome of St.
Sophia.
One of the greatest of the Turkish princes was Mahmood or Mahmud, the
Gaznevide, who reigned in the eastern provinces of Persia, one thousand
years after the birth of Christ. His father Sebectagi was the slave of
the slave of the slave of the commander of the faithful. But in this
descent of servitude, the first degree was merely titular, since it was
filled by the sovereign of Transoxiana and Chorasan, who still paid a
nominal allegiance to the caliph of Bagdad. The second rank was that of
a minister of state, a lieutenant of the Samanides, who broke, by his
revolt, the bonds of political slavery. But the third step was a state
of real and domestic servitude in the family of that rebel; from which
Sebectagi, by his courage and dexterity, ascended to the supreme command
of the city and provinces of Gazna, as the son-in-law and successor of
his grateful master. The falling dynasty of the Samanides was at first
protected, and at last overthrown, by their servants; and, in the public
disorders, the fortune of Mahmud continually increased. From him the
title of _Sultan_ was first invented; and his kingdom was enlarged
from Transoxiana to the neighborhood of Ispahan, from the shores of the
Caspian to the mouth of the Indus. But the principal source of his
fame and riches was the holy war which he waged against the Gentoos of
Hindostan. In this foreign narrative I may not consume a page; and a
volume would scarcely suffice to recapitulate the battles and sieges
of his twelve expeditions. Never was the Mussulman hero dismayed by the
inclemency of the seasons, the height of the mountains, the breadth of
the rivers, the barrenness of the desert, the multitudes of the enemy,
or the formidable array of their elephants of war. The sultan of Gazna
surpassed the limits of the conquests of Alexander: after a march of
three months, over the hills of Cashmir and Thibet, he reached the
famous city of Kinnoge, on the Upper Ganges; and, in a naval combat on
one of the branches of the Indus, he fought and vanquished four thousand
boats of the natives. Delhi, Lahor, and Multan, were compelled to open
their gates: the fertile kingdom of Guzarat attracted his ambition and
tempted his stay; and his avarice indulged the fruitless project of
discovering the golden and aromatic isles of the Southern Ocean. On
the payment of a tribute, the _rajahs_ preserved their dominions; the
people, their lives and fortunes; but to the religion of Hindostan the
zealous Mussulman was cruel and inexorable: many hundred temples,
or pagodas, were levelled with the ground; many thousand idols were
demolished; and the servants of the prophet were stimulated and rewarded
by the precious materials of which they were composed. The pagoda of
Sumnat was situate on the promontory of Guzarat, in the neighborhood
of Diu, one of the last remaining possessions of the Portuguese. It was
endowed with the revenue of two thousand villages; two thousand Brahmins
were consecrated to the service of the Deity, whom they washed each
morning and evening in water from the distant Ganges: the subordinate
ministers consisted of three hundred musicians, three hundred barbers,
and five hundred dancing girls, conspicuous for their birth or beauty.
Three sides of the temple were protected by the ocean, the narrow
isthmus was fortified by a natural or artificial precipice; and the
city and adjacent country were peopled by a nation of fanatics. They
confessed the sins and the punishment of Kinnoge and Delhi; but if the
impious stranger should presume to approach _their_ holy precincts, he
would surely be overwhelmed by a blast of the divine vengeance. By this
challenge, the faith of Mahmud was animated to a personal trial of the
strength of this Indian deity. Fifty thousand of his worshippers
were pierced by the spear of the Moslems; the walls were scaled; the
sanctuary was profaned; and the conqueror aimed a blow of his iron mace
at the head of the idol. The trembling Brahmins are said to have offered
ten millions sterling for his ransom; and it was urged by the wisest
counsellors, that the destruction of a stone image would not change the
hearts of the Gentoos; and that such a sum might be dedicated to the
relief of the true believers. "Your reasons," replied the sultan, "are
specious and strong; but never in the eyes of posterity shall Mahmud
appear as a merchant of idols." He repeated his blows, and a treasure
of pearls and rubies, concealed in the belly of the statue, explained in
some degree the devout prodigality of the Brahmins. The fragments of the
idol were distributed to Gazna, Mecca, and Medina. Bagdad listened to
the edifying tale; and Mahmud was saluted by the caliph with the title
of guardian of the fortune and faith of Mahomet.