In the choice of the attack, the French and Venetians were

divided by their habits of life and warfare. The former affirmed

with truth, that Constantinople was most accessible on the side

of the sea and the harbor. The latter might assert with honor,

that they had long enough trusted their lives and fortunes to a

frail bark and a precarious element, and loudly demanded a trial

of knighthood, a firm ground, and a close onset, either on foot

or on horseback. After a prudent compromise, of employing the two

nations by sea and land, in the service best suited to their

character, the fleet covering the army, they both proceeded from

the entrance to the extremity of the harbor: the stone bridge of

the river was hastily repaired; and the six battles of the French

formed their encampment against the front of the capital, the

basis of the triangle which runs about four miles from the port

to the Propontis. 65 On the edge of a broad ditch, at the foot of

a lofty rampart, they had leisure to contemplate the difficulties

of their enterprise. The gates to the right and left of their

narrow camp poured forth frequent sallies of cavalry and

light-infantry, which cut off their stragglers, swept the country

of provisions, sounded the alarm five or six times in the course

of each day, and compelled them to plant a palisade, and sink an

intrenchment, for their immediate safety. In the supplies and

convoys the Venetians had been too sparing, or the Franks too

voracious: the usual complaints of hunger and scarcity were

heard, and perhaps felt their stock of flour would be exhausted

in three weeks; and their disgust of salt meat tempted them to

taste the flesh of their horses. The trembling usurper was

supported by Theodore Lascaris, his son-in-law, a valiant youth,

who aspired to save and to rule his country; the Greeks,

regardless of that country, were awakened to the defence of their

religion; but their firmest hope was in the strength and spirit

of the Varangian guards, of the Danes and English, as they are

named in the writers of the times. 66 After ten days’ incessant

labor, the ground was levelled, the ditch filled, the approaches

of the besiegers were regularly made, and two hundred and fifty

engines of assault exercised their various powers to clear the

rampart, to batter the walls, and to sap the foundations. On the

first appearance of a breach, the scaling-ladders were applied:

the numbers that defended the vantage ground repulsed and

oppressed the adventurous Latins; but they admired the resolution

of fifteen knights and sergeants, who had gained the ascent, and

maintained their perilous station till they were precipitated or

made prisoners by the Imperial guards. On the side of the harbor

the naval attack was more successfully conducted by the

Venetians; and that industrious people employed every resource

that was known and practiced before the invention of gunpowder. A

double line, three bow-shots in front, was formed by the galleys

and ships; and the swift motion of the former was supported by

the weight and loftiness of the latter, whose decks, and poops,

and turret, were the platforms of military engines, that

discharged their shot over the heads of the first line. The

soldiers, who leaped from the galleys on shore, immediately

planted and ascended their scaling-ladders, while the large

ships, advancing more slowly into the intervals, and lowering a

draw-bridge, opened a way through the air from their masts to the

rampart. In the midst of the conflict, the doge, a venerable and

conspicuous form, stood aloft in complete armor on the prow of

his galley. The great standard of St. Mark was displayed before

him; his threats, promises, and exhortations, urged the diligence

of the rowers; his vessel was the first that struck; and Dandolo

was the first warrior on the shore. The nations admired the

magnanimity of the blind old man, without reflecting that his age

and infirmities diminished the price of life, and enhanced the

value of immortal glory. On a sudden, by an invisible hand, (for

the standard-bearer was probably slain,) the banner of the

republic was fixed on the rampart: twenty-five towers were

rapidly occupied; and, by the cruel expedient of fire, the Greeks

were driven from the adjacent quarter. The doge had despatched

the intelligence of his success, when he was checked by the

danger of his confederates. Nobly declaring that he would rather

die with the pilgrims than gain a victory by their destruction,

Dandolo relinquished his advantage, recalled his troops, and

hastened to the scene of action. He found the six weary

diminutive _battles_ of the French encompassed by sixty squadrons

of the Greek cavalry, the least of which was more numerous than

the largest of their divisions. Shame and despair had provoked

Alexius to the last effort of a general sally; but he was awed by

the firm order and manly aspect of the Latins; and, after

skirmishing at a distance, withdrew his troops in the close of

the evening. The silence or tumult of the night exasperated his

fears; and the timid usurper, collecting a treasure of ten

thousand pounds of gold, basely deserted his wife, his people,

and his fortune; threw himself into a bark; stole through the

Bosphorus; and landed in shameful safety in an obscure harbor of

Thrace. As soon as they were apprised of his flight, the Greek

nobles sought pardon and peace in the dungeon where the blind

Isaac expected each hour the visit of the executioner. Again

saved and exalted by the vicissitudes of fortune, the captive in

his Imperial robes was replaced on the throne, and surrounded

with prostrate slaves, whose real terror and affected joy he was

incapable of discerning. At the dawn of day, hostilities were

suspended, and the Latin chiefs were surprised by a message from

the lawful and reigning emperor, who was impatient to embrace his

son, and to reward his generous deliverers. 67

65 (return) [ On the most correct plans of Constantinople, I know

not how to measure more than 4000 paces. Yet Villehardouin

computes the space at three leagues, (No. 86.) If his eye were

not deceived, he must reckon by the old Gallic league of 1500

paces, which might still be used in Champagne.]

66 (return) [ The guards, the Varangi, are styled by

Villehardouin, (No. 89, 95) Englois et Danois avec leurs haches.

Whatever had been their origin, a French pilgrim could not be

mistaken in the nations of which they were at that time

composed.]

67 (return) [ For the first siege and conquest of Constantinople,

we may read the original letter of the crusaders to Innocent

III., Gesta, c. 91, p. 533, 534. Villehardouin, No. 75—99.

Nicetas, in Alexio Comnen. l. iii. c. 10, p. 349—352. Dandolo, in

Chron. p. 322. Gunther, and his abbot Martin, were not yet

returned from their obstinate pilgrim age to Jerusalem, or St.

John d’Acre, where the greatest part of the company had died of

the plague.]

Chapter LX: The Fourth Crusade.—Part III.

But these generous deliverers were unwilling to release their

hostage, till they had obtained from his father the payment, or

at least the promise, of their recompense. They chose four

ambassadors, Matthew of Montmorency, our historian the marshal of

Champagne, and two Venetians, to congratulate the emperor. The

gates were thrown open on their approach, the streets on both

sides were lined with the battle axes of the Danish and English

guard: the presence-chamber glittered with gold and jewels, the

false substitute of virtue and power: by the side of the blind

Isaac his wife was seated, the sister of the king of Hungary: and

by her appearance, the noble matrons of Greece were drawn from

their domestic retirement, and mingled with the circle of

senators and soldiers. The Latins, by the mouth of the marshal,

spoke like men conscious of their merits, but who respected the

work of their own hands; and the emperor clearly understood, that

his son’s engagements with Venice and the pilgrims must be

ratified without hesitation or delay. Withdrawing into a private

chamber with the empress, a chamberlain, an interpreter, and the

four ambassadors, the father of young Alexius inquired with some

anxiety into the nature of his stipulations. The submission of

the Eastern empire to the pope, the succor of the Holy Land, and

a present contribution of two hundred thousand marks of

silver.—“These conditions are weighty,” was his prudent reply:

“they are hard to accept, and difficult to perform. But no

conditions can exceed the measure of your services and deserts.”

After this satisfactory assurance, the barons mounted on

horseback, and introduced the heir of Constantinople to the city

and palace: his youth and marvellous adventures engaged every

heart in his favor, and Alexius was solemnly crowned with his

father in the dome of St. Sophia. In the first days of his reign,

the people, already blessed with the restoration of plenty and

peace, was delighted by the joyful catastrophe of the tragedy;

and the discontent of the nobles, their regret, and their fears,

were covered by the polished surface of pleasure and loyalty The

mixture of two discordant nations in the same capital might have

been pregnant with mischief and danger; and the suburb of Galata,

or Pera, was assigned for the quarters of the French and

Venetians. But the liberty of trade and familiar intercourse was

allowed between the friendly nations: and each day the pilgrims

were tempted by devotion or curiosity to visit the churches and

palaces of Constantinople. Their rude minds, insensible perhaps

of the finer arts, were astonished by the magnificent scenery:

and the poverty of their native towns enhanced the populousness

and riches of the first metropolis of Christendom. 68 Descending

from his state, young Alexius was prompted by interest and

gratitude to repeat his frequent and familiar visits to his Latin

allies; and in the freedom of the table, the gay petulance of the

French sometimes forgot the emperor of the East. 69 In their most

serious conferences, it was agreed, that the reunion of the two

churches must be the result of patience and time; but avarice was

less tractable than zeal; and a larger sum was instantly

disbursed to appease the wants, and silence the importunity, of

the crusaders. 70 Alexius was alarmed by the approaching hour of

their departure: their absence might have relieved him from the

engagement which he was yet incapable of performing; but his

friends would have left him, naked and alone, to the caprice and

prejudice of a perfidious nation. He wished to bribe their stay,

the delay of a year, by undertaking to defray their expense, and

to satisfy, in their name, the freight of the Venetian vessels.

The offer was agitated in the council of the barons; and, after a

repetition of their debates and scruples, a majority of votes

again acquiesced in the advice of the doge and the prayer of the

young emperor. At the price of sixteen hundred pounds of gold, he

prevailed on the marquis of Montferrat to lead him with an army

round the provinces of Europe; to establish his authority, and

pursue his uncle, while Constantinople was awed by the presence

of Baldwin and his confederates of France and Flanders. The

expedition was successful: the blind emperor exulted in the

success of his arms, and listened to the predictions of his

flatterers, that the same Providence which had raised him from

the dungeon to the throne, would heal his gout, restore his

sight, and watch over the long prosperity of his reign. Yet the

mind of the suspicious old man was tormented by the rising

glories of his son; nor could his pride conceal from his envy,

that, while his own name was pronounced in faint and reluctant

acclamations, the royal youth was the theme of spontaneous and

universal praise. 71

68 (return) [ Compare, in the rude energy of Villehardouin, (No.

66, 100,) the inside and outside views of Constantinople, and

their impression on the minds of the pilgrims: cette ville (says

he) que de toutes les autres ere souveraine. See the parallel

passages of Fulcherius Carnotensis, Hist. Hierosol. l. i. c. 4,

and Will. Tyr. ii. 3, xx. 26.]

69 (return) [ As they played at dice, the Latins took off his

diadem, and clapped on his head a woollen or hairy cap, to

megaloprepeV kai pagkleiston katerrupainen onoma, (Nicetas, p.

358.) If these merry companions were Venetians, it was the

insolence of trade and a commonwealth.]

70 (return) [ Villehardouin, No. 101. Dandolo, p. 322. The doge

affirms, that the Venetians were paid more slowly than the

French; but he owns, that the histories of the two nations

differed on that subject. Had he read Villehardouin? The Greeks

complained, however, good totius Græciæ opes transtulisset,

(Gunther, Hist. C. P. c 13) See the lamentations and invectives

of Nicetas, (p. 355.)]

71 (return) [ The reign of Alexius Comnenus occupies three books

in Nicetas, p. 291—352. The short restoration of Isaac and his

son is despatched in five chapters, p. 352—362.]

By the recent invasion, the Greeks were awakened from a dream of

nine centuries; from the vain presumption that the capital of the

Roman empire was impregnable to foreign arms. The strangers of

the West had violated the city, and bestowed the sceptre, of

Constantine: their Imperial clients soon became as unpopular as

themselves: the well-known vices of Isaac were rendered still

more contemptible by his infirmities, and the young Alexius was

hated as an apostate, who had renounced the manners and religion

of his country. His secret covenant with the Latins was divulged

or suspected; the people, and especially the clergy, were

devoutly attached to their faith and superstition; and every

convent, and every shop, resounded with the danger of the church

and the tyranny of the pope. 72 An empty treasury could ill

supply the demands of regal luxury and foreign extortion: the

Greeks refused to avert, by a general tax, the impending evils of

servitude and pillage; the oppression of the rich excited a more

dangerous and personal resentment; and if the emperor melted the

plate, and despoiled the images, of the sanctuary, he seemed to

justify the complaints of heresy and sacrilege. During the

absence of Marquis Boniface and his Imperial pupil,

Constantinople was visited with a calamity which might be justly

imputed to the zeal and indiscretion of the Flemish pilgrims. 73

In one of their visits to the city, they were scandalized by the

aspect of a mosque or synagogue, in which one God was worshipped,

without a partner or a son. Their effectual mode of controversy

was to attack the infidels with the sword, and their habitation

with fire: but the infidels, and some Christian neighbors,

presumed to defend their lives and properties; and the flames

which bigotry had kindled, consumed the most orthodox and

innocent structures. During eight days and nights, the

conflagration spread above a league in front, from the harbor to

the Propontis, over the thickest and most populous regions of the

city. It is not easy to count the stately churches and palaces

that were reduced to a smoking ruin, to value the merchandise

that perished in the trading streets, or to number the families

that were involved in the common destruction. By this outrage,

which the doge and the barons in vain affected to disclaim, the

name of the Latins became still more unpopular; and the colony of

that nation, above fifteen thousand persons, consulted their

safety in a hasty retreat from the city to the protection of

their standard in the suburb of Pera. The emperor returned in

triumph; but the firmest and most dexterous policy would have

been insufficient to steer him through the tempest, which

overwhelmed the person and government of that unhappy youth. His

own inclination, and his father’s advice, attached him to his

benefactors; but Alexius hesitated between gratitude and

patriotism, between the fear of his subjects and of his allies.

74 By his feeble and fluctuating conduct he lost the esteem and

confidence of both; and, while he invited the marquis of

Monferrat to occupy the palace, he suffered the nobles to

conspire, and the people to arm, for the deliverance of their

country. Regardless of his painful situation, the Latin chiefs

repeated their demands, resented his delays, suspected his

intentions, and exacted a decisive answer of peace or war. The

haughty summons was delivered by three French knights and three

Venetian deputies, who girded their swords, mounted their horses,

pierced through the angry multitude, and entered, with a fearful

countenance, the palace and presence of the Greek emperor. In a

peremptory tone, they recapitulated their services and his

engagements; and boldly declared, that unless their just claims

were fully and immediately satisfied, they should no longer hold

him either as a sovereign or a friend. After this defiance, the

first that had ever wounded an Imperial ear, they departed

without betraying any symptoms of fear; but their escape from a

servile palace and a furious city astonished the ambassadors

themselves; and their return to the camp was the signal of mutual

hostility.

72 (return) [ When Nicetas reproaches Alexius for his impious

league, he bestows the harshest names on the pope’s new religion,

meizon kai atopwtaton... parektrophn pistewV... tvn tou Papa

pronomiwn kainismon,... metaqesin te kai metapoihsin tvn palaivn

'RwmaioiV?eqvn, (p. 348.) Such was the sincere language of every

Greek to the last gasp of the empire.]

73 (return) [ Nicetas (p. 355) is positive in the charge, and

specifies the Flemings, (FlamioneV,) though he is wrong in

supposing it an ancient name. Villehardouin (No. 107) exculpates

the barons, and is ignorant (perhaps affectedly ignorant) of the

names of the guilty.]

74 (return) [ Compare the suspicions and complaints of Nicetas

(p. 359—362) with the blunt charges of Baldwin of Flanders,

(Gesta Innocent III. c. 92, p. 534,) cum patriarcha et mole

nobilium, nobis promises perjurus et mendax.]

Among the Greeks, all authority and wisdom were overborne by the

impetuous multitude, who mistook their rage for valor, their

numbers for strength, and their fanaticism for the support and

inspiration of Heaven. In the eyes of both nations Alexius was

false and contemptible; the base and spurious race of the Angeli

was rejected with clamorous disdain; and the people of

Constantinople encompassed the senate, to demand at their hands a

more worthy emperor. To every senator, conspicuous by his birth

or dignity, they successively presented the purple: by each

senator the deadly garment was repulsed: the contest lasted three

days; and we may learn from the historian Nicetas, one of the

members of the assembly, that fear and weaknesses were the

guardians of their loyalty. A phantom, who vanished in oblivion,

was forcibly proclaimed by the crowd: 75 but the author of the

tumult, and the leader of the war, was a prince of the house of

Ducas; and his common appellation of Alexius must be

discriminated by the epithet of Mourzoufle, 76 which in the

vulgar idiom expressed the close junction of his black and shaggy

eyebrows. At once a patriot and a courtier, the perfidious

Mourzoufle, who was not destitute of cunning and courage, opposed

the Latins both in speech and action, inflamed the passions and

prejudices of the Greeks, and insinuated himself into the favor

and confidence of Alexius, who trusted him with the office of

great chamberlain, and tinged his buskins with the colors of

royalty. At the dead of night, he rushed into the bed-chamber

with an affrighted aspect, exclaiming, that the palace was

attacked by the people and betrayed by the guards. Starting from

his couch, the unsuspecting prince threw himself into the arms of

his enemy, who had contrived his escape by a private staircase.

But that staircase terminated in a prison: Alexius was seized,

stripped, and loaded with chains; and, after tasting some days

the bitterness of death, he was poisoned, or strangled, or beaten

with clubs, at the command, or in the presence, of the tyrant.

The emperor Isaac Angelus soon followed his son to the grave; and

Mourzoufle, perhaps, might spare the superfluous crime of

hastening the extinction of impotence and blindness.

75 (return) [ His name was Nicholas Canabus: he deserved the

praise of Nicetas and the vengeance of Mourzoufle, (p. 362.)]

76 (return) [ Villehardouin (No. 116) speaks of him as a

favorite, without knowing that he was a prince of the blood,

_Angelus_ and _Ducas_. Ducange, who pries into every corner,

believes him to be the son of Isaac Ducas Sebastocrator, and

second cousin of young Alexius.]

The death of the emperors, and the usurpation of Mourzoufle, had

changed the nature of the quarrel. It was no longer the

disagreement of allies who overvalued their services, or

neglected their obligations: the French and Venetians forgot

their complaints against Alexius, dropped a tear on the untimely

fate of their companion, and swore revenge against the perfidious

nation who had crowned his assassin. Yet the prudent doge was

still inclined to negotiate: he asked as a debt, a subsidy, or a

fine, fifty thousand pounds of gold, about two millions sterling;

nor would the conference have been abruptly broken, if the zeal,

or policy, of Mourzoufle had not refused to sacrifice the Greek

church to the safety of the state. 77 Amidst the invectives of

his foreign and domestic enemies, we may discern, that he was not

unworthy of the character which he had assumed, of the public

champion: the second siege of Constantinople was far more

laborious than the first; the treasury was replenished, and

discipline was restored, by a severe inquisition into the abuses

of the former reign; and Mourzoufle, an iron mace in his hand,

visiting the posts, and affecting the port and aspect of a

warrior, was an object of terror to his soldiers, at least, and

to his kinsmen. Before and after the death of Alexius, the Greeks

made two vigorous and well-conducted attempts to burn the navy in

the harbor; but the skill and courage of the Venetians repulsed

the fire-ships; and the vagrant flames wasted themselves without

injury in the sea. 78 In a nocturnal sally the Greek emperor was

vanquished by Henry, brother of the count of Flanders: the

advantages of number and surprise aggravated the shame of his

defeat: his buckler was found on the field of battle; and the

Imperial standard, 79 a divine image of the Virgin, was

presented, as a trophy and a relic to the Cistercian monks, the

disciples of St. Bernard. Near three months, without excepting

the holy season of Lent, were consumed in skirmishes and

preparations, before the Latins were ready or resolved for a

general assault. The land fortifications had been found

impregnable; and the Venetian pilots represented, that, on the

shore of the Propontis, the anchorage was unsafe, and the ships

must be driven by the current far away to the straits of the

Hellespont; a prospect not unpleasing to the reluctant pilgrims,

who sought every opportunity of breaking the army. From the

harbor, therefore, the assault was determined by the assailants,

and expected by the besieged; and the emperor had placed his

scarlet pavilions on a neighboring height, to direct and animate

the efforts of his troops. A fearless spectator, whose mind could

entertain the ideas of pomp and pleasure, might have admired the

long array of two embattled armies, which extended above half a

league, the one on the ships and galleys, the other on the walls

and towers raised above the ordinary level by several stages of

wooden turrets. Their first fury was spent in the discharge of

darts, stones, and fire, from the engines; but the water was

deep; the French were bold; the Venetians were skilful; they

approached the walls; and a desperate conflict of swords, spears,

and battle-axes, was fought on the trembling bridges that

grappled the floating, to the stable, batteries. In more than a

hundred places, the assault was urged, and the defence was

sustained; till the superiority of ground and numbers finally

prevailed, and the Latin trumpets sounded a retreat. On the

ensuing days, the attack was renewed with equal vigor, and a

similar event; and, in the night, the doge and the barons held a

council, apprehensive only for the public danger: not a voice

pronounced the words of escape or treaty; and each warrior,

according to his temper, embraced the hope of victory, or the

assurance of a glorious death. 80 By the experience of the former

siege, the Greeks were instructed, but the Latins were animated;

and the knowledge that Constantinople might be taken, was of more

avail than the local precautions which that knowledge had

inspired for its defence. In the third assault, two ships were

linked together to double their strength; a strong north wind

drove them on the shore; the bishops of Troyes and Soissons led

the van; and the auspicious names of the _pilgrim_ and the

_paradise_ resounded along the line. 81 The episcopal banners

were displayed on the walls; a hundred marks of silver had been

promised to the first adventurers; and if their reward was

intercepted by death, their names have been immortalized by fame.

811 Four towers were scaled; three gates were burst open; and the

French knights, who might tremble on the waves, felt themselves

invincible on horseback on the solid ground. Shall I relate that

the thousands who guarded the emperor’s person fled on the

approach, and before the lance, of a single warrior? Their

ignominious flight is attested by their countryman Nicetas: an

army of phantoms marched with the French hero, and he was

magnified to a giant in the eyes of the Greeks. 82 While the

fugitives deserted their posts and cast away their arms, the

Latins entered the city under the banners of their leaders: the

streets and gates opened for their passage; and either design or

accident kindled a third conflagration, which consumed in a few

hours the measure of three of the largest cities of France. 83 In

the close of evening, the barons checked their troops, and

fortified their stations: They were awed by the extent and

populousness of the capital, which might yet require the labor of

a month, if the churches and palaces were conscious of their

internal strength. But in the morning, a suppliant procession,

with crosses and images, announced the submission of the Greeks,

and deprecated the wrath of the conquerors: the usurper escaped

through the golden gate: the palaces of Blachernæ and Boucoleon

were occupied by the count of Flanders and the marquis of

Montferrat; and the empire, which still bore the name of

Constantine, and the title of Roman, was subverted by the arms of

the Latin pilgrims. 84

77 (return) [ This negotiation, probable in itself, and attested

by Nicetas, (p 65,) is omitted as scandalous by the delicacy of

Dandolo and Villehardouin. * Note: Wilken places it before the

death of Alexius, vol. v. p. 276.—M.]

78 (return) [ Baldwin mentions both attempts to fire the fleet,

(Gest. c. 92, p. 534, 535;) Villehardouin, (No. 113—15) only

describes the first. It is remarkable that neither of these

warriors observe any peculiar properties in the Greek fire.]

79 (return) [ Ducange (No. 119) pours forth a torrent of learning

on the _Gonfanon Imperial_. This banner of the Virgin is shown at

Venice as a trophy and relic: if it be genuine the pious doge

must have cheated the monks of Citeaux.]

80 (return) [ Villehardouin (No. 126) confesses, that mult ere

grant peril; and Guntherus (Hist. C. P. c. 13) affirms, that

nulla spes victoriæ arridere poterat. Yet the knight despises

those who thought of flight, and the monk praises his countrymen

who were resolved on death.]

81 (return) [ Baldwin, and all the writers, honor the names of

these two galleys, felici auspicio.]

811 (return) [ Pietro Alberti, a Venetian noble and Andrew

d’Amboise a French knight.—M.]

82 (return) [ With an allusion to Homer, Nicetas calls him

enneorguioV, nine orgyæ, or eighteen yards high, a stature which

would, indeed, have excused the terror of the Greek. On this

occasion, the historian seems fonder of the marvellous than of

his country, or perhaps of truth. Baldwin exclaims in the words

of the psalmist, persequitur unus ex nobis centum alienos.]

83 (return) [ Villehardouin (No. 130) is again ignorant of the

authors of _this_ more legitimate fire, which is ascribed by

Gunther to a quidam comes Teutonicus, (c. 14.) They seem ashamed,

the incendiaries!]

84 (return) [ For the second siege and conquest of

Constantinople, see Villehardouin (No. 113—132,) Baldwin’s iid

Epistle to Innocent III., (Gesta c. 92, p. 534—537,) with the

whole reign of Mourzoufle, in Nicetas, (p 363—375;) and borrowed

some hints from Dandolo (Chron. Venet. p. 323—330) and Gunther,

(Hist. C. P. c. 14—18,) who added the decorations of prophecy and

vision. The former produces an oracle of the Erythræan sibyl, of

a great armament on the Adriatic, under a blind chief, against

Byzantium, &c. Cœurious enough, were the prediction anterior to

the fact.]

Constantinople had been taken by storm; and no restraints, except

those of religion and humanity, were imposed on the conquerors by

the laws of war. Boniface, marquis of Montferrat, still acted as

their general; and the Greeks, who revered his name as that of

their future sovereign, were heard to exclaim in a lamentable

tone, “Holy marquis-king, have mercy upon us!” His prudence or

compassion opened the gates of the city to the fugitives; and he

exhorted the soldiers of the cross to spare the lives of their

fellow-Christians. The streams of blood that flowed down the

pages of Nicetas may be reduced to the slaughter of two thousand

of his unresisting countrymen; 85 and the greater part was

massacred, not by the strangers, but by the Latins, who had been

driven from the city, and who exercised the revenge of a

triumphant faction. Yet of these exiles, some were less mindful

of injuries than of benefits; and Nicetas himself was indebted

for his safety to the generosity of a Venetian merchant. Pope

Innocent the Third accuses the pilgrims for respecting, in their

lust, neither age nor sex, nor religious profession; and bitterly

laments that the deeds of darkness, fornication, adultery, and

incest, were perpetrated in open day; and that noble matrons and

holy nuns were polluted by the grooms and peasants of the

Catholic camp. 86 It is indeed probable that the license of

victory prompted and covered a multitude of sins: but it is

certain, that the capital of the East contained a stock of venal

or willing beauty, sufficient to satiate the desires of twenty

thousand pilgrims; and female prisoners were no longer subject to

the right or abuse of domestic slavery. The marquis of Montferrat

was the patron of discipline and decency; the count of Flanders

was the mirror of chastity: they had forbidden, under pain of

death, the rape of married women, or virgins, or nuns; and the

proclamation was sometimes invoked by the vanquished 87 and

respected by the victors. Their cruelty and lust were moderated

by the authority of the chiefs, and feelings of the soldiers; for

we are no longer describing an irruption of the northern savages;

and however ferocious they might still appear, time, policy, and

religion had civilized the manners of the French, and still more

of the Italians. But a free scope was allowed to their avarice,

which was glutted, even in the holy week, by the pillage of

Constantinople. The right of victory, unshackled by any promise

or treaty, had confiscated the public and private wealth of the

Greeks; and every hand, according to its size and strength, might

lawfully execute the sentence and seize the forfeiture. A

portable and universal standard of exchange was found in the

coined and uncoined metals of gold and silver, which each captor,

at home or abroad, might convert into the possessions most

suitable to his temper and situation. Of the treasures, which

trade and luxury had accumulated, the silks, velvets, furs, the

gems, spices, and rich movables, were the most precious, as they

could not be procured for money in the ruder countries of Europe.

An order of rapine was instituted; nor was the share of each

individual abandoned to industry or chance. Under the tremendous

penalties of perjury, excommunication, and death, the Latins were

bound to deliver their plunder into the common stock: three

churches were selected for the deposit and distribution of the

spoil: a single share was allotted to a foot-soldier; two for a

sergeant on horseback; four to a knight; and larger proportions

according to the rank and merit of the barons and princes. For

violating this sacred engagement, a knight belonging to the count

of St. Paul was hanged with his shield and coat of arms round his

neck; his example might render similar offenders more artful and

discreet; but avarice was more powerful than fear; and it is

generally believed that the secret far exceeded the acknowledged

plunder. Yet the magnitude of the prize surpassed the largest

scale of experience or expectation. 88 After the whole had been

equally divided between the French and Venetians, fifty thousand

marks were deducted to satisfy the debts of the former and the

demands of the latter. The residue of the French amounted to four

hundred thousand marks of silver, 89 about eight hundred thousand

pounds sterling; nor can I better appreciate the value of that

sum in the public and private transactions of the age, than by

defining it as seven times the annual revenue of the kingdom of

England. 90

85 (return) [ Ceciderunt tamen eâ die civium quasi duo millia,

&c., (Gunther, c. 18.) Arithmetic is an excellent touchstone to

try the amplifications of passion and rhetoric.]

86 (return) [ Quidam (says Innocent III., Gesta, c. 94, p. 538)

nec religioni, nec ætati, nec sexui pepercerunt: sed

fornicationes, adulteria, et incestus in oculis omnium

exercentes, non solûm maritatas et viduas, sed et matronas et

virgines Deoque dicatas, exposuerunt spurcitiis garcionum.

Villehardouin takes no notice of these common incidents.]

87 (return) [ Nicetas saved, and afterwards married, a noble

virgin, (p. 380,) whom a soldier, eti martusi polloiV onhdon

epibrimwmenoV, had almost violated in spite of the entolai,

entalmata eu gegonotwn.]

88 (return) [ Of the general mass of wealth, Gunther observes, ut

de pauperibus et advenis cives ditissimi redderentur, (Hist. C.

P. c. 18; (Villehardouin, (No. 132,) that since the creation, ne

fu tant gaaignié dans une ville; Baldwin, (Gesta, c. 92,) ut

tantum tota non videatur possidere Latinitas.]

89 (return) [ Villehardouin, No. 133—135. Instead of 400,000,

there is a various reading of 500,000. The Venetians had offered

to take the whole booty, and to give 400 marks to each knight,

200 to each priest and horseman, and 100 to each foot-soldier:

they would have been great losers, (Le Beau, Hist. du. Bas Empire

tom. xx. p. 506. I know not from whence.)]

90 (return) [ At the council of Lyons (A.D. 1245) the English

ambassadors stated the revenue of the crown as below that of the

foreign clergy, which amounted to 60,000 marks a year, (Matthew

Paris, p. 451 Hume’s Hist. of England, vol. ii. p. 170.)]

In this great revolution we enjoy the singular felicity of

comparing the narratives of Villehardouin and Nicetas, the

opposite feelings of the marshal of Champagne and the Byzantine

senator. 91 At the first view it should seem that the wealth of

Constantinople was only transferred from one nation to another;

and that the loss and sorrow of the Greeks is exactly balanced by

the joy and advantage of the Latins. But in the miserable account

of war, the gain is never equivalent to the loss, the pleasure to

the pain; the smiles of the Latins were transient and fallacious;

the Greeks forever wept over the ruins of their country; and

their real calamities were aggravated by sacrilege and mockery.

What benefits accrued to the conquerors from the three fires

which annihilated so vast a portion of the buildings and riches

of the city? What a stock of such things, as could neither be

used nor transported, was maliciously or wantonly destroyed! How

much treasure was idly wasted in gaming, debauchery, and riot!

And what precious objects were bartered for a vile price by the

impatience or ignorance of the soldiers, whose reward was stolen

by the base industry of the last of the Greeks! These alone, who

had nothing to lose, might derive some profit from the

revolution; but the misery of the upper ranks of society is

strongly painted in the personal adventures of Nicetas himself.

His stately palace had been reduced to ashes in the second

conflagration; and the senator, with his family and friends,

found an obscure shelter in another house which he possessed near

the church of St. Sophia. It was the door of this mean habitation

that his friend, the Venetian merchant, guarded in the disguise

of a soldier, till Nicetas could save, by a precipitate flight,

the relics of his fortune and the chastity of his daughter. In a

cold, wintry season, these fugitives, nursed in the lap of

prosperity, departed on foot; his wife was with child; the

desertion of their slaves compelled them to carry their baggage

on their own shoulders; and their women, whom they placed in the

centre, were exhorted to conceal their beauty with dirt, instead

of adorning it with paint and jewels Every step was exposed to

insult and danger: the threats of the strangers were less painful

than the taunts of the plebeians, with whom they were now

levelled; nor did the exiles breathe in safety till their

mournful pilgrimage was concluded at Selymbria, above forty miles

from the capital. On the way they overtook the patriarch, without

attendance and almost without apparel, riding on an ass, and

reduced to a state of apostolical poverty, which, had it been

voluntary, might perhaps have been meritorious. In the mean

while, his desolate churches were profaned by the licentiousness

and party zeal of the Latins. After stripping the gems and

pearls, they converted the chalices into drinking-cups; their

tables, on which they gamed and feasted, were covered with the

pictures of Christ and the saints; and they trampled under foot

the most venerable objects of the Christian worship. In the

cathedral of St. Sophia, the ample veil of the sanctuary was rent

asunder for the sake of the golden fringe; and the altar, a

monument of art and riches, was broken in pieces and shared among

the captors. Their mules and horses were laden with the wrought

silver and gilt carvings, which they tore down from the doors and

pulpit; and if the beasts stumbled under the burden, they were

stabbed by their impatient drivers, and the holy pavement

streamed with their impure blood. A prostitute was seated on the

throne of the patriarch; and that daughter of Belial, as she is

styled, sung and danced in the church, to ridicule the hymns and

processions of the Orientals. Nor were the repositories of the

royal dead secure from violation: in the church of the Apostles,

the tombs of the emperors were rifled; and it is said, that after

six centuries the corpse of Justinian was found without any signs

of decay or putrefaction. In the streets, the French and Flemings

clothed themselves and their horses in painted robes and flowing

head-dresses of linen; and the coarse intemperance of their

feasts 92 insulted the splendid sobriety of the East. To expose

the arms of a people of scribes and scholars, they affected to

display a pen, an inkhorn, and a sheet of paper, without

discerning that the instruments of science and valor were _alike_

feeble and useless in the hands of the modern Greeks.

91 (return) [ The disorders of the sack of Constantinople, and

his own adventures, are feelingly described by Nicetas, p.

367—369, and in the Status Urb. C. P. p. 375—384. His complaints,

even of sacrilege, are justified by Innocent III., (Gesta, c.

92;) but Villehardouin does not betray a symptom of pity or

remorse.]

92 (return) [ If I rightly apprehend the Greek of Nicetas’s

receipts, their favorite dishes were boiled buttocks of beef,

salt pork and peas, and soup made of garlic and sharp or sour

herbs, (p. 382.)]

Their reputation and their language encouraged them, however, to

despise the ignorance and to overlook the progress of the Latins.

93 In the love of the arts, the national difference was still

more obvious and real; the Greeks preserved with reverence the

works of their ancestors, which they could not imitate; and, in

the destruction of the statues of Constantinople, we are provoked

to join in the complaints and invectives of the Byzantine

historian. 94 We have seen how the rising city was adorned by the

vanity and despotism of the Imperial founder: in the ruins of

paganism, some gods and heroes were saved from the axe of

superstition; and the forum and hippodrome were dignified with

the relics of a better age. Several of these are described by

Nicetas, 95 in a florid and affected style; and from his

descriptions I shall select some interesting particulars. _1._

The victorious charioteers were cast in bronze, at their own or

the public charge, and fitly placed in the hippodrome: they stood

aloft in their chariots, wheeling round the goal: the spectators

could admire their attitude, and judge of the resemblance; and of

these figures, the most perfect might have been transported from

the Olympic stadium. _2._ The sphinx, river-horse, and crocodile,

denote the climate and manufacture of Egypt and the spoils of

that ancient province. _3._ The she-wolf suckling Romulus and

Remus, a subject alike pleasing to the _old_ and the _new_

Romans, but which could really be treated before the decline of

the Greek sculpture. _4._ An eagle holding and tearing a serpent

in his talons, a domestic monument of the Byzantines, which they

ascribed, not to a human artist, but to the magic power of the

philosopher Apollonius, who, by this talisman, delivered the city

from such venomous reptiles. _5._ An ass and his driver, which

were erected by Augustus in his colony of Nicopolis, to

commemorate a verbal omen of the victory of Actium. _6._ An

equestrian statue which passed, in the vulgar opinion, for

Joshua, the Jewish conqueror, stretching out his hand to stop the

course of the descending sun. A more classical tradition

recognized the figures of Bellerophon and Pegasus; and the free

attitude of the steed seemed to mark that he trod on air, rather

than on the earth. _7._ A square and lofty obelisk of brass; the

sides were embossed with a variety of picturesque and rural

scenes, birds singing; rustics laboring, or playing on their

pipes; sheep bleating; lambs skipping; the sea, and a scene of

fish and fishing; little naked cupids laughing, playing, and

pelting each other with apples; and, on the summit, a female

figure, turning with the slightest breath, and thence denominated

_the wind’s attendant_. _8._ The Phrygian shepherd presenting to

Venus the prize of beauty, the apple of discord. _9._ The

incomparable statue of Helen, which is delineated by Nicetas in

the words of admiration and love: her well-turned feet, snowy

arms, rosy lips, bewitching smiles, swimming eyes, arched

eyebrows, the harmony of her shape, the lightness of her drapery,

and her flowing locks that waved in the wind; a beauty that might

have moved her Barbarian destroyers to pity and remorse. _10._

The manly or divine form of Hercules, 96 as he was restored to

life by the masterhand of Lysippus; of such magnitude, that his

thumb was equal to his waist, his leg to the stature, of a common

man: 97 his chest ample, his shoulders broad, his limbs strong

and muscular, his hair curled, his aspect commanding. Without his

bow, or quiver, or club, his lion’s skin carelessly thrown over

him, he was seated on an osier basket, his right leg and arm

stretched to the utmost, his left knee bent, and supporting his

elbow, his head reclining on his left hand, his countenance

indignant and pensive. _11._ A colossal statue of Juno, which had

once adorned her temple of Samos, the enormous head by four yoke

of oxen was laboriously drawn to the palace. _12._ Another

colossus, of Pallas or Minerva, thirty feet in height, and

representing with admirable spirit the attributes and character

of the martial maid. Before we accuse the Latins, it is just to

remark, that this Pallas was destroyed after the first siege, by

the fear and superstition of the Greeks themselves. 98 The other

statues of brass which I have enumerated were broken and melted

by the unfeeling avarice of the crusaders: the cost and labor

were consumed in a moment; the soul of genius evaporated in

smoke; and the remnant of base metal was coined into money for

the payment of the troops. Bronze is not the most durable of

monuments: from the marble forms of Phidias and Praxiteles, the

Latins might turn aside with stupid contempt; 99 but unless they

were crushed by some accidental injury, those useless stones

stood secure on their pedestals. 100 The most enlightened of the

strangers, above the gross and sensual pursuits of their

countrymen, more piously exercised the right of conquest in the

search and seizure of the relics of the saints. 101 Immense was

the supply of heads and bones, crosses and images, that were

scattered by this revolution over the churches of Europe; and

such was the increase of pilgrimage and oblation, that no branch,

perhaps, of more lucrative plunder was imported from the East.

102 Of the writings of antiquity, many that still existed in the

twelfth century, are now lost. But the pilgrims were not

solicitous to save or transport the volumes of an unknown tongue:

the perishable substance of paper or parchment can only be

preserved by the multiplicity of copies; the literature of the

Greeks had almost centred in the metropolis; and, without

computing the extent of our loss, we may drop a tear over the

libraries that have perished in the triple fire of

Constantinople. 103

93 (return) [ Nicetas uses very harsh expressions, par

agrammatoiV BarbaroiV, kai teleon analfabhtoiV, (Fragment, apud

Fabric. Bibliot. Græc. tom. vi. p. 414.) This reproach, it is

true, applies most strongly to their ignorance of Greek and of

Homer. In their own language, the Latins of the xiith and xiiith

centuries were not destitute of literature. See Harris’s

Philological Inquiries, p. iii. c. 9, 10, 11.]

94 (return) [ Nicetas was of Chonæ in Phrygia, (the old Colossæ

of St. Paul:) he raised himself to the honors of senator, judge

of the veil, and great logothete; beheld the fall of the empire,

retired to Nice, and composed an elaborate history from the death

of Alexius Comnenus to the reign of Henry.]

95 (return) [ A manuscript of Nicetas in the Bodleian library

contains this curious fragment on the statues of Constantinople,

which fraud, or shame, or rather carelessness, has dropped in the

common editions. It is published by Fabricius, (Bibliot. Græc.

tom. vi. p. 405—416,) and immoderately praised by the late

ingenious Mr. Harris of Salisbury, (Philological Inquiries, p.

iii. c. 5, p. 301—312.)]

96 (return) [ To illustrate the statue of Hercules, Mr. Harris

quotes a Greek epigram, and engraves a beautiful gem, which does

not, however, copy the attitude of the statue: in the latter,

Hercules had not his club, and his right leg and arm were

extended.]

97 (return) [ I transcribe these proportions, which appear to me

inconsistent with each other; and may possibly show, that the

boasted taste of Nicetas was no more than affectation and

vanity.]

98 (return) [ Nicetas in Isaaco Angelo et Alexio, c. 3, p. 359.

The Latin editor very properly observes, that the historian, in

his bombast style, produces ex pulice elephantem.]

99 (return) [ In two passages of Nicetas (edit. Paris, p. 360.

Fabric. p. 408) the Latins are branded with the lively reproach

of oi tou kalou anerastoi barbaroi, and their avarice of brass is

clearly expressed. Yet the Venetians had the merit of removing

four bronze horses from Constantinople to the place of St. Mark,

(Sanuto, Vite del Dogi, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum,

tom. xxii. p. 534.)]

100 (return) [ Winckelman, Hist. de l’Art. tom. iii. p. 269,

270.]

101 (return) [ See the pious robbery of the abbot Martin, who

transferred a rich cargo to his monastery of Paris, diocese of

Basil, (Gunther, Hist. C. P. c. 19, 23, 24.) Yet in secreting

this booty, the saint incurred an excommunication, and perhaps

broke his oath. (Compare Wilken vol. v. p. 308.—M.)]

102 (return) [ Fleury, Hist. Eccles tom. xvi. p. 139—145.]

103 (return) [ I shall conclude this chapter with the notice of a

modern history, which illustrates the taking of Constantinople by

the Latins; but which has fallen somewhat late into my hands.

Paolo Ramusio, the son of the compiler of Voyages, was directed

by the senate of Venice to write the history of the conquest: and

this order, which he received in his youth, he executed in a

mature age, by an elegant Latin work, de Bello

Constantinopolitano et Imperatoribus Comnenis per Gallos et

Venetos restitutis, (Venet. 1635, in folio.) Ramusio, or

Rhamnusus, transcribes and translates, sequitur ad unguem, a MS.

of Villehardouin, which he possessed; but he enriches his

narrative with Greek and Latin materials, and we are indebted to

him for a correct state of the fleet, the names of the fifty

Venetian nobles who commanded the galleys of the republic, and

the patriot opposition of Pantaleon Barbus to the choice of the

doge for emperor.]

Chapter LXI: Partition Of The Empire By The French And

Venetians.—Part I.

Partition Of The Empire By The French And Venetians,—Five Latin

Emperors Of The Houses Of Flanders And Courtenay.— Their Wars

Against The Bulgarians And Greeks.—Weakness And Poverty Of The

Latin Empire.—Recovery Of Constantinople By The Greeks.—General

Consequences Of The Crusades.

After the death of the lawful princes, the French and Venetians,

confident of justice and victory, agreed to divide and regulate

their future possessions. 1 It was stipulated by treaty, that

twelve electors, six of either nation, should be nominated; that

a majority should choose the emperor of the East; and that, if

the votes were equal, the decision of chance should ascertain the

successful candidate. To him, with all the titles and

prerogatives of the Byzantine throne, they assigned the two

palaces of Boucoleon and Blachernæ, with a fourth part of the

Greek monarchy. It was defined that the three remaining portions

should be equally shared between the republic of Venice and the

barons of France; that each feudatory, with an honorable

exception for the doge, should acknowledge and perform the duties

of homage and military service to the supreme head of the empire;

that the nation which gave an emperor, should resign to their

brethren the choice of a patriarch; and that the pilgrims,

whatever might be their impatience to visit the Holy Land, should

devote another year to the conquest and defence of the Greek

provinces. After the conquest of Constantinople by the Latins,

the treaty was confirmed and executed; and the first and most

important step was the creation of an emperor. The six electors

of the French nation were all ecclesiastics, the abbot of Loces,

the archbishop elect of Acre in Palestine, and the bishops of

Troyes, Soissons, Halberstadt, and Bethlehem, the last of whom

exercised in the camp the office of pope’s legate: their

profession and knowledge were respectable; and as _they_ could

not be the objects, they were best qualified to be the authors of

the choice. The six Venetians were the principal servants of the

state, and in this list the noble families of Querini and

Contarini are still proud to discover their ancestors. The twelve

assembled in the chapel of the palace; and after the solemn

invocation of the Holy Ghost, they proceeded to deliberate and

vote. A just impulse of respect and gratitude prompted them to

crown the virtues of the doge; his wisdom had inspired their

enterprise; and the most youthful knights might envy and applaud

the exploits of blindness and age. But the patriot Dandolo was

devoid of all personal ambition, and fully satisfied that he had

been judged worthy to reign. His nomination was overruled by the

Venetians themselves: his countrymen, and perhaps his friends, 2

represented, with the eloquence of truth, the mischiefs that

might arise to national freedom and the common cause, from the

union of two incompatible characters, of the first magistrate of

a republic and the emperor of the East. The exclusion of the doge

left room for the more equal merits of Boniface and Baldwin; and

at their names all meaner candidates respectfully withdrew. The

marquis of Montferrat was recommended by his mature age and fair

reputation, by the choice of the adventurers, and the wishes of

the Greeks; nor can I believe that Venice, the mistress of the

sea, could be seriously apprehensive of a petty lord at the foot

of the Alps. 3 But the count of Flanders was the chief of a

wealthy and warlike people: he was valiant, pious, and chaste; in

the prime of life, since he was only thirty-two years of age; a

descendant of Charlemagne, a cousin of the king of France, and a

compeer of the prelates and barons who had yielded with

reluctance to the command of a foreigner. Without the chapel,

these barons, with the doge and marquis at their head, expected

the decision of the twelve electors. It was announced by the

bishop of Soissons, in the name of his colleagues: “Ye have sworn

to obey the prince whom we should choose: by our unanimous

suffrage, Baldwin count of Flanders and Hainault is now your

sovereign, and the emperor of the East.” He was saluted with loud

applause, and the proclamation was reechoed through the city by

the joy of the Latins, and the trembling adulation of the Greeks.

Boniface was the first to kiss the hand of his rival, and to

raise him on the buckler: and Baldwin was transported to the

cathedral, and solemnly invested with the purple buskins. At the

end of three weeks he was crowned by the legate, in the vacancy

of the patriarch; but the Venetian clergy soon filled the chapter

of St. Sophia, seated Thomas Morosini on the ecclesiastical

throne, and employed every art to perpetuate in their own nation

the honors and benefices of the Greek church. 4 Without delay the

successor of Constantine instructed Palestine, France, and Rome,

of this memorable revolution. To Palestine he sent, as a trophy,

the gates of Constantinople, and the chain of the harbor; 5 and

adopted, from the Assise of Jerusalem, the laws or customs best

adapted to a French colony and conquest in the East. In his

epistles, the natives of France are encouraged to swell that

colony, and to secure that conquest, to people a magnificent city

and a fertile land, which will reward the labors both of the

priest and the soldier. He congratulates the Roman pontiff on the

restoration of his authority in the East; invites him to

extinguish the Greek schism by his presence in a general council;

and implores his blessing and forgiveness for the disobedient

pilgrims. Prudence and dignity are blended in the answer of

Innocent. 6 In the subversion of the Byzantine empire, he

arraigns the vices of man, and adores the providence of God; the

conquerors will be absolved or condemned by their future conduct;

the validity of their treaty depends on the judgment of St.

Peter; but he inculcates their most sacred duty of establishing a

just subordination of obedience and tribute, from the Greeks to

the Latins, from the magistrate to the clergy, and from the

clergy to the pope.

1 (return) [ See the original treaty of partition, in the

Venetian Chronicle of Andrew Dandolo, p. 326—330, and the

subsequent election in Ville hardouin, No. 136—140, with Ducange

in his Observations, and the book of his Histoire de

Constantinople sous l’Empire des François.]

2 (return) [ After mentioning the nomination of the doge by a

French elector his kinsman Andrew Dandolo approves his exclusion,

quidam Venetorum fidelis et nobilis senex, usus oratione satis

probabili, &c., which has been embroidered by modern writers from

Blondus to Le Beau.]

3 (return) [ Nicetas, (p. 384,) with the vain ignorance of a

Greek, describes the marquis of Montferrat as a _maritime_ power.

Dampardian de oikeisqai paralion. Was he deceived by the

Byzantine theme of Lombardy which extended along the coast of

Calabria?]

4 (return) [ They exacted an oath from Thomas Morosini to appoint

no canons of St. Sophia the lawful electors, except Venetians who

had lived ten years at Venice, &c. But the foreign clergy was

envious, the pope disapproved this national monopoly, and of the

six Latin patriarchs of Constantinople, only the first and the

last were Venetians.]

5 (return) [ Nicetas, p. 383.]

6 (return) [ The Epistles of Innocent III. are a rich fund for

the ecclesiastical and civil institution of the Latin empire of

Constantinople; and the most important of these epistles (of

which the collection in 2 vols. in folio is published by Stephen

Baluze) are inserted in his Gesta, in Muratori, Script. Rerum

Italicarum, tom. iii. p. l. c. 94—105.]

In the division of the Greek provinces, 7 the share of the

Venetians was more ample than that of the Latin emperor. No more

than one fourth was appropriated to his domain; a clear moiety of

the remainder was reserved for Venice; and the other moiety was

distributed among the adventurers of France and Lombardy. The

venerable Dandolo was proclaimed despot of Romania, and invested

after the Greek fashion with the purple buskins. He ended at

Constantinople his long and glorious life; and if the prerogative

was personal, the title was used by his successors till the

middle of the fourteenth century, with the singular, though true,

addition of lords of one fourth and a half of the Roman empire. 8

The doge, a slave of state, was seldom permitted to depart from

the helm of the republic; but his place was supplied by the

_bail_, or regent, who exercised a supreme jurisdiction over the

colony of Venetians: they possessed three of the eight quarters

of the city; and his independent tribunal was composed of six

judges, four counsellors, two chamberlains two fiscal advocates,

and a constable. Their long experience of the Eastern trade

enabled them to select their portion with discernment: they had

rashly accepted the dominion and defence of Adrianople; but it

was the more reasonable aim of their policy to form a chain of

factories, and cities, and islands, along the maritime coast,

from the neighborhood of Ragusa to the Hellespont and the

Bosphorus. The labor and cost of such extensive conquests

exhausted their treasury: they abandoned their maxims of

government, adopted a feudal system, and contented themselves

with the homage of their nobles, 9 for the possessions which

these private vassals undertook to reduce and maintain. And thus

it was that the family of Sanut acquired the duchy of Naxos,

which involved the greatest part of the archipelago. For the

price of ten thousand marks, the republic purchased of the

marquis of Montferrat the fertile Island of Crete or Candia, with

the ruins of a hundred cities; 10 but its improvement was stinted

by the proud and narrow spirit of an aristocracy; 11 and the

wisest senators would confess that the sea, not the land, was the

treasury of St. Mark. In the moiety of the adventurers the

marquis Boniface might claim the most liberal reward; and,

besides the Isle of Crete, his exclusion from the throne was

compensated by the royal title and the provinces beyond the

Hellespont. But he prudently exchanged that distant and difficult

conquest for the kingdom of Thessalonica Macedonia, twelve days’

journey from the capital, where he might be supported by the

neighboring powers of his brother-in-law the king of Hungary. His

progress was hailed by the voluntary or reluctant acclamations of

the natives; and Greece, the proper and ancient Greece, again

received a Latin conqueror, 12 who trod with indifference that

classic ground. He viewed with a careless eye the beauties of the

valley of Tempe; traversed with a cautious step the straits of

Thermopylæ; occupied the unknown cities of Thebes, Athens, and

Argos; and assaulted the fortifications of Corinth and Napoli, 13

which resisted his arms. The lots of the Latin pilgrims were

regulated by chance, or choice, or subsequent exchange; and they

abused, with intemperate joy, their triumph over the lives and

fortunes of a great people. After a minute survey of the

provinces, they weighed in the scales of avarice the revenue of

each district, the advantage of the situation, and the ample or

scanty supplies for the maintenance of soldiers and horses. Their

presumption claimed and divided the long-lost dependencies of the

Roman sceptre: the Nile and Euphrates rolled through their

imaginary realms; and happy was the warrior who drew for his

prize the palace of the Turkish sultan of Iconium. 14 I shall not

descend to the pedigree of families and the rent-roll of estates,

but I wish to specify that the counts of Blois and St. Pol were

invested with the duchy of Nice and the lordship of Demotica: 15

the principal fiefs were held by the service of constable,

chamberlain, cup-bearer, butler, and chief cook; and our

historian, Jeffrey of Villehardouin, obtained a fair

establishment on the banks of the Hebrus, and united the double

office of marshal of Champagne and Romania. At the head of his

knights and archers, each baron mounted on horseback to secure

the possession of his share, and their first efforts were

generally successful. But the public force was weakened by their

dispersion; and a thousand quarrels must arise under a law, and

among men, whose sole umpire was the sword. Within three months

after the conquest of Constantinople, the emperor and the king of

Thessalonica drew their hostile followers into the field; they

were reconciled by the authority of the doge, the advice of the

marshal, and the firm freedom of their peers. 16

7 (return) [ In the treaty of partition, most of the names are

corrupted by the scribes: they might be restored, and a good map,

suited to the last age of the Byzantine empire, would be an

improvement of geography. But, alas D’Anville is no more!]

8 (return) [ Their style was dominus quartæ partis et dimidiæ

imperii Romani, till Giovanni Dolfino, who was elected doge in

the year of 1356, (Sanuto, p. 530, 641.) For the government of

Constantinople, see Ducange, Histoire de C. P. i. 37.]

9 (return) [ Ducange (Hist. de C. P. ii. 6) has marked the

conquests made by the state or nobles of Venice of the Islands of

Candia, Corfu, Cephalonia, Zante, Naxos, Paros, Melos, Andros,

Mycone, Syro, Cea, and Lemnos.]

10 (return) [ Boniface sold the Isle of Candia, August 12, A.D.

1204. See the act in Sanuto, p. 533: but I cannot understand how

it could be his mother’s portion, or how she could be the

daughter of an emperor Alexius.]

11 (return) [ In the year 1212, the doge Peter Zani sent a colony

to Candia, drawn from every quarter of Venice. But in their

savage manners and frequent rebellions, the Candiots may be

compared to the Corsicans under the yoke of Genoa; and when I

compare the accounts of Belon and Tournefort, I cannot discern

much difference between the Venetian and the Turkish island.]

12 (return) [ Villehardouin (No. 159, 160, 173—177) and Nicetas

(p. 387—394) describe the expedition into Greece of the marquis

Boniface. The Choniate might derive his information from his

brother Michael, archbishop of Athens, whom he paints as an

orator, a statesman, and a saint. His encomium of Athens, and the

description of Tempe, should be published from the Bodleian MS.

of Nicetas, (Fabric. Bibliot. Græc. tom. vi. p. 405,) and would

have deserved Mr. Harris’s inquiries.]

13 (return) [ Napoli de Romania, or Nauplia, the ancient seaport

of Argos, is still a place of strength and consideration, situate

on a rocky peninsula, with a good harbor, (Chandler’s Travels

into Greece, p. 227.)]

14 (return) [ I have softened the expression of Nicetas, who

strives to expose the presumption of the Franks. See the Rebus

post C. P. expugnatam, p. 375—384.]

15 (return) [ A city surrounded by the River Hebrus, and six

leagues to the south of Adrianople, received from its double wall

the Greek name of Didymoteichos, insensibly corrupted into

Demotica and Dimot. I have preferred the more convenient and

modern appellation of Demotica. This place was the last Turkish

residence of Charles XII.]

16 (return) [ Their quarrel is told by Villehardouin (No.

146—158) with the spirit of freedom. The merit and reputation of

the marshal are so acknowledged by the Greek historian (p. 387)

mega para touV tvn Dauinwn dunamenou strateumasi: unlike some

modern heroes, whose exploits are only visible in their own

memoirs. * Note: William de Champlite, brother of the count of

Dijon, assumed the title of Prince of Achaia: on the death of his

brother, he returned, with regret, to France, to assume his

paternal inheritance, and left Villehardouin his “_bailli_,” on

condition that if he did not return within a year Villehardouin

was to retain an investiture. Brosset’s Add. to Le Beau, vol.

xvii. p. 200. M. Brosset adds, from the Greek chronicler edited

by M. Buchon, the somewhat unknightly trick by which

Villehardouin disembarrassed himself from the troublesome claim

of Robert, the cousin of the count of Dijon. to the succession.

He contrived that Robert should arrive just fifteen days too

late; and with the general concurrence of the assembled knights

was himself invested with the principality. Ibid. p. 283. M.]

Two fugitives, who had reigned at Constantinople, still asserted

the title of emperor; and the subjects of their fallen throne

might be moved to pity by the misfortunes of the elder Alexius,

or excited to revenge by the spirit of Mourzoufle. A domestic

alliance, a common interest, a similar guilt, and the merit of

extinguishing his enemies, a brother and a nephew, induced the

more recent usurper to unite with the former the relics of his

power. Mourzoufle was received with smiles and honors in the camp

of his father Alexius; but the wicked can never love, and should

rarely trust, their fellow-criminals; he was seized in the bath,

deprived of his eyes, stripped of his troops and treasures, and

turned out to wander an object of horror and contempt to those

who with more propriety could hate, and with more justice could

punish, the assassin of the emperor Isaac and his son. As the

tyrant, pursued by fear or remorse, was stealing over to Asia, he

was seized by the Latins of Constantinople, and condemned, after

an open trial, to an ignominious death. His judges debated the

mode of his execution, the axe, the wheel, or the stake; and it

was resolved that Mourzoufle 17 should ascend the Theodosian

column, a pillar of white marble of one hundred and forty-seven

feet in height. 18 From the summit he was cast down headlong, and

dashed in pieces on the pavement, in the presence of innumerable

spectators, who filled the forum of Taurus, and admired the

accomplishment of an old prediction, which was explained by this

singular event. 19 The fate of Alexius is less tragical: he was

sent by the marquis a captive to Italy, and a gift to the king of

the Romans; but he had not much to applaud his fortune, if the

sentence of imprisonment and exile were changed from a fortress

in the Alps to a monastery in Asia. But his daughter, before the

national calamity, had been given in marriage to a young hero who

continued the succession, and restored the throne, of the Greek

princes. 20 The valor of Theodore Lascaris was signalized in the

two sieges of Constantinople. After the flight of Mourzoufle,

when the Latins were already in the city, he offered himself as

their emperor to the soldiers and people; and his ambition, which

might be virtuous, was undoubtedly brave. Could he have infused a

soul into the multitude, they might have crushed the strangers

under their feet: their abject despair refused his aid; and

Theodore retired to breathe the air of freedom in Anatolia,

beyond the immediate view and pursuit of the conquerors. Under

the title, at first of despot, and afterwards of emperor, he drew

to his standard the bolder spirits, who were fortified against

slavery by the contempt of life; and as every means was lawful

for the public safety implored without scruple the alliance of

the Turkish sultan Nice, where Theodore established his

residence, Prusa and Philadelphia, Smyrna and Ephesus, opened

their gates to their deliverer: he derived strength and

reputation from his victories, and even from his defeats; and the

successor of Constantine preserved a fragment of the empire from

the banks of the Mæander to the suburbs of Nicomedia, and at

length of Constantinople. Another portion, distant and obscure,

was possessed by the lineal heir of the Comneni, a son of the

virtuous Manuel, a grandson of the tyrant Andronicus. His name

was Alexius; and the epithet of great 201 was applied perhaps to

his stature, rather than to his exploits. By the indulgence of

the Angeli, he was appointed governor or duke of Trebizond: 21

211 his birth gave him ambition, the revolution independence;

and, without changing his title, he reigned in peace from Sinope

to the Phasis, along the coast of the Black Sea. His nameless son

and successor 212 is described as the vassal of the sultan, whom

he served with two hundred lances: that Comnenian prince was no

more than duke of Trebizond, and the title of emperor was first

assumed by the pride and envy of the grandson of Alexius. In the

West, a third fragment was saved from the common shipwreck by

Michael, a bastard of the house of Angeli, who, before the

revolution, had been known as a hostage, a soldier, and a rebel.

His flight from the camp of the marquis Boniface secured his

freedom; by his marriage with the governor’s daughter, he

commanded the important place of Durazzo, assumed the title of

despot, and founded a strong and conspicuous principality in

Epirus, Ætolia, and Thessaly, which have ever been peopled by a

warlike race. The Greeks, who had offered their service to their

new sovereigns, were excluded by the haughty Latins 22 from all

civil and military honors, as a nation born to tremble and obey.

Their resentment prompted them to show that they might have been

useful friends, since they could be dangerous enemies: their

nerves were braced by adversity: whatever was learned or holy,

whatever was noble or valiant, rolled away into the independent

states of Trebizond, Epirus, and Nice; and a single patrician is

marked by the ambiguous praise of attachment and loyalty to the

Franks. The vulgar herd of the cities and the country would have

gladly submitted to a mild and regular servitude; and the

transient disorders of war would have been obliterated by some

years of industry and peace. But peace was banished, and industry

was crushed, in the disorders of the feudal system. The _Roman_

emperors of Constantinople, if they were endowed with abilities,

were armed with power for the protection of their subjects: their

laws were wise, and their administration was simple. The Latin

throne was filled by a titular prince, the chief, and often the

servant, of his licentious confederates; the fiefs of the empire,

from a kingdom to a castle, were held and ruled by the sword of

the barons; and their discord, poverty, and ignorance, extended

the ramifications of tyranny to the most sequestered villages.

The Greeks were oppressed by the double weight of the priests,

who were invested with temporal power, and of the soldier, who

was inflamed by fanatic hatred; and the insuperable bar of

religion and language forever separated the stranger and the

native. As long as the crusaders were united at Constantinople,

the memory of their conquest, and the terror of their arms,

imposed silence on the captive land: their dispersion betrayed

the smallness of their numbers and the defects of their

discipline; and some failures and mischances revealed the secret,

that they were not invincible. As the fears of the Greeks abated,

their hatred increased. They murdered; they conspired; and before

a year of slavery had elapsed, they implored, or accepted, the

succor of a Barbarian, whose power they had felt, and whose

gratitude they trusted. 23

17 (return) [ See the fate of Mourzoufle in Nicetas, (p. 393,)

Villehardouin, (No. 141—145, 163,) and Guntherus, (c. 20, 21.)

Neither the marshal nor the monk afford a grain of pity for a

tyrant or rebel, whose punishment, however, was more unexampled

than his crime.]

18 (return) [ The column of Arcadius, which represents in basso

relievo his victories, or those of his father Theodosius, is

still extant at Constantinople. It is described and measured,

Gyllius, (Topograph. iv. 7,) Banduri, (ad l. i. Antiquit. C. P.

p. 507, &c.,) and Tournefort, (Voyage du Levant, tom. ii. lettre

xii. p. 231.) (Compare Wilken, note, vol. v p. 388.—M.)]

19 (return) [ The nonsense of Gunther and the modern Greeks

concerning this _columna fatidica_, is unworthy of notice; but it

is singular enough, that fifty years before the Latin conquest,

the poet Tzetzes, (Chiliad, ix. 277) relates the dream of a

matron, who saw an army in the forum, and a man sitting on the

column, clapping his hands, and uttering a loud exclamation. *

Note: We read in the “Chronicle of the Conquest of

Constantinople, and of the Establishment of the French in the

Morea,” translated by J A Buchon, Paris, 1825, p. 64 that Leo

VI., called the Philosopher, had prophesied that a perfidious

emperor should be precipitated from the top of this column. The

crusaders considered themselves under an obligation to fulfil

this prophecy. Brosset, note on Le Beau, vol. xvii. p. 180. M

Brosset announces that a complete edition of this work, of which

the original Greek of the first book only has been published by

M. Buchon in preparation, to form part of the new series of the

Byzantine historian.—M.]

20 (return) [ The dynasties of Nice, Trebizond, and Epirus (of

which Nicetas saw the origin without much pleasure or hope) are

learnedly explored, and clearly represented, in the Familiæ

Byzantinæ of Ducange.]

201 (return) [ This was a title, not a personal appellation.

Joinville speaks of the “Grant Comnenie, et sire de

Traffezzontes.” Fallmerayer, p. 82.—M.]

21 (return) [ Except some facts in Pachymer and Nicephorus

Gregoras, which will hereafter be used, the Byzantine writers

disdain to speak of the empire of Trebizond, or principality of

the _Lazi_; and among the Latins, it is conspicuous only in the

romancers of the xivth or xvth centuries. Yet the indefatigable

Ducange has dug out (Fam. Byz. p. 192) two authentic passages in

Vincent of Beauvais (l. xxxi. c. 144) and the prothonotary

Ogerius, (apud Wading, A.D. 1279, No. 4.)]

211 (return) [ On the revolutions of Trebizond under the later

empire down to this period, see Fallmerayer, Geschichte des

Kaiserthums von Trapezunt, ch. iii. The wife of Manuel fled with

her infant sons and her treasure from the relentless enmity of

Isaac Angelus. Fallmerayer conjectures that her arrival enabled

the Greeks of that region to make head against the formidable

Thamar, the Georgian queen of Teflis, p. 42. They gradually

formed a dominion on the banks of the Phasis, which the

distracted government of the Angeli neglected or were unable to

suppress. On the capture of Constantinople by the Latins, Alexius

was joined by many noble fugitives from Constantinople. He had

always retained the names of Cæsar and BasileuV. He now fixed the

seat of his empire at Trebizond; but he had never abandoned his

pretensions to the Byzantine throne, ch. iii. Fallmerayer appears

to make out a triumphant case as to the assumption of the royal

title by Alexius the First. Since the publication of M.

Fallmerayer’s work, (München, 1827,) M. Tafel has published, at

the end of the opuscula of Eustathius, a curious chronicle of

Trebizond by Michael Panaretas, (Frankfort, 1832.) It gives the

succession of the emperors, and some other curious circumstances

of their wars with the several Mahometan powers.—M.]

212 (return) [ The successor of Alexius was his son-in-law

Andronicus I., of the Comnenian family, surnamed Gidon. There

were five successions between Alexius and John, according to

Fallmerayer, p. 103. The troops of Trebizond fought in the army

of Dschelaleddin, the Karismian, against Alaleddin, the Seljukian

sultan of Roum, but as allies rather than vassals, p. 107. It was

after the defeat of Dschelaleddin that they furnished their

contingent to Alai-eddin. Fallmerayer struggles in vain to

mitigate this mark of the subjection of the Comneni to the

sultan. p. 116.—M.]

22 (return) [ The portrait of the French Latins is drawn in

Nicetas by the hand of prejudice and resentment: ouden tvn allwn

eqnvn eiV ''AreoV?rga parasumbeblhsqai sjisin hneiconto all’ oude

tiV tvn caritwn h tvn?mousvn para toiV barbaroiV toutoiV

epexenizeto, kai para touto oimai thn jusin hsan anhmeroi, kai

ton xolon eixon tou logou prstreconta. [P. 791 Ed. Bek.]

23 (return) [ I here begin to use, with freedom and confidence,

the eight books of the Histoire de C. P. sous l’Empire des

François, which Ducange has given as a supplement to

Villehardouin; and which, in a barbarous style, deserves the

praise of an original and classic work.]

The Latin conquerors had been saluted with a solemn and early

embassy from John, or Joannice, or Calo-John, the revolted chief

of the Bulgarians and Walachians. He deemed himself their

brother, as the votary of the Roman pontiff, from whom he had

received the regal title and a holy banner; and in the subversion

of the Greek monarchy, he might aspire to the name of their

friend and accomplice. But Calo-John was astonished to find, that

the Count of Flanders had assumed the pomp and pride of the

successors of Constantine; and his ambassadors were dismissed

with a haughty message, that the rebel must deserve a pardon, by

touching with his forehead the footstool of the Imperial throne.

His resentment 24 would have exhaled in acts of violence and

blood: his cooler policy watched the rising discontent of the

Greeks; affected a tender concern for their sufferings; and

promised, that their first struggles for freedom should be

supported by his person and kingdom. The conspiracy was

propagated by national hatred, the firmest band of association

and secrecy: the Greeks were impatient to sheathe their daggers

in the breasts of the victorious strangers; but the execution was

prudently delayed, till Henry, the emperor’s brother, had

transported the flower of his troops beyond the Hellespont. Most

of the towns and villages of Thrace were true to the moment and

the signal; and the Latins, without arms or suspicion, were

slaughtered by the vile and merciless revenge of their slaves.

From Demotica, the first scene of the massacre, the surviving

vassals of the count of St. Pol escaped to Adrianople; but the

French and Venetians, who occupied that city, were slain or

expelled by the furious multitude: the garrisons that could

effect their retreat fell back on each other towards the

metropolis; and the fortresses, that separately stood against the

rebels, were ignorant of each other’s and of their sovereign’s

fate. The voice of fame and fear announced the revolt of the

Greeks and the rapid approach of their Bulgarian ally; and

Calo-John, not depending on the forces of his own kingdom, had

drawn from the Scythian wilderness a body of fourteen thousand

Comans, who drank, as it was said, the blood of their captives,

and sacrificed the Christians on the altars of their gods. 25

24 (return) [ In Calo-John’s answer to the pope we may find his

claims and complaints, (Gesta Innocent III. c. 108, 109:) he was

cherished at Rome as the prodigal son.]

25 (return) [ The Comans were a Tartar or Turkman horde, which

encamped in the xiith and xiiith centuries on the verge of

Moldavia. The greater part were pagans, but some were Mahometans,

and the whole horde was converted to Christianity (A.D. 1370) by

Lewis, king of Hungary.]

Alarmed by this sudden and growing danger, the emperor despatched

a swift messenger to recall Count Henry and his troops; and had

Baldwin expected the return of his gallant brother, with a supply

of twenty thousand Armenians, he might have encountered the

invader with equal numbers and a decisive superiority of arms and

discipline. But the spirit of chivalry could seldom discriminate

caution from cowardice; and the emperor took the field with a

hundred and forty knights, and their train of archers and

sergeants. The marshal, who dissuaded and obeyed, led the

vanguard in their march to Adrianople; the main body was

commanded by the count of Blois; the aged doge of Venice followed

with the rear; and their scanty numbers were increased from all

sides by the fugitive Latins. They undertook to besiege the

rebels of Adrianople; and such was the pious tendency of the

crusades that they employed the holy week in pillaging the

country for their subsistence, and in framing engines for the

destruction of their fellow-Christians. But the Latins were soon

interrupted and alarmed by the light cavalry of the Comans, who

boldly skirmished to the edge of their imperfect lines: and a

proclamation was issued by the marshal of Romania, that, on the

trumpet’s sound, the cavalry should mount and form; but that

none, under pain of death, should abandon themselves to a

desultory and dangerous pursuit. This wise injunction was first

disobeyed by the count of Blois, who involved the emperor in his

rashness and ruin. The Comans, of the Parthian or Tartar school,

fled before their first charge; but after a career of two

leagues, when the knights and their horses were almost

breathless, they suddenly turned, rallied, and encompassed the

heavy squadrons of the Franks. The count was slain on the field;

the emperor was made prisoner; and if the one disdained to fly,

if the other refused to yield, their personal bravery made a poor

atonement for their ignorance, or neglect, of the duties of a

general. 26

26 (return) [ Nicetas, from ignorance or malice, imputes the

defeat to the cowardice of Dandolo, (p. 383;) but Villehardouin

shares his own glory with his venerable friend, qui viels home

ére et gote ne veoit, mais mult ére sages et preus et vigueros,

(No. 193.) * Note: Gibbon appears to me to have misapprehended

the passage of Nicetas. He says, “that principal and subtlest

mischief. that primary cause of all the horrible miseries

suffered by the _Romans_,” i. e. the Byzantines. It is an

effusion of malicious triumph against the Venetians, to whom he

always ascribes the capture of Constantinople.—M.]

Chapter LXI: Partition Of The Empire By The French And

Venetians.—Part II.

Proud of his victory and his royal prize, the Bulgarian advanced

to relieve Adrianople and achieve the destruction of the Latins.

They must inevitably have been destroyed, if the marshal of

Romania had not displayed a cool courage and consummate skill;

uncommon in all ages, but most uncommon in those times, when war

was a passion, rather than a science. His grief and fears were

poured into the firm and faithful bosom of the doge; but in the

camp he diffused an assurance of safety, which could only be

realized by the general belief. All day he maintained his

perilous station between the city and the Barbarians:

Villehardouin decamped in silence at the dead of night; and his

masterly retreat of three days would have deserved the praise of

Xenophon and the ten thousand. In the rear, the marshal supported

the weight of the pursuit; in the front, he moderated the

impatience of the fugitives; and wherever the Comans approached,

they were repelled by a line of impenetrable spears. On the third

day, the weary troops beheld the sea, the solitary town of

Rodosta, 27 and their friends, who had landed from the Asiatic

shore. They embraced, they wept; but they united their arms and

counsels; and in his brother’s absence, Count Henry assumed the

regency of the empire, at once in a state of childhood and

caducity. 28 If the Comans withdrew from the summer heats, seven

thousand Latins, in the hour of danger, deserted Constantinople,

their brethren, and their vows. Some partial success was

overbalanced by the loss of one hundred and twenty knights in the

field of Rusium; and of the Imperial domain, no more was left

than the capital, with two or three adjacent fortresses on the

shores of Europe and Asia. The king of Bulgaria was resistless

and inexorable; and Calo-John respectfully eluded the demands of

the pope, who conjured his new proselyte to restore peace and the

emperor to the afflicted Latins. The deliverance of Baldwin was

no longer, he said, in the power of man: that prince had died in

prison; and the manner of his death is variously related by

ignorance and credulity. The lovers of a tragic legend will be

pleased to hear, that the royal captive was tempted by the

amorous queen of the Bulgarians; that his chaste refusal exposed

him to the falsehood of a woman and the jealousy of a savage;

that his hands and feet were severed from his body; that his

bleeding trunk was cast among the carcasses of dogs and horses;

and that he breathed three days, before he was devoured by the

birds of prey. 29 About twenty years afterwards, in a wood of the

Netherlands, a hermit announced himself as the true Baldwin, the

emperor of Constantinople, and lawful sovereign of Flanders. He

related the wonders of his escape, his adventures, and his

penance, among a people prone to believe and to rebel; and, in

the first transport, Flanders acknowledged her long-lost

sovereign. A short examination before the French court detected

the impostor, who was punished with an ignominious death; but the

Flemings still adhered to the pleasing error; and the countess

Jane is accused by the gravest historians of sacrificing to her

ambition the life of an unfortunate father. 30

27 (return) [ The truth of geography, and the original text of

Villehardouin, (No. 194,) place Rodosto three days’ journey

(trois jornées) from Adrianople: but Vigenere, in his version,

has most absurdly substituted _trois heures_; and this error,

which is not corrected by Ducange has entrapped several moderns,

whose names I shall spare.]

28 (return) [ The reign and end of Baldwin are related by

Villehardouin and Nicetas, (p. 386—416;) and their omissions are

supplied by Ducange in his Observations, and to the end of his

first book.]

29 (return) [ After brushing away all doubtful and improbable

circumstances, we may prove the death of Baldwin, 1. By the firm

belief of the French barons, (Villehardouin, No. 230.) 2. By the

declaration of Calo-John himself, who excuses his not releasing

the captive emperor, quia debitum carnis exsolverat cum carcere

teneretur, (Gesta Innocent III. c. 109.) * Note: Compare Von

Raumer. Geschichte der Hohenstaufen, vol. ii. p. 237. Petitot, in

his preface to Villehardouin in the Collection des Mémoires,

relatifs a l’Histoire de France, tom. i. p. 85, expresses his

belief in the first part of the “tragic legend.”—M.]

30 (return) [ See the story of this impostor from the French and

Flemish writers in Ducange, Hist. de C. P. iii. 9; and the

ridiculous fables that were believed by the monks of St. Alban’s,

in Matthew Paris, Hist. Major, p. 271, 272.]

In all civilized hostility, a treaty is established for the

exchange or ransom of prisoners; and if their captivity be

prolonged, their condition is known, and they are treated

according to their rank with humanity or honor. But the savage

Bulgarian was a stranger to the laws of war: his prisons were

involved in darkness and silence; and above a year elapsed before

the Latins could be assured of the death of Baldwin, before his

brother, the regent Henry, would consent to assume the title of

emperor. His moderation was applauded by the Greeks as an act of

rare and inimitable virtue. Their light and perfidious ambition

was eager to seize or anticipate the moment of a vacancy, while a

law of succession, the guardian both of the prince and people,

was gradually defined and confirmed in the hereditary monarchies

of Europe. In the support of the Eastern empire, Henry was

gradually left without an associate, as the heroes of the crusade

retired from the world or from the war. The doge of Venice, the

venerable Dandolo, in the fulness of years and glory, sunk into

the grave. The marquis of Montferrat was slowly recalled from the

Peloponnesian war to the revenge of Baldwin and the defence of

Thessalonica. Some nice disputes of feudal homage and service

were reconciled in a personal interview between the emperor and

the king; they were firmly united by mutual esteem and the common

danger; and their alliance was sealed by the nuptials of Henry

with the daughter of the Italian prince. He soon deplored the

loss of his friend and father. At the persuasion of some faithful

Greeks, Boniface made a bold and successful inroad among the

hills of Rhodope: the Bulgarians fled on his approach; they

assembled to harass his retreat. On the intelligence that his

rear was attacked, without waiting for any defensive armor, he

leaped on horseback, couched his lance, and drove the enemies

before him; but in the rash pursuit he was pierced with a mortal

wound; and the head of the king of Thessalonica was presented to

Calo-John, who enjoyed the honors, without the merit, of victory.

It is here, at this melancholy event, that the pen or the voice

of Jeffrey of Villehardouin seems to drop or to expire; 31 and if

he still exercised his military office of marshal of Romania, his

subsequent exploits are buried in oblivion. 32 The character of

Henry was not unequal to his arduous situation: in the siege of

Constantinople, and beyond the Hellespont, he had deserved the

fame of a valiant knight and a skilful commander; and his courage

was tempered with a degree of prudence and mildness unknown to

his impetuous brother. In the double war against the Greeks of

Asia and the Bulgarians of Europe, he was ever the foremost on

shipboard or on horseback; and though he cautiously provided for

the success of his arms, the drooping Latins were often roused by

his example to save and to second their fearless emperor. But

such efforts, and some supplies of men and money from France,

were of less avail than the errors, the cruelty, and death, of

their most formidable adversary. When the despair of the Greek

subjects invited Calo-John as their deliverer, they hoped that he

would protect their liberty and adopt their laws: they were soon

taught to compare the degrees of national ferocity, and to

execrate the savage conqueror, who no longer dissembled his

intention of dispeopling Thrace, of demolishing the cities, and

of transplanting the inhabitants beyond the Danube. Many towns

and villages of Thrace were already evacuated: a heap of ruins

marked the place of Philippopolis, and a similar calamity was

expected at Demotica and Adrianople, by the first authors of the

revolt. They raised a cry of grief and repentance to the throne

of Henry; the emperor alone had the magnanimity to forgive and

trust them. No more than four hundred knights, with their

sergeants and archers, could be assembled under his banner; and

with this slender force he fought 321 and repulsed the Bulgarian,

who, besides his infantry, was at the head of forty thousand

horse. In this expedition, Henry felt the difference between a

hostile and a friendly country: the remaining cities were

preserved by his arms; and the savage, with shame and loss, was

compelled to relinquish his prey. The siege of Thessalonica was

the last of the evils which Calo-John inflicted or suffered: he

was stabbed in the night in his tent; and the general, perhaps

the assassin, who found him weltering in his blood, ascribed the

blow, with general applause, to the lance of St. Demetrius. 33

After several victories, the prudence of Henry concluded an

honorable peace with the successor of the tyrant, and with the

Greek princes of Nice and Epirus. If he ceded some doubtful

limits, an ample kingdom was reserved for himself and his

feudatories; and his reign, which lasted only ten years, afforded

a short interval of prosperity and peace. Far above the narrow

policy of Baldwin and Boniface, he freely intrusted to the Greeks

the most important offices of the state and army; and this

liberality of sentiment and practice was the more seasonable, as

the princes of Nice and Epirus had already learned to seduce and

employ the mercenary valor of the Latins. It was the aim of Henry

to unite and reward his deserving subjects, of every nation and

language; but he appeared less solicitous to accomplish the

impracticable union of the two churches. Pelagius, the pope’s

legate, who acted as the sovereign of Constantinople, had

interdicted the worship of the Greeks, and sternly imposed the

payment of tithes, the double procession of the Holy Ghost, and a

blind obedience to the Roman pontiff. As the weaker party, they

pleaded the duties of conscience, and implored the rights of

toleration: “Our bodies,” they said, “are Cæsar’s, but our souls

belong only to God.” The persecution was checked by the firmness

of the emperor: 34 and if we can believe that the same prince was

poisoned by the Greeks themselves, we must entertain a

contemptible idea of the sense and gratitude of mankind. His

valor was a vulgar attribute, which he shared with ten thousand

knights; but Henry possessed the superior courage to oppose, in a

superstitious age, the pride and avarice of the clergy. In the

cathedral of St. Sophia he presumed to place his throne on the

right hand of the patriarch; and this presumption excited the

sharpest censure of Pope Innocent the Third. By a salutary edict,

one of the first examples of the laws of mortmain, he prohibited

the alienation of fiefs: many of the Latins, desirous of

returning to Europe, resigned their estates to the church for a

spiritual or temporal reward; these holy lands were immediately

discharged from military service, and a colony of soldiers would

have been gradually transformed into a college of priests. 35

31 (return) [ Villehardouin, No. 257. I quote, with regret, this

lamentable conclusion, where we lose at once the original

history, and the rich illustrations of Ducange. The last pages

may derive some light from Henry’s two epistles to Innocent III.,

(Gesta, c. 106, 107.)]

32 (return) [ The marshal was alive in 1212, but he probably died

soon afterwards, without returning to France, (Ducange,

Observations sur Villehardouin, p. 238.) His fief of Messinople,

the gift of Boniface, was the ancient Maximianopolis, which

flourished in the time of Ammianus Marcellinus, among the cities

of Thrace, (No. 141.)]

321 (return) [ There was no battle. On the advance of the Latins,

John suddenly broke up his camp and retreated. The Latins

considered this unexpected deliverance almost a miracle. Le Beau

suggests the probability that the detection of the Comans, who

usually quitted the camp during the heats of summer, may have

caused the flight of the Bulgarians. Nicetas, c. 8 Villebardouin,

c. 225. Le Beau, vol. xvii. p. 242.—M.]

33 (return) [ The church of this patron of Thessalonica was

served by the canons of the holy sepulchre, and contained a

divine ointment which distilled daily and stupendous miracles,

(Ducange, Hist. de C. P. ii. 4.)]

34 (return) [ Acropolita (c. 17) observes the persecution of the

legate, and the toleration of Henry, ('Erh, * as he calls him)

kludwna katestorese. Note: Or rather 'ErrhV.—M.]

35 (return) [ See the reign of Henry, in Ducange, (Hist. de C. P.

l. i. c. 35—41, l. ii. c. 1—22,) who is much indebted to the

Epistles of the Popes. Le Beau (Hist. du Bas Empire, tom. xxi. p.

120—122) has found, perhaps in Doutreman, some laws of Henry,

which determined the service of fiefs, and the prerogatives of

the emperor.]

The virtuous Henry died at Thessalonica, in the defence of that

kingdom, and of an infant, the son of his friend Boniface. In the

two first emperors of Constantinople the male line of the counts

of Flanders was extinct. But their sister Yolande was the wife of

a French prince, the mother of a numerous progeny; and one of her

daughters had married Andrew king of Hungary, a brave and pious

champion of the cross. By seating him on the Byzantine throne,

the barons of Romania would have acquired the forces of a

neighboring and warlike kingdom; but the prudent Andrew revered

the laws of succession; and the princess Yolande, with her

husband Peter of Courtenay, count of Auxerre, was invited by the

Latins to assume the empire of the East. The royal birth of his

father, the noble origin of his mother, recommended to the barons

of France the first cousin of their king. His reputation was

fair, his possessions were ample, and in the bloody crusade

against the Albigeois, the soldiers and the priests had been

abundantly satisfied of his zeal and valor. Vanity might applaud

the elevation of a French emperor of Constantinople; but prudence

must pity, rather than envy, his treacherous and imaginary

greatness. To assert and adorn his title, he was reduced to sell

or mortgage the best of his patrimony. By these expedients, the

liberality of his royal kinsman Philip Augustus, and the national

spirit of chivalry, he was enabled to pass the Alps at the head

of one hundred and forty knights, and five thousand five hundred

sergeants and archers. After some hesitation, Pope Honorius the

Third was persuaded to crown the successor of Constantine: but he

performed the ceremony in a church without the walls, lest he

should seem to imply or to bestow any right of sovereignty over

the ancient capital of the empire. The Venetians had engaged to

transport Peter and his forces beyond the Adriatic, and the

empress, with her four children, to the Byzantine palace; but

they required, as the price of their service, that he should

recover Durazzo from the despot of Epirus. Michael Angelus, or

Comnenus, the first of his dynasty, had bequeathed the succession

of his power and ambition to Theodore, his legitimate brother,

who already threatened and invaded the establishments of the

Latins. After discharging his debt by a fruitless assault, the

emperor raised the siege to prosecute a long and perilous journey

over land from Durazzo to Thessalonica. He was soon lost in the

mountains of Epirus: the passes were fortified; his provisions

exhausted; he was delayed and deceived by a treacherous

negotiation; and, after Peter of Courtenay and the Roman legate

had been arrested in a banquet, the French troops, without

leaders or hopes, were eager to exchange their arms for the

delusive promise of mercy and bread. The Vatican thundered; and

the impious Theodore was threatened with the vengeance of earth

and heaven; but the captive emperor and his soldiers were

forgotten, and the reproaches of the pope are confined to the

imprisonment of his legate. No sooner was he satisfied by the

deliverance of the priests and a promise of spiritual obedience,

than he pardoned and protected the despot of Epirus. His

peremptory commands suspended the ardor of the Venetians and the

king of Hungary; and it was only by a natural or untimely death

36 that Peter of Courtenay was released from his hopeless

captivity. 37

36 (return) [ Acropolita (c. 14) affirms, that Peter of Courtenay

died by the sword, (ergon macairaV genesqai;) but from his dark

expressions, I should conclude a previous captivity, wV pantaV

ardhn desmwtaV poihsai sun pasi skeuesi. * The Chronicle of

Auxerre delays the emperor’s death till the year 1219; and

Auxerre is in the neighborhood of Courtenay. Note: Whatever may

have been the fact, this can hardly be made out from the

expressions of Acropolita.—M.]

37 (return) [ See the reign and death of Peter of Courtenay, in

Ducange, (Hist. de C. P. l. ii. c. 22—28,) who feebly strives to

excuse the neglect of the emperor by Honorius III.]

The long ignorance of his fate, and the presence of the lawful

sovereign, of Yolande, his wife or widow, delayed the

proclamation of a new emperor. Before her death, and in the midst

of her grief, she was delivered of a son, who was named Baldwin,

the last and most unfortunate of the Latin princes of

Constantinople. His birth endeared him to the barons of Romania;

but his childhood would have prolonged the troubles of a

minority, and his claims were superseded by the elder claims of

his brethren. The first of these, Philip of Courtenay, who

derived from his mother the inheritance of Namur, had the wisdom

to prefer the substance of a marquisate to the shadow of an

empire; and on his refusal, Robert, the second of the sons of

Peter and Yolande, was called to the throne of Constantinople.

Warned by his father’s mischance, he pursued his slow and secure

journey through Germany and along the Danube: a passage was

opened by his sister’s marriage with the king of Hungary; and the

emperor Robert was crowned by the patriarch in the cathedral of

St. Sophia. But his reign was an æra of calamity and disgrace;

and the colony, as it was styled, of New France yielded on all

sides to the Greeks of Nice and Epirus. After a victory, which he

owed to his perfidy rather than his courage, Theodore Angelus

entered the kingdom of Thessalonica, expelled the feeble

Demetrius, the son of the marquis Boniface, erected his standard

on the walls of Adrianople; and added, by his vanity, a third or

a fourth name to the list of rival emperors. The relics of the

Asiatic province were swept away by John Vataces, the son-in-law

and successor of Theodore Lascaris, and who, in a triumphant

reign of thirty-three years, displayed the virtues both of peace

and war. Under his discipline, the swords of the French

mercenaries were the most effectual instruments of his conquests,

and their desertion from the service of their country was at once

a symptom and a cause of the rising ascendant of the Greeks. By

the construction of a fleet, he obtained the command of the

Hellespont, reduced the islands of Lesbos and Rhodes, attacked

the Venetians of Candia, and intercepted the rare and

parsimonious succors of the West. Once, and once only, the Latin

emperor sent an army against Vataces; and in the defeat of that

army, the veteran knights, the last of the original conquerors,

were left on the field of battle. But the success of a foreign

enemy was less painful to the pusillanimous Robert than the

insolence of his Latin subjects, who confounded the weakness of

the emperor and of the empire. His personal misfortunes will

prove the anarchy of the government and the ferociousness of the

times. The amorous youth had neglected his Greek bride, the

daughter of Vataces, to introduce into the palace a beautiful

maid, of a private, though noble family of Artois; and her mother

had been tempted by the lustre of the purple to forfeit her

engagements with a gentleman of Burgundy. His love was converted

into rage; he assembled his friends, forced the palace gates,

threw the mother into the sea, and inhumanly cut off the nose and

lips of the wife or concubine of the emperor. Instead of

punishing the offender, the barons avowed and applauded the

savage deed, 38 which, as a prince and as a man, it was

impossible that Robert should forgive. He escaped from the guilty

city to implore the justice or compassion of the pope: the

emperor was coolly exhorted to return to his station; before he

could obey, he sunk under the weight of grief, shame, and

impotent resentment. 39

38 (return) [ Marinus Sanutus (Secreta Fidelium Crucis, l. ii. p.

4, c. 18, p. 73) is so much delighted with this bloody deed, that

he has transcribed it in his margin as a bonum exemplum. Yet he

acknowledges the damsel for the lawful wife of Robert.]

39 (return) [ See the reign of Robert, in Ducange, (Hist. de C.

P. l. ii. c.—12.)]

It was only in the age of chivalry, that valor could ascend from

a private station to the thrones of Jerusalem and Constantinople.

The titular kingdom of Jerusalem had devolved to Mary, the

daughter of Isabella and Conrad of Montferrat, and the

granddaughter of Almeric or Amaury. She was given to John of

Brienne, of a noble family in Champagne, by the public voice, and

the judgment of Philip Augustus, who named him as the most worthy

champion of the Holy Land. 40 In the fifth crusade, he led a

hundred thousand Latins to the conquest of Egypt: by him the

siege of Damietta was achieved; and the subsequent failure was

justly ascribed to the pride and avarice of the legate. After the

marriage of his daughter with Frederic the Second, 41 he was

provoked by the emperor’s ingratitude to accept the command of

the army of the church; and though advanced in life, and

despoiled of royalty, the sword and spirit of John of Brienne

were still ready for the service of Christendom. In the seven

years of his brother’s reign, Baldwin of Courtenay had not

emerged from a state of childhood, and the barons of Romania felt

the strong necessity of placing the sceptre in the hands of a man

and a hero. The veteran king of Jerusalem might have disdained

the name and office of regent; they agreed to invest him for his

life with the title and prerogatives of emperor, on the sole

condition that Baldwin should marry his second daughter, and

succeed at a mature age to the throne of Constantinople. The

expectation, both of the Greeks and Latins, was kindled by the

renown, the choice, and the presence of John of Brienne; and they

admired his martial aspect, his green and vigorous age of more

than fourscore years, and his size and stature, which surpassed

the common measure of mankind. 42 But avarice, and the love of

ease, appear to have chilled the ardor of enterprise: 421 his

troops were disbanded, and two years rolled away without action

or honor, till he was awakened by the dangerous alliance of

Vataces emperor of Nice, and of Azan king of Bulgaria. They

besieged Constantinople by sea and land, with an army of one

hundred thousand men, and a fleet of three hundred ships of war;

while the entire force of the Latin emperor was reduced to one

hundred and sixty knights, and a small addition of sergeants and

archers. I tremble to relate, that instead of defending the city,

the hero made a sally at the head of his cavalry; and that of

forty-eight squadrons of the enemy, no more than three escaped

from the edge of his invincible sword. Fired by his example, the

infantry and the citizens boarded the vessels that anchored close

to the walls; and twenty-five were dragged in triumph into the

harbor of Constantinople. At the summons of the emperor, the

vassals and allies armed in her defence; broke through every

obstacle that opposed their passage; and, in the succeeding year,

obtained a second victory over the same enemies. By the rude

poets of the age, John of Brienne is compared to Hector, Roland,

and Judas Machabæus: 43 but their credit, and his glory, receive

some abatement from the silence of the Greeks. The empire was

soon deprived of the last of her champions; and the dying monarch

was ambitious to enter paradise in the habit of a Franciscan

friar. 44

40 (return) [ Rex igitur Franciæ, deliberatione habitâ, respondit

nuntiis, se daturum hominem Syriæ partibus aptum; in armis probum

(_preux_) in bellis securum, in agendis providum, Johannem

comitem Brennensem. Sanut. Secret. Fidelium, l. iii. p. xi. c. 4,

p. 205 Matthew Paris, p. 159.]

41 (return) [ Giannone (Istoria Civile, tom. ii. l. xvi. p.

380—385) discusses the marriage of Frederic II. with the daughter

of John of Brienne, and the double union of the crowns of Naples

and Jerusalem.]

42 (return) [ Acropolita, c. 27. The historian was at that time a

boy, and educated at Constantinople. In 1233, when he was eleven

years old, his father broke the Latin chain, left a splendid

fortune, and escaped to the Greek court of Nice, where his son

was raised to the highest honors.]

421 (return) [ John de Brienne, elected emperor 1229, wasted two

years in preparations, and did not arrive at Constantinople till

1231. Two years more glided away in inglorious inaction; he then

made some ineffective warlike expeditions. Constantinople was not

besieged till 1234.—M.]

43 (return) [ Philip Mouskes, bishop of Tournay, (A.D.

1274—1282,) has composed a poem, or rather string of verses, in

bad old Flemish French, on the Latin emperors of Constantinople,

which Ducange has published at the end of Villehardouin; see p.

38, for the prowess of John of Brienne.

N’Aie, Ector, Roll’ ne Ogiers Ne Judas Machabeus li

fiers Tant ne fit d’armes en estors Com fist li Rois

Jehans cel jors Et il defors et il dedans La paru sa

force et ses sens Et li hardiment qu’il avoit.]

44 (return) [ See the reign of John de Brienne, in Ducange, Hist.

de C. P. l. ii. c. 13—26.]

In the double victory of John of Brienne, I cannot discover the

name or exploits of his pupil Baldwin, who had attained the age

of military service, and who succeeded to the imperial dignity on

the decease of his adoptive father. 45 The royal youth was

employed on a commission more suitable to his temper; he was sent

to visit the Western courts, of the pope more especially, and of

the king of France; to excite their pity by the view of his

innocence and distress; and to obtain some supplies of men or

money for the relief of the sinking empire. He thrice repeated

these mendicant visits, in which he seemed to prolong his stay

and postpone his return; of the five-and-twenty years of his

reign, a greater number were spent abroad than at home; and in no

place did the emperor deem himself less free and secure than in

his native country and his capital. On some public occasions, his

vanity might be soothed by the title of Augustus, and by the

honors of the purple; and at the general council of Lyons, when

Frederic the Second was excommunicated and deposed, his Oriental

colleague was enthroned on the right hand of the pope. But how

often was the exile, the vagrant, the Imperial beggar, humbled

with scorn, insulted with pity, and degraded in his own eyes and

those of the nations! In his first visit to England, he was

stopped at Dover by a severe reprimand, that he should presume,

without leave, to enter an independent kingdom. After some delay,

Baldwin, however, was permitted to pursue his journey, was

entertained with cold civility, and thankfully departed with a

present of seven hundred marks. 46 From the avarice of Rome he

could only obtain the proclamation of a crusade, and a treasure

of indulgences; a coin whose currency was depreciated by too

frequent and indiscriminate abuse. His birth and misfortunes

recommended him to the generosity of his cousin Louis the Ninth;

but the martial zeal of the saint was diverted from

Constantinople to Egypt and Palestine; and the public and private

poverty of Baldwin was alleviated, for a moment, by the

alienation of the marquisate of Namur and the lordship of

Courtenay, the last remains of his inheritance. 47 By such

shameful or ruinous expedients, he once more returned to Romania,

with an army of thirty thousand soldiers, whose numbers were

doubled in the apprehension of the Greeks. His first despatches

to France and England announced his victories and his hopes: he

had reduced the country round the capital to the distance of

three days’ journey; and if he succeeded against an important,

though nameless, city, (most probably Chiorli,) the frontier

would be safe and the passage accessible. But these expectations

(if Baldwin was sincere) quickly vanished like a dream: the

troops and treasures of France melted away in his unskilful

hands; and the throne of the Latin emperor was protected by a

dishonorable alliance with the Turks and Comans. To secure the

former, he consented to bestow his niece on the unbelieving

sultan of Cogni; to please the latter, he complied with their

Pagan rites; a dog was sacrificed between the two armies; and the

contracting parties tasted each other’s blood, as a pledge of

their fidelity. 48 In the palace, or prison, of Constantinople,

the successor of Augustus demolished the vacant houses for winter

fuel, and stripped the lead from the churches for the daily

expense of his family. Some usurious loans were dealt with a

scanty hand by the merchants of Italy; and Philip, his son and

heir, was pawned at Venice as the security for a debt. 49 Thirst,

hunger, and nakedness, are positive evils: but wealth is

relative; and a prince who would be rich in a private station,

may be exposed by the increase of his wants to all the anxiety

and bitterness of poverty.

45 (return) [ See the reign of Baldwin II. till his expulsion

from Constantinople, in Ducange, Hist. de C. P. l. iv. c. 1—34,

the end l. v. c. 1—33.]

46 (return) [ Matthew Paris relates the two visits of Baldwin II.

to the English court, p. 396, 637; his return to Greece armatâ

manû, p. 407 his letters of his nomen formidabile, &c., p. 481,

(a passage which has escaped Ducange;) his expulsion, p. 850.]

47 (return) [ Louis IX. disapproved and stopped the alienation of

Courtenay (Ducange, l. iv. c. 23.) It is now annexed to the royal

demesne but granted for a term (_engagé_) to the family of

Boulainvilliers. Courtenay, in the election of Nemours in the

Isle de France, is a town of 900 inhabitants, with the remains of

a castle, (Mélanges tirés d’une Grande Bibliothèque, tom. xlv. p.

74—77.)]

48 (return) [ Joinville, p. 104, edit. du Louvre. A Coman prince,

who died without baptism, was buried at the gates of

Constantinople with a live retinue of slaves and horses.]

49 (return) [ Sanut. Secret. Fidel. Crucis, l. ii. p. iv. c. 18,

p. 73.]

Chapter LXI: Partition Of The Empire By The French And

Venetians.—Part III.

But in this abject distress, the emperor and empire were still

possessed of an ideal treasure, which drew its fantastic value

from the superstition of the Christian world. The merit of the

true cross was somewhat impaired by its frequent division; and a

long captivity among the infidels might shed some suspicion on

the fragments that were produced in the East and West. But

another relic of the Passion was preserved in the Imperial chapel

of Constantinople; and the crown of thorns which had been placed

on the head of Christ was equally precious and authentic. It had

formerly been the practice of the Egyptian debtors to deposit, as

a security, the mummies of their parents; and both their honor

and religion were bound for the redemption of the pledge. In the

same manner, and in the absence of the emperor, the barons of

Romania borrowed the sum of thirteen thousand one hundred and

thirty-four pieces of gold 50 on the credit of the holy crown:

they failed in the performance of their contract; and a rich

Venetian, Nicholas Querini, undertook to satisfy their impatient

creditors, on condition that the relic should be lodged at

Venice, to become his absolute property, if it were not redeemed

within a short and definite term. The barons apprised their

sovereign of the hard treaty and impending loss and as the empire

could not afford a ransom of seven thousand pounds sterling,

Baldwin was anxious to snatch the prize from the Venetians, and

to vest it with more honor and emolument in the hands of the most

Christian king. 51 Yet the negotiation was attended with some

delicacy. In the purchase of relics, the saint would have started

at the guilt of simony; but if the mode of expression were

changed, he might lawfully repay the debt, accept the gift, and

acknowledge the obligation. His ambassadors, two Dominicans, were

despatched to Venice to redeem and receive the holy crown which

had escaped the dangers of the sea and the galleys of Vataces. On

opening a wooden box, they recognized the seals of the doge and

barons, which were applied on a shrine of silver; and within this

shrine the monument of the Passion was enclosed in a golden vase.

The reluctant Venetians yielded to justice and power: the emperor

Frederic granted a free and honorable passage; the court of

France advanced as far as Troyes in Champagne, to meet with

devotion this inestimable relic: it was borne in triumph through

Paris by the king himself, barefoot, and in his shirt; and a free

gift of ten thousand marks of silver reconciled Baldwin to his

loss. The success of this transaction tempted the Latin emperor

to offer with the same generosity the remaining furniture of his

chapel; 52 a large and authentic portion of the true cross; the

baby-linen of the Son of God, the lance, the sponge, and the

chain, of his Passion; the rod of Moses, and part of the skull of

St. John the Baptist. For the reception of these spiritual

treasures, twenty thousand marks were expended by St. Louis on a

stately foundation, the holy chapel of Paris, on which the muse

of Boileau has bestowed a comic immortality. The truth of such

remote and ancient relics, which cannot be proved by any human

testimony, must be admitted by those who believe in the miracles

which they have performed. About the middle of the last age, an

inveterate ulcer was touched and cured by a holy prickle of the

holy crown: 53 the prodigy is attested by the most pious and

enlightened Christians of France; nor will the fact be easily

disproved, except by those who are armed with a general antidote

against religious credulity. 54

50 (return) [ Under the words _Perparus_, _Perpera_,

_Hyperperum_, Ducange is short and vague: Monetæ genus. From a

corrupt passage of Guntherus, (Hist. C. P. c. 8, p. 10,) I guess

that the Perpera was the nummus aureus, the fourth part of a mark

of silver, or about ten shillings sterling in value. In lead it

would be too contemptible.]

51 (return) [ For the translation of the holy crown, &c., from

Constantinople to Paris, see Ducange (Hist. de C. P. l. iv. c.

11—14, 24, 35) and Fleury, (Hist. Ecclés. tom. xvii. p.

201—204.)]

52 (return) [ Mélanges tirés d’une Grande Bibliothèque, tom.

xliii. p. 201—205. The Lutrin of Boileau exhibits the inside, the

soul and manners of the _Sainte Chapelle_; and many facts

relative to the institution are collected and explained by his

commentators, Brosset and De St. Marc.]

53 (return) [ It was performed A.D. 1656, March 24, on the niece

of Pascal; and that superior genius, with Arnauld, Nicole, &c.,

were on the spot, to believe and attest a miracle which

confounded the Jesuits, and saved Port Royal, (uvres de Racine,

tom. vi. p. 176—187, in his eloquent History of Port Royal.)]

54 (return) [ Voltaire (Siécle de Louis XIV. c. 37, uvres, tom.

ix. p. 178, 179) strives to invalidate the fact: but Hume,

(Essays, vol. ii. p. 483, 484,) with more skill and success,

seizes the battery, and turns the cannon against his enemies.]

The Latins of Constantinople 55 were on all sides encompassed and

pressed; their sole hope, the last delay of their ruin, was in

the division of their Greek and Bulgarian enemies; and of this

hope they were deprived by the superior arms and policy of

Vataces, emperor of Nice. From the Propontis to the rocky coast

of Pamphylia, Asia was peaceful and prosperous under his reign;

and the events of every campaign extended his influence in

Europe. The strong cities of the hills of Macedonia and Thrace

were rescued from the Bulgarians; and their kingdom was

circumscribed by its present and proper limits, along the

southern banks of the Danube. The sole emperor of the Romans

could no longer brook that a lord of Epirus, a Comnenian prince

of the West, should presume to dispute or share the honors of the

purple; and the humble Demetrius changed the color of his

buskins, and accepted with gratitude the appellation of despot.

His own subjects were exasperated by his baseness and incapacity;

they implored the protection of their supreme lord. After some

resistance, the kingdom of Thessalonica was united to the empire

of Nice; and Vataces reigned without a competitor from the

Turkish borders to the Adriatic Gulf. The princes of Europe

revered his merit and power; and had he subscribed an orthodox

creed, it should seem that the pope would have abandoned without

reluctance the Latin throne of Constantinople. But the death of

Vataces, the short and busy reign of Theodore his son, and the

helpless infancy of his grandson John, suspended the restoration

of the Greeks. In the next chapter, I shall explain their

domestic revolutions; in this place, it will be sufficient to

observe, that the young prince was oppressed by the ambition of

his guardian and colleague, Michael Palæologus, who displayed the

virtues and vices that belong to the founder of a new dynasty.

The emperor Baldwin had flattered himself, that he might recover

some provinces or cities by an impotent negotiation. His

ambassadors were dismissed from Nice with mockery and contempt.

At every place which they named, Palæologus alleged some special

reason, which rendered it dear and valuable in his eyes: in the

one he was born; in another he had been first promoted to

military command; and in a third he had enjoyed, and hoped long

to enjoy, the pleasures of the chase. “And what then do you

propose to give us?” said the astonished deputies. “Nothing,”

replied the Greek, “not a foot of land. If your master be

desirous of peace, let him pay me, as an annual tribute, the sum

which he receives from the trade and customs of Constantinople.

On these terms, I may allow him to reign. If he refuses, it is

war. I am not ignorant of the art of war, and I trust the event

to God and my sword.” 56 An expedition against the despot of

Epirus was the first prelude of his arms. If a victory was

followed by a defeat; if the race of the Comneni or Angeli

survived in those mountains his efforts and his reign; the

captivity of Villehardouin, prince of Achaia, deprived the Latins

of the most active and powerful vassal of their expiring

monarchy. The republics of Venice and Genoa disputed, in the

first of their naval wars, the command of the sea and the

commerce of the East. Pride and interest attached the Venetians

to the defence of Constantinople; their rivals were tempted to

promote the designs of her enemies, and the alliance of the

Genoese with the schismatic conqueror provoked the indignation of

the Latin church. 57