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The Project Gutenberg Etext of History Of The Decline And Fall Of The
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#2 in our format series by Edward Gibbon, Esq. With notes by the Rev. H.
H. Milman


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History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire Volume 2


by Edward Gibbon, Esq. With notes by the Rev. H. H. Milman

April, 1997  [Etext # 895]


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This is the sixth volume of the six volumes of Edward Gibbon's History
Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire. If you find any errors
please feel free to notify me of them. I want to make this the best
etext edition possible for both scholars and the general public. I would
like to thank those who have helped in making this text better.
Especially Dale R. Fredrickson who has hand entered the Greek characters
in the footnotes and who has suggested retaining the conjoined ae
character in the text.   [e-mail] and [e-mail] are my
email addresses for now. Please feel free to send me your comments and I
hope you enjoy this.  David Reed

History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire

Edward Gibbon, Esq.

With notes by the Rev. H. H. Milman

Vol. 6

1782 (Written), 1845 (Revised)

Chapter LIX: The Crusades.Part I.

Preservation Of The Greek Empire. -- Numbers, Passage, And Event, Of The
Second And Third Crusades. -- St. Bernard. -- Reign Of Saladin In Egypt
And Syria. -- His Conquest Of Jerusalem. -- Naval Crusades. -- Richard
The First Of England. -- Pope Innocent The Third; And The Fourth And
Fifth Crusades. -- The Emperor Frederic The Second. -- Louis The Ninth
Of France; And The Two Last Crusades. -- Expulsion Of The Latins Or
Franks By The Mamelukes.

In a style less grave than that of history, I should perhaps compare the
emperor Alexius ^1 to the jackal, who is said to follow the steps, and
to devour the leavings, of the lion. Whatever had been his fears and
toils in the passage of the first crusade, they were amply recompensed
by the subsequent benefits which he derived from the exploits of the
Franks. His dexterity and vigilance secured their first conquest of
Nice; and from this threatening station the Turks were compelled to
evacuate the neighborhood of Constantinople. While the crusaders, with
blind valor, advanced into the midland countries of Asia, the crafty
Greek improved the favorable occasion when the emirs of the sea-coast
were recalled to the standard of the sultan. The Turks were driven from
the Isles of Rhodes and Chios: the cities of Ephesus and Smyrna, of
Sardes, Philadelphia, and Laodicea, were restored to the empire, which
Alexius enlarged from the Hellespont to the banks of the Mæander, and
the rocky shores of Pamphylia. The churches resumed their splendor: the
towns were rebuilt and fortified; and the desert country was peopled
with colonies of Christians, who were gently removed from the more
distant and dangerous frontier. In these paternal cares, we may forgive
Alexius, if he forgot the deliverance of the holy sepulchre; but, by the
Latins, he was stigmatized with the foul reproach of treason and
desertion. They had sworn fidelity and obedience to his throne; but
hehad promised to assist their enterprise in person, or, at least, with
his troops and treasures: his base retreat dissolved their obligations;
and the sword, which had been the instrument of their victory, was the
pledge and title of their just independence. It does not appear that the
emperor attempted to revive his obsolete claims over the kingdom of
Jerusalem; ^2 but the borders of Cilicia and Syria were more recent in
his possession, and more accessible to his arms. The great army of the
crusaders was annihilated or dispersed; the principality of Antioch was
left without a head, by the surprise and captivity of Bohemond; his
ransom had oppressed him with a heavy debt; and his Norman followers
were insufficient to repel the hostilities of the Greeks and Turks. In
this distress, Bohemond embraced a magnanimous resolution, of leaving
the defence of Antioch to his kinsman, the faithful Tancred; of arming
the West against the Byzantine empire; and of executing the design which
he inherited from the lessons and example of his father Guiscard. His
embarkation was clandestine: and, if we may credit a tale of the
princess Anne, he passed the hostile sea closely secreted in a coffin.
^3 But his reception in France was dignified by the public applause, and
his marriage with the king's daughter: his return was glorious, since
the bravest spirits of the age enlisted under his veteran command; and
he repassed the Adriatic at the head of five thousand horse and forty
thousand foot, assembled from the most remote climates of Europe. ^4 The
strength of Durazzo, and prudence of Alexius, the progress of famine and
approach of winter, eluded his ambitious hopes; and the venal
confederates were seduced from his standard. A treaty of peace ^5
suspended the fears of the Greeks; and they were finally delivered by
the death of an adversary, whom neither oaths could bind, nor dangers
could appal, nor prosperity could satiate. His children succeeded to the
principality of Antioch; but the boundaries were strictly defined, the
homage was clearly stipulated, and the cities of Tarsus and Malmistra
were restored to the Byzantine emperors. Of the coast of Anatolia, they
possessed the entire circuit from Trebizond to the Syrian gates. The
Seljukian dynasty of Roum ^6 was separated on all sides from the sea and
their Mussulman brethren; the power of the sultan was shaken by the
victories and even the defeats of the Franks; and after the loss of
Nice, they removed their throne to Cogni or Iconium, an obscure and in
land town above three hundred miles from Constantinople. ^7 Instead of
trembling for their capital, the Comnenian princes waged an offensive
war against the Turks, and the first crusade prevented the fall of the
declining empire.

[Footnote 1: Anna Comnena relates her father's conquests in Asia Minor
Alexiad, l. xi. p. 321--325, l. xiv. p. 419; his Cilician war against
Tancred and Bohemond, p. 328--324; the war of Epirus, with tedious
prolixity, l. xii. xiii. p. 345--406; the death of Bohemond, l. xiv. p.
419.]

[Footnote 2: The kings of Jerusalem submitted, however, to a nominal
dependence, and in the dates of their inscriptions, (one is still
legible in the church of Bethlem,) they respectfully placed before their
own the name of the reigning emperor, (Ducange, Dissertations sur
Joinville xxvii. p. 319.)]

[Footnote 3: Anna Comnena adds, that, to complete the imitation, he was
shut up with a dead cock; and condescends to wonder how the Barbarian
could endure the confinement and putrefaction. This absurd tale is
unknown to the Latins. *

Note: * The Greek writers, in general, Zonaras, p. 2, 303, and Glycas,
p. 334 agree in this story with the princess Anne, except in the absurd
addition of the dead cock. Ducange has already quoted some instances
where a similar stratagem had been adopted by Normanprinces. On this
authority Wilken inclines to believe the fact. Appendix to vol. ii. p.
14. -- M.]

[Footnote 4: 'Apo QulhV in the Byzantine geography, must mean England;
yet we are more credibly informed, that our Henry I. would not suffer
him to levy any troops in his kingdom, (Ducange, Not. ad Alexiad. p.
41.)]

[Footnote 5: The copy of the treaty (Alexiad. l. xiii. p. 406--416) is
an original and curious piece, which would require, and might afford, a
good map of the principality of Antioch.]

[Footnote 6: See, in the learned work of M. De Guignes, (tom. ii. part
ii.,) the history of the Seljukians of Iconium, Aleppo, and Damascus, as
far as it may be collected from the Greeks, Latins, and Arabians. The
last are ignorant or regardless of the affairs of Roum.]

[Footnote 7: Iconium is mentioned as a station by Xenophon, and by
Strabo, with an ambiguous title of KwmopoliV, (Cellarius, tom. ii. p.
121.) Yet St. Paul found in that place a multitude (plhqoV) of Jews and
Gentiles. under the corrupt name of Kunijah, it is described as a great
city, with a river and garden, three leagues from the mountains, and
decorated (I know not why) with Plato's tomb, (Abulfeda, tabul. xvii. p.
303 vers. Reiske; and the Index Geographicus of Schultens from Ibn
Said.)]

In the twelfth century, three great emigrations marched by land from the
West for the relief of Palestine. The soldiers and pilgrims of Lombardy,
France, and Germany were excited by the example and success of the first
crusade. ^8 Forty-eight years after the deliverance of the holy
sepulchre, the emperor, and the French king, Conrad the Third and Louis
the Seventh, undertook the second crusade to support the falling
fortunes of the Latins. ^9 A grand division of the third crusade was led
by the emperor Frederic Barbarossa, ^10 who sympathized with his
brothers of France and England in the common loss of Jerusalem. These
three expeditions may be compared in their resemblance of the greatness
of numbers, their passage through the Greek empire, and the nature and
event of their Turkish warfare, and a brief parallel may save the
repetition of a tedious narrative. However splendid it may seem, a
regular story of the crusades would exhibit the perpetual return of the
same causes and effects; and the frequent attempts for the defence or
recovery of the Holy Land would appear so many faint and unsuccessful
copies of the original.

[Footnote 8: For this supplement to the first crusade, see Anna Comnena,
Alexias, l. xi. p. 331, &c., and the viiith book of Albert Aquensis.)]

[Footnote 9: For the second crusade, of Conrad III. and Louis VII., see
William of Tyre, (l. xvi. c. 18--19,) Otho of Frisingen, (l. i. c.
34--45 59, 60,) Matthew Paris, (Hist. Major. p. 68,) Struvius, (Corpus
Hist Germanicæ, p. 372, 373,) Scriptores Rerum Francicarum àDuchesne
tom. iv.: Nicetas, in Vit. Manuel, l. i. c. 4, 5, 6, p. 41--48, Cinnamus
l. ii. p. 41--49.]

[Footnote 10: For the third crusade, of Frederic Barbarossa, see Nicetas
in Isaac Angel. l. ii. c. 3--8, p. 257--266. Struv. (Corpus. Hist. Germ.
p. 414,) and two historians, who probably were spectators, Tagino, (in
Scriptor. Freher. tom. i. p. 406--416, edit Struv.,) and the Anonymus de
Expeditione AsiaticâFred. I. (in Canisii Antiq. Lection. tom. iii. p.
ii. p. 498--526, edit. Basnage.)]

I. Of the swarms that so closely trod in the footsteps of the first
pilgrims, the chiefs were equal in rank, though unequal in fame and
merit, to Godfrey of Bouillon and his fellow-adventurers. At their head
were displayed the banners of the dukes of Burgundy, Bavaria, and
Aquitain; the first a descendant of Hugh Capet, the second, a father of
the Brunswick line: the archbishop of Milan, a temporal prince,
transported, for the benefit of the Turks, the treasures and ornaments
of his church and palace; and the veteran crusaders, Hugh the Great and
Stephen of Chartres, returned to consummate their unfinished vow. The
huge and disorderly bodies of their followers moved forward in two
columns; and if the first consisted of two hundred and sixty thousand
persons, the second might possibly amount to sixty thousand horse and
one hundred thousand foot. ^11 ^* The armies of the second crusade might
have claimed the conquest of Asia; the nobles of France and Germany were
animated by the presence of their sovereigns; and both the rank and
personal character of Conrad and Louis gave a dignity to their cause,
and a discipline to their force, which might be vainly expected from the
feudatory chiefs. The cavalry of the emperor, and that of the king, was
each composed of seventy thousand knights, and their immediate
attendants in the field; ^12 and if the light-armed troops, the peasant
infantry, the women and children, the priests and monks, be rigorously
excluded, the full account will scarcely be satisfied with four hundred
thousand souls. The West, from Rome to Britain, was called into action;
the kings of Poland and Bohemia obeyed the summons of Conrad; and it is
affirmed by the Greeks and Latins, that, in the passage of a strait or
river, the Byzantine agents, after a tale of nine hundred thousand,
desisted from the endless and formidable computation. ^13 In the third
crusade, as the French and English preferred the navigation of the
Mediterranean, the host of Frederic Barbarossa was less numerous.
Fifteen thousand knights, and as many squires, were the flower of the
German chivalry: sixty thousand horse, and one hundred thousand foot,
were mustered by the emperor in the plains of Hungary; and after such
repetitions, we shall no longer be startled at the six hundred thousand
pilgrims, which credulity has ascribed to this last emigration. ^14 Such
extravagant reckonings prove only the astonishment of contemporaries;
but their astonishment most strongly bears testimony to the existence of
an enormous, though indefinite, multitude. The Greeks might applaud
their superior knowledge of the arts and stratagems of war, but they
confessed the strength and courage of the French cavalry, and the
infantry of the Germans; ^15 and the strangers are described as an iron
race, of gigantic stature, who darted fire from their eyes, and spilt
blood like water on the ground. Under the banners of Conrad, a troop of
females rode in the attitude and armor of men; and the chief of these
Amazons, from her gilt spurs and buskins, obtained the epithet of the
Golden-footed Dame.

[Footnote 11: Anne, who states these later swarms at 40,000 horse and
100,000 foot, calls them Normans, and places at their head two brothers
of Flanders. The Greeks were strangely ignorant of the names, families,
and possessions of the Latin princes.]

[Footnote *: It was this army of pilgrims, the first body of which was
headed by the archbishop of Milan and Count Albert of Blandras, which
set forth on the wild, yet, with a more disciplined army, not impolitic,
enterprise of striking at the heart of the Mahometan power, by attacking
the sultan in Bagdad. For their adventures and fate, see Wilken, vol.
ii. p. 120, &c., Michaud, book iv. -- M.]

[Footnote 12: William of Tyre, and Matthew Paris, reckon 70,000 loricati
in each of the armies.]

[Footnote 13: The imperfect enumeration is mentioned by Cinnamus,
(ennenhkonta muriadeV,) and confirmed by Odo de Diogilo apud Ducange ad
Cinnamum, with the more precise sum of 900,556. Why must therefore the
version and comment suppose the modest and insufficient reckoning of
90,000? Does not Godfrey of Viterbo (Pantheon, p. xix. in Muratori, tom.
vii. p. 462) exclaim?

---- Numerum si poscere quæras,

Millia millena militis agmen erat.

1]

[Footnote 14: This extravagant account is given by Albert of Stade,
(apud Struvium, p. 414;) my calculation is borrowed from Godfrey of
Viterbo, Arnold of Lubeck, apud eundem, and Bernard Thesaur. (c. 169, p.
804.) The original writers are silent. The Mahometans gave him 200,000,
or 260,000, men, (Bohadin, in Vit. Saladin, p. 110.)]

[Footnote 15: I must observe, that, in the second and third crusades,
the subjects of Conrad and Frederic are styled by the Greeks and
Orientals Alamanni. The Lechi and Tzechi of Cinnamus are the Poles and
Bohemians; and it is for the French that he reserves the ancient
appellation of Germans. He likewise names the Brittioi, or Britannoi. *

Note: * He names both -- Brittioi te kai Britanoi. -- M.]

II. The number and character of the strangers was an object of terror to
the effeminate Greeks, and the sentiment of fear is nearly allied to
that of hatred. This aversion was suspended or softened by the
apprehension of the Turkish power; and the invectives of the Latins will
not bias our more candid belief, that the emperor Alexius dissembled
their insolence, eluded their hostilities, counselled their rashness,
and opened to their ardor the road of pilgrimage and conquest. But when
the Turks had been driven from Nice and the sea-coast, when the
Byzantine princes no longer dreaded the distant sultans of Cogni, they
felt with purer indignation the free and frequent passage of the western
Barbarians, who violated the majesty, and endangered the safety, of the
empire. The second and third crusades were undertaken under the reign of
Manuel Comnenus and Isaac Angelus. Of the former, the passions were
always impetuous, and often malevolent; and the natural union of a
cowardly and a mischievous temper was exemplified in the latter, who,
without merit or mercy, could punish a tyrant, and occupy his throne. It
was secretly, and perhaps tacitly, resolved by the prince and people to
destroy, or at least to discourage, the pilgrims, by every species of
injury and oppression; and their want of prudence and discipline
continually afforded the pretence or the opportunity. The Western
monarchs had stipulated a safe passage and fair market in the country of
their Christian brethren; the treaty had been ratified by oaths and
hostages; and the poorest soldier of Frederic's army was furnished with
three marks of silver to defray his expenses on the road. But every
engagement was violated by treachery and injustice; and the complaints
of the Latins are attested by the honest confession of a Greek
historian, who has dared to prefer truth to his country. ^16 Instead of
a hospitable reception, the gates of the cities, both in Europe and
Asia, were closely barred against the crusaders; and the scanty pittance
of food was let down in baskets from the walls. Experience or foresight
might excuse this timid jealousy; but the common duties of humanity
prohibited the mixture of chalk, or other poisonous ingredients, in the
bread; and should Manuel be acquitted of any foul connivance, he is
guilty of coining base money for the purpose of trading with the
pilgrims. In every step of their march they were stopped or misled: the
governors had private orders to fortify the passes and break down the
bridges against them: the stragglers were pillaged and murdered: the
soldiers and horses were pierced in the woods by arrows from an
invisible hand; the sick were burnt in their beds; and the dead bodies
were hung on gibbets along the highways. These injuries exasperated the
champions of the cross, who were not endowed with evangelical patience;
and the Byzantine princes, who had provoked the unequal conflict,
promoted the embarkation and march of these formidable guests. On the
verge of the Turkish frontier Barbarossa spared the guilty Philadelphia,
^17 rewarded the hospitable Laodicea, and deplored the hard necessity
that had stained his sword with any drops of Christian blood. In their
intercourse with the monarchs of Germany and France, the pride of the
Greeks was exposed to an anxious trial. They might boast that on the
first interview the seat of Louis was a low stool, beside the throne of
Manuel; ^18 but no sooner had the French king transported his army
beyond the Bosphorus, than he refused the offer of a second conference,
unless his brother would meet him on equal terms, either on the sea or
land. With Conrad and Frederic, the ceremonial was still nicer and more
difficult: like the successors of Constantine, they styled themselves
emperors of the Romans; ^19 and firmly maintained the purity of their
title and dignity. The first of these representatives of Charlemagne
would only converse with Manuel on horseback in the open field; the
second, by passing the Hellespont rather than the Bosphorus, declined
the view of Constantinople and its sovereign. An emperor, who had been
crowned at Rome, was reduced in the Greek epistles to the humble
appellation of Rex, or prince, of the Alemanni; and the vain and feeble
Angelus affected to be ignorant of the name of one of the greatest men
and monarchs of the age. While they viewed with hatred and suspicion the
Latin pilgrims the Greek emperors maintained a strict, though secret,
alliance with the Turks and Saracens. Isaac Angelus complained, that by
his friendship for the great Saladin he had incurred the enmity of the
Franks; and a mosque was founded at Constantinople for the public
exercise of the religion of Mahomet. ^20

[Footnote 16: Nicetas was a child at the second crusade, but in the
third he commanded against the Franks the important post of
Philippopolis. Cinnamus is infected with national prejudice and pride.]

[Footnote 17: The conduct of the Philadelphians is blamed by Nicetas,
while the anonymous German accuses the rudeness of his countrymen,
(culpânostrâ.) History would be pleasant, if we were embarrassed only by
suchcontradictions. It is likewise from Nicetas, that we learn the pious
and humane sorrow of Frederic.]

[Footnote 18: Cqamalh edra, which Cinnamus translates into Latin by the
word Sellion. Ducange works very hard to save his king and country from
such ignominy, (sur Joinville, dissertat. xxvii. p. 317--320.) Louis
afterwards insisted on a meeting in mari ex æquo, not ex equo, according
to the laughable readings of some MSS.]

[Footnote 19: Ego Romanorum imperator sum, ille Romaniorum, (Anonym
Canis. p. 512.) The public and historical style of the Greeks was Rhx .
. . princeps. Yet Cinnamus owns, that 'Imperatwr is synonymous to
BasileuV.]

[Footnote 20: In the Epistles of Innocent III., (xiii. p. 184,) and the
History of Bohadin, (p. 129, 130,) see the views of a pope and a cadhi
on this singulartoleration.]

III. The swarms that followed the first crusade were destroyed in
Anatolia by famine, pestilence, and the Turkish arrows; and the princes
only escaped with some squadrons of horse to accomplish their lamentable
pilgrimage. A just opinion may be formed of their knowledge and
humanity; of their knowledge, from the design of subduing Persia and
Chorasan in their way to Jerusalem; ^* of their humanity, from the
massacre of the Christian people, a friendly city, who came out to meet
them with palms and crosses in their hands. The arms of Conrad and Louis
were less cruel and imprudent; but the event of the second crusade was
still more ruinous to Christendom; and the Greek Manuel is accused by
his own subjects of giving seasonable intelligence to the sultan, and
treacherous guides to the Latin princes. Instead of crushing the common
foe, by a double attack at the same time but on different sides, the
Germans were urged by emulation, and the French were retarded by
jealousy. Louis had scarcely passed the Bosphorus when he was met by the
returning emperor, who had lost the greater part of his army in
glorious, but unsuccessful, actions on the banks of the Mæander. The
contrast of the pomp of his rival hastened the retreat of Conrad: ^! the
desertion of his independent vassals reduced him to his hereditary
troops; and he borrowed some Greek vessels to execute by sea the
pilgrimage of Palestine. Without studying the lessons of experience, or
the nature of the war, the king of France advanced through the same
country to a similar fate. The vanguard, which bore the royal banner and
the oriflamme of St. Denys, ^21 had doubled their march with rash and
inconsiderate speed; and the rear, which the king commanded in person,
no longer found their companions in the evening camp. In darkness and
disorder, they were encompassed, assaulted, and overwhelmed, by the
innumerable host of Turks, who, in the art of war, were superior to the
Christians of the twelfth century. ^* Louis, who climbed a tree in the
general discomfiture, was saved by his own valor and the ignorance of
his adversaries; and with the dawn of day he escaped alive, but almost
alone, to the camp of the vanguard. But instead of pursuing his
expedition by land, he was rejoiced to shelter the relics of his army in
the friendly seaport of Satalia. From thence he embarked for Antioch;
but so penurious was the supply of Greek vessels, that they could only
afford room for his knights and nobles; and the plebeian crowd of
infantry was left to perish at the foot of the Pamphylian hills. The
emperor and the king embraced and wept at Jerusalem; their martial
trains, the remnant of mighty armies, were joined to the Christian
powers of Syria, and a fruitless siege of Damascus was the final effort
of the second crusade. Conrad and Louis embarked for Europe with the
personal fame of piety and courage; but the Orientals had braved these
potent monarchs of the Franks, with whose names and military forces they
had been so often threatened. ^22 Perhaps they had still more to fear
from the veteran genius of Frederic the First, who in his youth had
served in Asia under his uncle Conrad. Forty campaigns in Germany and
Italy had taught Barbarossa to command; and his soldiers, even the
princes of the empire, were accustomed under his reign to obey. As soon
as he lost sight of Philadelphia and Laodicea, the last cities of the
Greek frontier, he plunged into the salt and barren desert, a land (says
the historian) of horror and tribulation. ^23 During twenty days, every
step of his fainting and sickly march was besieged by the innumerable
hordes of Turkmans, ^24 whose numbers and fury seemed after each defeat
to multiply and inflame. The emperor continued to struggle and to
suffer; and such was the measure of his calamities, that when he reached
the gates of Iconium, no more than one thousand knights were able to
serve on horseback. By a sudden and resolute assault he defeated the
guards, and stormed the capital of the sultan, ^25 who humbly sued for
pardon and peace. The road was now open, and Frederic advanced in a
career of triumph, till he was unfortunately drowned in a petty torrent
of Cilicia. ^26 The remainder of his Germans was consumed by sickness
and desertion: and the emperor's son expired with the greatest part of
his Swabian vassals at the siege of Acre. Among the Latin heroes,
Godfrey of Bouillon and Frederic Barbarossa could alone achieve the
passage of the Lesser Asia; yet even their success was a warning; and in
the last and most experienced age of the crusades, every nation
preferred the sea to the toils and perils of an inland expedition. ^27

[Footnote *: This was the design of the pilgrims under the archbishop of
Milan. See note, p. 102. -- M.]

[Footnote !: Conrad had advanced with part of his army along a central
road, between that on the coast and that which led to Iconium. He had
been betrayed by the Greeks, his army destroyed without a battle.
Wilken, vol. iii. p. 165. Michaud, vol. ii. p. 156. Conrad advanced
again with Louis as far as Ephesus, and from thence, at the invitation
of Manuel, returned to Constantinople. It was Louis who, at the passage
of the Mæander, was engaged in a "glorious action." Wilken, vol. iii. p.
179. Michaud vol. ii. p. 160. Gibbon followed Nicetas. -- M.]

[Footnote 21: As counts of Vexin, the kings of France were the vassals
and advocates of the monastery of St. Denys. The saint's peculiar
banner, which they received from the abbot, was of a square form, and a
red or flamingcolor. The oriflammeappeared at the head of the French
armies from the xiith to the xvth century, (Ducange sur Joinville,
Dissert. xviii. p. 244--253.)]

[Footnote *: They descended the heights to a beautiful valley which by
beneath them. The Turks seized the heights which separated the two
divisions of the army. The modern historians represent differently the
act to which Louis owed his safety, which Gibbon has described by the
undignified phrase, "he climbed a tree." According to Michaud, vol. ii.
p. 164, the king got upon a rock, with his back against a tree;
according to Wilken, vol. iii., he dragged himself up to the top of the
rock by the roots of a tree, and continued to defend himself till
nightfall. -- M.]

[Footnote 22: The original French histories of the second crusade are
the Gesta Ludovici VII. published in the ivth volume of Duchesne's
collection. The same volume contains many original letters of the king,
of Suger his minister, &c., the best documents of authentic history.]

[Footnote 23: Terram horroris et salsuginis, terram siccam sterilem,
inamnam. Anonym. Canis. p. 517. The emphatic language of a sufferer.]

[Footnote 24: Gens innumera, sylvestris, indomita, prædones sine
ductore. The sultan of Cogni might sincerely rejoice in their defeat.
Anonym. Canis. p. 517, 518.]

[Footnote 25: See, in the anonymous writer in the Collection of
Canisius, Tagino and Bohadin, (Vit. Saladin. p. 119, 120,) the ambiguous
conduct of Kilidge Arslan, sultan of Cogni, who hated and feared both
Saladin and Frederic.]

[Footnote 26: The desire of comparing two great men has tempted many
writers to drown Frederic in the River Cydnus, in which Alexander so
imprudently bathed, (Q. Curt. l. iii c. 4, 5.) But, from the march of
the emperor, I rather judge, that his Saleph is the Calycadnus, a stream
of less fame, but of a longer course. *

Note: * It is now called the Girama: its course is described in M'Donald
Kinneir's Travels. -- M.]

[Footnote 27: Marinus Sanutus, A.D. 1321, lays it down as a precept,
Quod stolus ecclesiæper terram nullatenus est ducenda. He resolves, by
the divine aid, the objection, or rather exception, of the first
crusade, (Secreta Fidelium Crucis, l. ii. pars ii. c. i. p. 37.)]

The enthusiasm of the first crusade is a natural and simple event, while
hope was fresh, danger untried, and enterprise congenial to the spirit
of the times. But the obstinate perseverance of Europe may indeed excite
our pity and admiration; that no instruction should have been drawn from
constant and adverse experience; that the same confidence should have
repeatedly grown from the same failures; that six succeeding generations
should have rushed headlong down the precipice that was open before
them; and that men of every condition should have staked their public
and private fortunes on the desperate adventure of possessing or
recovering a tombstone two thousand miles from their country. In a
period of two centuries after the council of Clermont, each spring and
summer produced a new emigration of pilgrim warriors for the defence of
the Holy Land; but the seven great armaments or crusades were excited by
some impending or recent calamity: the nations were moved by the
authority of their pontiffs, and the example of their kings: their zeal
was kindled, and their reason was silenced, by the voice of their holy
orators; and among these, Bernard, ^28 the monk, or the saint, may claim
the most honorable place. ^* About eight years before the first conquest
of Jerusalem, he was born of a noble family in Burgundy; at the age of
three-and-twenty he buried himself in the monastery of Citeaux, then in
the primitive fervor of the institution; at the end of two years he led
forth her third colony, or daughter, to the valley of Clairvaux ^29 in
Champagne; and was content, till the hour of his death, with the humble
station of abbot of his own community. A philosophic age has abolished,
with too liberal and indiscriminate disdain, the honors of these
spiritual heroes. The meanest among them are distinguished by some
energies of the mind; they were at least superior to their votaries and
disciples; and, in the race of superstition, they attained the prize for
which such numbers contended. In speech, in writing, in action, Bernard
stood high above his rivals and contemporaries; his compositions are not
devoid of wit and eloquence; and he seems to have preserved as much
reason and humanity as may be reconciled with the character of a saint.
In a secular life, he would have shared the seventh part of a private
inheritance; by a vow of poverty and penance, by closing his eyes
against the visible world, ^30 by the refusal of all ecclesiastical
dignities, the abbot of Clairvaux became the oracle of Europe, and the
founder of one hundred and sixty convents. Princes and pontiffs trembled
at the freedom of his apostolical censures: France, England, and Milan,
consulted and obeyed his judgment in a schism of the church: the debt
was repaid by the gratitude of Innocent the Second; and his successor,
Eugenius the Third, was the friend and disciple of the holy Bernard. It
was in the proclamation of the second crusade that he shone as the
missionary and prophet of God, who called the nations to the defence of
his holy sepulchre. ^31 At the parliament of Vezelay he spoke before the
king; and Louis the Seventh, with his nobles, received their crosses
from his hand. The abbot of Clairvaux then marched to the less easy
conquest of the emperor Conrad: ^* a phlegmatic people, ignorant of his
language, was transported by the pathetic vehemence of his tone and
gestures; and his progress, from Constance to Cologne, was the triumph
of eloquence and zeal. Bernard applauds his own success in the
depopulation of Europe; affirms that cities and castles were emptied of
their inhabitants; and computes, that only one man was left behind for
the consolation of seven widows. ^32 The blind fanatics were desirous of
electing him for their general; but the example of the hermit Peter was
before his eyes; and while he assured the crusaders of the divine favor,
he prudently declined a military command, in which failure and victory
would have been almost equally disgraceful to his character. ^33 Yet,
after the calamitous event, the abbot of Clairvaux was loudly accused as
a false prophet, the author of the public and private mourning; his
enemies exulted, his friends blushed, and his apology was slow and
unsatisfactory. He justifies his obedience to the commands of the pope;
expatiates on the mysterious ways of Providence; imputes the misfortunes
of the pilgrims to their own sins; and modestly insinuates, that his
mission had been approved by signs and wonders. ^34 Had the fact been
certain, the argument would be decisive; and his faithful disciples, who
enumerate twenty or thirty miracles in a day, appeal to the public
assemblies of France and Germany, in which they were performed. ^35 At
the present hour, such prodigies will not obtain credit beyond the
precincts of Clairvaux; but in the preternatural cures of the blind, the
lame, and the sick, who were presented to the man of God, it is
impossible for us to ascertain the separate shares of accident, of
fancy, of imposture, and of fiction.

[Footnote 28: The most authentic information of St. Bernard must be
drawn from his own writings, published in a correct edition by Père
Mabillon, and reprinted at Venice, 1750, in six volumes in folio.
Whatever friendship could recollect, or superstition could add, is
contained in the two lives, by his disciples, in the vith volume:
whatever learning and criticism could ascertain, may be found in the
prefaces of the Benedictine editor.]

[Footnote *: Gibbon, whose account of the crusades is perhaps the least
accurate and satisfactory chapter in his History, has here failed in
that lucid arrangement, which in general gives perspicuity to his most
condensed and crowded narratives. He has unaccountably, and to the great
perplexity of the reader, placed the preaching of St Bernard after the
second crusade to which i led. -- M.]

[Footnote 29: Clairvaux, surnamed the valley of Absynth, is situate
among the woods near Bar sur Aube in Champagne. St. Bernard would blush
at the pomp of the church and monastery; he would ask for the library,
and I know not whether he would be much edified by a tun of 800 muids,
(914 1-7 hogsheads,) which almost rivals that of Heidelberg, (Mélanges
tirés d'une Grande Bibliothèque, tom. xlvi. p. 15--20.)]

[Footnote 30: The disciples of the saint (Vit. ima, l. iii. c. 2, p.
1232. Vit. iida, c. 16, No. 45, p. 1383) record a marvellous example of
his pious apathy. Juxta lacum etiam Lausannensem totius diei itinere
pergens, penitus non attendit aut se videre non vidit. Cum enim vespere
facto de eodem lacûsocii colloquerentur, interrogabat eos ubi lacus ille
esset, et mirati sunt universi. To admire or despise St. Bernard as he
ought, the reader, like myself, should have before the windows of his
library the beauties of that incomparable landscape.]

[Footnote 31: Otho Frising. l. i. c. 4. Bernard. Epist. 363, ad Francos
Orientales Opp. tom. i. p. 328. Vit. ima, l. iii. c. 4, tom. vi. p.
1235.]

[Footnote *: Bernard had a nobler object in his expedition into Germany
-- to arrest the fierce and merciless persecution of the Jews, which was
preparing, under the monk Radulph, to renew the frightful scenes which
had preceded the first crusade, in the flourishing cities on the banks
of the Rhine. The Jews acknowledge the Christian intervention of St.
Bernard. See the curious extract from the History of Joseph ben Meir.
Wilken, vol. iii. p. 1. and p. 63. -- M.]

[Footnote 32: Mandastis et obedivi . . . . multiplicati sunt super
numerum; vacuantur urbes et castella; et penejam non inveniunt quem
apprehendant septem mulieres unum virum; adeo ubique viduævivis remanent
viris. Bernard. Epist. p. 247. We must be careful not to construe peneas
a substantive.]

[Footnote 33: Quis ego sum ut disponam acies, ut egrediar ante facies
armatorum, aut quid tam remotum a professione meâ, si vires, si peritia,
&c. Epist. 256, tom. i. p. 259. He speaks with contempt of the hermit
Peter, vir quidam, Epist. 363.]

[Footnote 34: Sic dicunt forsitan isti, unde scimus quòd a Domino sermo
egressus sit? Quæsigna tu facis ut credamus tibi? Non est quod ad ista
ipse respondeam; parcendum verecundiæmeæ, responde tu pro me, et pro te
ipso, secundum quævidisti et audisti, et secundum quod te inspiraverit
Deus. Consolat. l. ii. c. 1. Opp. tom. ii. p. 421--423.]

[Footnote 35: See the testimonies in Vita ima, l. iv. c. 5, 6. Opp. tom.
vi. p. 1258--1261, l. vi. c. 1--17, p. 1286--1314.]

Omnipotence itself cannot escape the murmurs of its discordant votaries;
since the same dispensation which was applauded as a deliverance in
Europe, was deplored, and perhaps arraigned, as a calamity in Asia.
After the loss of Jerusalem, the Syrian fugitives diffused their
consternation and sorrow; Bagdad mourned in the dust; the cadhi
Zeineddin of Damascus tore his beard in the caliph's presence; and the
whole divan shed tears at his melancholy tale. ^36 But the commanders of
the faithful could only weep; they were themselves captives in the hands
of the Turks: some temporal power was restored to the last age of the
Abbassides; but their humble ambition was confined to Bagdad and the
adjacent province. Their tyrants, the Seljukian sultans, had followed
the common law of the Asiatic dynasties, the unceasing round of valor,
greatness, discord, degeneracy, and decay; their spirit and power were
unequal to the defence of religion; and, in his distant realm of Persia,
the Christians were strangers to the name and the arms of Sangiar, the
last hero of his race. ^37 While the sultans were involved in the silken
web of the harem, the pious task was undertaken by their slaves, the
Atabeks, ^38 a Turkish name, which, like the Byzantine patricians, may
be translated by Father of the Prince. Ascansar, a valiant Turk, had
been the favorite of Malek Shaw, from whom he received the privilege of
standing on the right hand of the throne; but, in the civil wars that
ensued on the monarch's death, he lost his head and the government of
Aleppo. His domestic emirs persevered in their attachment to his son
Zenghi, who proved his first arms against the Franks in the defeat of
Antioch: thirty campaigns in the service of the caliph and sultan
established his military fame; and he was invested with the command of
Mosul, as the only champion that could avenge the cause of the prophet.
The public hope was not disappointed: after a siege of twenty-five days,
he stormed the city of Edessa, and recovered from the Franks their
conquests beyond the Euphrates: ^39 the martial tribes of Curdistan were
subdued by the independent sovereign of Mosul and Aleppo: his soldiers
were taught to behold the camp as their only country; they trusted to
his liberality for their rewards; and their absent families were
protected by the vigilance of Zenghi. At the head of these veterans, his
son Noureddin gradually united the Mahometan powers; ^* added the
kingdom of Damascus to that of Aleppo, and waged a long and successful
war against the Christians of Syria; he spread his ample reign from the
Tigris to the Nile, and the Abbassides rewarded their faithful servant
with all the titles and prerogatives of royalty. The Latins themselves
were compelled to own the wisdom and courage, and even the justice and
piety, of this implacable adversary. ^40 In his life and government the
holy warrior revived the zeal and simplicity of the first caliphs. Gold
and silk were banished from his palace; the use of wine from his
dominions; the public revenue was scrupulously applied to the public
service; and the frugal household of Noureddin was maintained from his
legitimate share of the spoil which he vested in the purchase of a
private estate. His favorite sultana sighed for some female object of
expense. "Alas," replied the king, "I fear God, and am no more than the
treasurer of the Moslems. Their property I cannot alienate; but I still
possess three shops in the city of Hems: these you may take; and these
alone can I bestow." His chamber of justice was the terror of the great
and the refuge of the poor. Some years after the sultan's death, an
oppressed subject called aloud in the streets of Damascus, "O Noureddin,
Noureddin, where art thou now? Arise, arise, to pity and protect us!" A
tumult was apprehended, and a living tyrant blushed or trembled at the
name of a departed monarch.

[Footnote 36: Abulmahasen apud de Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. ii. p.
ii. p. 99.]

[Footnote 37: See his articlein the Bibliothèque Orientale of
D'Herbelot, and De Guignes, tom. ii. p. i. p. 230--261. Such was his
valor, that he was styled the second Alexander; and such the extravagant
love of his subjects, that they prayed for the sultan a year after his
decease. Yet Sangiar might have been made prisoner by the Franks, as
well as by the Uzes. He reigned near fifty years, (A.D. 1103--1152,) and
was a munificent patron of Persian poetry.]

[Footnote 38: See the Chronology of the Atabeks of Irak and Syria, in De
Guignes, tom. i. p. 254; and the reigns of Zenghi and Noureddin in the
same writer, (tom. ii. p. ii. p. 147--221,) who uses the Arabic text of
Benelathir, Ben Schouna and Abulfeda; the Bibliothèque Orientale, under
the articles Atabeksand Noureddin, and the Dynasties of Abulpharagius,
p. 250--267, vers. Pocock.]

[Footnote 39: William of Tyre (l. xvi. c. 4, 5, 7) describes the loss of
Edessa, and the death of Zenghi. The corruption of his name into
Sanguin, afforded the Latins a comfortable allusion to his
sanguinarycharacter and end, fit sanguine sanguinolentus.]

[Footnote *: On Noureddin's conquest of Damascus, see extracts from
Arabian writers prefixed to the second part of the third volume of
Wilken. -- M.]

[Footnote 40: Noradinus (says William of Tyre, l. xx. 33) maximus
nominis et fidei Christianæpersecutor; princeps tamen justus, vafer,
providus' et secundum gentis suætraditiones religiosus. To this Catholic
witness we may add the primate of the Jacobites, (Abulpharag. p. 267,)
quo non alter erat inter reges vitæratione magis laudabili, aut
quæpluribus justitiæexperimentis abundaret. The true praise of kings is
after their death, and from the mouth of their enemies.]

Chapter LIX: The Crusades. -- Part II.

By the arms of the Turks and Franks, the Fatimites had been deprived of
Syria. In Egypt the decay of their character and influence was still
more essential. Yet they were still revered as the descendants and
successors of the prophet; they maintained their invisible state in the
palace of Cairo; and their person was seldom violated by the profane
eyes of subjects or strangers. The Latin ambassadors ^41 have described
their own introduction, through a series of gloomy passages, and
glittering porticos: the scene was enlivened by the warbling of birds
and the murmur of fountains: it was enriched by a display of rich
furniture and rare animals; of the Imperial treasures, something was
shown, and much was supposed; and the long order of unfolding doors was
guarded by black soldiers and domestic eunuchs. The sanctuary of the
presence chamber was veiled with a curtain; and the vizier, who
conducted the ambassadors, laid aside the cimeter, and prostrated
himself three times on the ground; the veil was then removed; and they
beheld the commander of the faithful, who signified his pleasure to the
first slave of the throne. But this slave was his master: the viziers or
sultans had usurped the supreme administration of Egypt; the claims of
the rival candidates were decided by arms; and the name of the most
worthy, of the strongest, was inserted in the royal patent of command.
The factions of Dargham and Shawer alternately expelled each other from
the capital and country; and the weaker side implored the dangerous
protection of the sultan of Damascus, or the king of Jerusalem, the
perpetual enemies of the sect and monarchy of the Fatimites. By his arms
and religion the Turk was most formidable; but the Frank, in an easy,
direct march, could advance from Gaza to the Nile; while the
intermediate situation of his realm compelled the troops of Noureddin to
wheel round the skirts of Arabia, a long and painful circuit, which
exposed them to thirst, fatigue, and the burning winds of the desert.
The secret zeal and ambition of the Turkish prince aspired to reign in
Egypt under the name of the Abbassides; but the restoration of the
suppliant Shawer was the ostensible motive of the first expedition; and
the success was intrusted to the emir Shiracouh, a valiant and veteran
commander. Dargham was oppressed and slain; but the ingratitude, the
jealousy, the just apprehensions, of his more fortunate rival, soon
provoked him to invite the king of Jerusalem to deliver Egypt from his
insolent benefactors. To this union the forces of Shiracouh were
unequal: he relinquished the premature conquest; and the evacuation of
Belbeis or Pelusium was the condition of his safe retreat. As the Turks
defiled before the enemy, and their general closed the rear, with a
vigilant eye, and a battle axe in his hand, a Frank presumed to ask him
if he were not afraid of an attack. "It is doubtless in your power to
begin the attack," replied the intrepid emir; "but rest assured, that
not one of my soldiers will go to paradise till he has sent an infidel
to hell." His report of the riches of the land, the effeminacy of the
natives, and the disorders of the government, revived the hopes of
Noureddin; the caliph of Bagdad applauded the pious design; and
Shiracouh descended into Egypt a second time with twelve thousand Turks
and eleven thousand Arabs. Yet his forces were still inferior to the
confederate armies of the Franks and Saracens; and I can discern an
unusual degree of military art, in his passage of the Nile, his retreat
into Thebais, his masterly evolutions in the battle of Babain, the
surprise of Alexandria, and his marches and countermarches in the flats
and valley of Egypt, from the tropic to the sea. His conduct was
seconded by the courage of his troops, and on the eve of action a
Mamaluke ^42 exclaimed, "If we cannot wrest Egypt from the Christian
dogs, why do we not renounce the honors and rewards of the sultan, and
retire to labor with the peasants, or to spin with the females of the
harem?" Yet, after all his efforts in the field, ^43 after the obstinate
defence of Alexandria ^44 by his nephew Saladin, an honorable
capitulation and retreat ^* concluded the second enterprise of
Shiracouh; and Noureddin reserved his abilities for a third and more
propitious occasion. It was soon offered by the ambition and avarice of
Amalric or Amaury, king of Jerusalem, who had imbibed the pernicious
maxim, that no faith should be kept with the enemies of God. ^! A
religious warrior, the great master of the hospital, encouraged him to
proceed; the emperor of Constantinople either gave, or promised, a fleet
to act with the armies of Syria; and the perfidious Christian,
unsatisfied with spoil and subsidy, aspired to the conquest of Egypt. In
this emergency, the Moslems turned their eyes towards the sultan of
Damascus; the vizier, whom danger encompassed on all sides, yielded to
their unanimous wishes, and Noureddin seemed to be tempted by the fair
offer of one third of the revenue of the kingdom. The Franks were
already at the gates of Cairo; but the suburbs, the old city, were burnt
on their approach; they were deceived by an insidious negotiation, and
their vessels were unable to surmount the barriers of the Nile. They
prudently declined a contest with the Turks in the midst of a hostile
country; and Amaury retired into Palestine with the shame and reproach
that always adhere to unsuccessful injustice. After this deliverance,
Shiracouh was invested with a robe of honor, which he soon stained with
the blood of the unfortunate Shawer. For a while, the Turkish emirs
condescended to hold the office of vizier; but this foreign conquest
precipitated the fall of the Fatimites themselves; and the bloodless
change was accomplished by a message and a word. The caliphs had been
degraded by their own weakness and the tyranny of the viziers: their
subjects blushed, when the descendant and successor of the prophet
presented his naked hand to the rude gripe of a Latin ambassador; they
wept when he sent the hair of his women, a sad emblem of their grief and
terror, to excite the pity of the sultan of Damascus. By the command of
Noureddin, and the sentence of the doctors, the holy names of Abubeker,
Omar, and Othman, were solemnly restored: the caliph Mosthadi, of
Bagdad, was acknowledged in the public prayers as the true commander of
the faithful; and the green livery of the sons of Ali was exchanged for
the black color of the Abbassides. The last of his race, the caliph
Adhed, who survived only ten days, expired in happy ignorance of his
fate; his treasures secured the loyalty of the soldiers, and silenced
the murmurs of the sectaries; and in all subsequent revolutions, Egypt
has never departed from the orthodox tradition of the Moslems. ^45

[Footnote 41: From the ambassador, William of Tyre (l. xix. c. 17, 18,)
describes the palace of Cairo. In the caliph's treasure were found a
pearl as large as a pigeon's egg, a ruby weighing seventeen Egyptian
drams, an emerald a palm and a half in length, and many vases of crystal
and porcelain of China, (Renaudot, p. 536.)]

[Footnote 42: Mamluc, plur. Mamalic, is defined by Pocock, (Prolegom. ad
Abulpharag. p. 7,) and D'Herbelot, (p. 545,) servum emptitium, seu qui
pretio numerato in domini possessionem cedit. They frequently occur in
the wars of Saladin, (Bohadin, p. 236, &c.;) and it was only the
BahartieMamalukes that were first introduced into Egypt by his
descendants.]

[Footnote 43: Jacobus àVitriaco (p. 1116) gives the king of Jerusalem no
more than 374 knights. Both the Franks and the Moslems report the
superior numbers of the enemy; a difference which may be solved by
counting or omitting the unwarlike Egyptians.]

[Footnote 44: It was the Alexandria of the Arabs, a middle term in
extent and riches between the period of the Greeks and Romans, and that
of the Turks, (Savary, Lettres sur l'Egypte, tom. i. p. 25, 26.)]

[Footnote *: The treaty stipulated that both the Christians and the
Arabs should withdraw from Egypt. Wilken, vol. iii. part ii. p. 113. --
M.]

[Footnote !: The Knights Templars, abhorring the perfidious breach of
treaty partly, perhaps, out of jealousy of the Hospitallers, refused to
join in this enterprise. Will. Tyre c. xx. p. 5. Wilken, vol. iii. part
ii. p. 117. -- M.]

[Footnote 45: For this great revolution of Egypt, see William of Tyre,
(l. xix. 5, 6, 7, 12--31, xx. 5--12,) Bohadin, (in Vit. Saladin, p.
30--39,) Abulfeda, (in Excerpt. Schultens, p. 1--12,) D'Herbelot,
(Bibliot. Orient. Adhed, Fathemah, but very incorrect,) Renaudot, (Hist.
Patriarch. Alex. p. 522--525, 532--537,) Vertot, (Hist. des Chevaliers
de Malthe, tom. i. p. 141--163, in 4to.,) and M. de Guignes, (tom. ii.
p. 185--215.)]

The hilly country beyond the Tigris is occupied by the pastoral tribes
of the Curds; ^46 a people hardy, strong, savage impatient of the yoke,
addicted to rapine, and tenacious of the government of their national
chiefs. The resemblance of name, situation, and manners, seems to
identify them with the Carduchians of the Greeks; ^47 and they still
defend against the Ottoman Porte the antique freedom which they asserted
against the successors of Cyrus. Poverty and ambition prompted them to
embrace the profession of mercenary soldiers: the service of his father
and uncle prepared the reign of the great Saladin; ^48 and the son of
Job or Ayud, a simple Curd, magnanimously smiled at his pedigree, which
flattery deduced from the Arabian caliphs. ^49 So unconscious was
Noureddin of the impending ruin of his house, that he constrained the
reluctant youth to follow his uncle Shiracouh into Egypt: his military
character was established by the defence of Alexandria; and, if we may
believe the Latins, he solicited and obtained from the Christian general
the profanehonors of knighthood. ^50 On the death of Shiracouh, the
office of grand vizier was bestowed on Saladin, as the youngest and
least powerful of the emirs; but with the advice of his father, whom he
invited to Cairo, his genius obtained the ascendant over his equals, and
attached the army to his person and interest. While Noureddin lived,
these ambitious Curds were the most humble of his slaves; and the
indiscreet murmurs of the divan were silenced by the prudent Ayub, who
loudly protested that at the command of the sultan he himself would lead
his sons in chains to the foot of the throne. "Such language," he added
in private, "was prudent and proper in an assembly of your rivals; but
we are now above fear and obedience; and the threats of Noureddin shall
not extort the tribute of a sugar-cane." His seasonable death relieved
them from the odious and doubtful conflict: his son, a minor of eleven
years of age, was left for a while to the emirs of Damascus; and the new
lord of Egypt was decorated by the caliph with every title ^51 that
could sanctify his usurpation in the eyes of the people. Nor was Saladin
long content with the possession of Egypt; he despoiled the Christians
of Jerusalem, and the Atabeks of Damascus, Aleppo, and Diarbekir: Mecca
and Medina acknowledged him for their temporal protector: his brother
subdued the distant regions of Yemen, or the happy Arabia; and at the
hour of his death, his empire was spread from the African Tripoli to the
Tigris, and from the Indian Ocean to the mountains of Armenia. In the
judgment of his character, the reproaches of treason and ingratitude
strike forcibly on ourminds, impressed, as they are, with the principle
and experience of law and loyalty. But his ambition may in some measure
be excused by the revolutions of Asia, ^52 which had erased every notion
of legitimate succession; by the recent example of the Atabeks
themselves; by his reverence to the son of his benefactor; his humane
and generous behavior to the collateral branches; by theirincapacity and
hismerit; by the approbation of the caliph, the sole source of all
legitimate power; and, above all, by the wishes and interest of the
people, whose happiness is the first object of government. In
hisvirtues, and in those of his patron, they admired the singular union
of the hero and the saint; for both Noureddin and Saladin are ranked
among the Mahometan saints; and the constant meditation of the holy war
appears to have shed a serious and sober color over their lives and
actions. The youth of the latter ^53 was addicted to wine and women: but
his aspiring spirit soon renounced the temptations of pleasure for the
graver follies of fame and dominion: the garment of Saladin was of
coarse woollen; water was his only drink; and, while he emulated the
temperance, he surpassed the chastity, of his Arabian prophet. Both in
faith and practice he was a rigid Mussulman: he ever deplored that the
defence of religion had not allowed him to accomplish the pilgrimage of
Mecca; but at the stated hours, five times each day, the sultan devoutly
prayed with his brethren: the involuntary omission of fasting was
scrupulously repaid; and his perusal of the Koran, on horseback between
the approaching armies, may be quoted as a proof, however ostentatious,
of piety and courage. ^54 The superstitious doctrine of the sect of
Shafei was the only study that he deigned to encourage: the poets were
safe in his contempt; but all profane science was the object of his
aversion; and a philosopher, who had invented some speculative
novelties, was seized and strangled by the command of the royal saint.
The justice of his divan was accessible to the meanest suppliant against
himself and his ministers; and it was only for a kingdom that Saladin
would deviate from the rule of equity. While the descendants of Seljuk
and Zenghi held his stirrup and smoothed his garments, he was affable
and patient with the meanest of his servants. So boundless was his
liberality, that he distributed twelve thousand horses at the siege of
Acre; and, at the time of his death, no more than forty-seven drams of
silver and one piece of gold coin were found in the treasury; yet, in a
martial reign, the tributes were diminished, and the wealthy citizens
enjoyed, without fear or danger, the fruits of their industry. Egypt,
Syria, and Arabia, were adorned by the royal foundations of hospitals,
colleges, and mosques; and Cairo was fortified with a wall and citadel;
but his works were consecrated to public use: ^55 nor did the sultan
indulge himself in a garden or palace of private luxury. In a fanatic
age, himself a fanatic, the genuine virtues of Saladin commanded the
esteem of the Christians; the emperor of Germany gloried in his
friendship; ^56 the Greek emperor solicited his alliance; ^57 and the
conquest of Jerusalem diffused, and perhaps magnified, his fame both in
the East and West.

[Footnote 46: For the Curds, see De Guignes, tom. ii. p. 416, 417, the
Index Geographicus of Schultens and Tavernier, Voyages, p. i. p. 308,
309. The Ayoubites descended from the tribe of the Rawadiæi, one of the
noblest; but as theywere infected with the heresy of the Metempsychosis,
the orthodox sultans insinuated that their descent was only on the
mother's side, and that their ancestor was a stranger who settled among
the Curds.]

[Footnote 47: See the ivth book of the Anabasis of Xenophon. The ten
thousand suffered more from the arrows of the free Carduchians, than
from the splendid weakness of the great king.]

[Footnote 48: We are indebted to the professor Schultens (Lugd. Bat,
1755, in folio) for the richest and most authentic materials, a life of
Saladin by his friend and minister the Cadhi Bohadin, and copious
extracts from the history of his kinsman the prince Abulfeda of Hamah.
To these we may add, the article of Salaheddinin the Bibliothèque
Orientale, and all that may be gleaned from the Dynasties of
Abulpharagius.]

[Footnote 49: Since Abulfeda was himself an Ayoubite, he may share the
praise, for imitating, at least tacitly, the modesty of the founder.]

[Footnote 50: Hist. Hierosol. in the Gesta Dei per Francos, p. 1152. A
similar example may be found in Joinville, (p. 42, edition du Louvre;)
but the pious St. Louis refused to dignify infidels with the order of
Christian knighthood, (Ducange, Observations, p 70.)]

[Footnote 51: In these Arabic titles, religionismust always be
understood; Noureddin, lumen r.; Ezzodin, decus; Amadoddin, columen: our
hero's proper name was Joseph, and he was styled Salahoddin, salus; Al
Malichus, Al Nasirus, rex defensor; Abu Modaffer, pater victoriæ,
Schultens, Præfat.]

[Footnote 52: Abulfeda, who descended from a brother of Saladin,
observes, from many examples, that the founders of dynasties took the
guilt for themselves, and left the reward to their innocent collaterals,
(Excerpt p. 10.)]

[Footnote 53: See his life and character in Renaudot, p. 537--548.]

[Footnote 54: His civil and religious virtues are celebrated in the
first chapter of Bohadin, (p. 4--30,) himself an eye-witness, and an
honest bigot.]

[Footnote 55: In many works, particularly Joseph's well in the castle of
Cairo, the Sultan and the Patriarch have been confounded by the
ignorance of natives and travellers.]

[Footnote 56: Anonym. Canisii, tom. iii. p. ii. p. 504.]

[Footnote 57: Bohadin, p. 129, 130.]

During his short existence, the kingdom of Jerusalem ^58 was supported
by the discord of the Turks and Saracens; and both the Fatimite caliphs
and the sultans of Damascus were tempted to sacrifice the cause of their
religion to the meaner considerations of private and present advantage.
But the powers of Egypt, Syria, and Arabia, were now united by a hero,
whom nature and fortune had armed against the Christians. All without
now bore the most threatening aspect; and all was feeble and hollow in
the internal state of Jerusalem. After the two first Baldwins, the
brother and cousin of Godfrey of Bouillon, the sceptre devolved by
female succession to Melisenda, daughter of the second Baldwin, and her
husband Fulk, count of Anjou, the father, by a former marriage, of our
English Plantagenets. Their two sons, Baldwin the Third, and Amaury,
waged a strenuous, and not unsuccessful, war against the infidels; but
the son of Amaury, Baldwin the Fourth, was deprived, by the leprosy, a
gift of the crusades, of the faculties both of mind and body. His sister
Sybilla, the mother of Baldwin the Fifth, was his natural heiress: after
the suspicious death of her child, she crowned her second husband, Guy
of Lusignan, a prince of a handsome person, but of such base renown,
that his own brother Jeffrey was heard to exclaim, "Since they have made
hima king, surely they would have made mea god!" The choice was
generally blamed; and the most powerful vassal, Raymond count of
Tripoli, who had been excluded from the succession and regency,
entertained an implacable hatred against the king, and exposed his honor
and conscience to the temptations of the sultan. Such were the guardians
of the holy city; a leper, a child, a woman, a coward, and a traitor:
yet its fate was delayed twelve years by some supplies from Europe, by
the valor of the military orders, and by the distant or domestic
avocations of their great enemy. At length, on every side, the sinking
state was encircled and pressed by a hostile line: and the truce was
violated by the Franks, whose existence it protected. A soldier of
fortune, Reginald of Chatillon, had seized a fortress on the edge of the
desert, from whence he pillaged the caravans, insulted Mahomet, and
threatened the cities of Mecca and Medina. Saladin condescended to
complain; rejoiced in the denial of justice, and at the head of
fourscore thousand horse and foot invaded the Holy Land. The choice of
Tiberias for his first siege was suggested by the count of Tripoli, to
whom it belonged; and the king of Jerusalem was persuaded to drain his
garrison, and to arm his people, for the relief of that important place.
^59 By the advice of the perfidious Raymond, the Christians were
betrayed into a camp destitute of water: he fled on the first onset,
with the curses of both nations: ^60 Lusignan was overthrown, with the
loss of thirty thousand men; and the wood of the true cross (a dire
misfortune!) was left in the power of the infidels. ^* The royal captive
was conducted to the tent of Saladin; and as he fainted with thirst and
terror, the generous victor presented him with a cup of sherbet, cooled
in snow, without suffering his companion, Reginald of Chatillon, to
partake of this pledge of hospitality and pardon. "The person and
dignity of a king," said the sultan, "are sacred, but this impious
robber must instantly acknowledge the prophet, whom he has blasphemed,
or meet the death which he has so often deserved." On the proud or
conscientious refusal of the Christian warrior, Saladin struck him on
the head with his cimeter, and Reginald was despatched by the guards.
^61 The trembling Lusignan was sent to Damascus, to an honorable prison
and speedy ransom; but the victory was stained by the execution of two
hundred and thirty knights of the hospital, the intrepid champions and
martyrs of their faith. The kingdom was left without a head; and of the
two grand masters of the military orders, the one was slain and the
other was a prisoner. From all the cities, both of the sea-coast and the
inland country, the garrisons had been drawn away for this fatal field:
Tyre and Tripoli alone could escape the rapid inroad of Saladin; and
three months after the battle of Tiberias, he appeared in arms before
the gates of Jerusalem. ^62

[Footnote 58: For the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, see William of Tyre,
from the ixth to the xxiid book. Jacob a Vitriaco, Hist. Hierosolem l
i., and Sanutus Secreta Fidelium Crucis, l. iii. p. vi. vii. viii. ix.]

[Footnote 59: Templarii ut apes bombabant et Hospitalarii ut venti
stridebant, et barones se exitio offerebant, et Turcopuli (the Christian
light troops) semet ipsi in ignem injiciebant, (Ispahani de Expugnatione
Kudsiticâ, p. 18, apud Schultens;) a specimen of Arabian eloquence,
somewhat different from the style of Xenophon!]

[Footnote 60: The Latins affirm, the Arabians insinuate, the treason of
Raymond; but had he really embraced their religion, he would have been a
saint and a hero in the eyes of the latter.]

[Footnote *: Raymond's advice would have prevented the abandonment of a
secure camp abounding with water near Sepphoris. The rash and insolent
valor of the master of the order of Knights Templars, which had before
exposed the Christians to a fatal defeat at the brook Kishon, forced the
feeble king to annul the determination of a council of war, and advance
to a camp in an enclosed valley among the mountains, near Hittin,
without water. Raymond did not fly till the battle was irretrievably
lost, and then the Saracens seem to have opened their ranks to allow him
free passage. The charge of suggesting the siege of Tiberias appears
ungrounded Raymond, no doubt, played a double part: he was a man of
strong sagacity, who foresaw the desperate nature of the contest with
Saladin, endeavored by every means to maintain the treaty, and, though
he joined both his arms and his still more valuable counsels to the
Christian army, yet kept up a kind of amicable correspondence with the
Mahometans. See Wilken, vol. iii. part ii. p. 276, et seq. Michaud, vol.
ii. p. 278, et seq. M. Michaud is still more friendly than Wilken to the
memory of Count Raymond, who died suddenly, shortly after the battle of
Hittin. He quotes a letter written in the name of Saladin by the caliph
Alfdel, to show that Raymond was considered by the Mahometans their most
dangerous and detested enemy. "No person of distinction among the
Christians escaped, except the count, (of Tripoli) whom God curse. God
made him die shortly afterwards, and sent him from the kingdom of death
to hell." -- M.]

[Footnote 61: Benaud, Reginald, or Arnold de Chatillon, is celebrated by
the Latins in his life and death; but the circumstances of the latter
are more distinctly related by Bohadin and Abulfeda; and Joinville
(Hist. de St. Louis, p. 70) alludes to the practice of Saladin, of never
putting to death a prisoner who had tasted his bread and salt. Some of
the companions of Arnold had been slaughtered, and almost sacrificed, in
a valley of Mecca, ubi sacrificia mactantur, (Abulfeda, p. 32.)]

[Footnote 62: Vertot, who well describes the loss of the kingdom and
city (Hist. des Chevaliers de Malthe, tom. i. l. ii. p. 226--278,)
inserts two original epistles of a Knight Templar.]

He might expect that the siege of a city so venerable on earth and in
heaven, so interesting to Europe and Asia, would rekindle the last
sparks of enthusiasm; and that, of sixty thousand Christians, every man
would be a soldier, and every soldier a candidate for martyrdom. But
Queen Sybilla trembled for herself and her captive husband; and the
barons and knights, who had escaped from the sword and chains of the
Turks, displayed the same factious and selfish spirit in the public
ruin. The most numerous portion of the inhabitants was composed of the
Greek and Oriental Christians, whom experience had taught to prefer the
Mahometan before the Latin yoke; ^63 and the holy sepulchre attracted a
base and needy crowd, without arms or courage, who subsisted only on the
charity of the pilgrims. Some feeble and hasty efforts were made for the
defence of Jerusalem: but in the space of fourteen days, a victorious
army drove back the sallies of the besieged, planted their engines,
opened the wall to the breadth of fifteen cubits, applied their
scaling-ladders, and erected on the breach twelve banners of the prophet
and the sultan. It was in vain that a barefoot procession of the queen,
the women, and the monks, implored the Son of God to save his tomb and
his inheritance from impious violation. Their sole hope was in the mercy
of the conqueror, and to their first suppliant deputation that mercy was
sternly denied. "He had sworn to avenge the patience and long-suffering
of the Moslems; the hour of forgiveness was elapsed, and the moment was
now arrived to expiate, in blood, the innocent blood which had been
spilt by Godfrey and the first crusaders." But a desperate and
successful struggle of the Franks admonished the sultan that his triumph
was not yet secure; he listened with reverence to a solemn adjuration in
the name of the common Father of mankind; and a sentiment of human
sympathy mollified the rigor of fanaticism and conquest. He consented to
accept the city, and to spare the inhabitants. The Greek and Oriental
Christians were permitted to live under his dominion, but it was
stipulated, that in forty days all the Franks and Latins should evacuate
Jerusalem, and be safely conducted to the seaports of Syria and Egypt;
that ten pieces of gold should be paid for each man, five for each
woman, and one for every child; and that those who were unable to
purchase their freedom should be detained in perpetual slavery. Of some
writers it is a favorite and invidious theme to compare the humanity of
Saladin with the massacre of the first crusade. The difference would be
merely personal; but we should not forget that the Christians had
offered to capitulate, and that the Mahometans of Jerusalem sustained
the last extremities of an assault and storm. Justice is indeed due to
the fidelity with which the Turkish conqueror fulfilled the conditions
of the treaty; and he may be deservedly praised for the glance of pity
which he cast on the misery of the vanquished. Instead of a rigorous
exaction of his debt, he accepted a sum of thirty thousand byzants, for
the ransom of seven thousand poor; two or three thousand more were
dismissed by his gratuitous clemency; and the number of slaves was
reduced to eleven or fourteen thousand persons. In this interview with
the queen, his words, and even his tears suggested the kindest
consolations; his liberal alms were distributed among those who had been
made orphans or widows by the fortune of war; and while the knights of
the hospital were in arms against him, he allowed their more pious
brethren to continue, during the term of a year, the care and service of
the sick. In these acts of mercy the virtue of Saladin deserves our
admiration and love: he was above the necessity of dissimulation, and
his stern fanaticism would have prompted him to dissemble, rather than
to affect, this profane compassion for the enemies of the Koran. After
Jerusalem had been delivered from the presence of the strangers, the
sultan made his triumphal entry, his banners waving in the wind, and to
the harmony of martial music. The great mosque of Omar, which had been
converted into a church, was again consecrated to one God and his
prophet Mahomet: the walls and pavement were purified with rose-water;
and a pulpit, the labor of Noureddin, was erected in the sanctuary. But
when the golden cross that glittered on the dome was cast down, and
dragged through the streets, the Christians of every sect uttered a
lamentable groan, which was answered by the joyful shouts of the
Moslems. In four ivory chests the patriarch had collected the crosses,
the images, the vases, and the relics of the holy place; they were
seized by the conqueror, who was desirous of presenting the caliph with
the trophies of Christian idolatry. He was persuaded, however, to
intrust them to the patriarch and prince of Antioch; and the pious
pledge was redeemed by Richard of England, at the expense of fifty-two
thousand byzants of gold. ^64

[Footnote 63: Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 545.]

[Footnote 64: For the conquest of Jerusalem, Bohadin (p. 67--75) and
Abulfeda (p. 40--43) are our Moslem witnesses. Of the Christian, Bernard
Thesaurarius (c. 151--167) is the most copious and authentic; see
likewise Matthew Paris, (p. 120--124.)]

The nations might fear and hope the immediate and final expulsion of the
Latins from Syria; which was yet delayed above a century after the death
of Saladin. ^65 In the career of victory, he was first checked by the
resistance of Tyre; the troops and garrisons, which had capitulated,
were imprudently conducted to the same port: their numbers were adequate
to the defence of the place; and the arrival of Conrad of Montferrat
inspired the disorderly crowd with confidence and union. His father, a
venerable pilgrim, had been made prisoner in the battle of Tiberias; but
that disaster was unknown in Italy and Greece, when the son was urged by
ambition and piety to visit the inheritance of his royal nephew, the
infant Baldwin. The view of the Turkish banners warned him from the
hostile coast of Jaffa; and Conrad was unanimously hailed as the prince
and champion of Tyre, which was already besieged by the conqueror of
Jerusalem. The firmness of his zeal, and perhaps his knowledge of a
generous foe, enabled him to brave the threats of the sultan, and to
declare, that should his aged parent be exposed before the walls, he
himself would discharge the first arrow, and glory in his descent from a
Christian martyr. ^66 The Egyptian fleet was allowed to enter the harbor
of Tyre; but the chain was suddenly drawn, and five galleys were either
sunk or taken: a thousand Turks were slain in a sally; and Saladin,
after burning his engines, concluded a glorious campaign by a
disgraceful retreat to Damascus. He was soon assailed by a more
formidable tempest. The pathetic narratives, and even the pictures, that
represented in lively colors the servitude and profanation of Jerusalem,
awakened the torpid sensibility of Europe: the emperor Frederic
Barbarossa, and the kings of France and England, assumed the cross; and
the tardy magnitude of their armaments was anticipated by the maritime
states of the Mediterranean and the Ocean. The skilful and provident
Italians first embarked in the ships of Genoa, Pisa, and Venice. They
were speedily followed by the most eager pilgrims of France, Normandy,
and the Western Isles. The powerful succor of Flanders, Frise, and
Denmark, filled near a hundred vessels: and the Northern warriors were
distinguished in the field by a lofty stature and a ponderous
battle-axe. ^67 Their increasing multitudes could no longer be confined
within the walls of Tyre, or remain obedient to the voice of Conrad.
They pitied the misfortunes, and revered the dignity, of Lusignan, who
was released from prison, perhaps, to divide the army of the Franks. He
proposed the recovery of Ptolemais, or Acre, thirty miles to the south
of Tyre; and the place was first invested by two thousand horse and
thirty thousand foot under his nominal command. I shall not expatiate on
the story of this memorable siege; which lasted near two years, and
consumed, in a narrow space, the forces of Europe and Asia. Never did
the flame of enthusiasm burn with fiercer and more destructive rage; nor
could the true believers, a common appellation, who consecrated their
own martyrs, refuse some applause to the mistaken zeal and courage of
their adversaries. At the sound of the holy trumpet, the Moslems of
Egypt, Syria, Arabia, and the Oriental provinces, assembled under the
servant of the prophet: ^68 his camp was pitched and removed within a
few miles of Acre; and he labored, night and day, for the relief of his
brethren and the annoyance of the Franks. Nine battles, not unworthy of
the name, were fought in the neighborhood of Mount Carmel, with such
vicissitude of fortune, that in one attack, the sultan forced his way
into the city; that in one sally, the Christians penetrated to the royal
tent. By the means of divers and pigeons, a regular correspondence was
maintained with the besieged; and, as often as the sea was left open,
the exhausted garrison was withdrawn, and a fresh supply was poured into
the place. The Latin camp was thinned by famine, the sword and the
climate; but the tents of the dead were replenished with new pilgrims,
who exaggerated the strength and speed of their approaching countrymen.
The vulgar was astonished by the report, that the pope himself, with an
innumerable crusade, was advanced as far as Constantinople. The march of
the emperor filled the East with more serious alarms: the obstacles
which he encountered in Asia, and perhaps in Greece, were raised by the
policy of Saladin: his joy on the death of Barbarossa was measured by
his esteem; and the Christians were rather dismayed than encouraged at
the sight of the duke of Swabia and his way-worn remnant of five
thousand Germans. At length, in the spring of the second year, the royal
fleets of France and England cast anchor in the Bay of Acre, and the
siege was more vigorously prosecuted by the youthful emulation of the
two kings, Philip Augustus and Richard Plantagenet. After every resource
had been tried, and every hope was exhausted, the defenders of Acre
submitted to their fate; a capitulation was granted, but their lives and
liberties were taxed at the hard conditions of a ransom of two hundred
thousand pieces of gold, the deliverance of one hundred nobles, and
fifteen hundred inferior captives, and the restoration of the wood of
the holy cross. Some doubts in the agreement, and some delay in the
execution, rekindled the fury of the Franks, and three thousand Moslems,
almost in the sultan's view, were beheaded by the command of the
sanguinary Richard. ^69 By the conquest of Acre, the Latin powers
acquired a strong town and a convenient harbor; but the advantage was
most dearly purchased. The minister and historian of Saladin computes,
from the report of the enemy, that their numbers, at different periods,
amounted to five or six hundred thousand; that more than one hundred
thousand Christians were slain; that a far greater number was lost by
disease or shipwreck; and that a small portion of this mighty host could
return in safety to their native countries. ^70

[Footnote 65: The sieges of Tyre and Acre are most copiously described
by Bernard Thesaurarius, (de Acquisitione TerræSanctæ, c. 167--179,) the
author of the Historia Hierosolymitana, (p. 1150--1172, in Bongarsius,)
Abulfeda, (p. 43--50,) and Bohadin, (p. 75--179.)]

[Footnote 66: I have followed a moderate and probable representation of
the fact; by Vertot, who adopts without reluctance a romantic tale the
old marquis is actually exposed to the darts of the besieged.]

[Footnote 67: Northmanni et Gothi, et cæteri populi insularum quæinter
occidentem et septentrionem sitæsunt, gentes bellicosæ, corporis proceri
mortis intrepidæ, bipennibus armatæ, navibus rotundis,
quæYsnachiædicuntur, advectæ.]

[Footnote 68: The historian of Jerusalem (p. 1108) adds the nations of
the East from the Tigris to India, and the swarthy tribes of Moors and
Getulians, so that Asia and Africa fought against Europe.]

[Footnote 69: Bohadin, p. 180; and this massacre is neither denied nor
blamed by the Christian historians. Alacriter jussa complentes, (the
English soldiers,) says Galfridus àVinesauf, (l. iv. c. 4, p. 346,) who
fixes at 2700 the number of victims; who are multiplied to 5000 by Roger
Hoveden, (p. 697, 698.) The humanity or avarice of Philip Augustus was
persuaded to ransom his prisoners, (Jacob àVitriaco, l. i. c. 98, p.
1122.)]

[Footnote 70: Bohadin, p. 14. He quotes the judgment of Balianus, and
the prince of Sidon, and adds, ex illo mundo quasi hominum paucissimi
redierunt. Among the Christians who died before St. John d'Acre, I find
the English names of De Ferrers earl of Derby, (Dugdale, Baronage, part
i. p. 260,) Mowbray, (idem, p. 124,) De Mandevil, De Fiennes, St. John,
Scrope, Bigot, Talbot, &c.]

Chapter LIX: The Crusades. -- Part III.

Philip Augustus, and Richard the First, are the only kings of France and
England who have fought under the same banners; but the holy service in
which they were enlisted was incessantly disturbed by their national
jealousy; and the two factions, which they protected in Palestine, were
more averse to each other than to the common enemy. In the eyes of the
Orientals; the French monarch was superior in dignity and power; and, in
the emperor's absence, the Latins revered him as their temporal chief.
^71 His exploits were not adequate to his fame. Philip was brave, but
the statesman predominated in his character; he was soon weary of
sacrificing his health and interest on a barren coast: the surrender of
Acre became the signal of his departure; nor could he justify this
unpopular desertion, by leaving the duke of Burgundy with five hundred
knights and ten thousand foot, for the service of the Holy Land. The
king of England, though inferior in dignity, surpassed his rival in
wealth and military renown; ^72 and if heroism be confined to brutal and
ferocious valor, Richard Plantagenet will stand high among the heroes of
the age. The memory of Cur de Lion, of the lion-hearted prince, was long
dear and glorious to his English subjects; and, at the distance of sixty
years, it was celebrated in proverbial sayings by the grandsons of the
Turks and Saracens, against whom he had fought: his tremendous name was
employed by the Syrian mothers to silence their infants; and if a horse
suddenly started from the way, his rider was wont to exclaim, "Dost thou
think King Richard is in that bush?" ^73 His cruelty to the Mahometans
was the effect of temper and zeal; but I cannot believe that a soldier,
so free and fearless in the use of his lance, would have descended to
whet a dagger against his valiant brother Conrad of Montferrat, who was
slain at Tyre by some secret assassins. ^74 After the surrender of Acre,
and the departure of Philip, the king of England led the crusaders to
the recovery of the sea-coast; and the cities of Cæsarea and Jaffa were
added to the fragments of the kingdom of Lusignan. A march of one
hundred miles from Acre to Ascalon was a great and perpetual battle of
eleven days. In the disorder of his troops, Saladin remained on the
field with seventeen guards, without lowering his standard, or
suspending the sound of his brazen kettle-drum: he again rallied and
renewed the charge; and his preachers or heralds called aloud on the
unitarians, manfully to stand up against the Christian idolaters. But
the progress of these idolaters was irresistible; and it was only by
demolishing the walls and buildings of Ascalon, that the sultan could
prevent them from occupying an important fortress on the confines of
Egypt. During a severe winter, the armies slept; but in the spring, the
Franks advanced within a day's march of Jerusalem, under the leading
standard of the English king; and his active spirit intercepted a
convoy, or caravan, of seven thousand camels. Saladin ^75 had fixed his
station in the holy city; but the city was struck with consternation and
discord: he fasted; he prayed; he preached; he offered to share the
dangers of the siege; but his Mamalukes, who remembered the fate of
their companions at Acre, pressed the sultan with loyal or seditious
clamors, to reserve hisperson and theircourage for the future defence of
the religion and empire. ^76 The Moslems were delivered by the sudden,
or, as they deemed, the miraculous, retreat of the Christians; ^77 and
the laurels of Richard were blasted by the prudence, or envy, of his
companions. The hero, ascending a hill, and veiling his face, exclaimed
with an indignant voice, "Those who are unwilling to rescue, are
unworthy to view, the sepulchre of Christ!" After his return to Acre, on
the news that Jaffa was surprised by the sultan, he sailed with some
merchant vessels, and leaped foremost on the beach: the castle was
relieved by his presence; and sixty thousand Turks and Saracens fled
before his arms. The discovery of his weakness, provoked them to return
in the morning; and they found him carelessly encamped before the gates
with only seventeen knights and three hundred archers. Without counting
their numbers, he sustained their charge; and we learn from the evidence
of his enemies, that the king of England, grasping his lance, rode
furiously along their front, from the right to the left wing, without
meeting an adversary who dared to encounter his career. ^78 Am I writing
the history of Orlando or Amadis?

[Footnote 71: Magnus hic apud eos, interque reges eorum tum virtute tum
majestate eminens . . . . summus rerum arbiter, (Bohadin, p. 159.) He
does not seem to have known the names either of Philip or Richard.]

[Footnote 72: Rex Angliæ, præstrenuus . . . . rege Gallorum minor apud
eos censebatur ratione regni atque dignitatis; sed tum divitiis
florentior, tum bellicâvirtute multo erat celebrior, (Bohadin, p. 161.)
A stranger might admire those riches; the national historians will tell
with what lawless and wasteful oppression they were collected.]

[Footnote 73: Joinville, p. 17. Cuides-tu que ce soit le roi Richart?]

[Footnote 74: Yet he was guilty in the opinion of the Moslems, who
attest the confession of the assassins, that they were sent by the king
of England, (Bohadin, p. 225;) and his only defence is an absurd and
palpable forgery, (Hist. de l'Académie des Inscriptions, tom. xv. p.
155--163,) a pretended letter from the prince of the assassins, the
Sheich, or old man of the mountain, who justified Richard, by assuming
to himself the guilt or merit of the murder. *

Note: * Von Hammer (Geschichte der Assassinen, p. 202) sums up against
Richard, Wilken (vol. iv. p. 485) as strongly for acquittal. Michaud
(vol. ii. p. 420) delivers no decided opinion. This crime was also
attributed to Saladin, who is said, by an Oriental authority, (the
continuator of Tabari,) to have employed the assassins to murder both
Conrad and Richard. It is a melancholy admission, but it must be
acknowledged, that such an act would be less inconsistent with the
character of the Christian than of the Mahometan king. -- M.]

[Footnote 75: See the distress and pious firmness of Saladin, as they
are described by Bohadin, (p. 7--9, 235--237,) who himself harangued the
defenders of Jerusalem; their fears were not unknown to the enemy,
(Jacob. àVitriaco, l. i. c. 100, p. 1123. Vinisauf, l. v. c. 50, p.
399.)]

[Footnote 76: Yet unless the sultan, or an Ayoubite prince, remained in
Jerusalem, nec Curdi Turcis, nec Turci essent obtemperaturi Curdis,
(Bohadin, p. 236.) He draws aside a corner of the political curtain.]

[Footnote 77: Bohadin, (p. 237,) and even Jeffrey de Vinisauf, (l. vi.
c. 1--8, p. 403--409,) ascribe the retreat to Richard himself; and
Jacobus àVitriaco observes, that in his impatience to depart, in alterum
virum mutatus est, (p. 1123.) Yet Joinville, a French knight, accuses
the envy of Hugh duke of Burgundy, (p. 116,) without supposing, like
Matthew Paris, that he was bribed by Saladin.]

[Footnote 78: The expeditions to Ascalon, Jerusalem, and Jaffa, are
related by Bohadin (p. 184--249) and Abulfeda, (p. 51, 52.) The author
of the Itinerary, or the monk of St. Alban's, cannot exaggerate the
cadhi's account of the prowess of Richard, (Vinisauf, l. vi. c. 14--24,
p. 412--421. Hist. Major, p. 137--143;) and on the whole of this war
there is a marvellous agreement between the Christian and Mahometan
writers, who mutually praise the virtues of their enemies.]

During these hostilities, a languid and tedious negotiation ^79 between
the Franks and Moslems was started, and continued, and broken, and again
resumed, and again broken. Some acts of royal courtesy, the gift of snow
and fruit, the exchange of Norway hawks and Arabian horses, softened the
asperity of religious war: from the vicissitude of success, the monarchs
might learn to suspect that Heaven was neutral in the quarrel; nor,
after the trial of each other, could either hope for a decisive victory.
^80 The health both of Richard and Saladin appeared to be in a declining
state; and they respectively suffered the evils of distant and domestic
warfare: Plantagenet was impatient to punish a perfidious rival who had
invaded Normandy in his absence; and the indefatigable sultan was
subdued by the cries of the people, who was the victim, and of the
soldiers, who were the instruments, of his martial zeal. The first
demands of the king of England were the restitution of Jerusalem,
Palestine, and the true cross; and he firmly declared, that himself and
his brother pilgrims would end their lives in the pious labor, rather
than return to Europe with ignominy and remorse. But the conscience of
Saladin refused, without some weighty compensation, to restore the
idols, or promote the idolatry, of the Christians; he asserted, with
equal firmness, his religious and civil claim to the sovereignty of
Palestine; descanted on the importance and sanctity of Jerusalem; and
rejected all terms of the establishment, or partition of the Latins. The
marriage which Richard proposed, of his sister with the sultan's
brother, was defeated by the difference of faith; the princess abhorred
the embraces of a Turk; and Adel, or Saphadin, would not easily renounce
a plurality of wives. A personal interview was declined by Saladin, who
alleged their mutual ignorance of each other's language; and the
negotiation was managed with much art and delay by their interpreters
and envoys. The final agreement was equally disapproved by the zealots
of both parties, by the Roman pontiff and the caliph of Bagdad. It was
stipulated that Jerusalem and the holy sepulchre should be open, without
tribute or vexation, to the pilgrimage of the Latin Christians; that,
after the demolition of Ascalon, they should inclusively possess the
sea-coast from Jaffa to Tyre; that the count of Tripoli and the prince
of Antioch should be comprised in the truce; and that, during three
years and three months, all hostilities should cease. The principal
chiefs of the two armies swore to the observance of the treaty; but the
monarchs were satisfied with giving their word and their right hand; and
the royal majesty was excused from an oath, which always implies some
suspicion of falsehood and dishonor. Richard embarked for Europe, to
seek a long captivity and a premature grave; and the space of a few
months concluded the life and glories of Saladin. The Orientals describe
his edifying death, which happened at Damascus; but they seem ignorant
of the equal distribution of his alms among the three religions, ^81 or
of the display of a shroud, instead of a standard, to admonish the East
of the instability of human greatness. The unity of empire was dissolved
by his death; his sons were oppressed by the stronger arm of their uncle
Saphadin; the hostile interests of the sultans of Egypt, Damascus, and
Aleppo, ^82 were again revived; and the Franks or Latins stood and
breathed, and hoped, in their fortresses along the Syrian coast.

[Footnote 79: See the progress of negotiation and hostility in Bohadin,
(p. 207--260,) who was himself an actor in the treaty. Richard declared
his intention of returning with new armies to the conquest of the Holy
Land; and Saladin answered the menace with a civil compliment, (Vinisauf
l. vi. c. 28, p. 423.)]

[Footnote 80: The most copious and original account of this holy war is
Galfridi àVinisauf, Itinerarium Regis Anglorum Richardi et aliorum in
Terram Hierosolymorum, in six books, published in the iid volume of
Gale's Scriptores Hist. Anglicanæ, (p. 247--429.) Roger Hoveden and
Matthew Paris afford likewise many valuable materials; and the former
describes, with accuracy, the discipline and navigation of the English
fleet.]

[Footnote 81: Even Vertot (tom. i. p. 251) adopts the foolish notion of
the indifference of Saladin, who professed the Koran with his last
breath.]

[Footnote 82: See the succession of the Ayoubites, in Abulpharagius,
(Dynast. p. 277, &c.,) and the tables of M. De Guignes, l'Art de
Vérifier les Dates, and the Bibliothèque Orientale.]

The noblest monument of a conqueror's fame, and of the terror which he
inspired, is the Saladine tenth, a general tax which was imposed on the
laity, and even the clergy, of the Latin church, for the service of the
holy war. The practice was too lucrative to expire with the occasion:
and this tribute became the foundation of all the tithes and tenths on
ecclesiastical benefices, which have been granted by the Roman pontiffs
to Catholic sovereigns, or reserved for the immediate use of the
apostolic see. ^83 This pecuniary emolument must have tended to increase
the interest of the popes in the recovery of Palestine: after the death
of Saladin, they preached the crusade, by their epistles, their legates,
and their missionaries; and the accomplishment of the pious work might
have been expected from the zeal and talents of Innocent the Third. ^84
Under that young and ambitious priest, the successors of St. Peter
attained the full meridian of their greatness: and in a reign of
eighteen years, he exercised a despotic command over the emperors and
kings, whom he raised and deposed; over the nations, whom an interdict
of months or years deprived, for the offence of their rulers, of the
exercise of Christian worship. In the council of the Lateran he acted as
the ecclesiastical, almost as the temporal, sovereign of the East and
West. It was at the feet of his legate that John of England surrendered
his crown; and Innocent may boast of the two most signal triumphs over
sense and humanity, the establishment of transubstantiation, and the
origin of the inquisition. At his voice, two crusades, the fourth and
the fifth, were undertaken; but, except a king of Hungary, the princes
of the second order were at the head of the pilgrims: the forces were
inadequate to the design; nor did the effects correspond with the hopes
and wishes of the pope and the people. The fourth crusade was diverted
from Syria to Constantinople; and the conquest of the Greek or Roman
empire by the Latins will form the proper and important subject of the
next chapter. In the fifth, ^85 two hundred thousand Franks were landed
at the eastern mouth of the Nile. They reasonably hoped that Palestine
must be subdued in Egypt, the seat and storehouse of the sultan; and,
after a siege of sixteen months, the Moslems deplored the loss of
Damietta. But the Christian army was ruined by the pride and insolence
of the legate Pelagius, who, in the pope's name, assumed the character
of general: the sickly Franks were encompassed by the waters of the Nile
and the Oriental forces; and it was by the evacuation of Damietta that
they obtained a safe retreat, some concessions for the pilgrims, and the
tardy restitution of the doubtful relic of the true cross. The failure
may in some measure be ascribed to the abuse and multiplication of the
crusades, which were preached at the same time against the Pagans of
Livonia, the Moors of Spain, the Albigeois of France, and the kings of
Sicily of the Imperial family. ^86 In these meritorious services, the
volunteers might acquire at home the same spiritual indulgence, and a
larger measure of temporal rewards; and even the popes, in their zeal
against a domestic enemy, were sometimes tempted to forget the distress
of their Syrian brethren. From the last age of the crusades they derived
the occasional command of an army and revenue; and some deep reasoners
have suspected that the whole enterprise, from the first synod of
Placentia, was contrived and executed by the policy of Rome. The
suspicion is not founded, either in nature or in fact. The successors of
St. Peter appear to have followed, rather than guided, the impulse of
manners and prejudice; without much foresight of the seasons, or
cultivation of the soil, they gathered the ripe and spontaneous fruits
of the superstition of the times. They gathered these fruits without
toil or personal danger: in the council of the Lateran, Innocent the
Third declared an ambiguous resolution of animating the crusaders by his
example; but the pilot of the sacred vessel could not abandon the helm;
nor was Palestine ever blessed with the presence of a Roman pontiff. ^87

[Footnote 83: Thomassin (Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. iii. p. 311--374)
has copiously treated of the origin, abuses, and restrictions of these
tenths. A theory was started, but not pursued, that they were rightfully
due to the pope, a tenth of the Levite's tenth to the high priest,
(Selden on Tithes; see his Works, vol. iii. p. ii. p. 1083.)]

[Footnote 84: See the Gesta Innocentii III. in Murat. Script. Rer.
Ital., (tom. iii. p. 486--568.)]

[Footnote 85: See the vth crusade, and the siege of Damietta, in Jacobus
àVitriaco, (l. iii. p. 1125--1149, in the Gesta Dei of Bongarsius,) an
eye-witness, Bernard Thesaurarius, (in Script. Muratori, tom. vii. p.
825--846, c. 190--207,) a contemporary, and Sanutus, (Secreta Fidel
Crucis, l. iii. p. xi. c. 4--9,) a diligent compiler; and of the
Arabians Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 294,) and the Extracts at the end of
Joinville, (p. 533, 537, 540, 547, &c.)]

[Footnote 86: To those who took the cross against Mainfroy, the pope
(A.D. 1255) granted plenissimam peccatorum remissionem. Fideles
mirabantur quòd tantum eis promitteret pro sanguine Christianorum
effundendo quantum pro cruore infidelium aliquando, (Matthew Paris p.
785.) A high flight for the reason of the xiiith century.]

[Footnote 87: This simple idea is agreeable to the good sense of
Mosheim, (Institut. Hist. Ecclés. p. 332,) and the fine philosophy of
Hume, (Hist. of England, vol. i. p. 330.)]

The persons, the families, and estates of the pilgrims, were under the
immediate protection of the popes; and these spiritual patrons soon
claimed the prerogative of directing their operations, and enforcing, by
commands and censures, the accomplishment of their vow. Frederic the
Second, ^88 the grandson of Barbarossa, was successively the pupil, the
enemy, and the victim of the church. At the age of twenty-one years, and
in obedience to his guardian Innocent the Third, he assumed the cross;
the same promise was repeated at his royal and imperial coronations; and
his marriage with the heiress of Jerusalem forever bound him to defend
the kingdom of his son Conrad. But as Frederic advanced in age and
authority, he repented of the rash engagements of his youth: his liberal
sense and knowledge taught him to despise the phantoms of superstition
and the crowns of Asia: he no longer entertained the same reverence for
the successors of Innocent: and his ambition was occupied by the
restoration of the Italian monarchy from Sicily to the Alps. But the
success of this project would have reduced the popes to their primitive
simplicity; and, after the delays and excuses of twelve years, they
urged the emperor, with entreaties and threats, to fix the time and
place of his departure for Palestine. In the harbors of Sicily and
Apulia, he prepared a fleet of one hundred galleys, and of one hundred
vessels, that were framed to transport and land two thousand five
hundred knights, with their horses and attendants; his vassals of Naples
and Germany formed a powerful army; and the number of English crusaders
was magnified to sixty thousand by the report of fame. But the
inevitable or affected slowness of these mighty preparations consumed
the strength and provisions of the more indigent pilgrims: the multitude
was thinned by sickness and desertion; and the sultry summer of Calabria
anticipated the mischiefs of a Syrian campaign. At length the emperor
hoisted sail at Brundusium, with a fleet and army of forty thousand men:
but he kept the sea no more than three days; and his hasty retreat,
which was ascribed by his friends to a grievous indisposition, was
accused by his enemies as a voluntary and obstinate disobedience. For
suspending his vow was Frederic excommunicated by Gregory the Ninth; for
presuming, the next year, to accomplish his vow, he was again
excommunicated by the same pope. ^89 While he served under the banner of
the cross, a crusade was preached against him in Italy; and after his
return he was compelled to ask pardon for the injuries which he had
suffered. The clergy and military orders of Palestine were previously
instructed to renounce his communion and dispute his commands; and in
his own kingdom, the emperor was forced to consent that the orders of
the camp should be issued in the name of God and of the Christian
republic. Frederic entered Jerusalem in triumph; and with his own hands
(for no priest would perform the office) he took the crown from the
altar of the holy sepulchre. But the patriarch cast an interdict on the
church which his presence had profaned; and the knights of the hospital
and temple informed the sultan how easily he might be surprised and
slain in his unguarded visit to the River Jordan. In such a state of
fanaticism and faction, victory was hopeless, and defence was difficult;
but the conclusion of an advantageous peace may be imputed to the
discord of the Mahometans, and their personal esteem for the character
of Frederic. The enemy of the church is accused of maintaining with the
miscreants an intercourse of hospitality and friendship unworthy of a
Christian; of despising the barrenness of the land; and of indulging a
profane thought, that if Jehovah had seen the kingdom of Naples he never
would have selected Palestine for the inheritance of his chosen people.
Yet Frederic obtained from the sultan the restitution of Jerusalem, of
Bethlem and Nazareth, of Tyre and Sidon; the Latins were allowed to
inhabit and fortify the city; an equal code of civil and religious
freedom was ratified for the sectaries of Jesus and those of Mahomet;
and, while the former worshipped at the holy sepulchre, the latter might
pray and preach in the mosque of the temple, ^90 from whence the prophet
undertook his nocturnal journey to heaven. The clergy deplored this
scandalous toleration; and the weaker Moslems were gradually expelled;
but every rational object of the crusades was accomplished without
bloodshed; the churches were restored, the monasteries were replenished;
and, in the space of fifteen years, the Latins of Jerusalem exceeded the
number of six thousand. This peace and prosperity, for which they were
ungrateful to their benefactor, was terminated by the irruption of the
strange and savage hordes of Carizmians. ^91 Flying from the arms of the
Moguls, those shepherds ^* of the Caspian rolled headlong on Syria; and
the union of the Franks with the sultans of Aleppo, Hems, and Damascus,
was insufficient to stem the violence of the torrent. Whatever stood
against them was cut off by the sword, or dragged into captivity: the
military orders were almost exterminated in a single battle; and in the
pillage of the city, in the profanation of the holy sepulchre, the
Latins confess and regret the modesty and discipline of the Turks and
Saracens.

[Footnote 88: The original materials for the crusade of Frederic II. may
be drawn from Richard de St. Germano (in Muratori, Script. Rerum Ital.
tom. vii. p. 1002--1013) and Matthew Paris, (p. 286, 291, 300, 302,
304.) The most rational moderns are Fleury, (Hist. Ecclés. tom. xvi.,)
Vertot, (Chevaliers de Malthe, tom. i. l. iii.,) Giannone, (Istoria
Civile di Napoli, tom. ii. l. xvi.,) and Muratori, (Annali d' Italia,
tom. x.)]

[Footnote 89: Poor Muratori knows what to think, but knows not what to
say: "Chino qui il capo,' &c. p. 322.]

[Footnote 90: The clergy artfully confounded the mosque or church of the
temple with the holy sepulchre, and their wilful error has deceived both
Vertot and Muratori.]

[Footnote 91: The irruption of the Carizmians, or Corasmins, is related
by Matthew Paris, (p. 546, 547,) and by Joinville, Nangis, and the
Arabians, (p. 111, 112, 191, 192, 528, 530.)]

[Footnote *: They were in alliance with Eyub, sultan of Syria. Wilken
vol. vi. p. 630. -- M.]

Of the seven crusades, the two last were undertaken by Louis the Ninth,
king of France; who lost his liberty in Egypt, and his life on the coast
of Africa. Twenty-eight years after his death, he was canonized at Rome;
and sixty-five miracles were readily found, and solemnly attested, to
justify the claim of the royal saint. ^92 The voice of history renders a
more honorable testimony, that he united the virtues of a king, a hero,
and a man; that his martial spirit was tempered by the love of private
and public justice; and that Louis was the father of his people, the
friend of his neighbors, and the terror of the infidels. Superstition
alone, in all the extent of her baleful influence, ^93 corrupted his
understanding and his heart: his devotion stooped to admire and imitate
the begging friars of Francis and Dominic: he pursued with blind and
cruel zeal the enemies of the faith; and the best of kings twice
descended from his throne to seek the adventures of a spiritual
knight-errant. A monkish historian would have been content to applaud
the most despicable part of his character; but the noble and gallant
Joinville, ^94 who shared the friendship and captivity of Louis, has
traced with the pencil of nature the free portrait of his virtues as
well as of his failings. From this intimate knowledge we may learn to
suspect the political views of depressing their great vassals, which are
so often imputed to the royal authors of the crusades. Above all the
princes of the middle ages, Louis the Ninth successfully labored to
restore the prerogatives of the crown; but it was at home and not in the
East, that he acquired for himself and his posterity: his vow was the
result of enthusiasm and sickness; and if he were the promoter, he was
likewise the victim, of his holy madness. For the invasion of Egypt,
France was exhausted of her troops and treasures; he covered the sea of
Cyprus with eighteen hundred sails; the most modest enumeration amounts
to fifty thousand men; and, if we might trust his own confession, as it
is reported by Oriental vanity, he disembarked nine thousand five
hundred horse, and one hundred and thirty thousand foot, who performed
their pilgrimage under the shadow of his power. ^95

[Footnote 92: Read, if you can, the Life and Miracles of St. Louis, by
the confessor of Queen Margaret, (p. 291--523. Joinville, du Louvre.)]

[Footnote 93: He believed all that mother church taught, (Joinville, p.
10,) but he cautioned Joinville against disputing with infidels. "L'omme
lay (said he in his old language) quand il ot medire de la loi
Crestienne, ne doit pas deffendre la loi Crestienne ne mais que de
l'espée, dequoi il doit donner parmi le ventre dedens, tant comme elle y
peut entrer' (p. 12.)]

[Footnote 94: I have two editions of Joinville, the one (Paris, 1668)
most valuable for the observations of Ducange; the other (Paris, au
Louvre, 1761) most precious for the pure and authentic text, a MS. of
which has been recently discovered. The last edition proves that the
history of St. Louis was finished A.D. 1309, without explaining, or even
admiring, the age of the author, which must have exceeded ninety years,
(Preface, p. x. Observations de Ducange, p. 17.)]

[Footnote 95: Joinville, p. 32. Arabic Extracts, p. 549. *

Note: * Compare Wilken, vol. vii. p. 94. -- M.]

In complete armor, the oriflamme waving before him, Louis leaped
foremost on the beach; and the strong city of Damietta, which had cost
his predecessors a siege of sixteen months, was abandoned on the first
assault by the trembling Moslems. But Damietta was the first and the
last of his conquests; and in the fifth and sixth crusades, the same
causes, almost on the same ground, were productive of similar
calamities. ^96 After a ruinous delay, which introduced into the camp
the seeds of an epidemic disease, the Franks advanced from the sea-coast
towards the capital of Egypt, and strove to surmount the unseasonable
inundation of the Nile, which opposed their progress. Under the eye of
their intrepid monarch, the barons and knights of France displayed their
invincible contempt of danger and discipline: his brother, the count of
Artois, stormed with inconsiderate valor the town of Massoura; and the
carrier pigeons announced to the inhabitants of Cairo that all was lost.
But a soldier, who afterwards usurped the sceptre, rallied the flying
troops: the main body of the Christians was far behind the vanguard; and
Artois was overpowered and slain. A shower of Greek fire was incessantly
poured on the invaders; the Nile was commanded by the Egyptian galleys,
the open country by the Arabs; all provisions were intercepted; each day
aggravated the sickness and famine; and about the same time a retreat
was found to be necessary and impracticable. The Oriental writers
confess, that Louis might have escaped, if he would have deserted his
subjects; he was made prisoner, with the greatest part of his nobles;
all who could not redeem their lives by service or ransom were inhumanly
massacred; and the walls of Cairo were decorated with a circle of
Christian heads. ^97 The king of France was loaded with chains; but the
generous victor, a great-grandson of the brother of Saladin, sent a robe
of honor to his royal captive, and his deliverance, with that of his
soldiers, was obtained by the restitution of Damietta ^98 and the
payment of four hundred thousand pieces of gold. In a soft and luxurious
climate, the degenerate children of the companions of Noureddin and
Saladin were incapable of resisting the flower of European chivalry:
they triumphed by the arms of their slaves or Mamalukes, the hardy
natives of Tartary, who at a tender age had been purchased of the Syrian
merchants, and were educated in the camp and palace of the sultan. But
Egypt soon afforded a new example of the danger of prætorian bands; and
the rage of these ferocious animals, who had been let loose on the
strangers, was provoked to devour their benefactor. In the pride of
conquest, Touran Shaw, the last of his race, was murdered by his
Mamalukes; and the most daring of the assassins entered the chamber of
the captive king, with drawn cimeters, and their hands imbrued in the
blood of their sultan. The firmness of Louis commanded their respect;
^99 their avarice prevailed over cruelty and zeal; the treaty was
accomplished; and the king of France, with the relics of his army, was
permitted to embark for Palestine. He wasted four years within the walls
of Acre, unable to visit Jerusalem, and unwilling to return without
glory to his native country.

[Footnote 96: The last editors have enriched their Joinville with large
and curious extracts from the Arabic historians, Macrizi, Abulfeda, &c.
See likewise Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 322--325,) who calls him by the
corrupt name of Redefrans. Matthew Paris (p. 683, 684) has described the
rival folly of the French and English who fought and fell at Massoura.]

[Footnote 97: Savary, in his agreeable Letters sur L'Egypte, has given a
description of Damietta, (tom. i. lettre xxiii. p. 274--290,) and a
narrative of the exposition of St. Louis, (xxv. p. 306--350.)]

[Footnote 98: For the ransom of St. Louis, a million of byzants was
asked and granted; but the sultan's generosity reduced that sum to
800,000 byzants, which are valued by Joinville at 400,000 French livres
of his own time, and expressed by Matthew Paris by 100,000 marks of
silver, (Ducange, Dissertation xx. sur Joinville.)]

[Footnote 99: The idea of the emirs to choose Louis for their sultan is
seriously attested by Joinville, (p. 77, 78,) and does not appear to me
so absurd as to M. de Voltaire, (Hist. Générale, tom. ii. p. 386, 387.)
The Mamalukes themselves were strangers, rebels, and equals: they had
felt his valor, they hoped his conversion; and such a motion, which was
not seconded, might be made, perhaps by a secret Christian in their
tumultuous assembly. *

Note: * Wilken, vol. vii. p. 257, thinks the proposition could not have
been made in earnest. -- M.]

The memory of his defeat excited Louis, after sixteen years of wisdom
and repose, to undertake the seventh and last of the crusades. His
finances were restored, his kingdom was enlarged; a new generation of
warriors had arisen, and he advanced with fresh confidence at the head
of six thousand horse and thirty thousand foot. The loss of Antioch had
provoked the enterprise; a wild hope of baptizing the king of Tunis
tempted him to steer for the African coast; and the report of an immense
treasure reconciled his troops to the delay of their voyage to the Holy
Land. Instead of a proselyte, he found a siege: the French panted and
died on the burning sands: St. Louis expired in his tent; and no sooner
had he closed his eyes, than his son and successor gave the signal of
the retreat. ^100 "It is thus," says a lively writer, "that a Christian
king died near the ruins of Carthage, waging war against the sectaries
of Mahomet, in a land to which Dido had introduced the deities of
Syria." ^101

[Footnote 100: See the expedition in the annals of St. Louis, by William
de Nangis, p. 270--287; and the Arabic extracts, p. 545, 555, of the
Louvre edition of Joinville.]

[Footnote 101: Voltaire, Hist. Générale, tom. ii. p. 391.]

A more unjust and absurd constitution cannot be devised than that which
condemns the natives of a country to perpetual servitude, under the
arbitrary dominion of strangers and slaves. Yet such has been the state
of Egypt above five hundred years. The most illustrious sultans of the
Baharite and Borgite dynasties ^102 were themselves promoted from the
Tartar and Circassian bands; and the four-and-twenty beys, or military
chiefs, have ever been succeeded, not by their sons, but by their
servants. They produce the great charter of their liberties, the treaty
of Selim the First with the republic: ^103 and the Othman emperor still
accepts from Egypt a slight acknowledgment of tribute and subjection.
With some breathing intervals of peace and order, the two dynasties are
marked as a period of rapine and bloodshed: ^104 but their throne,
however shaken, reposed on the two pillars of discipline and valor:
their sway extended over Egypt, Nubia, Arabia, and Syria: their
Mamalukes were multiplied from eight hundred to twenty-five thousand
horse; and their numbers were increased by a provincial militia of one
hundred and seven thousand foot, and the occasional aid of sixty-six
thousand Arabs. ^105 Princes of such power and spirit could not long
endure on their coast a hostile and independent nation; and if the ruin
of the Franks was postponed about forty years, they were indebted to the
cares of an unsettled reign, to the invasion of the Moguls, and to the
occasional aid of some warlike pilgrims. Among these, the English reader
will observe the name of our first Edward, who assumed the cross in the
lifetime of his father Henry. At the head of a thousand soldiers the
future conqueror of Wales and Scotland delivered Acre from a siege;
marched as far as Nazareth with an army of nine thousand men; emulated
the fame of his uncle Richard; extorted, by his valor, a ten years'
truce; ^* and escaped, with a dangerous wound, from the dagger of a
fanatic assassin. ^106 ^! Antioch, ^107 whose situation had been less
exposed to the calamities of the holy war, was finally occupied and
ruined by Bondocdar, or Bibars, sultan of Egypt and Syria; the Latin
principality was extinguished; and the first seat of the Christian name
was dispeopled by the slaughter of seventeen, and the captivity of one
hundred, thousand of her inhabitants. The maritime towns of Laodicea,
Gabala, Tripoli, Berytus, Sidon, Tyre and Jaffa, and the stronger
castles of the Hospitallers and Templars, successively fell; and the
whole existence of the Franks was confined to the city and colony of St.
John of Acre, which is sometimes described by the more classic title of
Ptolemais.

[Footnote 102: The chronology of the two dynasties of Mamalukes, the
Baharites, Turks or Tartars of Kipzak, and the Borgites, Circassians, is
given by Pocock (Prolegom. ad Abulpharag. p. 6--31) and De Guignes (tom.
i. p. 264--270;) their history from Abulfeda, Macrizi, &c., to the
beginning of the xvth century, by the same M. De Guignes, (tom. iv. p.
110--328.)]

[Footnote 103: Savary, Lettres sur l'Egypte, tom. ii. lettre xv. p.
189--208. I much question the authenticity of this copy; yet it is true,
that Sultan Selim concluded a treaty with the Circassians or Mamalukes
of Egypt, and left them in possession of arms, riches, and power. See a
new Abrégéde l'Histoire Ottomane, composed in Egypt, and translated by
M. Digeon, (tom. i. p. 55--58, Paris, 1781,) a curious, authentic, and
national history.]

[Footnote 104: Si totum quo regnum occupârunt tempus respicias,
præsertim quod fini propius, reperies illud bellis, pugnis, injuriis, ac
rapinis refertum, (Al Jannabi, apud Pocock, p. 31.) The reign of
Mohammed (A.D. 1311--1341) affords a happy exception, (De Guignes, tom.
iv. p. 208--210.)]

[Footnote 105: They are now reduced to 8500: but the expense of each
Mamaluke may be rated at a hundred louis: and Egypt groans under the
avarice and insolence of these strangers, (Voyages de Volney, tom. i. p.
89--187.)]

[Footnote *: Gibbon colors rather highly the success of Edward. Wilken
is more accurate vol. vii. p. 593, &c. -- M.]

[Footnote 106: See Carte's History of England, vol. ii. p. 165--175, and
his original authors, Thomas Wikes and Walter Hemingford, (l. iii. c.
34, 35,) in Gale's Collection, tom. ii. p. 97, 589--592.) They are both
ignorant of the princess Eleanor's piety in sucking the poisoned wound,
and saving her husband at the risk of her own life.]

[Footnote !: The sultan Bibars was concerned in this attempt at
assassination Wilken, vol. vii. p. 602. Ptolemæus Lucensis is the
earliest authority for the devotion of Eleanora. Ibid. 605. -- M.]

[Footnote 107: Sanutus, Secret. Fidelium Crucis, 1. iii. p. xii. c. 9,
and De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. iv. p. 143, from the Arabic
historians.]

After the loss of Jerusalem, Acre, ^108 which is distant about seventy
miles, became the metropolis of the Latin Christians, and was adorned
with strong and stately buildings, with aqueducts, an artificial port,
and a double wall. The population was increased by the incessant streams
of pilgrims and fugitives: in the pauses of hostility the trade of the
East and West was attracted to this convenient station; and the market
could offer the produce of every clime and the interpreters of every
tongue. But in this conflux of nations, every vice was propagated and
practised: of all the disciples of Jesus and Mahomet, the male and
female inhabitants of Acre were esteemed the most corrupt; nor could the
abuse of religion be corrected by the discipline of law. The city had
many sovereigns, and no government. The kings of Jerusalem and Cyprus,
of the house of Lusignan, the princes of Antioch, the counts of Tripoli
and Sidon, the great masters of the hospital, the temple, and the
Teutonic order, the republics of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, the pope's
legate, the kings of France and England, assumed an independent command:
seventeen tribunals exercised the power of life and death; every
criminal was protected in the adjacent quarter; and the perpetual
jealousy of the nations often burst forth in acts of violence and blood.
Some adventurers, who disgraced the ensign of the cross, compensated
their want of pay by the plunder of the Mahometan villages: nineteen
Syrian merchants, who traded under the public faith, were despoiled and
hanged by the Christians; and the denial of satisfaction justified the
arms of the sultan Khalil. He marched against Acre, at the head of sixty
thousand horse and one hundred and forty thousand foot: his train of
artillery (if I may use the word) was numerous and weighty: the separate
timbers of a single engine were transported in one hundred wagons; and
the royal historian Abulfeda, who served with the troops of Hamah, was
himself a spectator of the holy war. Whatever might be the vices of the
Franks, their courage was rekindled by enthusiasm and despair; but they
were torn by the discord of seventeen chiefs, and overwhelmed on all
sides by the powers of the sultan. After a siege of thirty three days,
the double wall was forced by the Moslems; the principal tower yielded
to their engines; the Mamalukes made a general assault; the city was
stormed; and death or slavery was the lot of sixty thousand Christians.
The convent, or rather fortress, of the Templars resisted three days
longer; but the great master was pierced with an arrow; and, of five
hundred knights, only ten were left alive, less happy than the victims
of the sword, if they lived to suffer on a scaffold, in the unjust and
cruel proscription of the whole order. The king of Jerusalem, the
patriarch and the great master of the hospital, effected their retreat
to the shore; but the sea was rough, the vessels were insufficient; and
great numbers of the fugitives were drowned before they could reach the
Isle of Cyprus, which might comfort Lusignan for the loss of Palestine.
By the command of the sultan, the churches and fortifications of the
Latin cities were demolished: a motive of avarice or fear still opened
the holy sepulchre to some devout and defenceless pilgrims; and a
mournful and solitary silence prevailed along the coast which had so
long resounded with the world's debate. ^109

[Footnote 108: The state of Acre is represented in all the chronicles of
te times, and most accurately in John Villani, l. vii. c. 144, in
Muratori, Scriptores Rerum Italicarum, tom. xiii. 337, 338.]

[Footnote 109: See the final expulsion of the Franks, in Sanutus, l.
iii. p. xii. c. 11--22; Abulfeda, Macrizi, &c., in De Guignes, tom. iv.
p. 162, 164; and Vertot, tom. i. l. iii. p. 307--428. *

Note: * After these chapters of Gibbon, the masterly prize composition,
"Essai sur 'Influence des Croisades sur l'Europe, par A H. L. Heeren:
traduit de l'Allemand par Charles Villars, Paris, 1808,' or the original
German, in Heeren's "Vermischte Schriften," may be read with great
advantage. -- M.]

Chapter LX: The Fourth Crusade.Part I.

Schism Of The Greeks And Latins. -- State Of Constantinople. -- Revolt
Of The Bulgarians. -- Isaac Angelus Dethroned By His Brother Alexius. --
Origin Of The Fourth Crusade. -- Alliance Of The French And Venetians
With The Son Of Isaac. -- Their Naval Expedition To Constantinople. --
The Two Sieges And Final Conquest Of The City By The Latins.

The restoration of the Western empire by Charlemagne was speedily
followed by the separation of the Greek and Latin churches. ^1 A
religious and national animosity still divides the two largest
communions of the Christian world; and the schism of Constantinople, by
alienating her most useful allies, and provoking her most dangerous
enemies, has precipitated the decline and fall of the Roman empire in
the East.

[Footnote 1: In the successive centuries, from the ixth to the xviiith,
Mosheim traces the schism of the Greeks with learning, clearness, and
impartiality; the filioque(Institut. Hist. Ecclés. p. 277,) Leo III. p.
303 Photius, p. 307, 308. Michael Cerularius, p. 370, 371, &c.]

In the course of the present History, the aversion of the Greeks for the
Latins has been often visible and conspicuous. It was originally derived
from the disdain of servitude, inflamed, after the time of Constantine,
by the pride of equality or dominion; and finally exasperated by the
preference which their rebellious subjects had given to the alliance of
the Franks. In every age the Greeks were proud of their superiority in
profane and religious knowledge: they had first received the light of
Christianity; they had pronounced the decrees of the seven general
councils; they alone possessed the language of Scripture and philosophy;
nor should the Barbarians, immersed in the darkness of the West, ^2
presume to argue on the high and mysterious questions of theological
science. Those Barbarians despised in then turn the restless and subtile
levity of the Orientals, the authors of every heresy; and blessed their
own simplicity, which was content to hold the tradition of the apostolic
church. Yet in the seventh century, the synods of Spain, and afterwards
of France, improved or corrupted the Nicene creed, on the mysterious
subject of the third person of the Trinity. ^3 In the long controversies
of the East, the nature and generation of the Christ had been
scrupulously defined; and the well-known relation of father and son
seemed to convey a faint image to the human mind. The idea of birth was
less analogous to the Holy Spirit, who, instead of a divine gift or
attribute, was considered by the Catholics as a substance, a person, a
god; he was not begotten, but in the orthodox style he proceeded. Did he
proceed from the Father alone, perhaps bythe Son? or from the Father
andthe Son? The first of these opinions was asserted by the Greeks, the
second by the Latins; and the addition to the Nicene creed of the word
filioque, kindled the flame of discord between the Oriental and the
Gallic churches. In the origin of the disputes the Roman pontiffs
affected a character of neutrality and moderation: ^4 they condemned the
innovation, but they acquiesced in the sentiment, of their Transalpine
brethren: they seemed desirous of casting a veil of silence and charity
over the superfluous research; and in the correspondence of Charlemagne
and Leo the Third, the pope assumes the liberality of a statesman, and
the prince descends to the passions and prejudices of a priest. ^5 But
the orthodoxy of Rome spontaneously obeyed the impulse of the temporal
policy; and the filioque, which Leo wished to erase, was transcribed in
the symbol and chanted in the liturgy of the Vatican. The Nicene and
Athanasian creeds are held as the Catholic faith, without which none can
be saved; and both Papists and Protestants must now sustain and return
the anathemas of the Greeks, who deny the procession of the Holy Ghost
from the Son, as well as from the Father. Such articles of faith are not
susceptible of treaty; but the rules of discipline will vary in remote
and independent churches; and the reason, even of divines, might allow,
that the difference is inevitable and harmless. The craft or
superstition of Rome has imposed on her priests and deacons the rigid
obligation of celibacy; among the Greeks it is confined to the bishops;
the loss is compensated by dignity or annihilated by age; and the
parochial clergy, the papas, enjoy the conjugal society of the wives
whom they have married before their entrance into holy orders. A
question concerning the Azymswas fiercely debated in the eleventh
century, and the essence of the Eucharist was supposed in the East and
West to depend on the use of leavened or unleavened bread. Shall I
mention in a serious history the furious reproaches that were urged
against the Latins, who for a long while remained on the defensive? They
neglected to abstain, according to the apostolical decree, from things
strangled, and from blood: they fasted (a Jewish observance!) on the
Saturday of each week: during the first week of Lent they permitted the
use of milk and cheese; ^6 their infirm monks were indulged in the taste
of flesh; and animal grease was substituted for the want of vegetable
oil: the holy chrism or unction in baptism was reserved to the episcopal
order: the bishops, as the bridegrooms of their churches, were decorated
with rings; their priests shaved their faces, and baptized by a single
immersion. Such were the crimes which provoked the zeal of the
patriarchs of Constantinople; and which were justified with equal zeal
by the doctors of the Latin church. ^7

[Footnote 2: ''AndreV dussebeiV kai apotropaioi, andreV ek sktouV
anadunteV, thV gar 'Esperiou moiraV uphrcon gennhmata, (Phot. Epist. p.
47, edit. Montacut.) The Oriental patriarch continues to apply the
images of thunder, earthquake, hail, wild boar, precursors of
Antichrist, &c., &c.]

[Footnote 3: The mysterious subject of the procession of the Holy Ghost
is discussed in the historical, theological, and controversial sense, or
nonsense, by the Jesuit Petavius. (Dogmata Theologica, tom. ii. l. vii.
p. 362--440.)]

[Footnote 4: Before the shrine of St. Peter he placed two shields of the
weight of 94 1/2 pounds of pure silver; on which he inscribed the text
of both creeds, (utroque symbolo,) pro amore et cautelâorthodoxæfidei,
(Anastas. in Leon. III. in Muratori, tom. iii. pars. i. p. 208.) His
language most clearly proves, that neither the filioque, nor the
Athanasian creed were received at Rome about the year 830.]

[Footnote 5: The Missi of Charlemagne pressed him to declare, that all
who rejected the filioque, or at least the doctrine, must be damned.
All, replies the pope, are not capable of reaching the altiora mysteria
qui potuerit, et non voluerit, salvus esse non potest, (Collect. Concil.
tom. ix. p. 277--286.) The potueritwould leave a large loophole of
salvation!]

[Footnote 6: In France, after some harsher laws, the ecclesiastical
discipline is now relaxed: milk, cheese, and butter, are become a
perpetual, and eggs an annual, indulgence in Lent, (Vie privée des
François, tom. ii. p. 27--38.)]

[Footnote 7: The original monuments of the schism, of the charges of the
Greeks against the Latins, are deposited in the epistles of Photius,
(Epist Encyclica, ii. p. 47--61,) and of Michael Cerularius, (Canisii
Antiq. Lectiones, tom. iii. p. i. p. 281--324, edit. Basnage, with the
prolix answer of Cardinal Humbert.)]

Bigotry and national aversion are powerful magnifiers of every object of
dispute; but the immediate cause of the schism of the Greeks may be
traced in the emulation of the leading prelates, who maintained the
supremacy of the old metropolis superior to all, and of the reigning
capital, inferior to none, in the Christian world. About the middle of
the ninth century, Photius, ^8 an ambitious layman, the captain of the
guards and principal secretary, was promoted by merit and favor to the
more desirable office of patriarch of Constantinople. In science, even
ecclesiastical science, he surpassed the clergy of the age; and the
purity of his morals has never been impeached: but his ordination was
hasty, his rise was irregular; and Ignatius, his abdicated predecessor,
was yet supported by the public compassion and the obstinacy of his
adherents. They appealed to the tribunal of Nicholas the First, one of
the proudest and most aspiring of the Roman pontiffs, who embraced the
welcome opportunity of judging and condemning his rival of the East.
Their quarrel was embittered by a conflict of jurisdiction over the king
and nation of the Bulgarians; nor was their recent conversion to
Christianity of much avail to either prelate, unless he could number the
proselytes among the subjects of his power. With the aid of his court
the Greek patriarch was victorious; but in the furious contest he
deposed in his turn the successor of St. Peter, and involved the Latin
church in the reproach of heresy and schism. Photius sacrificed the
peace of the world to a short and precarious reign: he fell with his
patron, the Cæsar Bardas; and Basil the Macedonian performed an act of
justice in the restoration of Ignatius, whose age and dignity had not
been sufficiently respected. From his monastery, or prison, Photius
solicited the favor of the emperor by pathetic complaints and artful
flattery; and the eyes of his rival were scarcely closed, when he was
again restored to the throne of Constantinople. After the death of Basil
he experienced the vicissitudes of courts and the ingratitude of a royal
pupil: the patriarch was again deposed, and in his last solitary hours
he might regret the freedom of a secular and studious life. In each
revolution, the breath, the nod, of the sovereign had been accepted by a
submissive clergy; and a synod of three hundred bishops was always
prepared to hail the triumph, or to stigmatize the fall, of the holy, or
the execrable, Photius. ^9 By a delusive promise of succor or reward,
the popes were tempted to countenance these various proceedings; and the
synods of Constantinople were ratified by their epistles or legates. But
the court and the people, Ignatius and Photius, were equally adverse to
their claims; their ministers were insulted or imprisoned; the
procession of the Holy Ghost was forgotten; Bulgaria was forever annexed
to the Byzantine throne; and the schism was prolonged by their rigid
censure of all the multiplied ordinations of an irregular patriarch. The
darkness and corruption of the tenth century suspended the intercourse,
without reconciling the minds, of the two nations. But when the Norman
sword restored the churches of Apulia to the jurisdiction of Rome, the
departing flock was warned, by a petulant epistle of the Greek
patriarch, to avoid and abhor the errors of the Latins. The rising
majesty of Rome could no longer brook the insolence of a rebel; and
Michael Cerularius was excommunicated in the heart of Constantinople by
the pope's legates. Shaking the dust from their feet, they deposited on
the altar of St. Sophia a direful anathema, ^10 which enumerates the
seven mortal heresies of the Greeks, and devotes the guilty teachers,
and their unhappy sectaries, to the eternal society of the devil and his
angels. According to the emergencies of the church and state, a friendly
correspondence was some times resumed; the language of charity and
concord was sometimes affected; but the Greeks have never recanted their
errors; the popes have never repealed their sentence; and from this
thunderbolt we may date the consummation of the schism. It was enlarged
by each ambitious step of the Roman pontiffs: the emperors blushed and
trembled at the ignominious fate of their royal brethren of Germany; and
the people were scandalized by the temporal power and military life of
the Latin clergy. ^11

[Footnote 8: The xth volume of the Venice edition of the Councils
contains all the acts of the synods, and history of Photius: they are
abridged, with a faint tinge of prejudice or prudence, by Dupin and
Fleury.]

[Footnote 9: The synod of Constantinople, held in the year 869, is the
viiith of the general councils, the last assembly of the East which is
recognized by the Roman church. She rejects the synods of Constantinople
of the years 867 and 879, which were, however, equally numerous and
noisy; but they were favorable to Photius.]

[Footnote 10: See this anathema in the Councils, tom. xi. p.
1457--1460.]

[Footnote 11: Anna Comnena (Alexiad, l. i. p. 31--33) represents the
abhorrence, not only of the church, but of the palace, for Gregory VII.,
the popes and the Latin communion. The style of Cinnamus and Nicetas is
still more vehement. Yet how calm is the voice of history compared with
that of polemics!]

The aversion of the Greeks and Latins was nourished and manifested in
the three first expeditions to the Holy Land. Alexius Comnenus contrived
the absence at least of the formidable pilgrims: his successors, Manuel
and Isaac Angelus, conspired with the Moslems for the ruin of the
greatest princes of the Franks; and their crooked and malignant policy
was seconded by the active and voluntary obedience of every order of
their subjects. Of this hostile temper, a large portion may doubtless be
ascribed to the difference of language, dress, and manners, which severs
and alienates the nations of the globe. The pride, as well as the
prudence, of the sovereign was deeply wounded by the intrusion of
foreign armies, that claimed a right of traversing his dominions, and
passing under the walls of his capital: his subjects were insulted and
plundered by the rude strangers of the West: and the hatred of the
pusillanimous Greeks was sharpened by secret envy of the bold and pious
enterprises of the Franks. But these profane causes of national enmity
were fortified and inflamed by the venom of religious zeal. Instead of a
kind embrace, a hospitable reception from their Christian brethren of
the East, every tongue was taught to repeat the names of schismatic and
heretic, more odious to an orthodox ear than those of pagan and infidel:
instead of being loved for the general conformity of faith and worship,
they were abhorred for some rules of discipline, some questions of
theology, in which themselves or their teachers might differ from the
Oriental church. In the crusade of Louis the Seventh, the Greek clergy
washed and purified the altars which had been defiled by the sacrifice
of a French priest. The companions of Frederic Barbarossa deplore the
injuries which they endured, both in word and deed, from the peculiar
rancor of the bishops and monks. Their prayers and sermons excited the
people against the impious Barbarians; and the patriarch is accused of
declaring, that the faithful might obtain the redemption of all their
sins by the extirpation of the schismatics. ^12 An enthusiast, named
Dorotheus, alarmed the fears, and restored the confidence, of the
emperor, by a prophetic assurance, that the German heretic, after
assaulting the gate of Blachernes, would be made a signal example of the
divine vengeance. The passage of these mighty armies were rare and
perilous events; but the crusades introduced a frequent and familiar
intercourse between the two nations, which enlarged their knowledge
without abating their prejudices. The wealth and luxury of
Constantinople demanded the productions of every climate these imports
were balanced by the art and labor of her numerous inhabitants; her
situation invites the commerce of the world; and, in every period of her
existence, that commerce has been in the hands of foreigners. After the
decline of Amalphi, the Venetians, Pisans, and Genoese, introduced their
factories and settlements into the capital of the empire: their services
were rewarded with honors and immunities; they acquired the possession
of lands and houses; their families were multiplied by marriages with
the natives; and, after the toleration of a Mahometan mosque, it was
impossible to interdict the churches of the Roman rite. ^13 The two
wives of Manuel Comnenus ^14 were of the race of the Franks: the first,
a sister-in-law of the emperor Conrad; the second, a daughter of the
prince of Antioch: he obtained for his son Alexius a daughter of Philip
Augustus, king of France; and he bestowed his own daughter on a marquis
of Montferrat, who was educated and dignified in the palace of
Constantinople. The Greek encountered the arms, and aspired to the
empire, of the West: he esteemed the valor, and trusted the fidelity, of
the Franks; ^15 their military talents were unfitly recompensed by the
lucrative offices of judges and treasures; the policy of Manuel had
solicited the alliance of the pope; and the popular voice accused him of
a partial bias to the nation and religion of the Latins. ^16 During his
reign, and that of his successor Alexius, they were exposed at
Constantinople to the reproach of foreigners, heretics, and favorites;
and this triple guilt was severely expiated in the tumult, which
announced the return and elevation of Andronicus. ^17 The people rose in
arms: from the Asiatic shore the tyrant despatched his troops and
galleys to assist the national revenge; and the hopeless resistance of
the strangers served only to justify the rage, and sharpen the daggers,
of the assassins. Neither age, nor sex, nor the ties of friendship or
kindred, could save the victims of national hatred, and avarice, and
religious zeal; the Latins were slaughtered in their houses and in the
streets; their quarter was reduced to ashes; the clergy were burnt in
their churches, and the sick in their hospitals; and some estimate may
be formed of the slain from the clemency which sold above four thousand
Christians in perpetual slavery to the Turks. The priests and monks were
the loudest and most active in the destruction of the schismatics; and
they chanted a thanksgiving to the Lord, when the head of a Roman
cardinal, the pope's legate, was severed from his body, fastened to the
tail of a dog, and dragged, with savage mockery, through the city. The
more diligent of the strangers had retreated, on the first alarm, to
their vessels, and escaped through the Hellespont from the scene of
blood. In their flight, they burnt and ravaged two hundred miles of the
sea-coast; inflicted a severe revenge on the guiltless subjects of the
empire; marked the priests and monks as their peculiar enemies; and
compensated, by the accumulation of plunder, the loss of their property
and friends. On their return, they exposed to Italy and Europe the
wealth and weakness, the perfidy and malice, of the Greeks, whose vices
were painted as the genuine characters of heresy and schism. The
scruples of the first crusaders had neglected the fairest opportunities
of securing, by the possession of Constantinople, the way to the Holy
Land: domestic revolution invited, and almost compelled, the French and
Venetians to achieve the conquest of the Roman empire of the East.

[Footnote 12: His anonymous historian (de Expedit. Asiat. Fred. I. in
Canisii Lection. Antiq. tom. iii. pars ii. p. 511, edit. Basnage)
mentions the sermons of the Greek patriarch, quomodo Græcis injunxerat
in remissionem peccatorum peregrinos occidere et delere de terra. Tagino
observes, (in Scriptores Freher. tom. i. p. 409, edit. Struv.,) Græci
hæreticos nos appellant: clerici et monachi dictis et factis
persequuntur. We may add the declaration of the emperor Baldwin fifteen
years afterwards: Hæc est (gens) quæLatinos omnes non hominum nomine,
sed canum dignabatur; quorum sanguinem effundere penèinter merita
reputabant, (Gesta Innocent. III., c. 92, in Muratori, Script. Rerum
Italicarum, tom. iii. pars i. p. 536.) There may be some exaggeration,
but it was as effectual for the action and reaction of hatred.]

[Footnote 13: See Anna Comnena, (Alexiad, l. vi. p. 161, 162,) and a
remarkable passage of Nicetas, (in Manuel, l. v. c. 9,) who observes of
the Venetians, kata smhnh kai jratriaV thn Kwnstantinou polin thV
oikeiaV hllaxanto, &c.]

[Footnote 14: Ducange, Fam. Byzant. p. 186, 187.]

[Footnote 15: Nicetas in Manuel. l. vii. c. 2. Regnante enim (Manuele) .
. . . apud eum tantam Latinus populus repererat gratiam ut neglectis
Græculis suis tanquam viris mollibus et effminatis, . . . . solis
Latinis grandia committeret negotia . . . . erga eos profusâliberalitate
abundabat . . . . ex omni orbe ad eum tanquam ad benefactorem nobiles et
ignobiles concurrebant. Willelm. Tyr. xxii. c. 10.]

[Footnote 16: The suspicions of the Greeks would have been confirmed, if
they had seen the political epistles of Manuel to Pope Alexander III.,
the enemy of his enemy Frederic I., in which the emperor declares his
wish of uniting the Greeks and Latins as one flock under one shepherd,
&c (See Fleury, Hist. Ecclés. tom. xv. p. 187, 213, 243.)]

[Footnote 17: See the Greek and Latin narratives in Nicetas (in Alexio
Comneno, c. 10) and William of Tyre, (l. xxii. c. 10, 11, 12, 13;) the
first soft and concise, the second loud, copious, and tragical.]

In the series of the Byzantine princes, I have exhibited the hypocrisy
and ambition, the tyranny and fall, of Andronicus, the last male of the
Comnenian family who reigned at Constantinople. The revolution, which
cast him headlong from the throne, saved and exalted Isaac Angelus, ^18
who descended by the females from the same Imperial dynasty. The
successor of a second Nero might have found it an easy task to deserve
the esteem and affection of his subjects; they sometimes had reason to
regret the administration of Andronicus. The sound and vigorous mind of
the tyrant was capable of discerning the connection between his own and
the public interest; and while he was feared by all who could inspire
him with fear, the unsuspected people, and the remote provinces, might
bless the inexorable justice of their master. But his successor was vain
and jealous of the supreme power, which he wanted courage and abilities
to exercise: his vices were pernicious, his virtues (if he possessed any
virtues) were useless, to mankind; and the Greeks, who imputed their
calamities to his negligence, denied him the merit of any transient or
accidental benefits of the times. Isaac slept on the throne, and was
awakened only by the sound of pleasure: his vacant hours were amused by
comedians and buffoons, and even to these buffoons the emperor was an
object of contempt: his feasts and buildings exceeded the examples of
royal luxury: the number of his eunuchs and domestics amounted to twenty
thousand; and a daily sum of four thousand pounds of silver would swell
to four millions sterling the annual expense of his household and table.
His poverty was relieved by oppression; and the public discontent was
inflamed by equal abuses in the collection, and the application, of the
revenue. While the Greeks numbered the days of their servitude, a
flattering prophet, whom he rewarded with the dignity of patriarch,
assured him of a long and victorious reign of thirty-two years; during
which he should extend his sway to Mount Libanus, and his conquests
beyond the Euphrates. But his only step towards the accomplishment of
the prediction was a splendid and scandalous embassy to Saladin, ^19 to
demand the restitution of the holy sepulchre, and to propose an
offensive and defensive league with the enemy of the Christian name. In
these unworthy hands, of Isaac and his brother, the remains of the Greek
empire crumbled into dust. The Island of Cyprus, whose name excites the
ideas of elegance and pleasure, was usurped by his namesake, a Comnenian
prince; and by a strange concatenation of events, the sword of our
English Richard bestowed that kingdom on the house of Lusignan, a rich
compensation for the loss of Jerusalem.

[Footnote 18: The history of the reign of Isaac Angelus is composed, in
three books, by the senator Nicetas, (p. 228--290;) and his offices of
logothete, or principal secretary, and judge of the veil or palace,
could not bribe the impartiality of the historian. He wrote, it is true,
after the fall and death of his benefactor.]

[Footnote 19: See Bohadin, Vit. Saladin. p. 129--131, 226, vers.
Schultens. The ambassador of Isaac was equally versed in the Greek,
French, and Arabic languages; a rare instance in those times. His
embassies were received with honor, dismissed without effect, and
reported with scandal in the West.]

The honor of the monarchy and the safety of the capital were deeply
wounded by the revolt of the Bulgarians and Walachians. Since the
victory of the second Basil, they had supported, above a hundred and
seventy years, the loose dominion of the Byzantine princes; but no
effectual measures had been adopted to impose the yoke of laws and
manners on these savage tribes. By the command of Isaac, their sole
means of subsistence, their flocks and herds, were driven away, to
contribute towards the pomp of the royal nuptials; and their fierce
warriors were exasperated by the denial of equal rank and pay in the
military service. Peter and Asan, two powerful chiefs, of the race of
the ancient kings, ^20 asserted their own rights and the national
freedom; their dæmoniac impostors proclaimed to the crowd, that their
glorious patron St. Demetrius had forever deserted the cause of the
Greeks; and the conflagration spread from the banks of the Danube to the
hills of Macedonia and Thrace. After some faint efforts, Isaac Angelus
and his brother acquiesced in their independence; and the Imperial
troops were soon discouraged by the bones of their fellow-soldiers, that
were scattered along the passes of Mount Hæmus. By the arms and policy
of John or Joannices, the second kingdom of Bulgaria was firmly
established. The subtle Barbarian sent an embassy to Innocent the Third,
to acknowledge himself a genuine son of Rome in descent and religion,
^21 and humbly received from the pope the license of coining money, the
royal title, and a Latin archbishop or patriarch. The Vatican exulted in
the spiritual conquest of Bulgaria, the first object of the schism; and
if the Greeks could have preserved the prerogatives of the church, they
would gladly have resigned the rights of the monarchy.

[Footnote 20: Ducange, Familiæ, Dalmaticæ, p. 318, 319, 320. The
original correspondence of the Bulgarian king and the Roman pontiff is
inscribed in the Gesta Innocent. III. c. 66--82, p. 513--525.]

[Footnote 21: The pope acknowledges his pedigree, a nobili urbis
Romæprosapiâgenitores tui originem traxerunt. This tradition, and the
strong resemblance of the Latin and Walachian idioms, is explained by M.
D'Anville, (Etats de l'Europe, p. 258--262.) The Italian colonies of the
Dacia of Trajan were swept away by the tide of emigration from the
Danube to the Volga, and brought back by another wave from the Volga to
the Danube. Possible, but strange!]

The Bulgarians were malicious enough to pray for the long life of Isaac
Angelus, the surest pledge of their freedom and prosperity. Yet their
chiefs could involve in the same indiscriminate contempt the family and
nation of the emperor. "In all the Greeks," said Asan to his troops,
"the same climate, and character, and education, will be productive of
the same fruits. Behold my lance," continued the warrior, "and the long
streamers that float in the wind. They differ only in color; they are
formed of the same silk, and fashioned by the same workman; nor has the
stripe that is stained in purple any superior price or value above its
fellows." ^22 Several of these candidates for the purple successively
rose and fell under the empire of Isaac; a general, who had repelled the
fleets of Sicily, was driven to revolt and ruin by the ingratitude of
the prince; and his luxurious repose was disturbed by secret
conspiracies and popular insurrections. The emperor was saved by
accident, or the merit of his servants: he was at length oppressed by an
ambitious brother, who, for the hope of a precarious diadem, forgot the
obligations of nature, of loyalty, and of friendship. ^23 While Isaac in
the Thracian valleys pursued the idle and solitary pleasures of the
chase, his brother, Alexius Angelus, was invested with the purple, by
the unanimous suffrage of the camp; the capital and the clergy
subscribed to their choice; and the vanity of the new sovereign rejected
the name of his fathers for the lofty and royal appellation of the
Comnenian race. On the despicable character of Isaac I have exhausted
the language of contempt, and can only add, that, in a reign of eight
years, the baser Alexius ^24 was supported by the masculine vices of his
wife Euphrosyne. The first intelligence of his fall was conveyed to the
late emperor by the hostile aspect and pursuit of the guards, no longer
his own: he fled before them above fifty miles, as far as Stagyra, in
Macedonia; but the fugitive, without an object or a follower, was
arrested, brought back to Constantinople, deprived of his eyes, and
confined in a lonesome tower, on a scanty allowance of bread and water.
At the moment of the revolution, his son Alexius, whom he educated in
the hope of empire, was twelve years of age. He was spared by the
usurper, and reduced to attend his triumph both in peace and war; but as
the army was encamped on the sea-shore, an Italian vessel facilitated
the escape of the royal youth; and, in the disguise of a common sailor,
he eluded the search of his enemies, passed the Hellespont, and found a
secure refuge in the Isle of Sicily. After saluting the threshold of the
apostles, and imploring the protection of Pope Innocent the Third,
Alexius accepted the kind invitation of his sister Irene, the wife of
Philip of Swabia, king of the Romans. But in his passage through Italy,
he heard that the flower of Western chivalry was assembled at Venice for
the deliverance of the Holy Land; and a ray of hope was kindled in his
bosom, that their invincible swords might be employed in his father's
restoration.

[Footnote 22: This parable is in the best savage style; but I wish the
Walach had not introduced the classic name of Mysians, the experiment of
the magnet or loadstone, and the passage of an old comic poet, (Nicetas
in Alex. Comneno, l. i. p. 299, 300.)]

[Footnote 23: The Latins aggravate the ingratitude of Alexius, by
supposing that he had been released by his brother Isaac from Turkish
captivity This pathetic tale had doubtless been repeated at Venice and
Zara but I do not readily discover its grounds in the Greek historians.]

[Footnote 24: See the reign of Alexius Angelus, or Comnenus, in the
three books of Nicetas, p. 291--352.]

About ten or twelve years after the loss of Jerusalem, the nobles of
France were again summoned to the holy war by the voice of a third
prophet, less extravagant, perhaps, than Peter the hermit, but far below
St. Bernard in the merit of an orator and a statesman. An illiterate
priest of the neighborhood of Paris, Fulk of Neuilly, ^25 forsook his
parochial duty, to assume the more flattering character of a popular and
itinerant missionary. The fame of his sanctity and miracles was spread
over the land; he declaimed, with severity and vehemence, against the
vices of the age; and his sermons, which he preached in the streets of
Paris, converted the robbers, the usurers, the prostitutes, and even the
doctors and scholars of the university. No sooner did Innocent the Third
ascend the chair of St. Peter, than he proclaimed in Italy, Germany, and
France, the obligation of a new crusade. ^26 The eloquent pontiff
described the ruin of Jerusalem, the triumph of the Pagans, and the
shame of Christendom; his liberality proposed the redemption of sins, a
plenary indulgence to all who should serve in Palestine, either a year
in person, or two years by a substitute; ^27 and among his legates and
orators who blew the sacred trumpet, Fulk of Neuilly was the loudest and
most successful. The situation of the principal monarchs was averse to
the pious summons. The emperor Frederic the Second was a child; and his
kingdom of Germany was disputed by the rival houses of Brunswick and
Swabia, the memorable factions of the Guelphs and Ghibelines. Philip
Augustus of France had performed, and could not be persuaded to renew,
the perilous vow; but as he was not less ambitious of praise than of
power, he cheerfully instituted a perpetual fund for the defence of the
Holy Land Richard of England was satiated with the glory and misfortunes
of his first adventure; and he presumed to deride the exhortations of
Fulk of Neuilly, who was not abashed in the presence of kings. "You
advise me," said Plantagenet, "to dismiss my three daughters, pride,
avarice, and incontinence: I bequeath them to the most deserving; my
pride to the knights templars, my avarice to the monks of Cisteaux, and
my incontinence to the prelates." But the preacher was heard and obeyed
by the great vassals, the princes of the second order; and Theobald, or
Thibaut, count of Champagne, was the foremost in the holy race. The
valiant youth, at the age of twenty-two years, was encouraged by the
domestic examples of his father, who marched in the second crusade, and
of his elder brother, who had ended his days in Palestine with the title
of King of Jerusalem; two thousand two hundred knights owed service and
homage to his peerage; ^28 the nobles of Champagne excelled in all the
exercises of war; ^29 and, by his marriage with the heiress of Navarre,
Thibaut could draw a band of hardy Gascons from either side of the
Pyrenæan mountains. His companion in arms was Louis, count of Blois and
Chartres; like himself of regal lineage, for both the princes were
nephews, at the same time, of the kings of France and England. In a
crowd of prelates and barons, who imitated their zeal, I distinguish the
birth and merit of Matthew of Montmorency; the famous Simon of Montfort,
the scourge of the Albigeois; and a valiant noble, Jeffrey of
Villehardouin, ^30 marshal of Champagne, ^31 who has condescended, in
the rude idiom of his age and country, ^32 to write or dictate ^33 an
original narrative of the councils and actions in which he bore a
memorable part. At the same time, Baldwin, count of Flanders, who had
married the sister of Thibaut, assumed the cross at Bruges, with his
brother Henry, and the principal knights and citizens of that rich and
industrious province. ^34 The vow which the chiefs had pronounced in
churches, they ratified in tournaments; the operations of the war were
debated in full and frequent assemblies; and it was resolved to seek the
deliverance of Palestine in Egypt, a country, since Saladin's death,
which was almost ruined by famine and civil war. But the fate of so many
royal armies displayed the toils and perils of a land expedition; and if
the Flemings dwelt along the ocean, the French barons were destitute of
ships and ignorant of navigation. They embraced the wise resolution of
choosing six deputies or representatives, of whom Villehardouin was one,
with a discretionary trust to direct the motions, and to pledge the
faith, of the whole confederacy. The maritime states of Italy were alone
possessed of the means of transporting the holy warriors with their arms
and horses; and the six deputies proceeded to Venice, to solicit, on
motives of piety or interest, the aid of that powerful republic.

[Footnote 25: See Fleury, Hist. Ecclés. tom. xvi. p. 26, &c., and
Villehardouin, No. 1, with the observations of Ducange, which I always
mean to quote with the original text.]

[Footnote 26: The contemporary life of Pope Innocent III., published by
Baluze and Muratori, (Scriptores Rerum Italicarum, tom. iii. pars i. p.
486--568, is most valuable for the important and original documents
which are inserted in the text. The bull of the crusade may be read, c.
84, 85.]

[Footnote 27: Por-ce que cil pardon, fut issi gran, si s'en esmeurent
mult li cuers des genz, et mult s'en croisierent, porce que li pardons
ere si gran. Villehardouin, No. 1. Our philosophers may refine on the
causes of the crusades, but such were the genuine feelings of a French
knight.]

[Footnote 28: This number of fiefs (of which 1800 owed liege homage) was
enrolled in the church of St. Stephen at Troyes, and attested A.D. 1213,
by the marshal and butler of Champagne, (Ducange, Observ. p. 254.)]

[Footnote 29: Campania . . . . militiæprivilegio singularius excellit .
. . . in tyrociniis . . . . prolusione armorum, &c., Duncage, p. 249,
from the old Chronicle of Jerusalem, A.D. 1177--1199.]

[Footnote 30: The name of Villehardouin was taken from a village and
castle in the diocese of Troyes, near the River Aube, between Bar and
Arcis. The family was ancient and noble; the elder branch of our
historian existed after the year 1400, the younger, which acquired the
principality of Achaia, merged in the house of Savoy, (Ducange, p.
235--245.)]

[Footnote 31: This office was held by his father and his descendants;
but Ducange has not hunted it with his usual sagacity. I find that, in
the year 1356, it was in the family of Conflans; but these provincial
have been long since eclipsed by the national marshals of France.]

[Footnote 32: This language, of which I shall produce some specimens, is
explained by Vigenere and Ducange, in a version and glossary. The
president Des Brosses (Méchanisme des Langues, tom. ii. p. 83) gives it
as the example of a language which has ceased to be French, and is
understood only by grammarians.]

[Footnote 33: His age, and his own expression, moi qui ceste uvre dicta,
(No. 62, &c.,) may justify the suspicion (more probable than Mr. Wood's
on Homer) that he could neither read nor write. Yet Champagne may boast
of the two first historians, the noble authors of French prose,
Villehardouin and Joinville.]

[Footnote 34: The crusade and reigns of the counts of Flanders, Baldwin
and his brother Henry, are the subject of a particular history by the
Jesuit Doutremens, (Constantinopolis Belgica; Turnaci, 1638, in 4to.,)
which I have only seen with the eyes of Ducange.]

In the invasion of Italy by Attila, I have mentioned ^35 the flight of
the Venetians from the fallen cities of the continent, and their obscure
shelter in the chain of islands that line the extremity of the Adriatic
Gulf. In the midst of the waters, free, indigent, laborious, and
inaccessible, they gradually coalesced into a republic: the first
foundations of Venice were laid in the Island of Rialto; and the annual
election of the twelve tribunes was superseded by the permanent office
of a duke or doge. On the verge of the two empires, the Venetians exult
in the belief of primitive and perpetual independence. ^36 Against the
Latins, their antique freedom has been asserted by the sword, and may be
justified by the pen. Charlemagne himself resigned all claims of
sovereignty to the islands of the Adriatic Gulf: his son Pepin was
repulsed in the attacks of the lagunasor canals, too deep for the
cavalry, and too shallow for the vessels; and in every age, under the
German Cæsars, the lands of the republic have been clearly distinguished
from the kingdom of Italy. But the inhabitants of Venice were considered
by themselves, by strangers, and by their sovereigns, as an inalienable
portion of the Greek empire: ^37 in the ninth and tenth centuries, the
proofs of their subjection are numerous and unquestionable; and the vain
titles, the servile honors, of the Byzantine court, so ambitiously
solicited by their dukes, would have degraded the magistrates of a free
people. But the bands of this dependence, which was never absolute or
rigid, were imperceptibly relaxed by the ambition of Venice and the
weakness of Constantinople. Obedience was softened into respect,
privilege ripened into prerogative, and the freedom of domestic
government was fortified by the independence of foreign dominion. The
maritime cities of Istria and Dalmatia bowed to the sovereigns of the
Adriatic; and when they armed against the Normans in the cause of
Alexius, the emperor applied, not to the duty of his subjects, but to
the gratitude and generosity of his faithful allies. The sea was their
patrimony: ^38 the western parts of the Mediterranean, from Tuscany to
Gibraltar, were indeed abandoned to their rivals of Pisa and Genoa; but
the Venetians acquired an early and lucrative share of the commerce of
Greece and Egypt. Their riches increased with the increasing demand of
Europe; their manufactures of silk and glass, perhaps the institution of
their bank, are of high antiquity; and they enjoyed the fruits of their
industry in the magnificence of public and private life. To assert her
flag, to avenge her injuries, to protect the freedom of navigation, the
republic could launch and man a fleet of a hundred galleys; and the
Greeks, the Saracens, and the Normans, were encountered by her naval
arms. The Franks of Syria were assisted by the Venetians in the
reduction of the sea coast; but their zeal was neither blind nor
disinterested; and in the conquest of Tyre, they shared the sovereignty
of a city, the first seat of the commerce of the world. The policy of
Venice was marked by the avarice of a trading, and the insolence of a
maritime, power; yet her ambition was prudent: nor did she often forget
that if armed galleys were the effect and safeguard, merchant vessels
were the cause and supply, of her greatness. In her religion, she
avoided the schisms of the Greeks, without yielding a servile obedience
to the Roman pontiff; and a free intercourse with the infidels of every
clime appears to have allayed betimes the fever of superstition. Her
primitive government was a loose mixture of democracy and monarchy; the
doge was elected by the votes of the general assembly; as long as he was
popular and successful, he reigned with the pomp and authority of a
prince; but in the frequent revolutions of the state, he was deposed, or
banished, or slain, by the justice or injustice of the multitude. The
twelfth century produced the first rudiments of the wise and jealous
aristocracy, which has reduced the doge to a pageant, and the people to
a cipher. ^39

[Footnote 35: History, &c., vol. iii. p. 446, 447.]

[Footnote 36: The foundation and independence of Venice, and Pepin's
invasion, are discussed by Pagi (Critica, tom. iii. A.D. 81), No. 4,
&c.) and Beretti, (Dissert. Chorograph. ItaliæMedii Ævi, in Muratori,
Script. tom. x. p. 153.) The two critics have a slight bias, the
Frenchman adverse, the Italian favorable, to the republic.]

[Footnote 37: When the son of Charlemagne asserted his right of
sovereignty, he was answered by the loyal Venetians, oti hmeiV douloi
Jelomen einai tou 'Rwmaiwn basilewV, (Constantin. Porphyrogenit. de
Administrat. Imperii, pars ii. c. 28, p. 85;) and the report of the ixth
establishes the fact of the xth century, which is confirmed by the
embassy of Liutprand of Cremona. The annual tribute, which the emperor
allows them to pay to the king of Italy, alleviates, by doubling, their
servitude; but the hateful word douloi must be translated, as in the
charter of 827, (Laugier, Hist. de Venice, tom. i. p. 67, &c.,) by the
softer appellation of subditi, or fideles.]

[Footnote 38: See the xxvth and xxxth dissertations of the Antiquitates
Medii Ævi of Muratori. From Anderson's History of Commerce, I understand
that the Venetians did not trade to England before the year 1323. The
most flourishing state of their wealth and commerce, in the beginning of
the xvth century, is agreeably described by the AbbéDubos, (Hist. de la
Ligue de Cambray, tom. ii. p. 443--480.)]

[Footnote 39: The Venetians have been slow in writing and publishing
their history. Their most ancient monuments are, 1. The rude Chronicle
(perhaps) of John Sagorninus, (Venezia, 1765, in octavo,) which
represents the state and manners of Venice in the year 1008. 2. The
larger history of the doge, (1342--1354,) Andrew Dandolo, published for
the first time in the xiith tom. of Muratori, A.D. 1728. The History of
Venice by the AbbéLaugier, (Paris, 1728,) is a work of some merit, which
I have chiefly used for the constitutional part. *

Note: * It is scarcely necessary to mention the valuable work of Count
Daru, "History de Venise," of which I hear that an Italian translation
has been published, with notes defensive of the ancient republic. I have
not yet seen this work. -- M.]

Chapter LX: The Fourth Crusade. -- Part II.

When the six ambassadors of the French pilgrims arrived at Venice, they
were hospitably entertained in the palace of St. Mark, by the reigning
duke; his name was Henry Dandolo; ^40 and he shone in the last period of
human life as one of the most illustrious characters of the times. Under
the weight of years, and after the loss of his eyes, ^41 Dandolo
retained a sound understanding and a manly courage: the spirit of a
hero, ambitious to signalize his reign by some memorable exploits; and
the wisdom of a patriot, anxious to build his fame on the glory and
advantage of his country. He praised the bold enthusiasm and liberal
confidence of the barons and their deputies: in such a cause, and with
such associates, he should aspire, were he a private man, to terminate
his life; but he was the servant of the republic, and some delay was
requisite to consult, on this arduous business, the judgment of his
colleagues. The proposal of the French was first debated by the six
sageswho had been recently appointed to control the administration of
the doge: it was next disclosed to the forty members of the council of
state; and finally communicated to the legislative assembly of four
hundred and fifty representatives, who were annually chosen in the six
quarters of the city. In peace and war, the doge was still the chief of
the republic; his legal authority was supported by the personal
reputation of Dandolo: his arguments of public interest were balanced
and approved; and he was authorized to inform the ambassadors of the
following conditions of the treaty. ^42 It was proposed that the
crusaders should assemble at Venice, on the feast of St. John of the
ensuing year; that flat-bottomed vessels should be prepared for four
thousand five hundred horses, and nine thousand squires, with a number
of ships sufficient for the embarkation of four thousand five hundred
knights, and twenty thousand foot; that during a term of nine months
they should be supplied with provisions, and transported to whatsoever
coast the service of God and Christendom should require; and that the
republic should join the armament with a squadron of fifty galleys. It
was required, that the pilgrims should pay, before their departure, a
sum of eighty-five thousand marks of silver; and that all conquests, by
sea and land, should be equally divided between the confederates. The
terms were hard; but the emergency was pressing, and the French barons
were not less profuse of money than of blood. A general assembly was
convened to ratify the treaty: the stately chapel and place of St. Mark
were filled with ten thousand citizens; and the noble deputies were
taught a new lesson of humbling themselves before the majesty of the
people. "Illustrious Venetians," said the marshal of Champagne, "we are
sent by the greatest and most powerful barons of France to implore the
aid of the masters of the sea for the deliverance of Jerusalem. They
have enjoined us to fall prostrate at your feet; nor will we rise from
the ground till you have promised to avenge with us the injuries of
Christ." The eloquence of their words and tears, ^43 their martial
aspect, and suppliant attitude, were applauded by a universal shout; as
it were, says Jeffrey, by the sound of an earthquake. The venerable doge
ascended the pulpit to urge their request by those motives of honor and
virtue, which alone can be offered to a popular assembly: the treaty was
transcribed on parchment, attested with oaths and seals, mutually
accepted by the weeping and joyful representatives of France and Venice;
and despatched to Rome for the approbation of Pope Innocent the Third.
Two thousand marks were borrowed of the merchants for the first expenses
of the armament. Of the six deputies, two repassed the Alps to announce
their success, while their four companions made a fruitless trial of the
zeal and emulation of the republics of Genoa and Pisa.

[Footnote 40: Henry Dandolo was eighty-four at his election, (A.D.
1192,) and ninety-seven at his death, (A.D. 1205.) See the Observations
of Ducange sur Villehardouin, No. 204. But this extraordinarylongevity
is not observed by the original writers, nor does there exist another
example of a hero near a hundred years of age. Theophrastus might afford
an instance of a writer of ninety-nine; but instead of ennenhkonta,
(Prom. ad Character.,)I am much inclined to read ebdomhkonta, with his
last editor Fischer, and the first thoughts of Casaubon. It is scarcely
possible that the powers of the mind and body should support themselves
till such a period of life.]

[Footnote 41: The modern Venetians (Laugier, tom. ii. p. 119) accuse the
emperor Manuel; but the calumny is refuted by Villehardouin and the
older writers, who suppose that Dandolo lost his eyes by a wound, (No.
31, and Ducange.) *

Note: * The accounts differ, both as to the extent and the cause of his
blindness According to Villehardouin and others, the sight was totally
lost; according to the Chronicle of Andrew Dandolo. (Murat. tom. xii. p.
322,) he was vise debilis. See Wilken, vol. v. p. 143. -- M.]

[Footnote 42: See the original treaty in the Chronicle of Andrew
Dandolo, p. 323--326.]

[Footnote 43: A reader of Villehardouin must observe the frequent tears
of the marshal and his brother knights. Sachiez que la ot mainte lerme
plorée de pitié, (No. 17;) mult plorant, (ibid.;) mainte lerme plorée,
(No. 34;) si orent mult pitiéet plorerent mult durement, (No. 60;) i ot
mainte lerme plorée de pitié, (No. 202.) They weep on every occasion of
grief, joy, or devotion.]

The execution of the treaty was still opposed by unforeseen difficulties
and delays. The marshal, on his return to Troyes, was embraced and
approved by Thibaut count of Champagne, who had been unanimously chosen
general of the confederates. But the health of that valiant youth
already declined, and soon became hopeless; and he deplored the untimely
fate, which condemned him to expire, not in a field of battle, but on a
bed of sickness. To his brave and numerous vassals, the dying prince
distributed his treasures: they swore in his presence to accomplish his
vow and their own; but some there were, says the marshal, who accepted
his gifts and forfeited their words. The more resolute champions of the
cross held a parliament at Soissons for the election of a new general;
but such was the incapacity, or jealousy, or reluctance, of the princes
of France, that none could be found both able and willing to assume the
conduct of the enterprise. They acquiesced in the choice of a stranger,
of Boniface marquis of Montferrat, descended of a race of heroes, and
himself of conspicuous fame in the wars and negotiations of the times;
^44 nor could the piety or ambition of the Italian chief decline this
honorable invitation. After visiting the French court, where he was
received as a friend and kinsman, the marquis, in the church of
Soissons, was invested with the cross of a pilgrim and the staff of a
general; and immediately repassed the Alps, to prepare for the distant
expedition of the East. About the festival of the Pentecost he displayed
his banner, and marched towards Venice at the head of the Italians: he
was preceded or followed by the counts of Flanders and Blois, and the
most respectable barons of France; and their numbers were swelled by the
pilgrims of Germany, ^45 whose object and motives were similar to their
own. The Venetians had fulfilled, and even surpassed, their engagements:
stables were constructed for the horses, and barracks for the troops:
the magazines were abundantly replenished with forage and provisions;
and the fleet of transports, ships, and galleys, was ready to hoist sail
as soon as the republic had received the price of the freight and
armament. But that price far exceeded the wealth of the crusaders who
were assembled at Venice. The Flemings, whose obedience to their count
was voluntary and precarious, had embarked in their vessels for the long
navigation of the ocean and Mediterranean; and many of the French and
Italians had preferred a cheaper and more convenient passage from
Marseilles and Apulia to the Holy Land. Each pilgrim might complain,
that after he had furnished his own contribution, he was made
responsible for the deficiency of his absent brethren: the gold and
silver plate of the chiefs, which they freely delivered to the treasury
of St. Marks, was a generous but inadequate sacrifice; and after all
their efforts, thirty-four thousand marks were still wanting to complete
the stipulated sum. The obstacle was removed by the policy and
patriotism of the doge, who proposed to the barons, that if they would
join their arms in reducing some revolted cities of Dalmatia, he would
expose his person in the holy war, and obtain from the republic a long
indulgence, till some wealthy conquest should afford the means of
satisfying the debt. After much scruple and hesitation, they chose
rather to accept the offer than to relinquish the enterprise; and the
first hostilities of the fleet and army were directed against Zara, ^46
a strong city of the Sclavonian coast, which had renounced its
allegiance to Venice, and implored the protection of the king of
Hungary. ^47 The crusaders burst the chain or boom of the harbor; landed
their horses, troops, and military engines; and compelled the
inhabitants, after a defence of five days, to surrender at discretion:
their lives were spared, but the revolt was punished by the pillage of
their houses and the demolition of their walls. The season was far
advanced; the French and Venetians resolved to pass the winter in a
secure harbor and plentiful country; but their repose was disturbed by
national and tumultuous quarrels of the soldiers and mariners. The
conquest of Zara had scattered the seeds of discord and scandal: the
arms of the allies had been stained in their outset with the blood, not
of infidels, but of Christians: the king of Hungary and his new subjects
were themselves enlisted under the banner of the cross; and the scruples
of the devout were magnified by the fear of lassitude of the reluctant
pilgrims. The pope had excommunicated the false crusaders who had
pillaged and massacred their brethren, ^48 and only the marquis Boniface
and Simon of Montfort ^* escaped these spiritual thunders; the one by
his absence from the siege, the other by his final departure from the
camp. Innocent might absolve the simple and submissive penitents of
France; but he was provoked by the stubborn reason of the Venetians, who
refused to confess their guilt, to accept their pardon, or to allow, in
their temporal concerns, the interposition of a priest.

[Footnote 44: By a victory (A.D. 1191) over the citizens of Asti, by a
crusade to Palestine, and by an embassy from the pope to the German
princes, (Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. x. p. 163, 202.)]

[Footnote 45: See the crusade of the Germans in the Historia C. P. of
Gunther, (Canisii Antiq. Lect. tom. iv. p. v.--viii.,) who celebrates
the pilgrimage of his abbot Martin, one of the preaching rivals of Fulk
of Neuilly. His monastery, of the Cistercian order, was situate in the
diocese of Basil.]

[Footnote 46: Jadera, now Zara, was a Roman colony, which acknowledged
Augustus for its parent. It is now only two miles round, and contains
five or six thousand inhabitants; but the fortifications are strong, and
it is joined to the main land by a bridge. See the travels of the two
companions, Spon and Wheeler, (Voyage de Dalmatie, de Grèce, &c., tom.
i. p. 64--70. Journey into Greece, p. 8--14;) the last of whom, by
mistaking Sestertiafor Sestertii, values an arch with statues and
columns at twelve pounds. If, in his time, there were no trees near
Zara, the cherry-trees were not yet planted which produce our
incomparable marasquin.]

[Footnote 47: Katona (Hist. Critica Reg. Hungariæ, Stirpis Arpad. tom.
iv. p. 536--558) collects all the facts and testimonies most adverse to
the conquerors of Zara.]

[Footnote 48: See the whole transaction, and the sentiments of the pope,
in the Epistles of Innocent III. Gesta, c. 86, 87, 88.]

[Footnote *: Montfort protested against the siege. Guido, the abbot of
Vaux de Sernay, in the name of the pope, interdicted the attack on a
Christian city; and the immediate surrender of the town was thus delayed
for five days of fruitless resistance. Wilken, vol. v. p. 167. See
likewise, at length, the history of the interdict issued by the pope.
Ibid. -- M.]

The assembly of such formidable powers by sea and land had revived the
hopes of young ^49 Alexius; and both at Venice and Zara, he solicited
the arms of the crusaders, for his own restoration and his father's ^50
deliverance. The royal youth was recommended by Philip king of Germany:
his prayers and presence excited the compassion of the camp; and his
cause was embraced and pleaded by the marquis of Montferrat and the doge
of Venice. A double alliance, and the dignity of Cæsar, had connected
with the Imperial family the two elder brothers of Boniface: ^51 he
expected to derive a kingdom from the important service; and the more
generous ambition of Dandolo was eager to secure the inestimable
benefits of trade and dominion that might accrue to his country. ^52
Their influence procured a favorable audience for the ambassadors of
Alexius; and if the magnitude of his offers excited some suspicion, the
motives and rewards which he displayed might justify the delay and
diversion of those forces which had been consecrated to the deliverance
of Jerusalem. He promised in his own and his father's name, that as soon
as they should be seated on the throne of Constantinople, they would
terminate the long schism of the Greeks, and submit themselves and their
people to the lawful supremacy of the Roman church. He engaged to
recompense the labors and merits of the crusaders, by the immediate
payment of two hundred thousand marks of silver; to accompany them in
person to Egypt; or, if it should be judged more advantageous, to
maintain, during a year, ten thousand men, and, during his life, five
hundred knights, for the service of the Holy Land. These tempting
conditions were accepted by the republic of Venice; and the eloquence of
the doge and marquis persuaded the counts of Flanders, Blois, and St.
Pol, with eight barons of France, to join in the glorious enterprise. A
treaty of offensive and defensive alliance was confirmed by their oaths
and seals; and each individual, according to his situation and
character, was swayed by the hope of public or private advantage; by the
honor of restoring an exiled monarch; or by the sincere and probable
opinion, that their efforts in Palestine would be fruitless and
unavailing, and that the acquisition of Constantinople must precede and
prepare the recovery of Jerusalem. But they were the chiefs or equals of
a valiant band of freemen and volunteers, who thought and acted for
themselves: the soldiers and clergy were divided; and, if a large
majority subscribed to the alliance, the numbers and arguments of the
dissidents were strong and respectable. ^53 The boldest hearts were
appalled by the report of the naval power and impregnable strength of
Constantinople; and their apprehensions were disguised to the world, and
perhaps to themselves, by the more decent objections of religion and
duty. They alleged the sanctity of a vow, which had drawn them from
their families and homes to the rescue of the holy sepulchre; nor should
the dark and crooked counsels of human policy divert them from a
pursuit, the event of which was in the hands of the Almighty. Their
first offence, the attack of Zara, had been severely punished by the
reproach of their conscience and the censures of the pope; nor would
they again imbrue their hands in the blood of their fellow-Christians.
The apostle of Rome had pronounced; nor would they usurp the right of
avenging with the sword the schism of the Greeks and the doubtful
usurpation of the Byzantine monarch. On these principles or pretences,
many pilgrims, the most distinguished for their valor and piety,
withdrew from the camp; and their retreat was less pernicious than the
open or secret opposition of a discontented party, that labored, on
every occasion, to separate the army and disappoint the enterprise.

[Footnote 49: A modern reader is surprised to hear of the valet de
Constantinople, as applied to young Alexius, on account of his youth,
like the infantsof Spain, and the nobilissimus puerof the Romans. The
pages and valetsof the knights were as noble as themselves,
(Villehardouin and Ducange, No. 36.)]

[Footnote 50: The emperor Isaac is styled by Villehardouin, Sursac, (No.
35, &c.,) which may be derived from the French Sire, or the Greek Kur
(kurioV?) melted into his proper name; the further corruptions of Tursac
and Conserac will instruct us what license may have been used in the old
dynasties of Assyria and Egypt.]

[Footnote 51: Reinier and Conrad: the former married Maria, daughter of
the emperor Manuel Comnenus; the latter was the husband of Theodora
Angela, sister of the emperors Isaac and Alexius. Conrad abandoned the
Greek court and princess for the glory of defending Tyre against
Saladin, (Ducange, Fam. Byzant. p. 187, 203.)]

[Footnote 52: Nicetas (in Alexio Comneno, l. iii. c. 9) accuses the doge
and Venetians as the first authors of the war against Constantinople,
and considers only as a kuma epi kumati, the arrival and shameful offers
of the royal exile. *

Note: * He admits, however, that the Angeli had committed depredations
on the Venetian trade, and the emperor himself had refused the payment
of part of the stipulated compensation for the seizure of the Venetian
merchandise by the emperor Manuel. Nicetas, in loc. -- M.]

[Footnote 53: Villehardouin and Gunther represent the sentiments of the
two parties. The abbot Martin left the army at Zara, proceeded to
Palestine, was sent ambassador to Constantinople, and became a reluctant
witness of the second siege.]

Notwithstanding this defection, the departure of the fleet and army was
vigorously pressed by the Venetians, whose zeal for the service of the
royal youth concealed a just resentment to his nation and family. They
were mortified by the recent preference which had been given to Pisa,
the rival of their trade; they had a long arrear of debt and injury to
liquidate with the Byzantine court; and Dandolo might not discourage the
popular tale, that he had been deprived of his eyes by the emperor
Manuel, who perfidiously violated the sanctity of an ambassador. A
similar armament, for ages, had not rode the Adriatic: it was composed
of one hundred and twenty flat-bottomed vessels or palandersfor the
horses; two hundred and forty transports filled with men and arms;
seventy store-ships laden with provisions; and fifty stout galleys, well
prepared for the encounter of an enemy. ^54 While the wind was
favorable, the sky serene, and the water smooth, every eye was fixed
with wonder and delight on the scene of military and naval pomp which
overspread the sea. ^* The shields of the knights and squires, at once
an ornament and a defence, were arranged on either side of the ships;
the banners of the nations and families were displayed from the stern;
our modern artillery was supplied by three hundred engines for casting
stones and darts: the fatigues of the way were cheered with the sound of
music; and the spirits of the adventurers were raised by the mutual
assurance, that forty thousand Christian heroes were equal to the
conquest of the world. ^55 In the navigation ^56 from Venice and Zara,
the fleet was successfully steered by the skill and experience of the
Venetian pilots: at Durazzo, the confederates first landed on the
territories of the Greek empire: the Isle of Corfu afforded a station
and repose; they doubled, without accident, the perilous cape of Malea,
the southern point of Peloponnesus or the Morea; made a descent in the
islands of Negropont and Andros; and cast anchor at Abydus on the
Asiatic side of the Hellespont. These preludes of conquest were easy and
bloodless: the Greeks of the provinces, without patriotism or courage,
were crushed by an irresistible force: the presence of the lawful heir
might justify their obedience; and it was rewarded by the modesty and
discipline of the Latins. As they penetrated through the Hellespont, the
magnitude of their navy was compressed in a narrow channel, and the face
of the waters was darkened with innumerable sails. They again expanded
in the basin of the Propontis, and traversed that placid sea, till they
approached the European shore, at the abbey of St. Stephen, three
leagues to the west of Constantinople. The prudent doge dissuaded them
from dispersing themselves in a populous and hostile land; and, as their
stock of provisions was reduced, it was resolved, in the season of
harvest, to replenish their store-ships in the fertile islands of the
Propontis. With this resolution, they directed their course: but a
strong gale, and their own impatience, drove them to the eastward; and
so near did they run to the shore and the city, that some volleys of
stones and darts were exchanged between the ships and the rampart. As
they passed along, they gazed with admiration on the capital of the
East, or, as it should seem, of the earth; rising from her seven hills,
and towering over the continents of Europe and Asia. The swelling domes
and lofty spires of five hundred palaces and churches were gilded by the
sun and reflected in the waters: the walls were crowded with soldiers
and spectators, whose numbers they beheld, of whose temper they were
ignorant; and each heart was chilled by the reflection, that, since the
beginning of the world, such an enterprise had never been undertaken by
such a handful of warriors. But the momentary apprehension was dispelled
by hope and valor; and every man, says the marshal of Champagne, glanced
his eye on the sword or lance which he must speedily use in the glorious
conflict. ^57 The Latins cast anchor before Chalcedon; the mariners only
were left in the vessels: the soldiers, horses, and arms, were safely
landed; and, in the luxury of an Imperial palace, the barons tasted the
first fruits of their success. On the third day, the fleet and army
moved towards Scutari, the Asiatic suburb of Constantinople: a
detachment of five hundred Greek horse was surprised and defeated by
fourscore French knights; and in a halt of nine days, the camp was
plentifully supplied with forage and provisions.

[Footnote 54: The birth and dignity of Andrew Dandolo gave him the
motive and the means of searching in the archives of Venice the
memorable story of his ancestor. His brevity seems to accuse the copious
and more recent narratives of Sanudo, (in Muratori, Script. Rerum
Italicarum, tom. xxii.,) Blondus, Sabellicus, and Rhamnusius.]

[Footnote *: This description rather belongs to the first setting sail
of the expedition from Venice, before the siege of Zara. The armament
did not return to Venice. -- M.]

[Footnote 55: Villehardouin, No. 62. His feelings and expressions are
original: he often weeps, but he rejoices in the glories and perils of
war with a spirit unknown to a sedentary writer.]

[Footnote 56: In this voyage, almost all the geographical names are
corrupted by the Latins. The modern appellation of Chalcis, and all
Euba, is derived from its Euripus, Evripo, Negri-po, Negropont, which
dishonors our maps, (D'Anville, Géographie Ancienne, tom. i. p. 263.)]

[Footnote 57: Et sachiez que il ni ot si hardi cui le cuer ne fremist,
(c. 66.) . . Chascuns regardoit ses armes . . . . que par tems en arons
mestier, (c. 67.) Such is the honesty of courage.]

In relating the invasion of a great empire, it may seem strange that I
have not described the obstacles which should have checked the progress
of the strangers. The Greeks, in truth, were an unwarlike people; but
they were rich, industrious, and subject to the will of a single man:
had that man been capable of fear, when his enemies were at a distance,
or of courage, when they approached his person. The first rumor of his
nephew's alliance with the French and Venetians was despised by the
usurper Alexius: his flatterers persuaded him, that in this contempt he
was bold and sincere; and each evening, in the close of the banquet, he
thrice discomfited the Barbarians of the West. These Barbarians had been
justly terrified by the report of his naval power; and the sixteen
hundred fishing boats of Constantinople ^58 could have manned a fleet,
to sink them in the Adriatic, or stop their entrance in the mouth of the
Hellespont. But all force may be annihilated by the negligence of the
prince and the venality of his ministers. The great duke, or admiral,
made a scandalous, almost a public, auction of the sails, the masts, and
the rigging: the royal forests were reserved for the more important
purpose of the chase; and the trees, says Nicetas, were guarded by the
eunuchs, like the groves of religious worship. ^59 From his dream of
pride, Alexius was awakened by the siege of Zara, and the rapid advances
of the Latins; as soon as he saw the danger was real, he thought it
inevitable, and his vain presumption was lost in abject despondency and
despair. He suffered these contemptible Barbarians to pitch their camp
in the sight of the palace; and his apprehensions were thinly disguised
by the pomp and menace of a suppliant embassy. The sovereign of the
Romans was astonished (his ambassadors were instructed to say) at the
hostile appearance of the strangers. If these pilgrims were sincere in
their vow for the deliverance of Jerusalem, his voice must applaud, and
his treasures should assist, their pious design but should they dare to
invade the sanctuary of empire, their numbers, were they ten times more
considerable, should not protect them from his just resentment. The
answer of the doge and barons was simple and magnanimous. "In the cause
of honor and justice," they said, "we despise the usurper of Greece, his
threats, and his offers. Ourfriendship and hisallegiance are due to the
lawful heir, to the young prince, who is seated among us, and to his
father, the emperor Isaac, who has been deprived of his sceptre, his
freedom, and his eyes, by the crime of an ungrateful brother. Let that
brother confess his guilt, and implore forgiveness, and we ourselves
will intercede, that he may be permitted to live in affluence and
security. But let him not insult us by a second message; our reply will
be made in arms, in the palace of Constantinople."

[Footnote 58: Eandem urbem plus in solis navibus piscatorum abundare,
quam illos in toto navigio. Habebat enim mille et sexcentas piscatorias
naves . . . . . Bellicas autem sive mercatorias habebant
infinitæmultitudinis et portum tutissimum. Gunther, Hist. C. P. c. 8, p.
10.]

[Footnote 59: Kaqaper iervn alsewn, eipein de kai Jeojuteutwn paradeiswn
ejeid?onto toutwni. Nicetas in Alex. Comneno, l. iii. c. 9, p. 348.]

On the tenth day of their encampment at Scutari, the crusaders prepared
themselves, as soldiers and as Catholics, for the passage of the
Bosphorus. Perilous indeed was the adventure; the stream was broad and
rapid: in a calm the current of the Euxine might drive down the liquid
and unextinguishable fires of the Greeks; and the opposite shores of
Europe were defended by seventy thousand horse and foot in formidable
array. On this memorable day, which happened to be bright and pleasant,
the Latins were distributed in six battles or divisions; the first, or
vanguard, was led by the count of Flanders, one of the most powerful of
the Christian princes in the skill and number of his crossbows. The four
successive battles of the French were commanded by his brother Henry,
the counts of St. Pol and Blois, and Matthew of Montmorency; the last of
whom was honored by the voluntary service of the marshal and nobles of
Champagne. The sixth division, the rear-guard and reserve of the army,
was conducted by the marquis of Montferrat, at the head of the Germans
and Lombards. The chargers, saddled, with their long comparisons
dragging on the ground, were embarked in the flat palanders; ^60 and the
knights stood by the side of their horses, in complete armor, their
helmets laced, and their lances in their hands. The numerous train of
sergeants ^61 and archers occupied the transports; and each transport
was towed by the strength and swiftness of a galley. The six divisions
traversed the Bosphorus, without encountering an enemy or an obstacle:
to land the foremost was the wish, to conquer or die was the resolution,
of every division and of every soldier. Jealous of the preeminence of
danger, the knights in their heavy armor leaped into the sea, when it
rose as high as their girdle; the sergeants and archers were animated by
their valor; and the squires, letting down the draw-bridges of the
palanders, led the horses to the shore. Before their squadrons could
mount, and form, and couch their Lances, the seventy thousand Greeks had
vanished from their sight: the timid Alexius gave the example to his
troops; and it was only by the plunder of his rich pavilions that the
Latins were informed that they had fought against an emperor. In the
first consternation of the flying enemy, they resolved, by a double
attack, to open the entrance of the harbor. The tower of Galata, ^62 in
the suburb of Pera, was attacked and stormed by the French, while the
Venetians assumed the more difficult task of forcing the boom or chain
that was stretched from that tower to the Byzantine shore. After some
fruitless attempts, their intrepid perseverance prevailed: twenty ships
of war, the relics of the Grecian navy, were either sunk or taken: the
enormous and massy links of iron were cut asunder by the shears, or
broken by the weight, of the galleys; ^63 and the Venetian fleet, safe
and triumphant, rode at anchor in the port of Constantinople. By these
daring achievements, a remnant of twenty thousand Latins solicited the
license of besieging a capital which contained above four hundred
thousand inhabitants, ^64 able, though not willing, to bear arms in
defence of their country. Such an account would indeed suppose a
population of near two millions; but whatever abatement may be required
in the numbers of the Greeks, the beliefof those numbers will equally
exalt the fearless spirit of their assailants.

[Footnote 60: From the version of Vignere I adopt the well-sounding word
palander, which is still used, I believe, in the Mediterranean. But had
I written in French, I should have preserved the original and expressive
denomination of vessiersor huissiers, from the huisor door which was let
down as a draw-bridge; but which, at sea, was closed into the side of
the ship, (see Ducange au Villehardouin, No. 14, and Joinville. p. 27,
28, edit. du Louvre.)]

[Footnote 61: To avoid the vague expressions of followers, &c., I use,
after Villehardouin, the word sergeantsfor all horsemen who were not
knights. There were sergeants at arms, and sergeants at law; and if we
visit the parade and Westminster Hall, we may observe the strange result
of the distinction, (Ducange, Glossar. Latin, Servientes, &c., tom. vi.
p. 226--231.)]

[Footnote 62: It is needless to observe, that on the subject of Galata,
the chain, &c., Ducange is accurate and full. Consult likewise the
proper chapters of the C. P. Christiana of the same author. The
inhabitants of Galata were so vain and ignorant, that they applied to
themselves St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians.]

[Footnote 63: The vessel that broke the chain was named the Eagle,
Aquila, (Dandolo, Chronicon, p. 322,) which Blondus (de Gestis Venet.)
has changed into Aquilo, the north wind. Ducange (Observations, No. 83)
maintains the latter reading; but he had not seen the respectable text
of Dandolo, nor did he enough consider the topography of the harbor. The
south-east would have been a more effectual wind. (Note to Wilken, vol.
v. p. 215.)]

[Footnote 64: Quatre cens mil homes ou plus, (Villehardouin, No. 134,)
must be understood of menof a military age. Le Beau (Hist. du. Bas
Empire, tom. xx. p. 417) allows Constantinople a million of inhabitants,
of whom 60,000 horse, and an infinite number of foot-soldiers. In its
present decay, the capital of the Ottoman empire may contain 400,000
souls, (Bell's Travels, vol. ii. p. 401, 402;) but as the Turks keep no
registers, and as circumstances are fallacious, it is impossible to
ascertain (Niebuhr, Voyage en Arabie, tom. i. p. 18, 19) the real
populousness of their cities.]

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
battlesof 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 replace 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

[Footnote 65: 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.]

[Footnote 66: 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.]

[Footnote 67: 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 II.

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

[Footnote 68: 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.]

[Footnote 69: 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.]

[Footnote 70: 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
Græciæopes transtulisset, (Gunther, Hist. C. P. c 13) See the
lamentations and invectives of Nicetas, (p. 355.)]

[Footnote 71: 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.

[Footnote 72: 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.]

[Footnote 73: 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.]

[Footnote 74: 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.

[Footnote 75: His name was Nicholas Canabus: he deserved the praise of
Nicetas and the vengeance of Mourzoufle, (p. 362.)]

[Footnote 76: Villehardouin (No. 116) speaks of him as a favorite,
without knowing that he was a prince of the blood, Angelusand 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 pilgrimand the
paradiseresounded 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. ^* 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 Blachernæand 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

[Footnote 77: 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.]

[Footnote 78: 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.]

[Footnote 79: 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.]

[Footnote 80: Villehardouin (No. 126) confesses, that mult ere grant
peril; and Guntherus (Hist. C. P. c. 13) affirms, that nulla spes
victoriæarridere poterat. Yet the knight despises those who thought of
flight, and the monk praises his countrymen who were resolved on death.]

[Footnote 81: Baldwin, and all the writers, honor the names of these two
galleys, felici auspicio.]

[Footnote *: Pietro Alberti, a Venetian noble and Andrew d'Amboise a
French knight. -- M.]

[Footnote 82: 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.]

[Footnote 83: Villehardouin (No. 130) is again ignorant of the authors
of thismore legitimate fire, which is ascribed by Gunther to a quidam
comes Teutonicus, (c. 14.) They seem ashamed, the incendiaries!]

[Footnote 84: 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. Curious 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

[Footnote 85: Ceciderunt tamen eâdie civium quasi duo millia, &c.,
(Gunther, c. 18.) Arithmetic is an excellent touchstone to try the
amplifications of passion and rhetoric.]

[Footnote 86: 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.]

[Footnote 87: 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.]

[Footnote 88: 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
gaaigniédans une ville; Baldwin, (Gesta, c. 92,) ut tantum tota non
videatur possidere Latinitas.]

[Footnote 89: 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.)]

[Footnote 90: 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
alikefeeble and useless in the hands of the modern Greeks.

[Footnote 91: 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.]

[Footnote 92: 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 oldand the newRomans, 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

[Footnote 93: 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.]

[Footnote 94: Nicetas was of Chonæin Phrygia, (the old Colossæof 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.]

[Footnote 95: 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.)]

[Footnote 96: 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.]

[Footnote 97: 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.]

[Footnote 98: 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.]

[Footnote 99: 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.)]

[Footnote 100: Winckelman, Hist. de l'Art. tom. iii. p. 269, 270.]

[Footnote 101: 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.)]

[Footnote 102: Fleury, Hist. Eccles tom. xvi. p. 139--145.]

[Footnote 103: 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 II.

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 theycould 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.

[Footnote 1: 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.]

[Footnote 2: 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.]

[Footnote 3: Nicetas, (p. 384,) with the vain ignorance of a Greek,
describes the marquis of Montferrat as a maritimepower. Dampardian de
oikeisqai paralion. Was he deceived by the Byzantine theme of Lombardy
which extended along the coast of Calabria?]

[Footnote 4: 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.]

[Footnote 5: Nicetas, p. 383.]

[Footnote 6: 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
adventures 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 on 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

[Footnote 7: 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!]

[Footnote 8: Their style was dominus quartæpartis et dimidiæimperii
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.]

[Footnote 9: 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.]

[Footnote 10: 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.]

[Footnote 11: 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.]

[Footnote 12: 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.]

[Footnote 13: 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.)]

[Footnote 14: 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.]

[Footnote 15: 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.]

[Footnote 16: 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 ^* 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 ^! 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 ^!! 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 Romanemperors 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 priest, 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

[Footnote 17: 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.]

[Footnote 18: 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.]

[Footnote 19: 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.]

[Footnote 20: 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 FamiliæByzantinæof Ducange.]

[Footnote *: This was a title, not a personal appellation. Joinville
speaks of the "Grant Comnenie, et sire de Traffezzontes." Fallmerayer,
p. 82. -- M.]

[Footnote 21: 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.)]

[Footnote !: 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.]

[Footnote !!: 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.]

[Footnote 22: 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.]

[Footnote 23: 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

[Footnote 24: 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.]

[Footnote 25: 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

[Footnote 26: 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

[Footnote 27: 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.]

[Footnote 28: 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.]

[Footnote 29: 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.]

[Footnote 30: 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 ^* 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

[Footnote 31: 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.)]

[Footnote 32: 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.)]

[Footnote *: 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.]

[Footnote 33: 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.)]

[Footnote 34: 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.]

[Footnote 35: 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

[Footnote 36: 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.]

[Footnote 37: 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

[Footnote 38: 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.]

[Footnote 39: 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: ^* 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

[Footnote 40: Rex igitur Franciæ, deliberatione habitâ, respondit
nuntiis, se daturum hominem Syriæpartibus 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.]

[Footnote 41: 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.]

[Footnote 42: 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.]

[Footnote *: 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.]

[Footnote 43: 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.

11]

[Footnote 44: 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.

[Footnote 45: 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.]

[Footnote 46: Matthew Paris relates the two visits of Baldwin II. to the
English court, p. 396, 637; his return to Greece armatâmanû, p. 407 his
letters of his nomen formidabile, &c., p. 481, (a passage which has
escaped Ducange;) his expulsion, p. 850.]

[Footnote 47: 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.)]

[Footnote 48: 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.]

[Footnote 49: 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

[Footnote 50: Under the words Perparus, Perpera, Hyperperum, Ducange is
short and vague: Monetægenus. 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.]

[Footnote 51: 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.)]

[Footnote 52: 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.]

[Footnote 53: 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.)]

[Footnote 54: 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

[Footnote 55: The gradual losses of the Latins may be traced in the
third fourth, and fifth books of the compilation of Ducange: but of the
Greek conquests he has dropped many circumstances, which may be
recovered from the larger history of George Acropolita, and the three
first books of Nicephorus, Gregoras, two writers of the Byzantine
series, who have had the good fortune to meet with learned editors Leo
Allatius at Rome, and John Boivin in the Academy of Inscriptions of
Paris.]

[Footnote 56: George Acropolita, c. 78, p. 89, 90. edit. Paris.]

[Footnote 57: The Greeks, ashamed of any foreign aid, disguise the
alliance and succor of the Genoese: but the fact is proved by the
testimony of J Villani (Chron. l. vi. c. 71, in Muratori, Script. Rerum
Italicarum, tom. xiii. p. 202, 203) and William de Nangis, (Annales de
St. Louis, p. 248 in the Louvre Joinville,) two impartial foreigners;
and Urban IV threatened to deprive Genoa of her archbishop.]

Intent on his great object, the emperor Michael visited in person and
strengthened the troops and fortifications of Thrace. The remains of the
Latins were driven from their last possessions: he assaulted without
success the suburb of Galata; and corresponded with a perfidious baron,
who proved unwilling, or unable, to open the gates of the metropolis.
The next spring, his favorite general, Alexius Strategopulus, whom he
had decorated with the title of Cæsar, passed the Hellespont with eight
hundred horse and some infantry, ^58 on a secret expedition. His
instructions enjoined him to approach, to listen, to watch, but not to
risk any doubtful or dangerous enterprise against the city. The adjacent
territory between the Propontis and the Black Sea was cultivated by a
hardy race of peasants and outlaws, exercised in arms, uncertain in
their allegiance, but inclined by language, religion, and present
advantage, to the party of the Greeks. They were styled the volunteers;
^59 and by their free service the army of Alexius, with the regulars of
Thrace and the Coman auxiliaries, ^60 was augmented to the number of
five-and-twenty thousand men. By the ardor of the volunteers, and by his
own ambition, the Cæsar was stimulated to disobey the precise orders of
his master, in the just confidence that success would plead his pardon
and reward. The weakness of Constantinople, and the distress and terror
of the Latins, were familiar to the observation of the volunteers; and
they represented the present moment as the most propitious to surprise
and conquest. A rash youth, the new governor of the Venetian colony, had
sailed away with thirty galleys, and the best of the French knights, on
a wild expedition to Daphnusia, a town on the Black Sea, at the distance
of forty leagues; ^* and the remaining Latins were without strength or
suspicion. They were informed that Alexius had passed the Hellespont;
but their apprehensions were lulled by the smallness of his original
numbers; and their imprudence had not watched the subsequent increase of
his army. If he left his main body to second and support his operations,
he might advance unperceived in the night with a chosen detachment.
While some applied scaling-ladders to the lowest part of the walls, they
were secure of an old Greek, who would introduce their companions
through a subterraneous passage into his house; they could soon on the
inside break an entrance through the golden gate, which had been long
obstructed; and the conqueror would be in the heart of the city before
the Latins were conscious of their danger. After some debate, the Cæsar
resigned himself to the faith of the volunteers; they were trusty, bold,
and successful; and in describing the plan, I have already related the
execution and success. ^61 But no sooner had Alexius passed the
threshold of the golden gate, than he trembled at his own rashness; he
paused, he deliberated; till the desperate volunteers urged him
forwards, by the assurance that in retreat lay the greatest and most
inevitable danger. Whilst the Cæsar kept his regulars in firm array, the
Comans dispersed themselves on all sides; an alarm was sounded, and the
threats of fire and pillage compelled the citizens to a decisive
resolution. The Greeks of Constantinople remembered their native
sovereigns; the Genoese merchants their recent alliance and Venetian
foes; every quarter was in arms; and the air resounded with a general
acclamation of "Long life and victory to Michael and John, the august
emperors of the Romans!" Their rival, Baldwin, was awakened by the
sound; but the most pressing danger could not prompt him to draw his
sword in the defence of a city which he deserted, perhaps, with more
pleasure than regret: he fled from the palace to the seashore, where he
descried the welcome sails of the fleet returning from the vain and
fruitless attempt on Daphnusia. Constantinople was irrecoverably lost;
but the Latin emperor and the principal families embarked on board the
Venetian galleys, and steered for the Isle of Euba, and afterwards for
Italy, where the royal fugitive was entertained by the pope and Sicilian
king with a mixture of contempt and pity. From the loss of
Constantinople to his death, he consumed thirteen years, soliciting the
Catholic powers to join in his restoration: the lesson had been familiar
to his youth; nor was his last exile more indigent or shameful than his
three former pilgrimages to the courts of Europe. His son Philip was the
heir of an ideal empire; and the pretensions of his daughter Catherine
were transported by her marriage to Charles of Valois, the brother of
Philip the Fair, king of France. The house of Courtenay was represented
in the female line by successive alliances, till the title of emperor of
Constantinople, too bulky and sonorous for a private name, modestly
expired in silence and oblivion. ^62

[Footnote 58: Some precautions must be used in reconciling the
discordant numbers; the 800 soldiers of Nicetas, the 25,000 of
Spandugino, (apud Ducange, l. v. c. 24;) the Greeks and Scythians of
Acropolita; and the numerous army of Michael, in the Epistles of Pope
Urban IV. (i. 129.)]

[Footnote 59: Qelhmatarioi. They are described and named by Pachymer,
(l. ii. c. 14.)]

[Footnote 60: It is needless to seek these Comans in the deserts of
Tartary, or even of Moldavia. A part of the horde had submitted to John
Vataces, and was probably settled as a nursery of soldiers on some waste
lands of Thrace, (Cantacuzen. l. i. c. 2.)]

[Footnote *: According to several authorities, particularly Abulfaradj.
Chron. Arab. p. 336, this was a stratagem on the part of the Greeks to
weaken the garrison of Constantinople. The Greek commander offered to
surrender the town on the appearance of the Venetians. -- M.]

[Footnote 61: The loss of Constantinople is briefly told by the Latins:
the conquest is described with more satisfaction by the Greeks; by
Acropolita, (c. 85,) Pachymer, (l. ii. c. 26, 27,) Nicephorus Gregoras,
(l. iv. c. 1, 2) See Ducange, Hist. de C. P. l. v. c. 19--27.]

[Footnote 62: See the three last books (l. v.--viii.) and the
genealogical tables of Ducange. In the year 1382, the titular emperor of
Constantinople was James de Baux, duke of Andria in the kingdom of
Naples, the son of Margaret, daughter of Catherine de Valois, daughter
of Catharine, daughter of Philip, son of Baldwin II., (Ducange, l. viii.
c. 37, 38.) It is uncertain whether he left any posterity.]

After this narrative of the expeditions of the Latins to Palestine and
Constantinople, I cannot dismiss the subject without resolving the
general consequences on the countries that were the scene, and on the
nations that were the actors, of these memorable crusades. ^63 As soon
as the arms of the Franks were withdrawn, the impression, though not the
memory, was erased in the Mahometan realms of Egypt and Syria. The
faithful disciples of the prophet were never tempted by a profane desire
to study the laws or language of the idolaters; nor did the simplicity
of their primitive manners receive the slightest alteration from their
intercourse in peace and war with the unknown strangers of the West. The
Greeks, who thought themselves proud, but who were only vain, showed a
disposition somewhat less inflexible. In the efforts for the recovery of
their empire, they emulated the valor, discipline, and tactics of their
antagonists. The modern literature of the West they might justly
despise; but its free spirit would instruct them in the rights of man;
and some institutions of public and private life were adopted from the
French. The correspondence of Constantinople and Italy diffused the
knowledge of the Latin tongue; and several of the fathers and classics
were at length honored with a Greek version. ^64 But the national and
religious prejudices of the Orientals were inflamed by persecution, and
the reign of the Latins confirmed the separation of the two churches.

[Footnote 63: Abulfeda, who saw the conclusion of the crusades, speaks
of the kingdoms of the Franks, and those of the Negroes, as equally
unknown, (Prolegom. ad Geograph.) Had he not disdained the Latin
language, how easily might the Syrian prince have found books and
interpreters!]

[Footnote 64: A short and superficial account of these versions from
Latin into Greek is given by Huet, (de Interpretatione et de claris
Interpretibus (p. 131--135.) Maximus Planudes, a monk of Constantinople,
(A.D. 1327--1353) has translated Cæsar's Commentaries, the Somnium
Scipionis, the Metamorphoses and Heroides of Ovid, &c., (Fabric. Bib.
Græc. tom. x. p. 533.)]

If we compare the æra of the crusades, the Latins of Europe with the
Greeks and Arabians, their respective degrees of knowledge, industry,
and art, our rude ancestors must be content with the third rank in the
scale of nations. Their successive improvement and present superiority
may be ascribed to a peculiar energy of character, to an active and
imitative spirit, unknown to their more polished rivals, who at that
time were in a stationary or retrograde state. With such a disposition,
the Latins should have derived the most early and essential benefits
from a series of events which opened to their eyes the prospect of the
world, and introduced them to a long and frequent intercourse with the
more cultivated regions of the East. The first and most obvious progress
was in trade and manufactures, in the arts which are strongly prompted
by the thirst of wealth, the calls of necessity, and the gratification
of the sense or vanity. Among the crowd of unthinking fanatics, a
captive or a pilgrim might sometimes observe the superior refinements of
Cairo and Constantinople: the first importer of windmills ^65 was the
benefactor of nations; and if such blessings are enjoyed without any
grateful remembrance, history has condescended to notice the more
apparent luxuries of silk and sugar, which were transported into Italy
from Greece and Egypt. But the intellectual wants of the Latins were
more slowly felt and supplied; the ardor of studious curiosity was
awakened in Europe by different causes and more recent events; and, in
the age of the crusades, they viewed with careless indifference the
literature of the Greeks and Arabians. Some rudiments of mathematical
and medicinal knowledge might be imparted in practice and in figures;
necessity might produce some interpreters for the grosser business of
merchants and soldiers; but the commerce of the Orientals had not
diffused the study and knowledge of their languages in the schools of
Europe. ^66 If a similar principle of religion repulsed the idiom of the
Koran, it should have excited their patience and curiosity to understand
the original text of the gospel; and the same grammar would have
unfolded the sense of Plato and the beauties of Homer. Yet in a reign of
sixty years, the Latins of Constantinople disdained the speech and
learning of their subjects; and the manuscripts were the only treasures
which the natives might enjoy without rapine or envy. Aristotle was
indeed the oracle of the Western universities, but it was a barbarous
Aristotle; and, instead of ascending to the fountain head, his Latin
votaries humbly accepted a corrupt and remote version, from the Jews and
Moors of Andalusia. The principle of the crusades was a savage
fanaticism; and the most important effects were analogous to the cause.
Each pilgrim was ambitious to return with his sacred spoils, the relics
of Greece and Palestine; ^67 and each relic was preceded and followed by
a train of miracles and visions. The belief of the Catholics was
corrupted by new legends, their practice by new superstitions; and the
establishment of the inquisition, the mendicant orders of monks and
friars, the last abuse of indulgences, and the final progress of
idolatry, flowed from the baleful fountain of the holy war. The active
spirit of the Latins preyed on the vitals of their reason and religion;
and if the ninth and tenth centuries were the times of darkness, the
thirteenth and fourteenth were the age of absurdity and fable.

[Footnote 65: Windmills, first invented in the dry country of Asia
Minor, were used in Normandy as early as the year 1105, (Vie privée des
François, tom. i. p. 42, 43. Ducange, Gloss. Latin. tom. iv. p. 474.)]

[Footnote 66: See the complaints of Roger Bacon, (Biographia Britannica,
vol. i. p. 418, Kippis's edition.) If Bacon himself, or Gerbert,
understood someGreek, they were prodigies, and owed nothing to the
commerce of the East.]

[Footnote 67: Such was the opinion of the great Leibnitz, (uvres de
Fontenelle, tom. v. p. 458,) a master of the history of the middle ages.
I shall only instance the pedigree of the Carmelites, and the flight of
the house of Loretto, which were both derived from Palestine.]

Chapter LXI: Partition Of The Empire By The French And Venetians. --
Part IV.

In the profession of Christianity, in the cultivation of a fertile land,
the northern conquerors of the Roman empire insensibly mingled with the
provincials, and rekindled the embers of the arts of antiquity. Their
settlements about the age of Charlemagne had acquired some degree of
order and stability, when they were overwhelmed by new swarms of
invaders, the Normans, Saracens, ^68 and Hungarians, who replunged the
western countries of Europe into their former state of anarchy and
barbarism. About the eleventh century, the second tempest had subsided
by the expulsion or conversion of the enemies of Christendom: the tide
of civilization, which had so long ebbed, began to flow with a steady
and accelerated course; and a fairer prospect was opened to the hopes
and efforts of the rising generations. Great was the increase, and rapid
the progress, during the two hundred years of the crusades; and some
philosophers have applauded the propitious influence of these holy wars,
which appear to me to have checked rather than forwarded the maturity of
Europe. ^69 The lives and labors of millions, which were buried in the
East, would have been more profitably employed in the improvement of
their native country: the accumulated stock of industry and wealth would
have overflowed in navigation and trade; and the Latins would have been
enriched and enlightened by a pure and friendly correspondence with the
climates of the East. In one respect I can indeed perceive the
accidental operation of the crusades, not so much in producing a benefit
as in removing an evil. The larger portion of the inhabitants of Europe
was chained to the soil, without freedom, or property, or knowledge; and
the two orders of ecclesiastics and nobles, whose numbers were
comparatively small, alone deserved the name of citizens and men. This
oppressive system was supported by the arts of the clergy and the swords
of the barons. The authority of the priests operated in the darker ages
as a salutary antidote: they prevented the total extinction of letters,
mitigated the fierceness of the times, sheltered the poor and
defenceless, and preserved or revived the peace and order of civil
society. But the independence, rapine, and discord of the feudal lords
were unmixed with any semblance of good; and every hope of industry and
improvement was crushed by the iron weight of the martial aristocracy.
Among the causes that undermined that Gothic edifice, a conspicuous
place must be allowed to the crusades. The estates of the barons were
dissipated, and their race was often extinguished, in these costly and
perilous expeditions. Their poverty extorted from their pride those
charters of freedom which unlocked the fetters of the slave, secured the
farm of the peasant and the shop of the artificer, and gradually
restored a substance and a soul to the most numerous and useful part of
the community. The conflagration which destroyed the tall and barren
trees of the forest gave air and scope to the vegetation of the smaller
and nutritive plants of the soil. ^*

[Footnote 68: If I rank the Saracens with the Barbarians, it is only
relative to their wars, or rather inroads, in Italy and France, where
their sole purpose was to plunder and destroy.]

[Footnote 69: On this interesting subject, the progress of society in
Europe, a strong ray of philosophical light has broke from Scotland in
our own times; and it is with private, as well as public regard, that I
repeat the names of Hume, Robertson, and Adam Smith.]

[Footnote *: On the consequences of the crusades, compare the valuable
Essay of Heeren, that of M. Choiseul d'Aillecourt, and a chapter of Mr.
Forster's "Mahometanism Unveiled." I may admire this gentleman's
learning and industry, without pledging myself to his wild theory of
prophets interpretation. -- M.]

Digression On The Family Of Courtenay.

The purple of three emperors, who have reigned at Constantinople, will
authorize or excuse a digression on the origin and singular fortunes of
the house of Courtenay, ^70 in the three principal branches: I. Of
Edessa; II. Of France; and III. Of England; of which the last only has
survived the revolutions of eight hundred years.

[Footnote 70: I have applied, but not confined, myself to A genealogical
History of the noble and illustrious Family of Courtenay, by Ezra
Cleaveland, Tutor to Sir William Courtenay, and Rector of Honiton; Exon.
1735, in folio.The first part is extracted from William of Tyre; the
second from Bouchet's French history; and the third from various
memorials, public, provincial, and private, of the Courtenays of
Devonshire The rector of Honiton has more gratitude than industry, and
more industry than criticism.]

I. Before the introduction of trade, which scatters riches, and of
knowledge, which dispels prejudice, the prerogative of birth is most
strongly felt and most humbly acknowledged. In every age, the laws and
manners of the Germans have discriminated the ranks of society; the
dukes and counts, who shared the empire of Charlemagne, converted their
office to an inheritance; and to his children, each feudal lord
bequeathed his honor and his sword. The proudest families are content to
lose, in the darkness of the middle ages, the tree of their pedigree,
which, however deep and lofty, must ultimately rise from a plebeian
root; and their historians must descend ten centuries below the
Christian æra, before they can ascertain any lineal succession by the
evidence of surnames, of arms, and of authentic records. With the first
rays of light, ^71 we discern the nobility and opulence of Atho, a
French knight; his nobility, in the rank and title of a nameless father;
his opulence, in the foundation of the castle of Courtenay in the
district of Gatinois, about fifty-six miles to the south of Paris. From
the reign of Robert, the son of Hugh Capet, the barons of Courtenay are
conspicuous among the immediate vassals of the crown; and Joscelin, the
grandson of Atho and a noble dame, is enrolled among the heroes of the
first crusade. A domestic alliance (their mothers were sisters) attached
him to the standard of Baldwin of Bruges, the second count of Edessa; a
princely fief, which he was worthy to receive, and able to maintain,
announces the number of his martial followers; and after the departure
of his cousin, Joscelin himself was invested with the county of Edessa
on both sides of the Euphrates. By economy in peace, his territories
were replenished with Latin and Syrian subjects; his magazines with
corn, wine, and oil; his castles with gold and silver, with arms and
horses. In a holy warfare of thirty years, he was alternately a
conqueror and a captive: but he died like a soldier, in a horse litter
at the head of his troops; and his last glance beheld the flight of the
Turkish invaders who had presumed on his age and infirmities. His son
and successor, of the same name, was less deficient in valor than in
vigilance; but he sometimes forgot that dominion is acquired and
maintained by the same arms. He challenged the hostility of the Turks,
without securing the friendship of the prince of Antioch; and, amidst
the peaceful luxury of Turbessel, in Syria, ^72 Joscelin neglected the
defence of the Christian frontier beyond the Euphrates. In his absence,
Zenghi, the first of the Atabeks, besieged and stormed his capital,
Edessa, which was feebly defended by a timorous and disloyal crowd of
Orientals: the Franks were oppressed in a bold attempt for its recovery,
and Courtenay ended his days in the prison of Aleppo. He still left a
fair and ample patrimony But the victorious Turks oppressed on all sides
the weakness of a widow and orphan; and, for the equivalent of an annual
pension, they resigned to the Greek emperor the charge of defending, and
the shame of losing, the last relics of the Latin conquest. The
countess-dowager of Edessa retired to Jerusalem with her two children;
the daughter, Agnes, became the wife and mother of a king; the son,
Joscelin the Third, accepted the office of seneschal, the first of the
kingdom, and held his new estates in Palestine by the service of fifty
knights. His name appears with honor in the transactions of peace and
war; but he finally vanishes in the fall of Jerusalem; and the name of
Courtenay, in this branch of Edessa, was lost by the marriage of his two
daughters with a French and German baron. ^73

[Footnote 71: The primitive record of the family is a passage of the
continuator of Aimoin, a monk of Fleury, who wrote in the xiith century.
See his Chronicle, in the Historians of France, (tom. xi. p. 276.)]

[Footnote 72: Turbessel, or, as it is now styled, Telbesher, is fixed by
D'Anville four-and-twenty miles from the great passage over the
Euphrates at Zeugma.]

[Footnote 73: His possessions are distinguished in the Assises of
Jerusalem (c. B26) among the feudal tenures of the kingdom, which must
therefore have been collected between the years 1153 and 1187. His
pedigree may be found in the Lignages d'Outremer, c. 16.]

II. While Joscelin reigned beyond the Euphrates, his elder brother Milo,
the son of Joscelin, the son of Atho, continued, near the Seine, to
possess the castle of their fathers, which was at length inherited by
Rainaud, or Reginald, the youngest of his three sons. Examples of genius
or virtue must be rare in the annals of the oldest families; and, in a
remote age their pride will embrace a deed of rapine and violence; such,
however, as could not be perpetrated without some superiority of
courage, or, at least, of power. A descendant of Reginald of Courtenay
may blush for the public robber, who stripped and imprisoned several
merchants, after they had satisfied the king's duties at Sens and
Orleans. He will glory in the offence, since the bold offender could not
be compelled to obedience and restitution, till the regent and the count
of Champagne prepared to march against him at the head of an army. ^74
Reginald bestowed his estates on his eldest daughter, and his daughter
on the seventh son of King Louis the Fat; and their marriage was crowned
with a numerous offspring. We might expect that a private should have
merged in a royal name; and that the descendants of Peter of France and
Elizabeth of Courtenay would have enjoyed the titles and honors of
princes of the blood. But this legitimate claim was long neglected, and
finally denied; and the causes of their disgrace will represent the
story of this second branch. 1.Of all the families now extant, the most
ancient, doubtless, and the most illustrious, is the house of France,
which has occupied the same throne above eight hundred years, and
descends, in a clear and lineal series of males, from the middle of the
ninth century. ^75 In the age of the crusades, it was already revered
both in the East and West. But from Hugh Capet to the marriage of Peter,
no more than five reigns or generations had elapsed; and so precarious
was their title, that the eldest sons, as a necessary precaution, were
previously crowned during the lifetime of their fathers. The peers of
France have long maintained their precedency before the younger branches
of the royal line, nor had the princes of the blood, in the twelfth
century, acquired that hereditary lustre which is now diffused over the
most remote candidates for the succession. 2.The barons of Courtenay
must have stood high in their own estimation, and in that of the world,
since they could impose on the son of a king the obligation of adopting
for himself and all his descendants the name and arms of their daughter
and his wife. In the marriage of an heiress with her inferior or her
equal, such exchange often required and allowed: but as they continued
to diverge from the regal stem, the sons of Louis the Fat were
insensibly confounded with their maternal ancestors; and the new
Courtenays might deserve to forfeit the honors of their birth, which a
motive of interest had tempted them to renounce. 3.The shame was far
more permanent than the reward, and a momentary blaze was followed by a
long darkness. The eldest son of these nuptials, Peter of Courtenay, had
married, as I have already mentioned, the sister of the counts of
Flanders, the two first emperors of Constantinople: he rashly accepted
the invitation of the barons of Romania; his two sons, Robert and
Baldwin, successively held and lost the remains of the Latin empire in
the East, and the granddaughter of Baldwin the Second again mingled her
blood with the blood of France and of Valois. To support the expenses of
a troubled and transitory reign, their patrimonial estates were
mortgaged or sold: and the last emperors of Constantinople depended on
the annual charity of Rome and Naples.

[Footnote 74: The rapine and satisfaction of Reginald de Courtenay, are
preposterously arranged in the Epistles of the abbot and regent Suger,
(cxiv. cxvi.,) the best memorials of the age, (Duchesne, Scriptores
Hist. Franc. tom. iv. p. 530.)]

[Footnote 75: In the beginning of the xith century, after naming the
father and grandfather of Hugh Capet, the monk Glaber is obliged to add,
cujus genus valde in-ante reperitur obscurum. Yet we are assured that
the great-grandfather of Hugh Capet was Robert the Strong count of
Anjou, (A.D. 863--873,) a noble Frank of Neustria, Neustricus . . .
generosæstirpis, who was slain in the defence of his country against the
Normans, dum patriæfines tuebatur. Beyond Robert, all is conjecture or
fable. It is a probable conjecture, that the third race descended from
the second by Childebrand, the brother of Charles Martel. It is an
absurd fable that the second was allied to the first by the marriage of
Ansbert, a Roman senator and the ancestor of St. Arnoul, with Blitilde,
a daughter of Clotaire I. The Saxon origin of the house of France is an
ancient but incredible opinion. See a judicious memoir of M. de
Foncemagne, (Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions, tom. xx. p.
548--579.) He had promised to declare his own opinion in a second
memoir, which has never appeared.]

While the elder brothers dissipated their wealth in romantic adventures,
and the castle of Courtenay was profaned by a plebeian owner, the
younger branches of that adopted name were propagated and multiplied.
But their splendor was clouded by poverty and time: after the decease of
Robert, great butler of France, they descended from princes to barons;
the next generations were confounded with the simple gentry; the
descendants of Hugh Capet could no longer be visible in the rural lords
of Tanlay and of Champignelles. The more adventurous embraced without
dishonor the profession of a soldier: the least active and opulent might
sink, like their cousins of the branch of Dreux, into the condition of
peasants. Their royal descent, in a dark period of four hundred years,
became each day more obsolete and ambiguous; and their pedigree, instead
of being enrolled in the annals of the kingdom, must be painfully
searched by the minute diligence of heralds and genealogists. It was not
till the end of the sixteenth century, on the accession of a family
almost as remote as their own, that the princely spirit of the
Courtenays again revived; and the question of the nobility provoked them
to ascertain the royalty of their blood. They appealed to the justice
and compassion of Henry the Fourth; obtained a favorable opinion from
twenty lawyers of Italy and Germany, and modestly compared themselves to
the descendants of King David, whose prerogatives were not impaired by
the lapse of ages or the trade of a carpenter. ^76 But every ear was
deaf, and every circumstance was adverse, to their lawful claims. The
Bourbon kings were justified by the neglect of the Valois; the princes
of the blood, more recent and lofty, disdained the alliance of his
humble kindred: the parliament, without denying their proofs, eluded a
dangerous precedent by an arbitrary distinction, and established St.
Louis as the first father of the royal line. ^77 A repetition of
complaints and protests was repeatedly disregarded; and the hopeless
pursuit was terminated in the present century by the death of the last
male of the family. ^78 Their painful and anxious situation was
alleviated by the pride of conscious virtue: they sternly rejected the
temptations of fortune and favor; and a dying Courtenay would have
sacrificed his son, if the youth could have renounced, for any temporal
interest, the right and title of a legitimate prince of the blood of
France. ^79

[Footnote 76: Of the various petitions, apologies, &c., published by the
princes of Courtenay, I have seen the three following, all in octavo: 1.
De Stirpe et Origine Domus de Courtenay: addita sunt Responsa
celeberrimorum EuropæJurisconsultorum; Paris, 1607. 2. Representation du
Procedétenûa l'instance faicte devant le Roi, par Messieurs de
Courtenay, pour la conservation de l'Honneur et Dignitéde leur Maison,
branche de la royalle Maison de France; àParis, 1613. 3. Representation
du subject qui a portéMessieurs de Salles et de Fraville, de la Maison
de Courtenay, àse retirer hors du Royaume, 1614. It was a homicide, for
which the Courtenays expected to be pardoned, or tried, as princes of
the blood.]

[Footnote 77: The sense of the parliaments is thus expressed by Thuanus
Principis nomen nusquam in Galliâtributum, nisi iis qui per mares e
regibus nostris originem repetunt; qui nunc tantum a Ludovico none
beatæmemoriænumerantur; nam Cortiniet Drocenses, a Ludovico crasso genus
ducentes, hodie inter eos minime recensentur. A distinction of
expediency rather than justice. The sanctity of Louis IX. could not
invest him with any special prerogative, and all the descendants of Hugh
Capet must be included in his original compact with the French nation.]

[Footnote 78: The last male of the Courtenays was Charles Roger, who
died in the year 1730, without leaving any sons. The last female was
Helene de Courtenay, who married Louis de Beaufremont. Her title of
Princesse du Sang Royal de France was suppressed (February 7th, 1737) by
an arrêtof the parliament of Paris.]

[Footnote 79: The singular anecdote to which I allude is related in the
Recueil des Pieces interessantes et peu connues, (Maestricht, 1786, in 4
vols. 12mo.;) and the unknown editor quotes his author, who had received
it from Helene de Courtenay, marquise de Beaufremont.]

III. According to the old register of Ford Abbey, the Courtenays of
Devonshire are descended from Prince Florus, the second son of Peter,
and the grandson of Louis the Fat. ^80 This fable of the grateful or
venal monks was too respectfully entertained by our antiquaries, Cambden
^81 and Dugdale: ^82 but it is so clearly repugnant to truth and time,
that the rational pride of the family now refuses to accept this
imaginary founder. Their most faithful historians believe, that, after
giving his daughter to the king's son, Reginald of Courtenay abandoned
his possessions in France, and obtained from the English monarch a
second wife and a new inheritance. It is certain, at least, that Henry
the Second distinguished in his camps and councils a Reginald, of the
name and arms, and, as it may be fairly presumed, of the genuine race,
of the Courtenays of France. The right of wardship enabled a feudal lord
to reward his vassal with the marriage and estate of a noble heiress;
and Reginald of Courtenay acquired a fair establishment in Devonshire,
where his posterity has been seated above six hundred years. ^83 From a
Norman baron, Baldwin de Brioniis, who had been invested by the
Conqueror, Hawise, the wife of Reginald, derived the honor of
Okehampton, which was held by the service of ninety-three knights; and a
female might claim the manly offices of hereditary viscount or sheriff,
and of captain of the royal castle of Exeter. Their son Robert married
the sister of the earl of Devon: at the end of a century, on the failure
of the family of Rivers, ^84 his great-grandson, Hugh the Second,
succeeded to a title which was still considered as a territorial
dignity; and twelve earls of Devonshire, of the name of Courtenay, have
flourished in a period of two hundred and twenty years. They were ranked
among the chief of the barons of the realm; nor was it till after a
strenuous dispute, that they yielded to the fief of Arundel the first
place in the parliament of England: their alliances were contracted with
the noblest families, the Veres, Despensers, St. Johns, Talbots, Bohuns,
and even the Plantagenets themselves; and in a contest with John of
Lancaster, a Courtenay, bishop of London, and afterwards archbishop of
Canterbury, might be accused of profane confidence in the strength and
number of his kindred. In peace, the earls of Devon resided in their
numerous castles and manors of the west; their ample revenue was
appropriated to devotion and hospitality; and the epitaph of Edward,
surnamed from his misfortune, the blind, from his virtues, the good,
earl, inculcates with much ingenuity a moral sentence, which may,
however, be abused by thoughtless generosity. After a grateful
commemoration of the fifty-five years of union and happiness which he
enjoyed with Mabe his wife, the good earl thus speaks from the tomb: --

"What we gave, we have;

What we spent, we had;

What we left, we lost." ^85

But their losses, in this sense, were far superior to their gifts and
expenses; and their heirs, not less than the poor, were the objects of
their paternal care. The sums which they paid for livery and seizin
attest the greatness of their possessions; and several estates have
remained in their family since the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
In war, the Courtenays of England fulfilled the duties, and deserved the
honors, of chivalry. They were often intrusted to levy and command the
militia of Devonshire and Cornwall; they often attended their supreme
lord to the borders of Scotland; and in foreign service, for a
stipulated price, they sometimes maintained fourscore men-at-arms and as
many archers. By sea and land they fought under the standard of the
Edwards and Henries: their names are conspicuous in battles, in
tournaments, and in the original list of the Order of the Garter; three
brothers shared the Spanish victory of the Black Prince; and in the
lapse of six generations, the English Courtenays had learned to despise
the nation and country from which they derived their origin. In the
quarrel of the two roses, the earls of Devon adhered to the house of
Lancaster; and three brothers successively died either in the field or
on the scaffold. Their honors and estates were restored by Henry the
Seventh; a daughter of Edward the Fourth was not disgraced by the
nuptials of a Courtenay; their son, who was created Marquis of Exeter,
enjoyed the favor of his cousin Henry the Eighth; and in the camp of
Cloth of Gold, he broke a lance against the French monarch. But the
favor of Henry was the prelude of disgrace; his disgrace was the signal
of death; and of the victims of the jealous tyrant, the marquis of
Exeter is one of the most noble and guiltless. His son Edward lived a
prisoner in the Tower, and died in exile at Padua; and the secret love
of Queen Mary, whom he slighted, perhaps for the princess Elizabeth, has
shed a romantic color on the story of this beautiful youth. The relics
of his patrimony were conveyed into strange families by the marriages of
his four aunts; and his personal honors, as if they had been legally
extinct, were revived by the patents of succeeding princes. But there
still survived a lineal descendant of Hugh, the first earl of Devon, a
younger branch of the Courtenays, who have been seated at Powderham
Castle above four hundred years, from the reign of Edward the Third to
the present hour. Their estates have been increased by the grant and
improvement of lands in Ireland, and they have been recently restored to
the honors of the peerage. Yet the Courtenays still retain the plaintive
motto, which asserts the innocence, and deplores the fall, of their
ancient house. ^86 While they sigh for past greatness, they are
doubtless sensible of present blessings: in the long series of the
Courtenay annals, the most splendid æra is likewise the most
unfortunate; nor can an opulent peer of Britain be inclined to envy the
emperors of Constantinople, who wandered over Europe to solicit alms for
the support of their dignity and the defence of their capital.

[Footnote 80: Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, vol. i. p. 786. Yet this
fable must have been invented before the reign of Edward III. The
profuse devotion of the three first generations to Ford Abbey was
followed by oppression on one side and ingratitude on the other; and in
the sixth generation, the monks ceased to register the births, actions,
and deaths of their patrons.]

[Footnote 81: In his Britannia, in the list of the earls of Devonshire.
His expression, e regio sanguine ortos, credunt, betrays, however, some
doubt or suspicion.]

[Footnote 82: In his Baronage, P. i. p. 634, he refers to his own
Monasticon. Should he not have corrected the register of Ford Abbey, and
annihilated the phantom Florus, by the unquestionable evidence of the
French historians?]

[Footnote 83: Besides the third and most valuable book of Cleaveland's
History, I have consulted Dugdale, the father of our genealogical
science, (Baronage, P. i. p. 634--643.)]

[Footnote 84: This great family, de Ripuariis, de Redvers, de Rivers,
ended, in Edward the Fifth's time, in Isabella de Fortibus, a famous and
potent dowager, who long survived her brother and husband, (Dugdale,
Baronage, P i. p. 254--257.)]

[Footnote 85: Cleaveland p. 142. By some it is assigned to a Rivers earl
of Devon; but the English denotes the xvth, rather than the xiiith
century.]

[Footnote 86: Ubi lapsus! Quid feci?a motto which was probably adopted
by the Powderham branch, after the loss of the earldom of Devonshire,
&c. The primitive arms of the Courtenays were, Or, three torteaux,
Gules, which seem to denote their affinity with Godfrey of Bouillon, and
the ancient counts of Boulogne.]

Chapter LXII: Greek Emperors Of Nice And Constantinople. Part I.

The Greek Emperors Of Nice And Constantinople. -- Elevation And Reign Of
Michael Palæologus. -- His False Union With The Pope And The Latin
Church. -- Hostile Designs Of Charles Of Anjou. -- Revolt Of Sicily. --
War Of The Catalans In Asia And Greece. -- Revolutions And Present State
Of Athens.

The loss of Constantinople restored a momentary vigor to the Greeks.
From their palaces, the princes and nobles were driven into the field;
and the fragments of the falling monarchy were grasped by the hands of
the most vigorous or the most skilful candidates. In the long and barren
pages of the Byzantine annals, ^1 it would not be an easy task to equal
the two characters of Theodore Lascaris and John Ducas Vataces, ^2 who
replanted and upheld the Roman standard at Nice in Bithynia. The
difference of their virtues was happily suited to the diversity of their
situation. In his first efforts, the fugitive Lascaris commanded only
three cities and two thousand soldiers: his reign was the season of
generous and active despair: in every military operation he staked his
life and crown; and his enemies of the Hellespont and the Mæander, were
surprised by his celerity and subdued by his boldness. A victorious
reign of eighteen years expanded the principality of Nice to the
magnitude of an empire. The throne of his successor and son-in-law
Vataces was founded on a more solid basis, a larger scope, and more
plentiful resources; and it was the temper, as well as the interest, of
Vataces to calculate the risk, to expect the moment, and to insure the
success, of his ambitious designs. In the decline of the Latins, I have
briefly exposed the progress of the Greeks; the prudent and gradual
advances of a conqueror, who, in a reign of thirty-three years, rescued
the provinces from national and foreign usurpers, till he pressed on all
sides the Imperial city, a leafless and sapless trunk, which must full
at the first stroke of the axe. But his interior and peaceful
administration is still more deserving of notice and praise. ^3 The
calamities of the times had wasted the numbers and the substance of the
Greeks; the motives and the means of agriculture were extirpated; and
the most fertile lands were left without cultivation or inhabitants. A
portion of this vacant property was occupied and improved by the
command, and for the benefit, of the emperor: a powerful hand and a
vigilant eye supplied and surpassed, by a skilful management, the minute
diligence of a private farmer: the royal domain became the garden and
granary of Asia; and without impoverishing the people, the sovereign
acquired a fund of innocent and productive wealth. According to the
nature of the soil, his lands were sown with corn or planted with vines;
the pastures were filled with horses and oxen, with sheep and hogs; and
when Vataces presented to the empress a crown of diamonds and pearls, he
informed her, with a smile, that this precious ornament arose from the
sale of the eggs of his innumerable poultry. The produce of his domain
was applied to the maintenance of his palace and hospitals, the calls of
dignity and benevolence: the lesson was still more useful than the
revenue: the plough was restored to its ancient security and honor; and
the nobles were taught to seek a sure and independent revenue from their
estates, instead of adorning their splendid beggary by the oppression of
the people, or (what is almost the same) by the favors of the court. The
superfluous stock of corn and cattle was eagerly purchased by the Turks,
with whom Vataces preserved a strict and sincere alliance; but he
discouraged the importation of foreign manufactures, the costly silks of
the East, and the curious labors of the Italian looms. "The demands of
nature and necessity," was he accustomed to say, "are indispensable; but
the influence of fashion may rise and sink at the breath of a monarch;"
and both his precept and example recommended simplicity of manners and
the use of domestic industry. The education of youth and the revival of
learning were the most serious objects of his care; and, without
deciding the precedency, he pronounced with truth, that a prince and a
philosopher ^4 are the two most eminent characters of human society. His
first wife was Irene, the daughter of Theodore Lascaris, a woman more
illustrious by her personal merit, the milder virtues of her sex, than
by the blood of the Angeli and Comneni that flowed in her veins, and
transmitted the inheritance of the empire. After her death he was
contracted to Anne, or Constance, a natural daughter of the emperor
Frederic ^* the Second; but as the bride had not attained the years of
puberty, Vataces placed in his solitary bed an Italian damsel of her
train; and his amorous weakness bestowed on the concubine the honors,
though not the title, of a lawful empress. His frailty was censured as a
flagitious and damnable sin by the monks; and their rude invectives
exercised and displayed the patience of the royal lover. A philosophic
age may excuse a single vice, which was redeemed by a crowd of virtues;
and in the review of his faults, and the more intemperate passions of
Lascaris, the judgment of their contemporaries was softened by gratitude
to the second founders of the empire. ^5 The slaves of the Latins,
without law or peace, applauded the happiness of their brethren who had
resumed their national freedom; and Vataces employed the laudable policy
of convincing the Greeks of every dominion that it was their interest to
be enrolled in the number of his subjects.

[Footnote 1: For the reigns of the Nicene emperors, more especially of
John Vataces and his son, their minister, George Acropolita, is the only
genuine contemporary; but George Pachymer returned to Constantinople
with the Greeks at the age of nineteen, (Hanckius de Script. Byzant. c.
33, 34, p. 564--578. Fabric. Bibliot. Græc. tom. vi. p. 448--460.) Yet
the history of Nicephorus Gregoras, though of the xivth century, is a
valuable narrative from the taking of Constantinople by the Latins.]

[Footnote 2: Nicephorus Gregoras (l. ii. c. 1) distinguishes between the
oxeia ormh of Lascaris, and the eustaqeia of Vataces. The two portraits
are in a very good style.]

[Footnote 3: Pachymer, l. i. c. 23, 24. Nic. Greg. l. ii. c. 6. The
reader of the Byzantines must observe how rarely we are indulged with
such precious details.]

[Footnote 4: Monoi gar apantwn anqrwpwn onomastotatoi basileuV kai
jilosojoV, (Greg. Acropol. c. 32.) The emperor, in a familiar
conversation, examined and encouraged the studies of his future
logothete.]

[Footnote *: Sister of Manfred, afterwards king of Naples. Nic. Greg. p.
45. -- M.]

[Footnote 5: Compare Acropolita, (c. 18, 52,) and the two first books of
Nicephorus Gregoras.]

A strong shade of degeneracy is visible between John Vataces and his son
Theodore; between the founder who sustained the weight, and the heir who
enjoyed the splendor, of the Imperial crown. ^6 Yet the character of
Theodore was not devoid of energy; he had been educated in the school of
his father, in the exercise of war and hunting; Constantinople was yet
spared; but in the three years of a short reign, he thrice led his
armies into the heart of Bulgaria. His virtues were sullied by a
choleric and suspicious temper: the first of these may be ascribed to
the ignorance of control; and the second might naturally arise from a
dark and imperfect view of the corruption of mankind. On a march in
Bulgaria, he consulted on a question of policy his principal ministers;
and the Greek logothete, George Acropolita, presumed to offend him by
the declaration of a free and honest opinion. The emperor half
unsheathed his cimeter; but his more deliberate rage reserved Acropolita
for a baser punishment. One of the first officers of the empire was
ordered to dismount, stripped of his robes, and extended on the ground
in the presence of the prince and army. In this posture he was chastised
with so many and such heavy blows from the clubs of two guards or
executioners, that when Theodore commanded them to cease, the great
logothete was scarcely able to rise and crawl away to his tent. After a
seclusion of some days, he was recalled by a peremptory mandate to his
seat in council; and so dead were the Greeks to the sense of honor and
shame, that it is from the narrative of the sufferer himself that we
acquire the knowledge of his disgrace. ^7 The cruelty of the emperor was
exasperated by the pangs of sickness, the approach of a premature end,
and the suspicion of poison and magic. The lives and fortunes, the eyes
and limbs, of his kinsmen and nobles, were sacrificed to each sally of
passion; and before he died, the son of Vataces might deserve from the
people, or at least from the court, the appellation of tyrant. A matron
of the family of the Palæologi had provoked his anger by refusing to
bestow her beauteous daughter on the vile plebeian who was recommended
by his caprice. Without regard to her birth or age, her body, as high as
the neck, was enclosed in a sack with several cats, who were pricked
with pins to irritate their fury against their unfortunate
fellow-captive. In his last hours the emperor testified a wish to
forgive and be forgiven, a just anxiety for the fate of John his son and
successor, who, at the age of eight years, was condemned to the dangers
of a long minority. His last choice intrusted the office of guardian to
the sanctity of the patriarch Arsenius, and to the courage of George
Muzalon, the great domestic, who was equally distinguished by the royal
favor and the public hatred. Since their connection with the Latins, the
names and privileges of hereditary rank had insinuated themselves into
the Greek monarchy; and the noble families ^8 were provoked by the
elevation of a worthless favorite, to whose influence they imputed the
errors and calamities of the late reign. In the first council, after the
emperor's death, Muzalon, from a lofty throne, pronounced a labored
apology of his conduct and intentions: his modesty was subdued by a
unanimous assurance of esteem and fidelity; and his most inveterate
enemies were the loudest to salute him as the guardian and savior of the
Romans. Eight days were sufficient to prepare the execution of the
conspiracy. On the ninth, the obsequies of the deceased monarch were
solemnized in the cathedral of Magnesia, ^9 an Asiatic city, where he
expired, on the banks of the Hermus, and at the foot of Mount Sipylus.
The holy rites were interrupted by a sedition of the guards; Muzalon,
his brothers, and his adherents, were massacred at the foot of the
altar; and the absent patriarch was associated with a new colleague,
with Michael Palæologus, the most illustrious, in birth and merit, of
the Greek nobles. ^10

[Footnote 6: A Persian saying, that Cyrus was the fatherand Darius the
master, of his subjects, was applied to Vataces and his son. But
Pachymer (l. i. c. 23) has mistaken the mild Darius for the cruel
Cambyses, despot or tyrant of his people. By the institution of taxes,
Darius had incurred the less odious, but more contemptible, name of
KaphloV, merchant or broker, (Herodotus, iii. 89.)]

[Footnote 7: Acropolita (c. 63) seems to admire his own firmness in
sustaining a beating, and not returning to council till he was called.
He relates the exploits of Theodore, and his own services, from c. 53 to
c. 74 of his history. See the third book of Nicephorus Gregoras.]

[Footnote 8: Pachymer (l. i. c. 21) names and discriminates fifteen or
twenty Greek families, kai osoi alloi, oiV h megalogenhV seira kai crush
sugkekrothto. Does he mean, by this decoration, a figurative or a real
golden chain? Perhaps, both.]

[Footnote 9: The old geographers, with Cellarius and D'Anville, and our
travellers, particularly Pocock and Chandler, will teach us to
distinguish the two Magnesias of Asia Minor, of the Mæander and of
Sipylus. The latter, our present object, is still flourishing for a
Turkish city, and lies eight hours, or leagues, to the north-east of
Smyrna, (Tournefort, Voyage du Levant, tom. iii. lettre xxii. p.
365--370. Chandler's Travels into Asia Minor, p. 267.)]

[Footnote 10: See Acropolita, (c. 75, 76, &c.,) who lived too near the
times; Pachymer, (l. i. c. 13--25,) Gregoras, (l. iii. c. 3, 4, 5.)]

Of those who are proud of their ancestors, the far greater part must be
content with local or domestic renown; and few there are who dare trust
the memorials of their family to the public annals of their country. As
early as the middle of the eleventh century, the noble race of the
Palæologi ^11 stands high and conspicuous in the Byzantine history: it
was the valiant George Palæologus who placed the father of the Comneni
on the throne; and his kinsmen or descendants continue, in each
generation, to lead the armies and councils of the state. The purple was
not dishonored by their alliance, and had the law of succession, and
female succession, been strictly observed, the wife of Theodore Lascaris
must have yielded to her elder sister, the mother of Michael Palæologus,
who afterwards raised his family to the throne. In his person, the
splendor of birth was dignified by the merit of the soldier and
statesman: in his early youth he was promoted to the office of
constableor commander of the French mercenaries; the private expense of
a day never exceeded three pieces of gold; but his ambition was
rapacious and profuse; and his gifts were doubled by the graces of his
conversation and manners. The love of the soldiers and people excited
the jealousy of the court, and Michael thrice escaped from the dangers
in which he was involved by his own imprudence or that of his friends.
I. Under the reign of Justice and Vataces, a dispute arose ^12 between
two officers, one of whom accused the other of maintaining the
hereditary right of the Palæologi The cause was decided, according to
the new jurisprudence of the Latins, by single combat; the defendant was
overthrown; but he persisted in declaring that himself alone was guilty;
and that he had uttered these rash or treasonable speeches without the
approbation or knowledge of his patron Yet a cloud of suspicion hung
over the innocence of the constable; he was still pursued by the
whispers of malevolence; and a subtle courtier, the archbishop of
Philadelphia, urged him to accept the judgment of God in the fiery proof
of the ordeal. ^13 Three days before the trial, the patient's arm was
enclosed in a bag, and secured by the royal signet; and it was incumbent
on him to bear a red-hot ball of iron three times from the altar to the
rails of the sanctuary, without artifice and without injury. Palæologus
eluded the dangerous experiment with sense and pleasantry. "I am a
soldier," said he, "and will boldly enter the lists with my accusers;
but a layman, a sinner like myself, is not endowed with the gift of
miracles. Yourpiety, most holy prelate, may deserve the interposition of
Heaven, and from your hands I will receive the fiery globe, the pledge
of my innocence." The archbishop started; the emperor smiled; and the
absolution or pardon of Michael was approved by new rewards and new
services. II. In the succeeding reign, as he held the government of
Nice, he was secretly informed, that the mind of the absent prince was
poisoned with jealousy; and that death, or blindness, would be his final
reward. Instead of awaiting the return and sentence of Theodore, the
constable, with some followers, escaped from the city and the empire;
and though he was plundered by the Turkmans of the desert, he found a
hospitable refuge in the court of the sultan. In the ambiguous state of
an exile, Michael reconciled the duties of gratitude and loyalty:
drawing his sword against the Tartars; admonishing the garrisons of the
Roman limit; and promoting, by his influence, the restoration of peace,
in which his pardon and recall were honorably included. III. While he
guarded the West against the despot of Epirus, Michael was again
suspected and condemned in the palace; and such was his loyalty or
weakness, that he submitted to be led in chains above six hundred miles
from Durazzo to Nice. The civility of the messenger alleviated his
disgrace; the emperor's sickness dispelled his danger; and the last
breath of Theodore, which recommended his infant son, at once
acknowledged the innocence and the power of Palæologus.

[Footnote 11: The pedigree of Palæologus is explained by Ducange,
(Famil. Byzant. p. 230, &c.:) the events of his private life are related
by Pachymer (l. i. c. 7--12) and Gregoras (l. ii. 8, l. iii. 2, 4, l.
iv. 1) with visible favor to the father of the reigning dynasty.]

[Footnote 12: Acropolita (c. 50) relates the circumstances of this
curious adventure, which seem to have escaped the more recent writers.]

[Footnote 13: Pachymer, (l. i. c. 12,) who speaks with proper contempt
of this barbarous trial, affirms, that he had seen in his youth many
person who had sustained, without injury, the fiery ordeal. As a Greek,
he is credulous; but the ingenuity of the Greeks might furnish some
remedies of art or fraud against their own superstition, or that of
their tyrant.]

But his innocence had been too unworthily treated, and his power was too
strongly felt, to curb an aspiring subject in the fair field that was
opened to his ambition. ^14 In the council, after the death of Theodore,
he was the first to pronounce, and the first to violate, the oath of
allegiance to Muzalon; and so dexterous was his conduct, that he reaped
the benefit, without incurring the guilt, or at least the reproach, of
the subsequent massacre. In the choice of a regent, he balanced the
interests and passions of the candidates; turned their envy and hatred
from himself against each other, and forced every competitor to own,
that after his own claims, those of Palæologus were best entitled to the
preference. Under the title of great duke, he accepted or assumed,
during a long minority, the active powers of government; the patriarch
was a venerable name; and the factious nobles were seduced, or
oppressed, by the ascendant of his genius. The fruits of the economy of
Vataces were deposited in a strong castle on the banks of the Hermus, in
the custody of the faithful Varangians: the constable retained his
command or influence over the foreign troops; he employed the guards to
possess the treasure, and the treasure to corrupt the guards; and
whatsoever might be the abuse of the public money, his character was
above the suspicion of private avarice. By himself, or by his
emissaries, he strove to persuade every rank of subjects, that their own
prosperity would rise in just proportion to the establishment of his
authority. The weight of taxes was suspended, the perpetual theme of
popular complaint; and he prohibited the trials by the ordeal and
judicial combat. These Barbaric institutions were already abolished or
undermined in France ^15 and England; ^16 and the appeal to the sword
offended the sense of a civilized, ^17 and the temper of an unwarlike,
people. For the future maintenance of their wives and children, the
veterans were grateful: the priests and the philosophers applauded his
ardent zeal for the advancement of religion and learning; and his vague
promise of rewarding merit was applied by every candidate to his own
hopes. Conscious of the influence of the clergy, Michael successfully
labored to secure the suffrage of that powerful order. Their expensive
journey from Nice to Magnesia, afforded a decent and ample pretence: the
leading prelates were tempted by the liberality of his nocturnal visits;
and the incorruptible patriarch was flattered by the homage of his new
colleague, who led his mule by the bridle into the town, and removed to
a respectful distance the importunity of the crowd. Without renouncing
his title by royal descent, Palæologus encouraged a free discussion into
the advantages of elective monarchy; and his adherents asked, with the
insolence of triumph, what patient would trust his health, or what
merchant would abandon his vessel, to the hereditaryskill of a physician
or a pilot? The youth of the emperor, and the impending dangers of a
minority, required the support of a mature and experienced guardian; of
an associate raised above the envy of his equals, and invested with the
name and prerogatives of royalty. For the interest of the prince and
people, without any selfish views for himself or his family, the great
duke consented to guard and instruct the son of Theodore; but he sighed
for the happy moment when he might restore to his firmer hands the
administration of his patrimony, and enjoy the blessings of a private
station. He was first invested with the title and prerogatives of
despot, which bestowed the purple ornaments and the second place in the
Roman monarchy. It was afterwards agreed that John and Michael should be
proclaimed as joint emperors, and raised on the buckler, but that the
preeminence should be reserved for the birthright of the former. A
mutual league of amity was pledged between the royal partners; and in
case of a rupture, the subjects were bound, by their oath of allegiance,
to declare themselves against the aggressor; an ambiguous name, the seed
of discord and civil war. Palæologus was content; but, on the day of the
coronation, and in the cathedral of Nice, his zealous adherents most
vehemently urged the just priority of his age and merit. The
unseasonable dispute was eluded by postponing to a more convenient
opportunity the coronation of John Lascaris; and he walked with a slight
diadem in the train of his guardian, who alone received the Imperial
crown from the hands of the patriarch. It was not without extreme
reluctance that Arsenius abandoned the cause of his pupil; out the
Varangians brandished their battle-axes; a sign of assent was extorted
from the trembling youth; and some voices were heard, that the life of a
child should no longer impede the settlement of the nation. A full
harvest of honors and employments was distributed among his friends by
the grateful Palæologus. In his own family he created a despot and two
sebastocrators; Alexius Strategopulus was decorated with the title of
Cæsar; and that veteran commander soon repaid the obligation, by
restoring Constantinople to the Greek emperor.

[Footnote 14: Without comparing Pachymer to Thucydides or Tacitus, I
will praise his narrative, (l. i. c. 13--32, l. ii. c. 1--9,) which
pursues the ascent of Palæologus with eloquence, perspicuity, and
tolerable freedom. Acropolita is more cautious, and Gregoras more
concise.]

[Footnote 15: The judicial combat was abolished by St. Louis in his own
territories; and his example and authority were at length prevalent in
France, (Esprit des Loix, l. xxviii. c. 29.)]

[Footnote 16: In civil cases Henry II. gave an option to the defendant:
Glanville prefers the proof by evidence; and that by judicial combat is
reprobated in the Fleta. Yet the trial by battle has never been
abrogated in the English law, and it was ordered by the judges as late
as the beginning of the last century. *

Note *: * And even demanded in the present. -- M.]

[Footnote 17: Yet an ingenious friend has urged to me in mitigation of
this practice, 1. Thatin nations emerging from barbarism, it moderates
the license of private war and arbitrary revenge. 2. Thatit is less
absurd than the trials by the ordeal, or boiling water, or the cross,
which it has contributed to abolish. 3. Thatit served at least as a test
of personal courage; a quality so seldom united with a base disposition,
that the danger of a trial might be some check to a malicious
prosecutor, and a useful barrier against injustice supported by power.
The gallant and unfortunate earl of Surrey might probably have escaped
his unmerited fate, had not his demand of the combat against his accuser
been overruled.]

It was in the second year of his reign, while he resided in the palace
and gardens of Nymphæum, ^18 near Smyrna, that the first messenger
arrived at the dead of night; and the stupendous intelligence was
imparted to Michael, after he had been gently waked by the tender
precaution of his sister Eulogia. The man was unknown or obscure; he
produced no letters from the victorious Cæsar; nor could it easily be
credited, after the defeat of Vataces and the recent failure of
Palæologus himself, that the capital had been surprised by a detachment
of eight hundred soldiers. As a hostage, the doubtful author was
confined, with the assurance of death or an ample recompense; and the
court was left some hours in the anxiety of hope and fear, till the
messengers of Alexius arrived with the authentic intelligence, and
displayed the trophies of the conquest, the sword and sceptre, ^19 the
buskins and bonnet, ^20 of the usurper Baldwin, which he had dropped in
his precipitate flight. A general assembly of the bishops, senators, and
nobles, was immediately convened, and never perhaps was an event
received with more heartfelt and universal joy. In a studied oration,
the new sovereign of Constantinople congratulated his own and the public
fortune. "There was a time," said he, "a far distant time, when the
Roman empire extended to the Adriatic, the Tigris, and the confines of
Æthiopia. After the loss of the provinces, our capital itself, in these
last and calamitous days, has been wrested from our hands by the
Barbarians of the West. From the lowest ebb, the tide of prosperity has
again returned in our favor; but our prosperity was that of fugitives
and exiles: and when we were asked, which was the country of the Romans,
we indicated with a blush the climate of the globe, and the quarter of
the heavens. The divine Providence has now restored to our arms the city
of Constantine, the sacred seat of religion and empire; and it will
depend on our valor and conduct to render this important acquisition the
pledge and omen of future victories." So eager was the impatience of the
prince and people, that Michael made his triumphal entry into
Constantinople only twenty days after the expulsion of the Latins. The
golden gate was thrown open at his approach; the devout conqueror
dismounted from his horse; and a miraculous image of Mary the
Conductress was borne before him, that the divine Virgin in person might
appear to conduct him to the temple of her Son, the cathedral of St.
Sophia. But after the first transport of devotion and pride, he sighed
at the dreary prospect of solitude and ruin. The palace was defiled with
smoke and dirt, and the gross intemperance of the Franks; whole streets
had been consumed by fire, or were decayed by the injuries of time; the
sacred and profane edifices were stripped of their ornaments: and, as if
they were conscious of their approaching exile, the industry of the
Latins had been confined to the work of pillage and destruction. Trade
had expired under the pressure of anarchy and distress, and the numbers
of inhabitants had decreased with the opulence of the city. It was the
first care of the Greek monarch to reinstate the nobles in the palaces
of their fathers; and the houses or the ground which they occupied were
restored to the families that could exhibit a legal right of
inheritance. But the far greater part was extinct or lost; the vacant
property had devolved to the lord; he repeopled Constantinople by a
liberal invitation to the provinces; and the brave volunteerswere seated
in the capital which had been recovered by their arms. The French barons
and the principal families had retired with their emperor; but the
patient and humble crowd of Latins was attached to the country, and
indifferent to the change of masters. Instead of banishing the factories
of the Pisans, Venetians, and Genoese, the prudent conqueror accepted
their oaths of allegiance, encouraged their industry, confirmed their
privileges, and allowed them to live under the jurisdiction of their
proper magistrates. Of these nations, the Pisans and Venetians preserved
their respective quarters in the city; but the services and power of the
Genoese deserved at the same time the gratitude and the jealousy of the
Greeks. Their independent colony was first planted at the seaport town
of Heraclea in Thrace. They were speedily recalled, and settled in the
exclusive possession of the suburb of Galata, an advantageous post, in
which they revived the commerce, and insulted the majesty, of the
Byzantine empire. ^21

[Footnote 18: The site of Nymphæum is not clearly defined in ancient or
modern geography. But from the last hours of Vataces, (Acropolita, c.
52,) it is evident the palace and gardens of his favorite residence were
in the neighborhood of Smyrna. Nymphæum might be loosely placed in
Lydia, (Gregoras, l. vi. 6.)]

[Footnote 19: This sceptre, the emblem of justice and power, was a long
staff, such as was used by the heroes in Homer. By the latter Greeks it
was named Dicanice, and the Imperial sceptre was distinguished as usual
by the red or purple color.]

[Footnote 20: Acropolita affirms (c. 87,) that this "Onnet was after the
French fashion; but from the ruby at the point or summit, Ducange (Hist.
de C. P. l. v. c. 28, 29) believes that it was the high-crowned hat of
the Greeks. Could Acropolita mistake the dress of his own court?]

[Footnote 21: See Pachymer, (l. ii. c. 28--33,) Acropolita, (c. 88,)
Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. iv. 7,) and for the treatment of the subject
Latins, Ducange, (l. v. c. 30, 31.)]

The recovery of Constantinople was celebrated as the æra of a new
empire: the conqueror, alone, and by the right of the sword, renewed his
coronation in the church of St. Sophia; and the name and honors of John
Lascaris, his pupil and lawful sovereign, were insensibly abolished. But
his claims still lived in the minds of the people; and the royal youth
must speedily attain the years of manhood and ambition. By fear or
conscience, Palæologus was restrained from dipping his hands in innocent
and royal blood; but the anxiety of a usurper and a parent urged him to
secure his throne by one of those imperfect crimes so familiar to the
modern Greeks. The loss of sight incapacitated the young prince for the
active business of the world; instead of the brutal violence of tearing
out his eyes, the visual nerve was destroyed by the intense glare of a
red-hot basin, ^22 and John Lascaris was removed to a distant castle,
where he spent many years in privacy and oblivion. Such cool and
deliberate guilt may seem incompatible with remorse; but if Michael
could trust the mercy of Heaven, he was not inaccessible to the
reproaches and vengeance of mankind, which he had provoked by cruelty
and treason. His cruelty imposed on a servile court the duties of
applause or silence; but the clergy had a right to speak in the name of
their invisible Master; and their holy legions were led by a prelate,
whose character was above the temptations of hope or fear. After a short
abdication of his dignity, Arsenius ^23 had consented to ascend the
ecclesiastical throne of Constantinople, and to preside in the
restoration of the church. His pious simplicity was long deceived by the
arts of Palæologus; and his patience and submission might soothe the
usurper, and protect the safety of the young prince. On the news of his
inhuman treatment, the patriarch unsheathed the spiritual sword; and
superstition, on this occasion, was enlisted in the cause of humanity
and justice. In a synod of bishops, who were stimulated by the example
of his zeal, the patriarch pronounced a sentence of excommunication;
though his prudence still repeated the name of Michael in the public
prayers. The Eastern prelates had not adopted the dangerous maxims of
ancient Rome; nor did they presume to enforce their censures, by
deposing princes, or absolving nations from their oaths of allegiance.
But the Christian, who had been separated from God and the church,
became an object of horror; and, in a turbulent and fanatic capital,
that horror might arm the hand of an assassin, or inflame a sedition of
the people. Palæologus felt his danger, confessed his guilt, and
deprecated his judge: the act was irretrievable; the prize was obtained;
and the most rigorous penance, which he solicited, would have raised the
sinner to the reputation of a saint. The unrelenting patriarch refused
to announce any means of atonement or any hopes of mercy; and
condescended only to pronounce, that for so great a crime, great indeed
must be the satisfaction. "Do you require," said Michael, "that I should
abdicate the empire?" and at these words, he offered, or seemed to
offer, the sword of state. Arsenius eagerly grasped this pledge of
sovereignty; but when he perceived that the emperor was unwilling to
purchase absolution at so dear a rate, he indignantly escaped to his
cell, and left the royal sinner kneeling and weeping before the door.
^24

[Footnote 22: This milder invention for extinguishing the sight was
tried by the philosopher Democritus on himself, when he sought to
withdraw his mind from the visible world: a foolish story! The word
abacinare, in Latin and Italian, has furnished Ducange (Gloss. Lat.)
with an opportunity to review the various modes of blinding: the more
violent were scooping, burning with an iron, or hot vinegar, and binding
the head with a strong cord till the eyes burst from their sockets.
Ingenious tyrants!]

[Footnote 23: See the first retreat and restoration of Arsenius, in
Pachymer (l. ii. c. 15, l. iii. c. 1, 2) and Nicephorus Gregoras, (l.
iii. c. 1, l. iv. c. 1.) Posterity justly accused the ajeleia and
raqumia of Arsenius the virtues of a hermit, the vices of a minister,
(l. xii. c. 2.)]

[Footnote 24: The crime and excommunication of Michael are fairly told
by Pachymer (l. iii. c. 10, 14, 19, &c.) and Gregoras, (l. iv. c. 4.)
His confession and penance restored their freedom.]

Chapter LXII: Greek Emperors Of Nice And Constantinople. -- Part II.

The danger and scandal of this excommunication subsisted above three
years, till the popular clamor was assuaged by time and repentance; till
the brethren of Arsenius condemned his inflexible spirit, so repugnant
to the unbounded forgiveness of the gospel. The emperor had artfully
insinuated, that, if he were still rejected at home, he might seek, in
the Roman pontiff, a more indulgent judge; but it was far more easy and
effectual to find or to place that judge at the head of the Byzantine
church. Arsenius was involved in a vague rumor of conspiracy and
disaffection; ^* some irregular steps in his ordination and government
were liable to censure; a synod deposed him from the episcopal office;
and he was transported under a guard of soldiers to a small island of
the Propontis. Before his exile, he sullenly requested that a strict
account might be taken of the treasures of the church; boasted, that his
sole riches, three pieces of gold, had been earned by transcribing the
psalms; continued to assert the freedom of his mind; and denied, with
his last breath, the pardon which was implored by the royal sinner. ^25
After some delay, Gregory, ^* bishop of Adrianople, was translated to
the Byzantine throne; but his authority was found insufficient to
support the absolution of the emperor; and Joseph, a reverend monk, was
substituted to that important function. This edifying scene was
represented in the presence of the senate and the people; at the end of
six years the humble penitent was restored to the communion of the
faithful; and humanity will rejoice, that a milder treatment of the
captive Lascaris was stipulated as a proof of his remorse. But the
spirit of Arsenius still survived in a powerful faction of the monks and
clergy, who persevered about forty-eight years in an obstinate schism.
Their scruples were treated with tenderness and respect by Michael and
his son; and the reconciliation of the Arsenites was the serious labor
of the church and state. In the confidence of fanaticism, they had
proposed to try their cause by a miracle; and when the two papers, that
contained their own and the adverse cause, were cast into a fiery
brazier, they expected that the Catholic verity would be respected by
the flames. Alas! the two papers were indiscriminately consumed, and
this unforeseen accident produced the union of a day, and renewed the
quarrel of an age. ^26 The final treaty displayed the victory of the
Arsenites: the clergy abstained during forty days from all
ecclesiastical functions; a slight penance was imposed on the laity; the
body of Arsenius was deposited in the sanctuary; and, in the name of the
departed saint, the prince and people were released from the sins of
their fathers. ^27

[Footnote *: Except the omission of a prayer for the emperor, the
charges against Arsenius were of different nature: he was accused of
having allowed the sultan of Iconium to bathe in vessels signed with the
cross, and to have admitted him to the church, though unbaptized, during
the service. It was pleaded, in favor of Arsenius, among other proofs of
the sultan's Christianity, that he had offered to eat ham. Pachymer, l.
iv. c. 4, p. 265. It was after his exile that he was involved in a
charge of conspiracy. -- M.]

[Footnote 25: Pachymer relates the exile of Arsenius, (l. iv. c. 1--16:)
he was one of the commissaries who visited him in the desert island. The
last testament of the unforgiving patriarch is still extant, (Dupin,
Bibliothèque Ecclésiastique, tom. x. p. 95.)]

[Footnote *: Pachymer calls him Germanus. -- M.]

[Footnote 26: Pachymer (l. vii. c. 22) relates this miraculous trial
like a philosopher, and treats with similar contempt a plot of the
Arsenites, to hide a revelation in the coffin of some old saint, (l.
vii. c. 13.) He compensates this incredulity by an image that weeps,
another that bleeds, (l. vii. c. 30,) and the miraculous cures of a deaf
and a mute patient, (l. xi. c. 32.)]

[Footnote 27: The story of the Arsenites is spread through the thirteen
books of Pachymer. Their union and triumph are reserved for Nicephorus
Gregoras, (l. vii. c. 9,) who neither loves nor esteems these
sectaries.]

The establishment of his family was the motive, or at least the
pretence, of the crime of Palæologus; and he was impatient to confirm
the succession, by sharing with his eldest son the honors of the purple.
Andronicus, afterwards surnamed the Elder, was proclaimed and crowned
emperor of the Romans, in the fifteenth year of his age; and, from the
first æra of a prolix and inglorious reign, he held that august title
nine years as the colleague, and fifty as the successor, of his father.
Michael himself, had he died in a private station, would have been
thought more worthy of the empire; and the assaults of his temporal and
spiritual enemies left him few moments to labor for his own fame or the
happiness of his subjects. He wrested from the Franks several of the
noblest islands of the Archipelago, Lesbos, Chios, and Rhodes: his
brother Constantine was sent to command in Malvasia and Sparta; and the
eastern side of the Morea, from Argos and Napoli to Cape Thinners, was
repossessed by the Greeks. This effusion of Christian blood was loudly
condemned by the patriarch; and the insolent priest presumed to
interpose his fears and scruples between the arms of princes. But in the
prosecution of these western conquests, the countries beyond the
Hellespont were left naked to the Turks; and their depredations verified
the prophecy of a dying senator, that the recovery of Constantinople
would be the ruin of Asia. The victories of Michael were achieved by his
lieutenants; his sword rusted in the palace; and, in the transactions of
the emperor with the popes and the king of Naples, his political acts
were stained with cruelty and fraud. ^28

[Footnote 28: Of the xiii books of Pachymer, the first six (as the ivth
and vth of Nicephorus Gregoras) contain the reign of Michael, at the
time of whose death he was forty years of age. Instead of breaking, like
his editor the Père Poussin, his history into two parts, I follow
Ducange and Cousin, who number the xiii. books in one series.]

I. The Vatican was the most natural refuge of a Latin emperor, who had
been driven from his throne; and Pope Urban the Fourth appeared to pity
the misfortunes, and vindicate the cause, of the fugitive Baldwin. A
crusade, with plenary indulgence, was preached by his command against
the schismatic Greeks: he excommunicated their allies and adherents;
solicited Louis the Ninth in favor of his kinsman; and demanded a tenth
of the ecclesiastical revenues of France and England for the service of
the holy war. ^29 The subtle Greek, who watched the rising tempest of
the West, attempted to suspend or soothe the hostility of the pope, by
suppliant embassies and respectful letters; but he insinuated that the
establishment of peace must prepare the reconciliation and obedience of
the Eastern church. The Roman court could not be deceived by so gross an
artifice; and Michael was admonished, that the repentance of the son
should precede the forgiveness of the father; and that faith(an
ambiguous word) was the only basis of friendship and alliance. After a
long and affected delay, the approach of danger, and the importunity of
Gregory the Tenth, compelled him to enter on a more serious negotiation:
he alleged the example of the great Vataces; and the Greek clergy, who
understood the intentions of their prince, were not alarmed by the first
steps of reconciliation and respect. But when he pressed the conclusion
of the treaty, they strenuously declared, that the Latins, though not in
name, were heretics in fact, and that they despised those strangers as
the vilest and most despicable portion of the human race. ^30 It was the
task of the emperor to persuade, to corrupt, to intimidate the most
popular ecclesiastics, to gain the vote of each individual, and
alternately to urge the arguments of Christian charity and the public
welfare. The texts of the fathers and the arms of the Franks were
balanced in the theological and political scale; and without approving
the addition to the Nicene creed, the most moderate were taught to
confess, that the two hostile propositions of proceeding from the Father
by the Son, and of proceeding from the Father and the Son, might be
reduced to a safe and Catholic sense. ^31 The supremacy of the pope was
a doctrine more easy to conceive, but more painful to acknowledge: yet
Michael represented to his monks and prelates, that they might submit to
name the Roman bishop as the first of the patriarchs; and that their
distance and discretion would guard the liberties of the Eastern church
from the mischievous consequences of the right of appeal. He protested
that he would sacrifice his life and empire rather than yield the
smallest point of orthodox faith or national independence; and this
declaration was sealed and ratified by a golden bull. The patriarch
Joseph withdrew to a monastery, to resign or resume his throne,
according to the event of the treaty: the letters of union and obedience
were subscribed by the emperor, his son Andronicus, and thirty-five
archbishops and metropolitans, with their respective synods; and the
episcopal list was multiplied by many dioceses which were annihilated
under the yoke of the infidels. An embassy was composed of some trusty
ministers and prelates: they embarked for Italy, with rich ornaments and
rare perfumes for the altar of St. Peter; and their secret orders
authorized and recommended a boundless compliance. They were received in
the general council of Lyons, by Pope Gregory the Tenth, at the head of
five hundred bishops. ^32 He embraced with tears his long-lost and
repentant children; accepted the oath of the ambassadors, who abjured
the schism in the name of the two emperors; adorned the prelates with
the ring and mitre; chanted in Greek and Latin the Nicene creed with the
addition of filioque; and rejoiced in the union of the East and West,
which had been reserved for his reign. To consummate this pious work,
the Byzantine deputies were speedily followed by the pope's nuncios; and
their instruction discloses the policy of the Vatican, which could not
be satisfied with the vain title of supremacy. After viewing the temper
of the prince and people, they were enjoined to absolve the schismatic
clergy, who should subscribe and swear their abjuration and obedience;
to establish in all the churches the use of the perfect creed; to
prepare the entrance of a cardinal legate, with the full powers and
dignity of his office; and to instruct the emperor in the advantages
which he might derive from the temporal protection of the Roman pontiff.
^33

[Footnote 29: Ducange, Hist. de C. P. l. v. c. 33, &c., from the
Epistles of Urban IV.]

[Footnote 30: From their mercantile intercourse with the Venetians and
Genoese, they branded the Latins as kaphloi and banausoi , (Pachymer, l.
v. c. 10.) "Some are heretics in name; others, like the Latins, in
fact," said the learned Veccus, (l. v. c. 12,) who soon afterwards
became a convert (c. 15, 16) and a patriarch, (c. 24.)]

[Footnote 31: In this class we may place Pachymer himself, whose copious
and candid narrative occupies the vth and vith books of his history. Yet
the Greek is silent on the council of Lyons, and seems to believe that
the popes always resided in Rome and Italy, (l. v. c. 17, 21.)]

[Footnote 32: See the acts of the council of Lyons in the year 1274.
Fleury, Hist. Ecclésiastique, tom. xviii. p. 181--199. Dupin, Bibliot.
Ecclés. tom. x. p. 135.]

[Footnote 33: This curious instruction, which has been drawn with more
or less honesty by Wading and Leo Allatius from the archives of the
Vatican, is given in an abstract or version by Fleury, (tom. xviii. p.
252--258.)]

But they found a country without a friend, a nation in which the names
of Rome and Union were pronounced with abhorrence. The patriarch Joseph
was indeed removed: his place was filled by Veccus, an ecclesiastic of
learning and moderation; and the emperor was still urged by the same
motives, to persevere in the same professions. But in his private
language Palæologus affected to deplore the pride, and to blame the
innovations, of the Latins; and while he debased his character by this
double hypocrisy, he justified and punished the opposition of his
subjects. By the joint suffrage of the new and the ancient Rome, a
sentence of excommunication was pronounced against the obstinate
schismatics; the censures of the church were executed by the sword of
Michael; on the failure of persuasion, he tried the arguments of prison
and exile, of whipping and mutilation; those touchstones, says an
historian, of cowards and the brave. Two Greeks still reigned in Ætolia,
Epirus, and Thessaly, with the appellation of despots: they had yielded
to the sovereign of Constantinople, but they rejected the chains of the
Roman pontiff, and supported their refusal by successful arms. Under
their protection, the fugitive monks and bishops assembled in hostile
synods; and retorted the name of heretic with the galling addition of
apostate: the prince of Trebizond was tempted to assume the forfeit
title of emperor; ^* and even the Latins of Negropont, Thebes, Athens,
and the Morea, forgot the merits of the convert, to join, with open or
clandestine aid, the enemies of Palæologus. His favorite generals, of
his own blood, and family, successively deserted, or betrayed, the
sacrilegious trust. His sister Eulogia, a niece, and two female cousins,
conspired against him; another niece, Mary queen of Bulgaria, negotiated
his ruin with the sultan of Egypt; and, in the public eye, their treason
was consecrated as the most sublime virtue. ^34 To the pope's nuncios,
who urged the consummation of the work, Palæologus exposed a naked
recital of all that he had done and suffered for their sake. They were
assured that the guilty sectaries, of both sexes and every rank, had
been deprived of their honors, their fortunes, and their liberty; a
spreading list of confiscation and punishment, which involved many
persons, the dearest to the emperor, or the best deserving of his favor.
They were conducted to the prison, to behold four princes of the royal
blood chained in the four corners, and shaking their fetters in an agony
of grief and rage. Two of these captives were afterwards released; the
one by submission, the other by death: but the obstinacy of their two
companions was chastised by the loss of their eyes; and the Greeks, the
least adverse to the union, deplored that cruel and inauspicious
tragedy. ^35 Persecutors must expect the hatred of those whom they
oppress; but they commonly find some consolation in the testimony of
their conscience, the applause of their party, and, perhaps, the success
of their undertaking. But the hypocrisy of Michael, which was prompted
only by political motives, must have forced him to hate himself, to
despise his followers, and to esteem and envy the rebel champions by
whom he was detested and despised. While his violence was abhorred at
Constantinople, at Rome his slowness was arraigned, and his sincerity
suspected; till at length Pope Martin the Fourth excluded the Greek
emperor from the pale of a church, into which he was striving to reduce
a schismatic people. No sooner had the tyrant expired, than the union
was dissolved, and abjured by unanimous consent; the churches were
purified; the penitents were reconciled; and his son Andronicus, after
weeping the sins and errors of his youth most piously denied his father
the burial of a prince and a Christian. ^36

[Footnote *: According to Fallmarayer he had always maintained this
title. -- M.]

[Footnote 34: This frank and authentic confession of Michael's distress
is exhibited in barbarous Latin by Ogerius, who signs himself
Protonotarius Interpretum, and transcribed by Wading from the MSS. of
the Vatican, (A.D. 1278, No. 3.) His annals of the Franciscan order, the
Fratres Minores, in xvii. volumes in folio, (Rome, 1741,) I have now
accidentally seen among the waste paper of a bookseller.]

[Footnote 35: See the vith book of Pachymer, particularly the chapters
1, 11, 16, 18, 24--27. He is the more credible, as he speaks of this
persecution with less anger than sorrow.]

[Footnote 36: Pachymer, l. vii. c. 1--ii. 17. The speech of Andronicus
the Elder (lib. xii. c. 2) is a curious record, which proves that if the
Greeks were the slaves of the emperor, the emperor was not less the
slave of superstition and the clergy.]

II. In the distress of the Latins, the walls and towers of
Constantinople had fallen to decay: they were restored and fortified by
the policy of Michael, who deposited a plenteous store of corn and salt
provisions, to sustain the siege which he might hourly expect from the
resentment of the Western powers. Of these, the sovereign of the Two
Sicilies was the most formidable neighbor: but as long as they were
possessed by Mainfroy, the bastard of Frederic the Second, his monarchy
was the bulwark, rather than the annoyance, of the Eastern empire. The
usurper, though a brave and active prince, was sufficiently employed in
the defence of his throne: his proscription by successive popes had
separated Mainfroy from the common cause of the Latins; and the forces
that might have besieged Constantinople were detained in a crusade
against the domestic enemy of Rome. The prize of her avenger, the crown
of the Two Sicilies, was won and worn by the brother of St Louis, by
Charles count of Anjou and Provence, who led the chivalry of France on
this holy expedition. ^37 The disaffection of his Christian subjects
compelled Mainfroy to enlist a colony of Saracens whom his father had
planted in Apulia; and this odious succor will explain the defiance of
the Catholic hero, who rejected all terms of accommodation. "Bear this
message," said Charles, "to the sultan of Nocera, that God and the sword
are umpire between us; and that he shall either send me to paradise, or
I will send him to the pit of hell." The armies met: and though I am
ignorant of Mainfroy's doom in the other world, in this he lost his
friends, his kingdom, and his life, in the bloody battle of Benevento.
Naples and Sicily were immediately peopled with a warlike race of French
nobles; and their aspiring leader embraced the future conquest of
Africa, Greece, and Palestine. The most specious reasons might point his
first arms against the Byzantine empire; and Palæologus, diffident of
his own strength, repeatedly appealed from the ambition of Charles to
the humanity of St. Louis, who still preserved a just ascendant over the
mind of his ferocious brother. For a while the attention of that brother
was confined at home by the invasion of Conradin, the last heir to the
imperial house of Swabia; but the hapless boy sunk in the unequal
conflict; and his execution on a public scaffold taught the rivals of
Charles to tremble for their heads as well as their dominions. A second
respite was obtained by the last crusade of St. Louis to the African
coast; and the double motive of interest and duty urged the king of
Naples to assist, with his powers and his presence, the holy enterprise.
The death of St. Louis released him from the importunity of a virtuous
censor: the king of Tunis confessed himself the tributary and vassal of
the crown of Sicily; and the boldest of the French knights were free to
enlist under his banner against the Greek empire. A treaty and a
marriage united his interest with the house of Courtenay; his daughter
Beatrice was promised to Philip, son and heir of the emperor Baldwin; a
pension of six hundred ounces of gold was allowed for his maintenance;
and his generous father distributed among his aliens the kingdoms and
provinces of the East, reserving only Constantinople, and one day's
journey round the city for the imperial domain. ^38 In this perilous
moment, Palæologus was the most eager to subscribe the creed, and
implore the protection, of the Roman pontiff, who assumed, with
propriety and weight, the character of an angel of peace, the common
father of the Christians. By his voice, the sword of Charles was chained
in the scabbard; and the Greek ambassadors beheld him, in the pope's
antechamber, biting his ivory sceptre in a transport of fury, and deeply
resenting the refusal to enfranchise and consecrate his arms. He appears
to have respected the disinterested mediation of Gregory the Tenth; but
Charles was insensibly disgusted by the pride and partiality of Nicholas
the Third; and his attachment to his kindred, the Ursini family,
alienated the most strenuous champion from the service of the church.
The hostile league against the Greeks, of Philip the Latin emperor, the
king of the Two Sicilies, and the republic of Venice, was ripened into
execution; and the election of Martin the Fourth, a French pope, gave a
sanction to the cause. Of the allies, Philip supplied his name; Martin,
a bull of excommunication; the Venetians, a squadron of forty galleys;
and the formidable powers of Charles consisted of forty counts, ten
thousand men at arms, a numerous body of infantry, and a fleet of more
than three hundred ships and transports. A distant day was appointed for
assembling this mighty force in the harbor of Brindisi; and a previous
attempt was risked with a detachment of three hundred knights, who
invaded Albania, and besieged the fortress of Belgrade. Their defeat
might amuse with a triumph the vanity of Constantinople; but the more
sagacious Michael, despairing of his arms, depended on the effects of a
conspiracy; on the secret workings of a rat, who gnawed the bowstring
^39 of the Sicilian tyrant.

[Footnote 37: The best accounts, the nearest the time, the most full and
entertaining, of the conquest of Naples by Charles of Anjou, may be
found in the Florentine Chronicles of Ricordano Malespina, (c.
175--193,) and Giovanni Villani, (l. vii. c. 1--10, 25--30,) which are
published by Muratori in the viiith and xiiith volumes of the Historians
of Italy. In his Annals (tom. xi. p. 56--72) he has abridged these great
events which are likewise described in the Istoria Civile of Giannone.
tom. l. xix. tom. iii. l. xx.]

[Footnote 38: Ducange, Hist. de C. P. l. v. c. 49--56, l. vi. c. 1--13.
See Pachymer, l. iv. c. 29, l. v. c. 7--10, 25 l. vi. c. 30, 32, 33, and
Nicephorus Gregoras, l. iv. 5, l. v. 1, 6.]

[Footnote 39: The reader of Herodotus will recollect how miraculously
the Assyrian host of Sennacherib was disarmed and destroyed, (l. ii. c.
141.)]

Among the proscribed adherents of the house of Swabia, John of Procida
forfeited a small island of that name in the Bay of Naples. His birth
was noble, but his education was learned; and in the poverty of exile,
he was relieved by the practice of physic, which he had studied in the
school of Salerno. Fortune had left him nothing to lose, except life;
and to despise life is the first qualification of a rebel. Procida was
endowed with the art of negotiation, to enforce his reasons and disguise
his motives; and in his various transactions with nations and men, he
could persuade each party that he labored solely for theirinterest. The
new kingdoms of Charles were afflicted by every species of fiscal and
military oppression; ^40 and the lives and fortunes of his Italian
subjects were sacrificed to the greatness of their master and the
licentiousness of his followers. The hatred of Naples was repressed by
his presence; but the looser government of his vicegerents excited the
contempt, as well as the aversion, of the Sicilians: the island was
roused to a sense of freedom by the eloquence of Procida; and he
displayed to every baron his private interest in the common cause. In
the confidence of foreign aid, he successively visited the courts of the
Greek emperor, and of Peter king of Arragon, ^41 who possessed the
maritime countries of Valentia and Catalonia. To the ambitious Peter a
crown was presented, which he might justly claim by his marriage with
the sister ^* of Mainfroy, and by the dying voice of Conradin, who from
the scaffold had cast a ring to his heir and avenger. Palæologus was
easily persuaded to divert his enemy from a foreign war by a rebellion
at home; and a Greek subsidy of twenty-five thousand ounces of gold was
most profitably applied to arm a Catalan fleet, which sailed under a
holy banner to the specious attack of the Saracens of Africa. In the
disguise of a monk or beggar, the indefatigable missionary of revolt
flew from Constantinople to Rome, and from Sicily to Saragossa: the
treaty was sealed with the signet of Pope Nicholas himself, the enemy of
Charles; and his deed of gift transferred the fiefs of St. Peter from
the house of Anjou to that of Arragon. So widely diffused and so freely
circulated, the secret was preserved above two years with impenetrable
discretion; and each of the conspirators imbibed the maxim of Peter, who
declared that he would cut off his left hand if it were conscious of the
intentions of his right. The mine was prepared with deep and dangerous
artifice; but it may be questioned, whether the instant explosion of
Palermo were the effect of accident or design.

[Footnote 40: According to Sabas Malaspina, (Hist. Sicula, l. iii. c.
16, in Muratori, tom. viii. p. 832,) a zealous Guelph, the subjects of
Charles, who had reviled Mainfroy as a wolf, began to regret him as a
lamb; and he justifies their discontent by the oppressions of the French
government, (l. vi. c. 2, 7.) See the Sicilian manifesto in Nicholas
Specialis, (l. i. c. 11, in Muratori, tom. x. p. 930.)]

[Footnote 41: See the character and counsels of Peter, king of Arragon,
in Mariana, (Hist. Hispan. l. xiv. c. 6, tom. ii. p. 133.) The reader
for gives the Jesuit's defects, in favor, always of his style, and often
of his sense.]

[Footnote *: Daughter. See Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. i. p. 517. -- M.]

On the vigil of Easter, a procession of the disarmed citizens visited a
church without the walls; and a noble damsel was rudely insulted by a
French soldier. ^42 The ravisher was instantly punished with death; and
if the people was at first scattered by a military force, their numbers
and fury prevailed: the conspirators seized the opportunity; the flame
spread over the island; and eight thousand French were exterminated in a
promiscuous massacre, which has obtained the name of the Sicilian
Vespers. ^43 From every city the banners of freedom and the church were
displayed: the revolt was inspired by the presence or the soul of
Procida and Peter of Arragon, who sailed from the African coast to
Palermo, was saluted as the king and savior of the isle. By the
rebellion of a people on whom he had so long trampled with impunity,
Charles was astonished and confounded; and in the first agony of grief
and devotion, he was heard to exclaim, "O God! if thou hast decreed to
humble me, grant me at least a gentle and gradual descent from the
pinnacle of greatness!" His fleet and army, which already filled the
seaports of Italy, were hastily recalled from the service of the Grecian
war; and the situation of Messina exposed that town to the first storm
of his revenge. Feeble in themselves, and yet hopeless of foreign
succor, the citizens would have repented, and submitted on the assurance
of full pardon and their ancient privileges. But the pride of the
monarch was already rekindled; and the most fervent entreaties of the
legate could extort no more than a promise, that he would forgive the
remainder, after a chosen list of eight hundred rebels had been yielded
to his discretion. The despair of the Messinese renewed their courage:
Peter of Arragon approached to their relief; ^44 and his rival was
driven back by the failure of provision and the terrors of the equinox
to the Calabrian shore. At the same moment, the Catalan admiral, the
famous Roger de Loria, swept the channel with an invincible squadron:
the French fleet, more numerous in transports than in galleys, was
either burnt or destroyed; and the same blow assured the independence of
Sicily and the safety of the Greek empire. A few days before his death,
the emperor Michael rejoiced in the fall of an enemy whom he hated and
esteemed; and perhaps he might be content with the popular judgment,
that had they not been matched with each other, Constantinople and Italy
must speedily have obeyed the same master. ^45 From this disastrous
moment, the life of Charles was a series of misfortunes: his capital was
insulted, his son was made prisoner, and he sunk into the grave without
recovering the Isle of Sicily, which, after a war of twenty years, was
finally severed from the throne of Naples, and transferred, as an
independent kingdom, to a younger branch of the house of Arragon. ^46

[Footnote 42: After enumerating the sufferings of his country, Nicholas
Specialis adds, in the true spirit of Italian jealousy, Quæomnia et
graviora quidem, ut arbitror, patienti animo Siculi tolerassent, nisi
(quod primum cunctis dominantibus cavendum est) alienas fminas
invasissent, (l. i. c. 2, p. 924.)]

[Footnote 43: The French were long taught to remember this bloody
lesson: "If I am provoked, (said Henry the Fourth,) I will breakfast at
Milan, and dine at Naples." "Your majesty (replied the Spanish
ambassador) may perhaps arrive in Sicily for vespers."]

[Footnote 44: This revolt, with the subsequent victory, are related by
two national writers, Bartholemy àNeocastro (in Muratori, tom. xiii.,)
and Nicholas Specialis (in Muratori, tom. x.,) the one a contemporary,
the other of the next century. The patriot Specialis disclaims the name
of rebellion, and all previous correspondence with Peter of Arragon,
(nullo communicato consilio,) who happenedto be with a fleet and army on
the African coast, (l. i. c. 4, 9.)]

[Footnote 45: Nicephorus Gregoras (l. v. c. 6) admires the wisdom of
Providence in this equal balance of states and princes. For the honor of
Palæologus, I had rather this balance had been observed by an Italian
writer.]

[Footnote 46: See the Chronicle of Villani, the xith volume of the
Annali d'Italia of Muratori, and the xxth and xxist books of the Istoria
Civile of Giannone.]

Chapter LXII: Greek Emperors Of Nice And Constantinople. -- Part III.

I shall not, I trust, be accused of superstition; but I must remark
that, even in this world, the natural order of events will sometimes
afford the strong appearances of moral retribution. The first Palæologus
had saved his empire by involving the kingdoms of the West in rebellion
and blood; and from these scenes of discord uprose a generation of iron
men, who assaulted and endangered the empire of his son. In modern times
our debts and taxes are the secret poison which still corrodes the bosom
of peace: but in the weak and disorderly government of the middle ages,
it was agitated by the present evil of the disbanded armies. Too idle to
work, too proud to beg, the mercenaries were accustomed to a life of
rapine: they could rob with more dignity and effect under a banner and a
chief; and the sovereign, to whom their service was useless, and their
presence importunate, endeavored to discharge the torrent on some
neighboring countries. After the peace of Sicily, many thousands of
Genoese, Catalans, ^47 &c., who had fought, by sea and land, under the
standard of Anjou or Arragon, were blended into one nation by the
resemblance of their manners and interest. They heard that the Greek
provinces of Asia were invaded by the Turks: they resolved to share the
harvest of pay and plunder: and Frederic king of Sicily most liberally
contributed the means of their departure. In a warfare of twenty years,
a ship, or a camp, was become their country; arms were their sole
profession and property; valor was the only virtue which they knew;
their women had imbibed the fearless temper of their lovers and
husbands: it was reported, that, with a stroke of their broadsword, the
Catalans could cleave a horseman and a horse; and the report itself was
a powerful weapon. Roger de Flor ^* was the most popular of their
chiefs; and his personal merit overshadowed the dignity of his prouder
rivals of Arragon. The offspring of a marriage between a German
gentleman of the court of Frederic the Second and a damsel of Brindisi,
Roger was successively a templar, an apostate, a pirate, and at length
the richest and most powerful admiral of the Mediterranean. He sailed
from Messina to Constantinople, with eighteen galleys, four great ships,
and eight thousand adventurers; ^* and his previous treaty was
faithfully accomplished by Andronicus the elder, who accepted with joy
and terror this formidable succor. A palace was allotted for his
reception, and a niece of the emperor was given in marriage to the
valiant stranger, who was immediately created great duke or admiral of
Romania. After a decent repose, he transported his troops over the
Propontis, and boldly led them against the Turks: in two bloody battles
thirty thousand of the Moslems were slain: he raised the siege of
Philadelphia, and deserved the name of the deliverer of Asia. But after
a short season of prosperity, the cloud of slavery and ruin again burst
on that unhappy province. The inhabitants escaped (says a Greek
historian) from the smoke into the flames; and the hostility of the
Turks was less pernicious than the friendship of the Catalans. ^! The
lives and fortunes which they had rescued they considered as their own:
the willing or reluctant maid was saved from the race of circumcision
for the embraces of a Christian soldier: the exaction of fines and
supplies was enforced by licentious rapine and arbitrary executions;
and, on the resistance of Magnesia, the great duke besieged a city of
the Roman empire. ^48 These disorders he excused by the wrongs and
passions of a victorious army; nor would his own authority or person
have been safe, had he dared to punish his faithful followers, who were
defrauded of the just and covenanted price of their services. The
threats and complaints of Andronicus disclosed the nakedness of the
empire. His golden bull had invited no more than five hundred horse and
a thousand foot soldiers; yet the crowds of volunteers, who migrated to
the East, had been enlisted and fed by his spontaneous bounty. While his
bravest allies were content with three byzants or pieces of gold, for
their monthly pay, an ounce, or even two ounces, of gold were assigned
to the Catalans, whose annual pension would thus amount to near a
hundred pounds sterling: one of their chiefs had modestly rated at three
hundred thousand crowns the value of his futuremerits; and above a
million had been issued from the treasury for the maintenance of these
costly mercenaries. A cruel tax had been imposed on the corn of the
husbandman: one third was retrenched from the salaries of the public
officers; and the standard of the coin was so shamefully debased, that
of the four-and-twenty parts only five were of pure gold. ^49 At the
summons of the emperor, Roger evacuated a province which no longer
supplied the materials of rapine; ^* but he refused to disperse his
troops; and while his style was respectful, his conduct was independent
and hostile. He protested, that if the emperor should march against him,
he would advance forty paces to kiss the ground before him; but in
rising from this prostrate attitude Roger had a life and sword at the
service of his friends. The great duke of Romania condescended to accept
the title and ornaments of Cæsar; but he rejected the new proposal of
the government of Asia with a subsidy of corn and money, ^* on condition
that he should reduce his troops to the harmless number of three
thousand men. Assassination is the last resource of cowards. The Cæsar
was tempted to visit the royal residence of Adrianople; in the
apartment, and before the eyes, of the empress he was stabbed by the
Alani guards; and though the deed was imputed to their private revenge,
^! his countrymen, who dwelt at Constantinople in the security of peace,
were involved in the same proscription by the prince or people. The loss
of their leader intimidated the crowd of adventurers, who hoisted the
sails of flight, and were soon scattered round the coasts of the
Mediterranean. But a veteran band of fifteen hundred Catalans, or
French, stood firm in the strong fortress of Gallipoli on the
Hellespont, displayed the banners of Arragon, and offered to revenge and
justify their chief, by an equal combat of ten or a hundred warriors.
Instead of accepting this bold defiance, the emperor Michael, the son
and colleague of Andronicus, resolved to oppress them with the weight of
multitudes: every nerve was strained to form an army of thirteen
thousand horse and thirty thousand foot; and the Propontis was covered
with the ships of the Greeks and Genoese. In two battles by sea and
land, these mighty forces were encountered and overthrown by the despair
and discipline of the Catalans: the young emperor fled to the palace;
and an insufficient guard of light-horse was left for the protection of
the open country. Victory renewed the hopes and numbers of the
adventures: every nation was blended under the name and standard of the
great company; and three thousand Turkish proselytes deserted from the
Imperial service to join this military association. In the possession of
Gallipoli, ^!! the Catalans intercepted the trade of Constantinople and
the Black Sea, while they spread their devastation on either side of the
Hellespont over the confines of Europe and Asia. To prevent their
approach, the greatest part of the Byzantine territory was laid waste by
the Greeks themselves: the peasants and their cattle retired into the
city; and myriads of sheep and oxen, for which neither place nor food
could be procured, were unprofitably slaughtered on the same day. Four
times the emperor Andronicus sued for peace, and four times he was
inflexibly repulsed, till the want of provisions, and the discord of the
chiefs, compelled the Catalans to evacuate the banks of the Hellespont
and the neighborhood of the capital. After their separation from the
Turks, the remains of the great company pursued their march through
Macedonia and Thessaly, to seek a new establishment in the heart of
Greece. ^50

[Footnote 47: In this motley multitude, the Catalans and Spaniards, the
bravest of the soldiery, were styled by themselves and the Greeks
Amogavares. Moncada derives their origin from the Goths, and Pachymer
(l. xi. c. 22) from the Arabs; and in spite of national and religious
pride, I am afraid the latter is in the right.]

[Footnote *: On Roger de Flor and his companions, see an historical
fragment, detailed and interesting, entitled "The Spaniards of the
Fourteenth Century," and inserted in "L'Espagne en 1808," a work
translated from the German, vol. ii. p. 167. This narrative enables us
to detect some slight errors which have crept into that of Gibbon. --
G.]

[Footnote *: The troops of Roger de Flor, according to his companions
Ramon de Montaner, were 1500 men at arms, 4000 Almogavares, and 1040
other foot, besides the sailors and mariners, vol. ii. p. 137. -- M.]

[Footnote !: Ramon de Montaner suppresses the cruelties and oppressions
of the Catalans, in which, perhaps, he shared. -- M.]

[Footnote 48: Some idea may be formed of the population of these cities,
from the 36,000 inhabitants of Tralles, which, in the preceding reign,
was rebuilt by the emperor, and ruined by the Turks. (Pachymer, l. vi.
c. 20, 21.)]

[Footnote 49: I have collected these pecuniary circumstances from
Pachymer, (l. xi. c. 21, l. xii. c. 4, 5, 8, 14, 19,) who describes the
progressive degradation of the gold coin. Even in the prosperous times
of John Ducas Vataces, the byzants were composed in equal proportions of
the pure and the baser metal. The poverty of Michael Palæologus
compelled him to strike a new coin, with nine parts, or carats, of gold,
and fifteen of copper alloy. After his death, the standard rose to ten
carats, till in the public distress it was reduced to the moiety. The
prince was relieved for a moment, while credit and commerce were forever
blasted. In France, the gold coin is of twenty-two carats, (one twelfth
alloy,) and the standard of England and Holland is still higher.]

[Footnote *: Roger de Flor, according to Ramon de Montaner, was recalled
from Natolia, on account of the war which had arisen on the death of
Asan, king of Bulgaria. Andronicus claimed the kingdom for his nephew,
the sons of Asan by his sister. Roger de Flor turned the tide of success
in favor of the emperor of Constantinople and made peace. -- M.]

[Footnote *: Andronicus paid the Catalans in the debased money, much to
their indignation. -- M.]

[Footnote !: According to Ramon de Montaner, he was murdered by order of
Kyr (kurioV) Michael, son of the emperor. p. 170. -- M.]

[Footnote !!: Ramon de Montaner describes his sojourn at Gallipoli: Nous
etions si riches, que nous ne semions, ni ne labourions, ni ne faisions
enver des vins ni ne cultivions les vignes: et cependant tous les ans
nous recucillions tour ce qu'il nous fallait, en vin, froment et avoine.
p. 193. This lasted for five merry years. Ramon de Montaner is high
authority, for he was "chancelier et maitre rational de l'armée,"
(commissary of rations.) He was left governor; all the scribes of the
army remained with him, and with their aid he kept the books in which
were registered the number of horse and foot employed on each
expedition. According to this book the plunder was shared, of which he
had a fifth for his trouble. p. 197. -- M.]

[Footnote 50: The Catalan war is most copiously related by Pachymer, in
the xith, xiith, and xiiith books, till he breaks off in the year 1308.
Nicephorus Gregoras (l. vii. 3--6) is more concise and complete.
Ducange, who adopts these adventurers as French, has hunted their
footsteps with his usual diligence, (Hist. de C. P. l. vi. c. 22--46.)
He quotes an Arragonese history, which I have read with pleasure, and
which the Spaniards extol as a model of style and composition,
(Expedicion de los Catalanes y Arragoneses contra Turcos y Griegos:
Barcelona, 1623 in quarto: Madrid, 1777, in octavo.) Don Francisco de
Moncada Conde de Ossona, may imitate Cæsar or Sallust; he may transcribe
the Greek or Italian contemporaries: but he never quotes his
authorities, and I cannot discern any national records of the exploits
of his countrymen. *

Note: * Ramon de Montaner, one of the Catalans, who accompanied Roger de
Flor, and who was governor of Gallipoli, has written, in Spanish, the
history of this band of adventurers, to which he belonged, and from
which he separated when it left the Thracian Chersonese to penetrate
into Macedonia and Greece. -- G.

The autobiography of Ramon de Montaner has been published in French by
M. Buchon, in the great collection of Mémoires relatifs àl'Histoire de
France. I quote this edition. -- M.]

After some ages of oblivion, Greece was awakened to new misfortunes by
the arms of the Latins. In the two hundred and fifty years between the
first and the last conquest of Constantinople, that venerable land was
disputed by a multitude of petty tyrants; without the comforts of
freedom and genius, her ancient cities were again plunged in foreign and
intestine war; and, if servitude be preferable to anarchy, they might
repose with joy under the Turkish yoke. I shall not pursue the obscure
and various dynasties, that rose and fell on the continent or in the
isles; but our silence on the fate of Athens ^51 would argue a strange
ingratitude to the first and purest school of liberal science and
amusement. In the partition of the empire, the principality of Athens
and Thebes was assigned to Otho de la Roche, a noble warrior of
Burgundy, ^52 with the title of great duke, ^53 which the Latins
understood in their own sense, and the Greeks more foolishly derived
from the age of Constantine. ^54 Otho followed the standard of the
marquis of Montferrat: the ample state which he acquired by a miracle of
conduct or fortune, ^55 was peaceably inherited by his son and two
grandsons, till the family, though not the nation, was changed, by the
marriage of an heiress into the elder branch of the house of Brienne.
The son of that marriage, Walter de Brienne, succeeded to the duchy of
Athens; and, with the aid of some Catalan mercenaries, whom he invested
with fiefs, reduced above thirty castles of the vassal or neighboring
lords. But when he was informed of the approach and ambition of the
great company, he collected a force of seven hundred knights, six
thousand four hundred horse, and eight thousand foot, and boldly met
them on the banks of the River Cephisus in Botia. The Catalans amounted
to no more than three thousand five hundred horse, and four thousand
foot; but the deficiency of numbers was compensated by stratagem and
order. They formed round their camp an artificial inundation; the duke
and his knights advanced without fear or precaution on the verdant
meadow; their horses plunged into the bog; and he was cut in pieces,
with the greatest part of the French cavalry. His family and nation were
expelled; and his son Walter de Brienne, the titular duke of Athens, the
tyrant of Florence, and the constable of France, lost his life in the
field of Poitiers Attica and Botia were the rewards of the victorious
Catalans; they married the widows and daughters of the slain; and during
fourteen years, the great company was the terror of the Grecian states.
Their factions drove them to acknowledge the sovereignty of the house of
Arragon; and during the remainder of the fourteenth century, Athens, as
a government or an appanage, was successively bestowed by the kings of
Sicily. After the French and Catalans, the third dynasty was that of the
Accaioli, a family, plebeian at Florence, potent at Naples, and
sovereign in Greece. Athens, which they embellished with new buildings,
became the capital of a state, that extended over Thebes, Argos,
Corinth, Delphi, and a part of Thessaly; and their reign was finally
determined by Mahomet the Second, who strangled the last duke, and
educated his sons in the discipline and religion of the seraglio.

[Footnote 51: See the laborious history of Ducange, whose accurate table
of the French dynasties recapitulates the thirty-five passages, in which
he mentions the dukes of Athens.]

[Footnote 52: He is twice mentioned by Villehardouin with honor, (No.
151, 235;) and under the first passage, Ducange observes all that can be
known of his person and family.]

[Footnote 53: From these Latin princes of the xivth century, Boccace,
Chaucer. and Shakspeare, have borrowed their Theseus dukeof Athens. An
ignorant age transfers its own language and manners to the most distant
times.]

[Footnote 54: The same Constantine gave to Sicily a king, to Russia the
magnus dapiferof the empire, to Thebes the primicerius; and these absurd
fables are properly lashed by Ducange, (ad Nicephor. Greg. l. vii. c.
5.) By the Latins, the lord of Thebes was styled, by corruption, the
Megas Kurios, or Grand Sire!]

[Footnote 55: Quodam miraculo, says Alberic. He was probably received by
Michael Choniates, the archbishop who had defended Athens against the
tyrant Leo Sgurus, (Nicetas urbs capta, p. 805, ed. Bek.) Michael was
the brother of the historian Nicetas; and his encomium of Athens is
still extant in MS. in the Bodleian library, (Fabric. Bibliot. Græc tom.
vi. p. 405.) *

Note: * Nicetas says expressly that Michael surrendered the Acropolis to
the marquis. -- M.]

Athens, ^56 though no more than the shadow of her former self, still
contains about eight or ten thousand inhabitants; of these, three
fourths are Greeks in religion and language; and the Turks, who compose
the remainder, have relaxed, in their intercourse with the citizens,
somewhat of the pride and gravity of their national character. The
olive-tree, the gift of Minerva, flourishes in Attica; nor has the honey
of Mount Hymettus lost any part of its exquisite flavor: ^57 but the
languid trade is monopolized by strangers, and the agriculture of a
barren land is abandoned to the vagrant Walachians. The Athenians are
still distinguished by the subtlety and acuteness of their
understandings; but these qualities, unless ennobled by freedom, and
enlightened by study, will degenerate into a low and selfish cunning:
and it is a proverbial saying of the country, "From the Jews of
Thessalonica, the Turks of Negropont, and the Greeks of Athens, good
Lord deliver us!" This artful people has eluded the tyranny of the
Turkish bashaws, by an expedient which alleviates their servitude and
aggravates their shame. About the middle of the last century, the
Athenians chose for their protector the Kislar Aga, or chief black
eunuch of the seraglio. This Æthiopian slave, who possesses the sultan's
ear, condescends to accept the tribute of thirty thousand crowns: his
lieutenant, the Waywode, whom he annually confirms, may reserve for his
own about five or six thousand more; and such is the policy of the
citizens, that they seldom fail to remove and punish an oppressive
governor. Their private differences are decided by the archbishop, one
of the richest prelates of the Greek church, since he possesses a
revenue of one thousand pounds sterling; and by a tribunal of the eight
gerontior elders, chosen in the eight quarters of the city: the noble
families cannot trace their pedigree above three hundred years; but
their principal members are distinguished by a grave demeanor, a fur
cap, and the lofty appellation of archon. By some, who delight in the
contrast, the modern language of Athens is represented as the most
corrupt and barbarous of the seventy dialects of the vulgar Greek: ^58
this picture is too darkly colored: but it would not be easy, in the
country of Plato and Demosthenes, to find a reader or a copy of their
works. The Athenians walk with supine indifference among the glorious
ruins of antiquity; and such is the debasement of their character, that
they are incapable of admiring the genius of their predecessors. ^59

[Footnote 56: The modern account of Athens, and the Athenians, is
extracted from Spon, (Voyage en Grece, tom. ii. p. 79--199,) and
Wheeler, (Travels into Greece, p. 337--414,) Stuart, (Antiquities of
Athens, passim,) and Chandler, (Travels into Greece, p. 23--172.) The
first of these travellers visited Greece in the year 1676; the last,
1765; and ninety years had not produced much difference in the tranquil
scene.]

[Footnote 57: The ancients, or at least the Athenians, believed that all
the bees in the world had been propagated from Mount Hymettus. They
taught, that health might be preserved, and life prolonged, by the
external use of oil, and the internal use of honey, (Geoponica, l. xv. c
7, p. 1089--1094, edit. Niclas.)]

[Footnote 58: Ducange, Glossar. Græc. Præfat. p. 8, who quotes for his
author Theodosius Zygomalas, a modern grammarian. Yet Spon (tom. ii. p.
194) and Wheeler, (p. 355,) no incompetent judges, entertain a more
favorable opinion of the Attic dialect.]

[Footnote 59: Yet we must not accuse them of corrupting the name of
Athens, which they still call Athini. From the eiV thn 'Aqhnhn, we have
formed our own barbarism of Setines. *

Note: * Gibbon did not foresee a Bavarian prince on the throne of
Greece, with Athens as his capital. -- M.]

Chapter LXIII: Civil Wars And The Ruin Of The Greek Empire.Part I.

Civil Wars, And Ruin Of The Greek Empire. -- Reigns Of Andronicus, The
Elder And Younger, And John Palæologus. -- Regency, Revolt, Reign, And
Abdication Of John Cantacuzene. -- Establishment Of A Genoese Colony At
Pera Or Galata. -- Their Wars With The Empire And City Of
Constantinople.

The long reign of Andronicus ^1 the elder is chiefly memorable by the
disputes of the Greek church, the invasion of the Catalans, and the rise
of the Ottoman power. He is celebrated as the most learned and virtuous
prince of the age; but such virtue, and such learning, contributed
neither to the perfection of the individual, nor to the happiness of
society A slave of the most abject superstition, he was surrounded on
all sides by visible and invisible enemies; nor were the flames of hell
less dreadful to his fancy, than those of a Catalan or Turkish war.
Under the reign of the Palæologi, the choice of the patriarch was the
most important business of the state; the heads of the Greek church were
ambitious and fanatic monks; and their vices or virtues, their learning
or ignorance, were equally mischievous or contemptible. By his
intemperate discipline, the patriarch Athanasius ^2 excited the hatred
of the clergy and people: he was heard to declare, that the sinner
should swallow the last dregs of the cup of penance; and the foolish
tale was propagated of his punishing a sacrilegious ass that had tasted
the lettuce of a convent garden. Driven from the throne by the universal
clamor, Athanasius composed before his retreat two papers of a very
opposite cast. His public testament was in the tone of charity and
resignation; the private codicil breathed the direst anathemas against
the authors of his disgrace, whom he excluded forever from the communion
of the holy trinity, the angels, and the saints. This last paper he
enclosed in an earthen pot, which was placed, by his order, on the top
of one of the pillars, in the dome of St. Sophia, in the distant hope of
discovery and revenge. At the end of four years, some youths, climbing
by a ladder in search of pigeons' nests, detected the fatal secret; and,
as Andronicus felt himself touched and bound by the excommunication, he
trembled on the brink of the abyss which had been so treacherously dug
under his feet. A synod of bishops was instantly convened to debate this
important question: the rashness of these clandestine anathemas was
generally condemned; but as the knot could be untied only by the same
hand, as that hand was now deprived of the crosier, it appeared that
this posthumous decree was irrevocable by any earthly power. Some faint
testimonies of repentance and pardon were extorted from the author of
the mischief; but the conscience of the emperor was still wounded, and
he desired, with no less ardor than Athanasius himself, the restoration
of a patriarch, by whom alone he could be healed. At the dead of night,
a monk rudely knocked at the door of the royal bed-chamber, announcing a
revelation of plague and famine, of inundations and earthquakes.
Andronicus started from his bed, and spent the night in prayer, till he
felt, or thought that he felt, a slight motion of the earth. The emperor
on foot led the bishops and monks to the cell of Athanasius; and, after
a proper resistance, the saint, from whom this message had been sent,
consented to absolve the prince, and govern the church of
Constantinople. Untamed by disgrace, and hardened by solitude, the
shepherd was again odious to the flock, and his enemies contrived a
singular, and as it proved, a successful, mode of revenge. In the night,
they stole away the footstool or foot-cloth of his throne, which they
secretly replaced with the decoration of a satirical picture. The
emperor was painted with a bridle in his mouth, and Athanasius leading
the tractable beast to the feet of Christ. The authors of the libel were
detected and punished; but as their lives had been spared, the Christian
priest in sullen indignation retired to his cell; and the eyes of
Andronicus, which had been opened for a moment, were again closed by his
successor.

[Footnote 1: Andronicus himself will justify our freedom in the
invective, (Nicephorus Gregoras, l. i. c. i.,) which he pronounced
against historic falsehood. It is true, that his censure is more
pointedly urged against calumny than against adulation.]

[Footnote 2: For the anathema in the pigeon's nest, see Pachymer, (l.
ix. c. 24,) who relates the general history of Athanasius, (l. viii. c.
13--16, 20, 24, l. x. c. 27--29, 31--36, l. xi. c. 1--3, 5, 6, l. xiii.
c. 8, 10, 23, 35,) and is followed by Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. vi. c. 5,
7, l. vii. c. 1, 9,) who includes the second retreat of this second
Chrysostom.]

If this transaction be one of the most curious and important of a reign
of fifty years, I cannot at least accuse the brevity of my materials,
since I reduce into some few pages the enormous folios of Pachymer, ^3
Cantacuzene, ^4 and Nicephorus Gregoras, ^5 who have composed the prolix
and languid story of the times. The name and situation of the emperor
John Cantacuzene might inspire the most lively curiosity. His memorials
of forty years extend from the revolt of the younger Andronicus to his
own abdication of the empire; and it is observed, that, like Moses and
Cæsar, he was the principal actor in the scenes which he describes. But
in this eloquent work we should vainly seek the sincerity of a hero or a
penitent. Retired in a cloister from the vices and passions of the
world, he presents not a confession, but an apology, of the life of an
ambitious statesman. Instead of unfolding the true counsels and
characters of men, he displays the smooth and specious surface of
events, highly varnished with his own praises and those of his friends.
Their motives are always pure; their ends always legitimate: they
conspire and rebel without any views of interest; and the violence which
they inflict or suffer is celebrated as the spontaneous effect of reason
and virtue.

[Footnote 3: Pachymer, in seven books, 377 folio pages, describes the
first twenty-six years of Andronicus the Elder; and marks the date of
his composition by the current news or lie of the day, (A.D. 1308.)
Either death or disgust prevented him from resuming the pen.]

[Footnote 4: After an interval of twelve years, from the conclusion of
Pachymer, Cantacuzenus takes up the pen; and his first book (c. 1--59,
p. 9--150) relates the civil war, and the eight last years of the elder
Andronicus. The ingenious comparison with Moses and Cæsar is fancied by
his French translator, the president Cousin.]

[Footnote 5: Nicephorus Gregoras more briefly includes the entire life
and reign of Andronicus the elder, (l. vi. c. 1, p. 96--291.) This is
the part of which Cantacuzene complains as a false and malicious
representation of his conduct.]

After the example of the first of the Palæologi, the elder Andronicus
associated his son Michael to the honors of the purple; and from the age
of eighteen to his premature death, that prince was acknowledged, above
twenty-five years, as the second emperor of the Greeks. ^6 At the head
of an army, he excited neither the fears of the enemy, nor the jealousy
of the court; his modesty and patience were never tempted to compute the
years of his father; nor was that father compelled to repent of his
liberality either by the virtues or vices of his son. The son of Michael
was named Andronicus from his grandfather, to whose early favor he was
introduced by that nominal resemblance. The blossoms of wit and beauty
increased the fondness of the elder Andronicus; and, with the common
vanity of age, he expected to realize in the second, the hope which had
been disappointed in the first, generation. The boy was educated in the
palace as an heir and a favorite; and in the oaths and acclamations of
the people, the august triadwas formed by the names of the father, the
son, and the grandson. But the younger Andronicus was speedily corrupted
by his infant greatness, while he beheld with puerile impatience the
double obstacle that hung, and might long hang, over his rising
ambition. It was not to acquire fame, or to diffuse happiness, that he
so eagerly aspired: wealth and impunity were in his eyes the most
precious attributes of a monarch; and his first indiscreet demand was
the sovereignty of some rich and fertile island, where he might lead a
life of independence and pleasure. The emperor was offended by the loud
and frequent intemperance which disturbed his capital; the sums which
his parsimony denied were supplied by the Genoese usurers of Pera; and
the oppressive debt, which consolidated the interest of a faction, could
be discharged only by a revolution. A beautiful female, a matron in
rank, a prostitute in manners, had instructed the younger Andronicus in
the rudiments of love; but he had reason to suspect the nocturnal visits
of a rival; and a stranger passing through the street was pierced by the
arrows of his guards, who were placed in ambush at her door. That
stranger was his brother, Prince Manuel, who languished and died of his
wound; and the emperor Michael, their common father, whose health was in
a declining state, expired on the eighth day, lamenting the loss of both
his children. ^7 However guiltless in his intention, the younger
Andronicus might impute a brother's and a father's death to the
consequence of his own vices; and deep was the sigh of thinking and
feeling men, when they perceived, instead of sorrow and repentance, his
ill-dissembled joy on the removal of two odious competitors. By these
melancholy events, and the increase of his disorders, the mind of the
elder emperor was gradually alienated; and, after many fruitless
reproofs, he transferred on another grandson ^8 his hopes and affection.
The change was announced by the new oath of allegiance to the reigning
sovereign, and the personwhom he should appoint for his successor; and
the acknowledged heir, after a repetition of insults and complaints, was
exposed to the indignity of a public trial. Before the sentence, which
would probably have condemned him to a dungeon or a cell, the emperor
was informed that the palace courts were filled with the armed followers
of his grandson; the judgment was softened to a treaty of
reconciliation; and the triumphant escape of the prince encouraged the
ardor of the younger faction.

[Footnote 6: He was crowned May 21st, 1295, and died October 12th, 1320,
(Ducange, Fam. Byz. p. 239.) His brother Theodore, by a second marriage,
inherited the marquisate of Montferrat, apostatized to the religion and
manners of the Latins, (oti kai gnwmh kai pistei kai schkati, kai
geneiwn koura kai pasin eqesin DatinoV hn akraijnhV. Nic. Greg. l. ix.
c. 1,) and founded a dynasty of Italian princes, which was extinguished
A.D. 1533, (Ducange, Fam. Byz. p. 249--253.)]

[Footnote 7: We are indebted to Nicephorus Gregoras (l. viii. c. 1) for
the knowledge of this tragic adventure; while Cantacuzene more
discreetly conceals the vices of Andronicus the Younger, of which he was
the witness and perhaps the associate, (l. i. c. 1, &c.)]

[Footnote 8: His destined heir was Michael Catharus, the bastard of
Constantine his second son. In this project of excluding his grandson
Andronicus, Nicephorus Gregoras (l. viii. c. 3) agrees with Cantacuzene,
(l. i. c. 1, 2.)]

Yet the capital, the clergy, and the senate, adhered to the person, or
at least to the government, of the old emperor; and it was only in the
provinces, by flight, and revolt, and foreign succor, that the
malecontents could hope to vindicate their cause and subvert his throne.
The soul of the enterprise was the great domestic John Cantacuzene; the
sally from Constantinople is the first date of his actions and
memorials; and if his own pen be most descriptive of his patriotism, an
unfriendly historian has not refused to celebrate the zeal and ability
which he displayed in the service of the young emperor. ^* That prince
escaped from the capital under the pretence of hunting; erected his
standard at Adrianople; and, in a few days, assembled fifty thousand
horse and foot, whom neither honor nor duty could have armed against the
Barbarians. Such a force might have saved or commanded the empire; but
their counsels were discordant, their motions were slow and doubtful,
and their progress was checked by intrigue and negotiation. The quarrel
of the two Andronici was protracted, and suspended, and renewed, during
a ruinous period of seven years. In the first treaty, the relics of the
Greek empire were divided: Constantinople, Thessalonica, and the
islands, were left to the elder, while the younger acquired the
sovereignty of the greatest part of Thrace, from Philippi to the
Byzantine limit. By the second treaty, he stipulated the payment of his
troops, his immediate coronation, and an adequate share of the power and
revenue of the state. The third civil war was terminated by the surprise
of Constantinople, the final retreat of the old emperor, and the sole
reign of his victorious grandson. The reasons of this delay may be found
in the characters of the men and of the times. When the heir of the
monarchy first pleaded his wrongs and his apprehensions, he was heard
with pity and applause: and his adherents repeated on all sides the
inconsistent promise, that he would increase the pay of the soldiers and
alleviate the burdens of the people. The grievances of forty years were
mingled in his revolt; and the rising generation was fatigued by the
endless prospect of a reign, whose favorites and maxims were of other
times. The youth of Andronicus had been without spirit, his age was
without reverence: his taxes produced an unusual revenue of five hundred
thousand pounds; yet the richest of the sovereigns of Christendom was
incapable of maintaining three thousand horse and twenty galleys, to
resist the destructive progress of the Turks. ^9 "How different," said
the younger Andronicus, "is my situation from that of the son of Philip!
Alexander might complain, that his father would leave him nothing to
conquer: alas! my grandsire will leave me nothing to lose." But the
Greeks were soon admonished, that the public disorders could not be
healed by a civil war; and that their young favorite was not destined to
be the savior of a falling empire. On the first repulse, his party was
broken by his own levity, their intestine discord, and the intrigues of
the ancient court, which tempted each malecontent to desert or betray
the cause of the rebellion. Andronicus the younger was touched with
remorse, or fatigued with business, or deceived by negotiation: pleasure
rather than power was his aim; and the license of maintaining a thousand
hounds, a thousand hawks, and a thousand huntsmen, was sufficient to
sully his fame and disarm his ambition.

[Footnote *: The conduct of Cantacuzene, by his own showing, was
inexplicable. He was unwilling to dethrone the old emperor, and
dissuaded the immediate march on Constantinople. The young Andronicus,
he says, entered into his views, and wrote to warn the emperor of his
danger when the march was determined. Cantacuzenus, in Nov. Byz. Hist.
Collect. vol. i. p. 104, &c. -- M.]

[Footnote 9: See Nicephorus Gregoras, l. viii. c. 6. The younger
Andronicus complained, that in four years and four months a sum of
350,000 byzants of gold was due to him for the expenses of his
household, (Cantacuzen l. i. c. 48.) Yet he would have remitted the
debt, if he might have been allowed to squeeze the farmers of the
revenue.]

Let us now survey the catastrophe of this busy plot, and the final
situation of the principal actors. ^10 The age of Andronicus was
consumed in civil discord; and, amidst the events of war and treaty, his
power and reputation continually decayed, till the fatal night in which
the gates of the city and palace were opened without resistance to his
grandson. His principal commander scorned the repeated warnings of
danger; and retiring to rest in the vain security of ignorance,
abandoned the feeble monarch, with some priests and pages, to the
terrors of a sleepless night. These terrors were quickly realized by the
hostile shouts, which proclaimed the titles and victory of Andronicus
the younger; and the aged emperor, falling prostrate before an image of
the Virgin, despatched a suppliant message to resign the sceptre, and to
obtain his life at the hands of the conqueror. The answer of his
grandson was decent and pious; at the prayer of his friends, the younger
Andronicus assumed the sole administration; but the elder still enjoyed
the name and preeminence of the first emperor, the use of the great
palace, and a pension of twenty-four thousand pieces of gold, one half
of which was assigned on the royal treasury, and the other on the
fishery of Constantinople. But his impotence was soon exposed to
contempt and oblivion; the vast silence of the palace was disturbed only
by the cattle and poultry of the neighborhood, ^* which roved with
impunity through the solitary courts; and a reduced allowance of ten
thousand pieces of gold ^11 was all that he could ask, and more than he
could hope. His calamities were imbittered by the gradual extinction of
sight; his confinement was rendered each day more rigorous; and during
the absence and sickness of his grandson, his inhuman keepers, by the
threats of instant death, compelled him to exchange the purple for the
monastic habit and profession. The monk Antonyhad renounced the pomp of
the world; yet he had occasion for a coarse fur in the winter season,
and as wine was forbidden by his confessor, and water by his physician,
the sherbet of Egypt was his common drink. It was not without difficulty
that the late emperor could procure three or four pieces to satisfy
these simple wants; and if he bestowed the gold to relieve the more
painful distress of a friend, the sacrifice is of some weight in the
scale of humanity and religion. Four years after his abdication,
Andronicus or Antony expired in a cell, in the seventy-fourth year of
his age: and the last strain of adulation could only promise a more
splendid crown of glory in heaven than he had enjoyed upon earth. ^12 ^!

[Footnote 10: I follow the chronology of Nicephorus Gregoras, who is
remarkably exact. It is proved that Cantacuzene has mistaken the dates
of his own actions, or rather that his text has been corrupted by
ignorant transcribers.]

[Footnote *: And the washerwomen, according to Nic. Gregoras, p. 431. --
M.]

[Footnote 11: I have endeavored to reconcile the 24,000 pieces of
Cantacuzene (l. ii. c. 1) with the 10,000 of Nicephorus Gregoras, (l.
ix. c. 2;) the one of whom wished to soften, the other to magnify, the
hardships of the old emperor.]

[Footnote 12: See Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. ix. 6, 7, 8, 10, 14, l. x. c.
1.) The historian had tasted of the prosperity, and shared the retreat,
of his benefactor; and that friendship which "waits or to the scaffold
or the cell," should not lightly be accused as "a hireling, a prostitute
to praise." *

Note:  *But it may be accused of unparalleled absurdity. He compares the
extinction of the feeble old man to that of the sun: his coffin is to be
floated like Noah's ark by a deluge of tears. -- M.]

[Footnote !: Prodigies (according to Nic. Gregoras, p. 460) announced
the departure of the old and imbecile Imperial Monk from his earthly
prison. -- M.]

Nor was the reign of the younger, more glorious or fortunate than that
of the elder, Andronicus. ^13 He gathered the fruits of ambition; but
the taste was transient and bitter: in the supreme station he lost the
remains of his early popularity; and the defects of his character became
still more conspicuous to the world. The public reproach urged him to
march in person against the Turks; nor did his courage fail in the hour
of trial; but a defeat and a wound were the only trophies of his
expedition in Asia, which confirmed the establishment of the Ottoman
monarchy. The abuses of the civil government attained their full
maturity and perfection: his neglect of forms, and the confusion of
national dresses, are deplored by the Greeks as the fatal symptoms of
the decay of the empire. Andronicus was old before his time; the
intemperance of youth had accelerated the infirmities of age; and after
being rescued from a dangerous malady by nature, or physic, or the
Virgin, he was snatched away before he had accomplished his forty-fifth
year. He was twice married; and, as the progress of the Latins in arms
and arts had softened the prejudices of the Byzantine court, his two
wives were chosen in the princely houses of Germany and Italy. The
first, Agnes at home, Irene in Greece, was daughter of the duke of
Brunswick. Her father ^14 was a petty lord ^15 in the poor and savage
regions of the north of Germany: ^16 yet he derived some revenue from
his silver mines; ^17 and his family is celebrated by the Greeks as the
most ancient and noble of the Teutonic name. ^18 After the death of this
childish princess, Andronicus sought in marriage Jane, the sister of the
count of Savoy; ^19 and his suit was preferred to that of the French
king. ^20 The count respected in his sister the superior majesty of a
Roman empress: her retinue was composed of knights and ladies; she was
regenerated and crowned in St. Sophia, under the more orthodox
appellation of Anne; and, at the nuptial feast, the Greeks and Italians
vied with each other in the martial exercises of tilts and tournaments.

[Footnote 13: The sole reign of Andronicus the younger is described by
Cantacuzene (l. ii. c. 1--40, p. 191--339) and Nicephorus Gregoras, (l.
ix c. 7--l. xi. c. 11, p. 262--361.)]

[Footnote 14: Agnes, or Irene, was the daughter of Duke Henry the
Wonderful, the chief of the house of Brunswick, and the fourth in
descent from the famous Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria, and
conqueror of the Sclavi on the Baltic coast. Her brother Henry was
surnamed the Greek, from his two journeys into the East: but these
journeys were subsequent to his sister's marriage; and I am ignorant
howAgnes was discovered in the heart of Germany, and recommended to the
Byzantine court. (Rimius, Memoirs of the House of Brunswick, p.
126--137.]

[Footnote 15: Henry the Wonderful was the founder of the branch of
Grubenhagen, extinct in the year 1596, (Rimius, p. 287.) He resided in
the castle of Wolfenbuttel, and possessed no more than a sixth part of
the allodial estates of Brunswick and Luneburgh, which the Guelph family
had saved from the confiscation of their great fiefs. The frequent
partitions among brothers had almost ruined the princely houses of
Germany, till that just, but pernicious, law was slowly superseded by
the right of primogeniture. The principality of Grubenhagen, one of the
last remains of the Hercynian forest, is a woody, mountainous, and
barren tract, (Busching's Geography, vol. vi. p. 270--286, English
translation.)]

[Footnote 16: The royal author of the Memoirs of Brandenburgh will teach
us, how justly, in a much later period, the north of Germany deserved
the epithets of poor and barbarous. (Essai sur les Murs, &c.) In the
year 1306, in the woods of Luneburgh, some wild people of the Vened race
were allowed to bury alive their infirm and useless parents. (Rimius, p.
136.)]

[Footnote 17: The assertion of Tacitus, that Germany was destitute of
the precious metals, must be taken, even in his own time, with some
limitation, (Germania, c. 5. Annal. xi. 20.) According to Spener, (Hist.
GermaniæPragmatica, tom. i. p. 351,) Argentifodinin Hercyniis montibus,
imperante Othone magno (A.D. 968) primum apertæ, largam etiam opes
augendi dederunt copiam: but Rimius (p. 258, 259) defers till the year
1016 the discovery of the silver mines of Grubenhagen, or the Upper
Hartz, which were productive in the beginning of the xivth century, and
which still yield a considerable revenue to the house of Brunswick.]

[Footnote 18: Cantacuzene has given a most honorable testimony, hn d' ek
Germanvn auth Jugathr doukoV nti Mprouzouhk, (the modern Greeks employ
the nt for the d, and the mp for the b, and the whole will read in the
Italian idiom di Brunzuic,) tou par autoiV epijanestatou, kai
?iamprothti pantaV touV omojulouV uperballontoV. The praise is just in
itself, and pleasing to an English ear.]

[Footnote 19: Anne, or Jane, was one of the four daughters of Amedée the
Great, by a second marriage, and half-sister of his successor Edward
count of Savoy. (Anderson's Tables, p. 650. See Cantacuzene, (l. i. c.
40--42.)]

[Footnote 20: That king, if the fact be true, must have been Charles the
Fair who in five years (1321--1326) was married to three wives,
(Anderson, p. 628.) Anne of Savoy arrived at Constantinople in February,
1326.]

The empress Anne of Savoy survived her husband: their son, John
Palæologus, was left an orphan and an emperor in the ninth year of his
age; and his weakness was protected by the first and most deserving of
the Greeks. The long and cordial friendship of his father for John
Cantacuzene is alike honorable to the prince and the subject. It had
been formed amidst the pleasures of their youth: their families were
almost equally noble; ^21 and the recent lustre of the purple was amply
compensated by the energy of a private education. We have seen that the
young emperor was saved by Cantacuzene from the power of his
grandfather; and, after six years of civil war, the same favorite
brought him back in triumph to the palace of Constantinople. Under the
reign of Andronicus the younger, the great domestic ruled the emperor
and the empire; and it was by his valor and conduct that the Isle of
Lesbos and the principality of Ætolia were restored to their ancient
allegiance. His enemies confess, that, among the public robbers,
Cantacuzene alone was moderate and abstemious; and the free and
voluntary account which he produces of his own wealth ^22 may sustain
the presumption that he was devolved by inheritance, and not accumulated
by rapine. He does not indeed specify the value of his money, plate, and
jewels; yet, after a voluntary gift of two hundred vases of silver,
after much had been secreted by his friends and plundered by his foes,
his forfeit treasures were sufficient for the equipment of a fleet of
seventy galleys. He does not measure the size and number of his estates;
but his granaries were heaped with an incredible store of wheat and
barley; and the labor of a thousand yoke of oxen might cultivate,
according to the practice of antiquity, about sixty-two thousand five
hundred acres of arable land. ^23 His pastures were stocked with two
thousand five hundred brood mares, two hundred camels, three hundred
mules, five hundred asses, five thousand horned cattle, fifty thousand
hogs, and seventy thousand sheep: ^24 a precious record of rural
opulence, in the last period of the empire, and in a land, most probably
in Thrace, so repeatedly wasted by foreign and domestic hostility. The
favor of Cantacuzene was above his fortune. In the moments of
familiarity, in the hour of sickness, the emperor was desirous to level
the distance between them and pressed his friend to accept the diadem
and purple. The virtue of the great domestic, which is attested by his
own pen, resisted the dangerous proposal; but the last testament of
Andronicus the younger named him the guardian of his son, and the regent
of the empire.

[Footnote 21: The noble race of the Cantacuzeni (illustrious from the
xith century in the Byzantine annals) was drawn from the Paladins of
France, the heroes of those romances which, in the xiiith century, were
translated and read by the Greeks, (Ducange, Fam. Byzant. p. 258.)]

[Footnote 22: See Cantacuzene, (l. iii. c. 24, 30, 36.)]

[Footnote 23: Saserna, in Gaul, and Columella, in Italy or Spain, allow
two yoke of oxen, two drivers, and six laborers, for two hundred jugera
(125 English acres) of arable land, and three more men must be added if
there be much underwood, (Columella de Re Rustica, l. ii. c. 13, p 441,
edit. Gesner.)]

[Footnote 24: In this enumeration (l. iii. c. 30) the French translation
of the president Cousin is blotted with three palpable and essential
errors. 1. He omits the 1000 yoke of working oxen. 2. He interprets the
pentakosiai proV diaciliaiV, by the number of fifteen hundred. * 3. He
confounds myriads with chiliads, and gives Cantacuzene no more than 5000
hogs. Put not your trust in translations!

Note: * There seems to be another reading, ciliaiV. Niebuhr's edit. in
loc. -- M.]

Had the regent found a suitable return of obedience and gratitude,
perhaps he would have acted with pure and zealous fidelity in the
service of his pupil. ^25 A guard of five hundred soldiers watched over
his person and the palace; the funeral of the late emperor was decently
performed; the capital was silent and submissive; and five hundred
letters, which Cantacuzene despatched in the first month, informed the
provinces of their loss and their duty. The prospect of a tranquil
minority was blasted by the great duke or admiral Apocaucus, and to
exaggerate hisperfidy, the Imperial historian is pleased to magnify his
own imprudence, in raising him to that office against the advice of his
more sagacious sovereign. Bold and subtle, rapacious and profuse, the
avarice and ambition of Apocaucus were by turns subservient to each
other; and his talents were applied to the ruin of his country. His
arrogance was heightened by the command of a naval force and an
impregnable castle, and under the mask of oaths and flattery he secretly
conspired against his benefactor. The female court of the empress was
bribed and directed; he encouraged Anne of Savoy to assert, by the law
of nature, the tutelage of her son; the love of power was disguised by
the anxiety of maternal tenderness: and the founder of the Palæologi had
instructed his posterity to dread the example of a perfidious guardian.
The patriarch John of Apri was a proud and feeble old man, encompassed
by a numerous and hungry kindred. He produced an obsolete epistle of
Andronicus, which bequeathed the prince and people to his pious care:
the fate of his predecessor Arsenius prompted him to prevent, rather
than punish, the crimes of a usurper; and Apocaucus smiled at the
success of his own flattery, when he beheld the Byzantine priest
assuming the state and temporal claims of the Roman pontiff. ^26 Between
three persons so different in their situation and character, a private
league was concluded: a shadow of authority was restored to the senate;
and the people was tempted by the name of freedom. By this powerful
confederacy, the great domestic was assaulted at first with clandestine,
at length with open, arms. His prerogatives were disputed; his opinions
slighted; his friends persecuted; and his safety was threatened both in
the camp and city. In his absence on the public service, he was accused
of treason; proscribed as an enemy of the church and state; and
delivered with all his adherents to the sword of justice, the vengeance
of the people, and the power of the devil; his fortunes were
confiscated; his aged mother was cast into prison; ^* all his past
services were buried in oblivion; and he was driven by injustice to
perpetrate the crime of which he was accused. ^27 From the review of his
preceding conduct, Cantacuzene appears to have been guiltless of any
treasonable designs; and the only suspicion of his innocence must arise
from the vehemence of his protestations, and the sublime purity which he
ascribes to his own virtue. While the empress and the patriarch still
affected the appearances of harmony, he repeatedly solicited the
permission of retiring to a private, and even a monastic, life. After he
had been declared a public enemy, it was his fervent wish to throw
himself at the feet of the young emperor, and to receive without a
murmur the stroke of the executioner: it was not without reluctance that
he listened to the voice of reason, which inculcated the sacred duty of
saving his family and friends, and proved that he could only save them
by drawing the sword and assuming the Imperial title.

[Footnote 25: See the regency and reign of John Cantacuzenus, and the
whole progress of the civil war, in his own history, (l. iii. c. 1--100,
p. 348--700,) and in that of Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. xii. c. 1--l. xv.
c. 9, p. 353--492.)]

[Footnote 26: He assumes the royal privilege of red shoes or buskins;
placed on his head a mitre of silk and gold; subscribed his epistles
with hyacinth or green ink, and claimed for the new, whatever
Constantine had given to the ancient, Rome, (Cantacuzen. l. iii. c. 36.
Nic. Gregoras, l. xiv. c. 3.)]

[Footnote *: She died there through persecution and neglect. -- M.]

[Footnote 27: Nic. Gregoras (l. xii. c. 5) confesses the innocence and
virtues of Cantacuzenus, the guilt and flagitious vices of Apocaucus;
nor does he dissemble the motive of his personal and religious enmity to
the former; nun de dia kakian allwn, aitioV o praotatoV thV tvn olwn
edoxaV? eioai jqoraV.

Note:  The alloi were the religious enemies and persecutors of
Nicephorus. -- M.]

Chapter LXIII: Civil Wars And The Ruin Of The Greek Empire. -- Part II.

In the strong city of Demotica, his peculiar domain, the emperor John
Cantacuzenus was invested with the purple buskins: his right leg was
clothed by his noble kinsmen, the left by the Latin chiefs, on whom he
conferred the order of knighthood. But even in this act of revolt, he
was still studious of loyalty; and the titles of John Palæologus and
Anne of Savoy were proclaimed before his own name and that of his wife
Irene. Such vain ceremony is a thin disguise of rebellion, nor are there
perhaps any personal wrongs that can authorize a subject to take arms
against his sovereign: but the want of preparation and success may
confirm the assurance of the usurper, that this decisive step was the
effect of necessity rather than of choice. Constantinople adhered to the
young emperor; the king of Bulgaria was invited to the relief of
Adrianople: the principal cities of Thrace and Macedonia, after some
hesitation, renounced their obedience to the great domestic; and the
leaders of the troops and provinces were induced, by their private
interest, to prefer the loose dominion of a woman and a priest. ^* The
army of Cantacuzene, in sixteen divisions, was stationed on the banks of
the Melas to tempt or to intimidate the capital: it was dispersed by
treachery or fear; and the officers, more especially the mercenary
Latins, accepted the bribes, and embraced the service, of the Byzantine
court. After this loss, the rebel emperor (he fluctuated between the two
characters) took the road of Thessalonica with a chosen remnant; but he
failed in his enterprise on that important place; and he was closely
pursued by the great duke, his enemy Apocaucus, at the head of a
superior power by sea and land. Driven from the coast, in his march, or
rather flight, into the mountains of Servia, Cantacuzene assembled his
troops to scrutinize those who were worthy and willing to accompany his
broken fortunes. A base majority bowed and retired; and his trusty band
was diminished to two thousand, and at last to five hundred, volunteers.
The cral, ^28 or despot of the Servians received him with general
hospitality; but the ally was insensibly degraded to a suppliant, a
hostage, a captive; and in this miserable dependence, he waited at the
door of the Barbarian, who could dispose of the life and liberty of a
Roman emperor. The most tempting offers could not persuade the cral to
violate his trust; but he soon inclined to the stronger side; and his
friend was dismissed without injury to a new vicissitude of hopes and
perils. Near six years the flame of discord burnt with various success
and unabated rage: the cities were distracted by the faction of the
nobles and the plebeians; the Cantacuzeni and Palæologi: and the
Bulgarians, the Servians, and the Turks, were invoked on both sides as
the instruments of private ambition and the common ruin. The regent
deplored the calamities, of which he was the author and victim: and his
own experience might dictate a just and lively remark on the different
nature of foreign and civil war. "The former," said he, "is the external
warmth of summer, always tolerable, and often beneficial; the latter is
the deadly heat of a fever, which consumes without a remedy the vitals
of the constitution." ^29

[Footnote *: Cantacuzene asserts, that in all the cities, the populace
were on the side of the emperor, the aristocracy on his. The populace
took the opportunity of rising and plundering the wealthy as
Cantacuzenites, vol. iii. c. 29 Ages of common oppression and ruin had
not extinguished these republican factions. -- M.]

[Footnote 28: The princes of Servia (Ducange, Famil. Dalmaticæ, &c., c.
2, 3, 4, 9) were styled Despots in Greek, and Cral in their native
idiom, (Ducange, Gloss. Græc. p. 751.) That title, the equivalent of
king, appears to be of Sclavonic origin, from whence it has been
borrowed by the Hungarians, the modern Greeks, and even by the Turks,
(Leunclavius, Pandect. Turc. p. 422,) who reserve the name of Padishah
for the emperor. To obtain the latter instead of the former is the
ambition of the French at Constantinople, (Aversissement àl'Histoire de
Timur Bec, p. 39.)]

[Footnote 29: Nic. Gregoras, l. xii. c. 14. It is surprising that
Cantacuzene has not inserted this just and lively image in his own
writings.]

The introduction of barbarians and savages into the contests of
civilized nations, is a measure pregnant with shame and mischief; which
the interest of the moment may compel, but which is reprobated by the
best principles of humanity and reason. It is the practice of both sides
to accuse their enemies of the guilt of the first alliances; and those
who fail in their negotiations are loudest in their censure of the
example which they envy and would gladly imitate. The Turks of Asia were
less barbarous perhaps than the shepherds of Bulgaria and Servia; but
their religion rendered them implacable foes of Rome and Christianity.
To acquire the friendship of their emirs, the two factions vied with
each other in baseness and profusion: the dexterity of Cantacuzene
obtained the preference: but the succor and victory were dearly
purchased by the marriage of his daughter with an infidel, the captivity
of many thousand Christians, and the passage of the Ottomans into
Europe, the last and fatal stroke in the fall of the Roman empire. The
inclining scale was decided in his favor by the death of Apocaucus, the
just though singular retribution of his crimes. A crowd of nobles or
plebeians, whom he feared or hated, had been seized by his orders in the
capital and the provinces; and the old palace of Constantine was
assigned as the place of their confinement. Some alterations in raising
the walls, and narrowing the cells, had been ingeniously contrived to
prevent their escape, and aggravate their misery; and the work was
incessantly pressed by the daily visits of the tyrant. His guards
watched at the gate, and as he stood in the inner court to overlook the
architects, without fear or suspicion, he was assaulted and laid
breathless on the ground, by two ^* resolute prisoners of the
Palæologian race, ^30 who were armed with sticks, and animated by
despair. On the rumor of revenge and liberty, the captive multitude
broke their fetters, fortified their prison, and exposed from the
battlements the tyrant's head, presuming on the favor of the people and
the clemency of the empress. Anne of Savoy might rejoice in the fall of
a haughty and ambitious minister, but while she delayed to resolve or to
act, the populace, more especially the mariners, were excited by the
widow of the great duke to a sedition, an assault, and a massacre. The
prisoners (of whom the far greater part were guiltless or inglorious of
the deed) escaped to a neighboring church: they were slaughtered at the
foot of the altar; and in his death the monster was not less bloody and
venomous than in his life. Yet his talents alone upheld the cause of the
young emperor; and his surviving associates, suspicious of each other,
abandoned the conduct of the war, and rejected the fairest terms of
accommodation. In the beginning of the dispute, the empress felt, and
complained, that she was deceived by the enemies of Cantacuzene: the
patriarch was employed to preach against the forgiveness of injuries;
and her promise of immortal hatred was sealed by an oath, under the
penalty of excommunication. ^31 But Anne soon learned to hate without a
teacher: she beheld the misfortunes of the empire with the indifference
of a stranger: her jealousy was exasperated by the competition of a
rival empress; and on the first symptoms of a more yielding temper, she
threatened the patriarch to convene a synod, and degrade him from his
office. Their incapacity and discord would have afforded the most
decisive advantage; but the civil war was protracted by the weakness of
both parties; and the moderation of Cantacuzene has not escaped the
reproach of timidity and indolence. He successively recovered the
provinces and cities; and the realm of his pupil was measured by the
walls of Constantinople; but the metropolis alone counterbalanced the
rest of the empire; nor could he attempt that important conquest till he
had secured in his favor the public voice and a private correspondence.
An Italian, of the name of Facciolati, ^32 had succeeded to the office
of great duke: the ships, the guards, and the golden gate, were subject
to his command; but his humble ambition was bribed to become the
instrument of treachery; and the revolution was accomplished without
danger or bloodshed. Destitute of the powers of resistance, or the hope
of relief, the inflexible Anne would have still defended the palace, and
have smiled to behold the capital in flames, rather than in the
possession of a rival. She yielded to the prayers of her friends and
enemies; and the treaty was dictated by the conqueror, who professed a
loyal and zealous attachment to the son of his benefactor. The marriage
of his daughter with John Palæologus was at length consummated: the
hereditary right of the pupil was acknowledged; but the sole
administration during ten years was vested in the guardian. Two emperors
and three empresses were seated on the Byzantine throne; and a general
amnesty quieted the apprehensions, and confirmed the property, of the
most guilty subjects. The festival of the coronation and nuptials was
celebrated with the appearances of concord and magnificence, and both
were equally fallacious. During the late troubles, the treasures of the
state, and even the furniture of the palace, had been alienated or
embezzled; the royal banquet was served in pewter or earthenware; and
such was the proud poverty of the times, that the absence of gold and
jewels was supplied by the paltry artifices of glass and gilt-leather.
^33

[Footnote *: Nicephorus says four, p.734.]

[Footnote 30: The two avengers were both Palæologi, who might resent,
with royal indignation, the shame of their chains. The tragedy of
Apocaucus may deserve a peculiar reference to Cantacuzene (l. iii. c.
86) and Nic. Gregoras, (l. xiv. c. 10.)]

[Footnote 31: Cantacuzene accuses the patriarch, and spares the empress,
the mother of his sovereign, (l. iii. 33, 34,) against whom Nic.
Gregoras expresses a particular animosity, (l. xiv. 10, 11, xv. 5.) It
is true that they do not speak exactly of the same time.]

[Footnote 32: The traitor and treason are revealed by Nic. Gregoras, (l.
xv. c. 8;) but the name is more discreetly suppressed by his great
accomplice, (Cantacuzen. l. iii. c. 99.)]

[Footnote 33: Nic. Greg. l. xv. 11. There were, however, some true
pearls, but very thinly sprinkled. The rest of the stones had only
pantodaphn croian proV to diaugeV.]

I hasten to conclude the personal history of John Cantacuzene. ^34 He
triumphed and reigned; but his reign and triumph were clouded by the
discontent of his own and the adverse faction. His followers might style
the general amnesty an act of pardon for his enemies, and of oblivion
for his friends: ^35 in his cause their estates had been forfeited or
plundered; and as they wandered naked and hungry through the streets,
they cursed the selfish generosity of a leader, who, on the throne of
the empire, might relinquish without merit his private inheritance. The
adherents of the empress blushed to hold their lives and fortunes by the
precarious favor of a usurper; and the thirst of revenge was concealed
by a tender concern for the succession, and even the safety, of her son.
They were justly alarmed by a petition of the friends of Cantacuzene,
that they might be released from their oath of allegiance to the
Palæologi, and intrusted with the defence of some cautionary towns; a
measure supported with argument and eloquence; and which was rejected
(says the Imperial historian) "by mysublime, and almost incredible
virtue." His repose was disturbed by the sound of plots and seditions;
and he trembled lest the lawful prince should be stolen away by some
foreign or domestic enemy, who would inscribe his name and his wrongs in
the banners of rebellion. As the son of Andronicus advanced in the years
of manhood, he began to feel and to act for himself; and his rising
ambition was rather stimulated than checked by the imitation of his
father's vices. If we may trust his own professions, Cantacuzene labored
with honest industry to correct these sordid and sensual appetites, and
to raise the mind of the young prince to a level with his fortune. In
the Servian expedition, the two emperors showed themselves in cordial
harmony to the troops and provinces; and the younger colleague was
initiated by the elder in the mysteries of war and government. After the
conclusion of the peace, Palæologus was left at Thessalonica, a royal
residence, and a frontier station, to secure by his absence the peace of
Constantinople, and to withdraw his youth from the temptations of a
luxurious capital. But the distance weakened the powers of control, and
the son of Andronicus was surrounded with artful or unthinking
companions, who taught him to hate his guardian, to deplore his exile,
and to vindicate his rights. A private treaty with the cral or despot of
Servia was soon followed by an open revolt; and Cantacuzene, on the
throne of the elder Andronicus, defended the cause of age and
prerogative, which in his youth he had so vigorously attacked. At his
request the empress-mother undertook the voyage of Thessalonica, and the
office of mediation: she returned without success; and unless Anne of
Savoy was instructed by adversity, we may doubt the sincerity, or at
least the fervor, of her zeal. While the regent grasped the sceptre with
a firm and vigorous hand, she had been instructed to declare, that the
ten years of his legal administration would soon elapse; and that, after
a full trial of the vanity of the world, the emperor Cantacuzene sighed
for the repose of a cloister, and was ambitious only of a heavenly
crown. Had these sentiments been genuine, his voluntary abdication would
have restored the peace of the empire, and his conscience would have
been relieved by an act of justice. Palæologus alone was responsible for
his future government; and whatever might be his vices, they were surely
less formidable than the calamities of a civil war, in which the
Barbarians and infidels were again invited to assist the Greeks in their
mutual destruction. By the arms of the Turks, who now struck a deep and
everlasting root in Europe, Cantacuzene prevailed in the third contest
in which he had been involved; and the young emperor, driven from the
sea and land, was compelled to take shelter among the Latins of the Isle
of Tenedos. His insolence and obstinacy provoked the victor to a step
which must render the quarrel irreconcilable; and the association of his
son Matthew, whom he invested with the purple, established the
succession in the family of the Cantacuzeni. But Constantinople was
still attached to the blood of her ancient princes; and this last injury
accelerated the restoration of the rightful heir. A noble Genoese
espoused the cause of Palæologus, obtained a promise of his sister, and
achieved the revolution with two galleys and two thousand five hundred
auxiliaries. Under the pretence of distress, they were admitted into the
lesser port; a gate was opened, and the Latin shout of, "Long life and
victory to the emperor, John Palæologus!" was answered by a general
rising in his favor. A numerous and loyal party yet adhered to the
standard of Cantacuzene: but he asserts in his history (does he hope for
belief?) that his tender conscience rejected the assurance of conquest;
that, in free obedience to the voice of religion and philosophy, he
descended from the throne and embraced with pleasure the monastic habit
and profession. ^36 So soon as he ceased to be a prince, his successor
was not unwilling that he should be a saint: the remainder of his life
was devoted to piety and learning; in the cells of Constantinople and
Mount Athos, the monk Joasaph was respected as the temporal and
spiritual father of the emperor; and if he issued from his retreat, it
was as the minister of peace, to subdue the obstinacy, and solicit the
pardon, of his rebellious son. ^37

[Footnote 34: From his return to Constantinople, Cantacuzene continues
his history and that of the empire, one year beyond the abdication of
his son Matthew, A.D. 1357, (l. iv. c. l--50, p. 705--911.) Nicephorus
Gregoras ends with the synod of Constantinople, in the year 1351, (l.
xxii. c. 3, p. 660; the rest, to the conclusion of the xxivth book, p.
717, is all controversy;) and his fourteen last books are still MSS. in
the king of France's library.]

[Footnote 35: The emperor (Cantacuzen. l. iv. c. 1) represents his own
virtues, and Nic. Gregoras (l. xv. c. 11) the complaints of his friends,
who suffered by its effects. I have lent them the words of our poor
cavaliers after the Restoration.]

[Footnote 36: The awkward apology of Cantacuzene, (l. iv. c. 39--42,)
who relates, with visible confusion, his own downfall, may be supplied
by the less accurate, but more honest, narratives of Matthew Villani (l.
iv. c. 46, in the Script. Rerum Ital. tom. xiv. p. 268) and Ducas, (c
10, 11.)]

[Footnote 37: Cantacuzene, in the year 1375, was honored with a letter
from the pope, (Fleury, Hist. Ecclés. tom. xx. p. 250.) His death is
placed by a respectable authority on the 20th of November, 1411,
(Ducange, Fam. Byzant. p. 260.) But if he were of the age of his
companion Andronicus the Younger, he must have lived 116 years; a rare
instance of longevity, which in so illustrious a person would have
attracted universal notice.]

Yet in the cloister, the mind of Cantacuzene was still exercised by
theological war. He sharpened a controversial pen against the Jews and
Mahometans; ^38 and in every state he defended with equal zeal the
divine light of Mount Thabor, a memorable question which consummates the
religious follies of the Greeks. The fakirs of India, ^39 and the monks
of the Oriental church, were alike persuaded, that in the total
abstraction of the faculties of the mind and body, the purer spirit may
ascend to the enjoyment and vision of the Deity. The opinion and
practice of the monasteries of Mount Athos ^40 will be best represented
in the words of an abbot, who flourished in the eleventh century. "When
thou art alone in thy cell," says the ascetic teacher, "shut thy door,
and seat thyself in a corner: raise thy mind above all things vain and
transitory; recline thy beard and chin on thy breast; turn thy eyes and
thy thoughts toward the middle of thy belly, the region of the navel;
and search the place of the heart, the seat of the soul. At first, all
will be dark and comfortless; but if you persevere day and night, you
will feel an ineffable joy; and no sooner has the soul discovered the
place of the heart, than it is involved in a mystic and ethereal light."
This light, the production of a distempered fancy, the creature of an
empty stomach and an empty brain, was adored by the Quietists as the
pure and perfect essence of God himself; and as long as the folly was
confined to Mount Athos, the simple solitaries were not inquisitive how
the divine essence could be a materialsubstance, or how an
immaterialsubstance could be perceived by the eyes of the body. But in
the reign of the younger Andronicus, these monasteries were visited by
Barlaam, ^41 a Calabrian monk, who was equally skilled in philosophy and
theology; who possessed the language of the Greeks and Latins; and whose
versatile genius could maintain their opposite creeds, according to the
interest of the moment. The indiscretion of an ascetic revealed to the
curious traveller the secrets of mental prayer and Barlaam embraced the
opportunity of ridiculing the Quietists, who placed the soul in the
navel; of accusing the monks of Mount Athos of heresy and blasphemy. His
attack compelled the more learned to renounce or dissemble the simple
devotion of their brethren; and Gregory Palamas introduced a scholastic
distinction between the essence and operation of God. His inaccessible
essence dwells in the midst of an uncreated and eternal light; and this
beatific vision of the saints had been manifested to the disciples on
Mount Thabor, in the transfiguration of Christ. Yet this distinction
could not escape the reproach of polytheism; the eternity of the light
of Thabor was fiercely denied; and Barlaam still charged the Palamites
with holding two eternal substances, a visible and an invisible God.
From the rage of the monks of Mount Athos, who threatened his life, the
Calabrian retired to Constantinople, where his smooth and specious
manners introduced him to the favor of the great domestic and the
emperor. The court and the city were involved in this theological
dispute, which flamed amidst the civil war; but the doctrine of Barlaam
was disgraced by his flight and apostasy: the Palamites triumphed; and
their adversary, the patriarch John of Apri, was deposed by the consent
of the adverse factions of the state. In the character of emperor and
theologian, Cantacuzene presided in the synod of the Greek church, which
established, as an article of faith, the uncreated light of Mount
Thabor; and, after so many insults, the reason of mankind was slightly
wounded by the addition of a single absurdity. Many rolls of paper or
parchment have been blotted; and the impenitent sectaries, who refused
to subscribe the orthodox creed, were deprived of the honors of
Christian burial; but in the next age the question was forgotten; nor
can I learn that the axe or the fagot were employed for the extirpation
of the Barlaamite heresy. ^42

[Footnote 38: His four discourses, or books, were printed at Basil,
1543, (Fabric Bibliot. Græc. tom. vi. p. 473.) He composed them to
satisfy a proselyte who was assaulted with letters from his friends of
Ispahan. Cantacuzene had read the Koran; but I understand from Maracci
that he adopts the vulgar prejudices and fables against Mahomet and his
religion.]

[Footnote 39: See the Voyage de Bernier, tom. i. p. 127.]

[Footnote 40: Mosheim, Institut. Hist. Ecclés. p. 522, 523. Fleury,
Hist. Ecclés. tom. xx. p. 22, 24, 107--114, &c. The former unfolds the
causes with the judgment of a philosopher, the latter transcribes and
transcribes and translates with the prejudices of a Catholic priest.]

[Footnote 41: Basnage (in Canisii Antiq. Lectiones, tom. iv. p.
363--368) has investigated the character and story of Barlaam. The
duplicity of his opinions had inspired some doubts of the identity of
his person. See likewise Fabricius, (Bibliot. Græc. tom. x. p.
427--432.)]

[Footnote 42: See Cantacuzene (l. ii. c. 39, 40, l. iv. c. 3, 23, 24,
25) and Nic. Gregoras, (l. xi. c. 10, l. xv. 3, 7, &c.,) whose last
books, from the xixth to xxivth, are almost confined to a subject so
interesting to the authors. Boivin, (in Vit. Nic. Gregoræ,) from the
unpublished books, and Fabricius, (Bibliot. Græc. tom. x. p. 462--473,)
or rather Montfaucon, from the MSS. of the Coislin library, have added
some facts and documents.]

For the conclusion of this chapter, I have reserved the Genoese war,
which shook the throne of Cantacuzene, and betrayed the debility of the
Greek empire. The Genoese, who, after the recovery of Constantinople,
were seated in the suburb of Pera or Galata, received that honorable
fief from the bounty of the emperor. They were indulged in the use of
their laws and magistrates; but they submitted to the duties of vassals
and subjects; the forcible word of liegemen^43 was borrowed from the
Latin jurisprudence; and their podesta, or chief, before he entered on
his office, saluted the emperor with loyal acclamations and vows of
fidelity. Genoa sealed a firm alliance with the Greeks; and, in case of
a defensive war, a supply of fifty empty galleys and a succor of fifty
galleys, completely armed and manned, was promised by the republic to
the empire. In the revival of a naval force, it was the aim of Michael
Palæologus to deliver himself from a foreign aid; and his vigorous
government contained the Genoese of Galata within those limits which the
insolence of wealth and freedom provoked them to exceed. A sailor
threatened that they should soon be masters of Constantinople, and slew
the Greek who resented this national affront; and an armed vessel, after
refusing to salute the palace, was guilty of some acts of piracy in the
Black Sea. Their countrymen threatened to support their cause; but the
long and open village of Galata was instantly surrounded by the Imperial
troops; till, in the moment of the assault, the prostrate Genoese
implored the clemency of their sovereign. The defenceless situation
which secured their obedience exposed them to the attack of their
Venetian rivals, who, in the reign of the elder Andronicus, presumed to
violate the majesty of the throne. On the approach of their fleets, the
Genoese, with their families and effects, retired into the city: their
empty habitations were reduced to ashes; and the feeble prince, who had
viewed the destruction of his suburb, expressed his resentment, not by
arms, but by ambassadors. This misfortune, however, was advantageous to
the Genoese, who obtained, and imperceptibly abused, the dangerous
license of surrounding Galata with a strong wall; of introducing into
the ditch the waters of the sea; of erecting lofty turrets; and of
mounting a train of military engines on the rampart. The narrow bounds
in which they had been circumscribed were insufficient for the growing
colony; each day they acquired some addition of landed property; and the
adjacent hills were covered with their villas and castles, which they
joined and protected by new fortifications. ^44 The navigation and trade
of the Euxine was the patrimony of the Greek emperors, who commanded the
narrow entrance, the gates, as it were, of that inland sea. In the reign
of Michael Palæologus, their prerogative was acknowledged by the sultan
of Egypt, who solicited and obtained the liberty of sending an annual
ship for the purchase of slaves in Circassia and the Lesser Tartary: a
liberty pregnant with mischief to the Christian cause; since these
youths were transformed by education and discipline into the formidable
Mamalukes. ^45 From the colony of Pera, the Genoese engaged with
superior advantage in the lucrative trade of the Black Sea; and their
industry supplied the Greeks with fish and corn; two articles of food
almost equally important to a superstitious people. The spontaneous
bounty of nature appears to have bestowed the harvests of Ukraine, the
produce of a rude and savage husbandry; and the endless exportation of
salt fish and caviare is annually renewed by the enormous sturgeons that
are caught at the mouth of the Don or Tanais, in their last station of
the rich mud and shallow water of the Mæotis. ^46 The waters of the
Oxus, the Caspian, the Volga, and the Don, opened a rare and laborious
passage for the gems and spices of India; and after three months' march
the caravans of Carizme met the Italian vessels in the harbors of
Crimæa. ^47 These various branches of trade were monopolized by the
diligence and power of the Genoese. Their rivals of Venice and Pisa were
forcibly expelled; the natives were awed by the castles and cities,
which arose on the foundations of their humble factories; and their
principal establishment of Caffa ^48 was besieged without effect by the
Tartar powers. Destitute of a navy, the Greeks were oppressed by these
haughty merchants, who fed, or famished, Constantinople, according to
their interest. They proceeded to usurp the customs, the fishery, and
even the toll, of the Bosphorus; and while they derived from these
objects a revenue of two hundred thousand pieces of gold, a remnant of
thirty thousand was reluctantly allowed to the emperor. ^49 The colony
of Pera or Galata acted, in peace and war, as an independent state; and,
as it will happen in distant settlements, the Genoese podesta too often
forgot that he was the servant of his own masters.

[Footnote 43: Pachymer (l. v. c. 10) very properly explains liziouV
(ligios) by ?lidiouV. The use of these words in the Greek and Latin of
the feudal times may be amply understood from the Glossaries of Ducange,
(Græc. p. 811, 812. Latin. tom. iv. p. 109--111.)]

[Footnote 44: The establishment and progress of the Genoese at Pera, or
Galata, is described by Ducange (C. P. Christiana, l. i. p. 68, 69) from
the Byzantine historians, Pachymer, (l. ii. c. 35, l. v. 10, 30, l. ix.
15 l. xii. 6, 9,) Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. v. c. 4, l. vi. c. 11, l. ix.
c. 5, l. ix. c. 1, l. xv. c. 1, 6,) and Cantacuzene, (l. i. c. 12, l.
ii. c. 29, &c.)]

[Footnote 45: Both Pachymer (l. iii. c. 3, 4, 5) and Nic. Greg. (l. iv.
c. 7) understand and deplore the effects of this dangerous indulgence.
Bibars, sultan of Egypt, himself a Tartar, but a devout Mussulman,
obtained from the children of Zingis the permission to build a stately
mosque in the capital of Crimea, (De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. iii.
p. 343.)]

[Footnote 46: Chardin (Voyages en Perse, tom. i. p. 48) was assured at
Caffa, that these fishes were sometimes twenty-four or twenty-six feet
long, weighed eight or nine hundred pounds, and yielded three or four
quintals of caviare. The corn of the Bosphorus had supplied the
Athenians in the time of Demosthenes.]

[Footnote 47: De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. iii. p. 343, 344. Viaggi
di Ramusio, tom. i. fol. 400. But this land or water carriage could only
be practicable when Tartary was united under a wise and powerful
monarch.]

[Footnote 48: Nic. Gregoras (l. xiii. c. 12) is judicious and well
informed on the trade and colonies of the Black Sea. Chardin describes
the present ruins of Caffa, where, in forty days, he saw above 400 sail
employed in the corn and fish trade, (Voyages en Perse, tom. i. p.
46--48.)]

[Footnote 49: See Nic. Gregoras, l. xvii. c. 1.]

These usurpations were encouraged by the weakness of the elder
Andronicus, and by the civil wars that afflicted his age and the
minority of his grandson. The talents of Cantacuzene were employed to
the ruin, rather than the restoration, of the empire; and after his
domestic victory, he was condemned to an ignominious trial, whether the
Greeks or the Genoese should reign in Constantinople. The merchants of
Pera were offended by his refusal of some contiguous land, some
commanding heights, which they proposed to cover with new
fortifications; and in the absence of the emperor, who was detained at
Demotica by sickness, they ventured to brave the debility of a female
reign. A Byzantine vessel, which had presumed to fish at the mouth of
the harbor, was sunk by these audacious strangers; the fishermen were
murdered. Instead of suing for pardon, the Genoese demanded
satisfaction; required, in a haughty strain, that the Greeks should
renounce the exercise of navigation; and encountered with regular arms
the first sallies of the popular indignation. They instantly occupied
the debatable land; and by the labor of a whole people, of either sex
and of every age, the wall was raised, and the ditch was sunk, with
incredible speed. At the same time, they attacked and burnt two
Byzantine galleys; while the three others, the remainder of the Imperial
navy, escaped from their hands: the habitations without the gates, or
along the shore, were pillaged and destroyed; and the care of the
regent, of the empress Irene, was confined to the preservation of the
city. The return of Cantacuzene dispelled the public consternation: the
emperor inclined to peaceful counsels; but he yielded to the obstinacy
of his enemies, who rejected all reasonable terms, and to the ardor of
his subjects, who threatened, in the style of Scripture, to break them
in pieces like a potter's vessel. Yet they reluctantly paid the taxes,
that he imposed for the construction of ships, and the expenses of the
war; and as the two nations were masters, the one of the land, the other
of the sea, Constantinople and Pera were pressed by the evils of a
mutual siege. The merchants of the colony, who had believed that a few
days would terminate the war, already murmured at their losses: the
succors from their mother-country were delayed by the factions of Genoa;
and the most cautious embraced the opportunity of a Rhodian vessel to
remove their families and effects from the scene of hostility. In the
spring, the Byzantine fleet, seven galleys and a train of smaller
vessels, issued from the mouth of the harbor, and steered in a single
line along the shore of Pera; unskilfully presenting their sides to the
beaks of the adverse squadron. The crews were composed of peasants and
mechanics; nor was their ignorance compensated by the native courage of
Barbarians: the wind was strong, the waves were rough; and no sooner did
the Greeks perceive a distant and inactive enemy, than they leaped
headlong into the sea, from a doubtful, to an inevitable peril. The
troops that marched to the attack of the lines of Pera were struck at
the same moment with a similar panic; and the Genoese were astonished,
and almost ashamed, at their double victory. Their triumphant vessels,
crowned with flowers, and dragging after them the captive galleys,
repeatedly passed and repassed before the palace: the only virtue of the
emperor was patience; and the hope of revenge his sole consolation. Yet
the distress of both parties interposed a temporary agreement; and the
shame of the empire was disguised by a thin veil of dignity and power.
Summoning the chiefs of the colony, Cantacuzene affected to despise the
trivial object of the debate; and, after a mild reproof, most liberally
granted the lands, which had been previously resigned to the seeming
custody of his officers. ^50

[Footnote 50: The events of this war are related by Cantacuzene (l. iv.
c. 11 with obscurity and confusion, and by Nic. Gregoras (l. xvii. c.
1--7) in a clear and honest narrative. The priest was less responsible
than the prince for the defeat of the fleet.]

But the emperor was soon solicited to violate the treaty, and to join
his arms with the Venetians, the perpetual enemies of Genoa and her
colonies. While he compared the reasons of peace and war, his moderation
was provoked by a wanton insult of the inhabitants of Pera, who
discharged from their rampart a large stone that fell in the midst of
Constantinople. On his just complaint, they coldly blamed the imprudence
of their engineer; but the next day the insult was repeated; and they
exulted in a second proof that the royal city was not beyond the reach
of their artillery. Cantacuzene instantly signed his treaty with the
Venetians; but the weight of the Roman empire was scarcely felt in the
balance of these opulent and powerful republics. ^51 From the Straits of
Gibraltar to the mouth of the Tanais, their fleets encountered each
other with various success; and a memorable battle was fought in the
narrow sea, under the walls of Constantinople. It would not be an easy
task to reconcile the accounts of the Greeks, the Venetians, and the
Genoese; ^52 and while I depend on the narrative of an impartial
historian, ^53 I shall borrow from each nation the facts that redound to
their own disgrace, and the honor of their foes. The Venetians, with
their allies the Catalans, had the advantage of number; and their fleet,
with the poor addition of eight Byzantine galleys, amounted to
seventy-five sail: the Genoese did not exceed sixty-four; but in those
times their ships of war were distinguished by the superiority of their
size and strength. The names and families of their naval commanders,
Pisani and Doria, are illustrious in the annals of their country; but
the personal merit of the former was eclipsed by the fame and abilities
of his rival. They engaged in tempestuous weather; and the tumultuary
conflict was continued from the dawn to the extinction of light. The
enemies of the Genoese applaud their prowess; the friends of the
Venetians are dissatisfied with their behavior; but all parties agree in
praising the skill and boldness of the Catalans, ^* who, with many
wounds, sustained the brunt of the action. On the separation of the
fleets, the event might appear doubtful; but the thirteen Genoese
galleys, that had been sunk or taken, were compensated by a double loss
of the allies; of fourteen Venetians, ten Catalans, and two Greeks; ^!
and even the grief of the conquerors expressed the assurance and habit
of more decisive victories. Pisani confessed his defeat, by retiring
into a fortified harbor, from whence, under the pretext of the orders of
the senate, he steered with a broken and flying squadron for the Isle of
Candia, and abandoned to his rivals the sovereignty of the sea. In a
public epistle, ^54 addressed to the doge and senate, Petrarch employs
his eloquence to reconcile the maritime powers, the two luminaries of
Italy. The orator celebrates the valor and victory of the Genoese, the
first of men in the exercise of naval war: he drops a tear on the
misfortunes of their Venetian brethren; but he exhorts them to pursue
with fire and sword the base and perfidious Greeks; to purge the
metropolis of the East from the heresy with which it was infected.
Deserted by their friends, the Greeks were incapable of resistance; and
three months after the battle, the emperor Cantacuzene solicited and
subscribed a treaty, which forever banished the Venetians and Catalans,
and granted to the Genoese a monopoly of trade, and almost a right of
dominion. The Roman empire (I smile in transcribing the name) might soon
have sunk into a province of Genoa, if the ambition of the republic had
not been checked by the ruin of her freedom and naval power. A long
contest of one hundred and thirty years was determined by the triumph of
Venice; and the factions of the Genoese compelled them to seek for
domestic peace under the protection of a foreign lord, the duke of
Milan, or the French king. Yet the spirit of commerce survived that of
conquest; and the colony of Pera still awed the capital and navigated
the Euxine, till it was involved by the Turks in the final servitude of
Constantinople itself.

[Footnote 51: The second war is darkly told by Cantacuzene, (l. iv. c.
18, p. 24, 25, 28--32,) who wishes to disguise what he dares not deny. I
regret this part of Nic. Gregoras, which is still in MS. at Paris. *

Note: * This part of Nicephorus Gregoras has not been printed in the new
edition of the Byzantine Historians. The editor expresses a hope that it
may be undertaken by Hase. I should join in the regret of Gibbon, if
these books contain any historical information: if they are but a
continuation of the controversies which fill the last books in our
present copies, they may as well sleep their eternal sleep in MS. as in
print. -- M.]

[Footnote 52: Muratori (Annali d' Italia, tom. xii. p. 144) refers to
the most ancient Chronicles of Venice (Caresinus, the continuator of
Andrew Dandulus, tom. xii. p. 421, 422) and Genoa, (George Stella
Annales Genuenses, tom. xvii. p. 1091, 1092;) both which I have
diligently consulted in his great Collection of the Historians of
Italy.]

[Footnote 53: See the Chronicle of Matteo Villani of Florence, l. ii. c.
59, p. 145--147, c. 74, 75, p. 156, 157, in Muratori's Collection, tom.
xiv.]

[Footnote *: Cantacuzene praises their bravery, but imputes their losses
to their ignorance of the seas: they suffered more by the breakers than
by the enemy, vol. iii. p. 224. -- M.]

[Footnote !: Cantacuzene says that the Genoese lost twenty-eight ships
with their crews, autandroi; the Venetians and Catalans sixteen, the
Imperials, none Cantacuzene accuses Pisani of cowardice, in not
following up the victory, and destroying the Genoese. But Pisani's
conduct, and indeed Cantacuzene's account of the battle, betray the
superiority of the Genoese. -- M.]

[Footnote 54: The Abbéde Sade (Mémoires sur la Vie de Petrarque, tom.
iii. p. 257--263) translates this letter, which he copied from a MS. in
the king of France's library. Though a servant of the duke of Milan,
Petrarch pours forth his astonishment and grief at the defeat and
despair of the Genoese in the following year, (p. 323--332.)]

Chapter LXIV: Moguls, Ottoman Turks.Part I.

Conquests Of Zingis Khan And The Moguls From China To Poland. -- Escape
Of Constantinople And The Greeks. -- Origin Of The Ottoman Turks In
Bithynia. -- Reigns And Victories Of Othman, Orchan, Amurath The First,
And Bajazet The First. -- Foundation And Progress Of The Turkish
Monarchy In Asia And Europe. -- Danger Of Constantinople And The Greek
Empire.

From the petty quarrels of a city and her suburbs, from the cowardice
and discord of the falling Greeks, I shall now ascend to the victorious
Turks; whose domestic slavery was ennobled by martial discipline,
religious enthusiasm, and the energy of the national character. The rise
and progress of the Ottomans, the present sovereigns of Constantinople,
are connected with the most important scenes of modern history; but they
are founded on a previous knowledge of the great eruption of the Moguls
^* and Tartars; whose rapid conquests may be compared with the primitive
convulsions of nature, which have agitated and altered the surface of
the globe. I have long since asserted my claim to introduce the nations,
the immediate or remote authors of the fall of the Roman empire; nor can
I refuse myself to those events, which, from their uncommon magnitude,
will interest a philosophic mind in the history of blood. ^1

[Footnote *: Mongol seems to approach the nearest to the proper name of
this race. The Chinese call them Mong-kou; the Mondchoux, their
neighbors, Monggo or Monggou. They called themselves also Beda. This
fact seems to have been proved by M. Schmidt against the French
Orientalists. See De Brosset. Note on Le Beau, tom. xxii p. 402.]

[Footnote 1: The reader is invited to review chapters xxii. to xxvi.,
and xxiii. to xxxviii., the manners of pastoral nations, the conquests
of Attila and the Huns, which were composed at a time when I entertained
the wish, rather than the hope, of concluding my history.]

From the spacious highlands between China, Siberia, and the Caspian Sea,
the tide of emigration and war has repeatedly been poured. These ancient
seats of the Huns and Turks were occupied in the twelfth century by many
pastoral tribes, of the same descent and similar manners, which were
united and led to conquest by the formidable Zingis. ^* In his ascent to
greatness, that Barbarian (whose private appellation was Temugin) had
trampled on the necks of his equals. His birth was noble; but it was the
pride of victory, that the prince or people deduced his seventh ancestor
from the immaculate conception of a virgin. His father had reigned over
thirteen hordes, which composed about thirty or forty thousand families:
above two thirds refused to pay tithes or obedience to his infant son;
and at the age of thirteen, Temugin fought a battle against his
rebellious subjects. The future conqueror of Asia was reduced to fly and
to obey; but he rose superior to his fortune, and in his fortieth year
he had established his fame and dominion over the circumjacent tribes.
In a state of society, in which policy is rude and valor is universal,
the ascendant of one man must be founded on his power and resolution to
punish his enemies and recompense his friends. His first military league
was ratified by the simple rites of sacrificing a horse and tasting of a
running stream: Temugin pledged himself to divide with his followers the
sweets and the bitters of life; and when he had shared among them his
horses and apparel, he was rich in their gratitude and his own hopes.
After his first victory, he placed seventy caldrons on the fire, and
seventy of the most guilty rebels were cast headlong into the boiling
water. The sphere of his attraction was continually enlarged by the ruin
of the proud and the submission of the prudent; and the boldest
chieftains might tremble, when they beheld, enchased in silver, the
skull of the khan of Keraites; ^2 who, under the name of Prester John,
had corresponded with the Roman pontiff and the princes of Europe. The
ambition of Temugin condescended to employ the arts of superstition; and
it was from a naked prophet, who could ascend to heaven on a white
horse, that he accepted the title of Zingis, ^3 the most great; and a
divine right to the conquest and dominion of the earth. In a general
couroultai, or diet, he was seated on a felt, which was long afterwards
revered as a relic, and solemnly proclaimed great khan, or emperor of
the Moguls ^4 and Tartars. ^5 Of these kindred, though rival, names, the
former had given birth to the imperial race; and the latter has been
extended by accident or error over the spacious wilderness of the north.

[Footnote *: On the traditions of the early life of Zingis, see D'Ohson,
Hist des Mongols; Histoire des Mongols, Paris, 1824. Schmidt, Geschichte
des Ost-Mongolen, p. 66, &c., and Notes. -- M.]

[Footnote 2: The khans of the Keraites were most probably incapable of
reading the pompous epistles composed in their name by the Nestorian
missionaries, who endowed them with the fabulous wonders of an Indian
kingdom. Perhaps these Tartars (the Presbyter or Priest John) had
submitted to the rites of baptism and ordination, (Asseman, Bibliot
Orient tom. iii. p. ii. p. 487--503.)]

[Footnote 3: Since the history and tragedy of Voltaire, Gengis, at least
in French, seems to be the more fashionable spelling; but Abulghazi Khan
must have known the true name of his ancestor. His etymology appears
just: Zin, in the Mogul tongue, signifies great, and gisis the
superlative termination, (Hist. Généalogique des Tatars, part iii. p.
194, 195.) From the same idea of magnitude, the appellation of Zingisis
bestowed on the ocean.]

[Footnote 4: The name of Moguls has prevailed among the Orientals, and
still adheres to the titular sovereign, the Great Mogul of Hindastan. *

Note: * M. Remusat (sur les Langues Tartares, p. 233) justly observes,
that Timour was a Turk, not a Mogul, and, p. 242, that probably there
was not Mogul in the army of Baber, who established the Indian throne of
the "Great Mogul." -- M.]

[Footnote 5: The Tartars (more properly Tatars) were descended from
Tatar Khan, the brother of Mogul Khan, (see Abulghazi, part i. and ii.,)
and once formed a horde of 70,000 families on the borders of Kitay, (p.
103--112.) In the great invasion of Europe (A.D. 1238) they seem to have
led the vanguard; and the similitude of the name of Tartarei,
recommended that of Tartars to the Latins, (Matt. Paris, p. 398, &c.)

Note:  This relationship, according to M. Klaproth, is fabulous, and
invented by the Mahometan writers, who, from religious zeal, endeavored
to connect the traditions of the nomads of Central Asia with those of
the Old Testament, as preserved in the Koran. There is no trace of it in
the Chinese writers. Tabl. de l'Asie, p. 156. -- M.]

The code of laws which Zingis dictated to his subjects was adapted to
the preservation of a domestic peace, and the exercise of foreign
hostility. The punishment of death was inflicted on the crimes of
adultery, murder, perjury, and the capital thefts of a horse or ox; and
the fiercest of men were mild and just in their intercourse with each
other. The future election of the great khan was vested in the princes
of his family and the heads of the tribes; and the regulations of the
chase were essential to the pleasures and plenty of a Tartar camp. The
victorious nation was held sacred from all servile labors, which were
abandoned to slaves and strangers; and every labor was servile except
the profession of arms. The service and discipline of the troops, who
were armed with bows, cimeters, and iron maces, and divided by hundreds,
thousands, and ten thousands, were the institutions of a veteran
commander. Each officer and soldier was made responsible, under pain of
death, for the safety and honor of his companions; and the spirit of
conquest breathed in the law, that peace should never be granted unless
to a vanquished and suppliant enemy. But it is the religion of Zingis
that best deserves our wonder and applause. ^* The Catholic inquisitors
of Europe, who defended nonsense by cruelty, might have been confounded
by the example of a Barbarian, who anticipated the lessons of
philosophy, ^6 and established by his laws a system of pure theism and
perfect toleration. His first and only article of faith was the
existence of one God, the Author of all good; who fills by his presence
the heavens and earth, which he has created by his power. The Tartars
and Moguls were addicted to the idols of their peculiar tribes; and many
of them had been converted by the foreign missionaries to the religions
of Moses, of Mahomet, and of Christ. These various systems in freedom
and concord were taught and practised within the precincts of the same
camp; and the Bonze, the Imam, the Rabbi, the Nestorian, and the Latin
priest, enjoyed the same honorable exemption from service and tribute:
in the mosque of Bochara, the insolent victor might trample the Koran
under his horse's feet, but the calm legislator respected the prophets
and pontiffs of the most hostile sects. The reason of Zingis was not
informed by books: the khan could neither read nor write; and, except
the tribe of the Igours, the greatest part of the Moguls and Tartars
were as illiterate as their sovereign. ^* The memory of their exploits
was preserved by tradition: sixty-eight years after the death of Zingis,
these traditions were collected and transcribed; ^7 the brevity of their
domestic annals may be supplied by the Chinese, ^8 Persians, ^9
Armenians, ^10 Syrians, ^11 Arabians, ^12 Greeks, ^13 Russians, ^14
Poles, ^15 Hungarians, ^16 and Latins; ^17 and each nation will deserve
credit in the relation of their own disasters and defeats. ^18

[Footnote *: Before his armies entered Thibet, he sent an embassy to
Bogdosottnam-Dsimmo, a Lama high priest, with a letter to this effect:
"I have chosen thee as high priest for myself and my empire. Repair then
to me, and promote the present and future happiness of man: I will be
thy supporter and protector: let us establish a system of religion, and
unite it with the monarchy," &c. The high priest accepted the
invitation; and the Mongol history literally terms this step the period
of the first respect for religion; because the monarch, by his public
profession, made it the religion of the state. Klaproth. "Travels in
Caucasus," ch. 7, Eng. Trans. p. 92. Neither Dshingis nor his son and
successor Oegodah had, on account of their continual wars, much leisure
for the propagation of the religion of the Lama. By religion they
understand a distinct, independent, sacred moral code, which has but one
origin, one source, and one object. This notion they universally
propagate, and even believe that the brutes, and all created beings,
have a religion adapted to their sphere of action. The different forms
of the various religions they ascribe to the difference of individuals,
nations, and legislators. Never do you hear of their inveighing against
any creed, even against the obviously absurd Schaman paganism, or of
their persecuting others on that account. They themselves, on the other
hand, endure every hardship, and even persecutions, with perfect
resignation, and indulgently excuse the follies of others, nay, consider
them as a motive for increased ardor in prayer, ch. ix. p. 109. -- M.]

[Footnote 6: A singular conformity may be found between the religious
laws of Zingis Khan and of Mr. Locke, (Constitutions of Carolina, in his
works, vol. iv. p. 535, 4to. edition, 1777.)]

[Footnote *: See the notice on Tha-tha-toung-o, the Ouogour minister of
Tchingis, in Abel Remusat's 2d series of Recherch. Asiat. vol. ii. p.
61. He taught the son of Tchingis to write: "He was the instructor of
the Moguls in writing, of which they were before ignorant;" and hence
the application of the Ouigour characters to the Mogul language cannot
be placed earlier than the year 1204 or 1205, nor so late as the time of
Pà-sse-pa, who lived under Khubilai. A new alphabet, approaching to that
of Thibet, was introduced under Khubilai. -- M.]

[Footnote 7: In the year 1294, by the command of Cazan, khan of Persia,
the fourth in descent from Zingis. From these traditions, his vizier
Fadlallah composed a Mogul history in the Persian language, which has
been used by Petit de la Croix, (Hist. de Genghizcan, p. 537--539.) The
Histoire Généalogique des Tatars (àLeyde, 1726, in 12mo., 2 tomes) was
translated by the Swedish prisoners in Siberia from the Mogul MS. of
Abulgasi Bahadur Khan, a descendant of Zingis, who reigned over the
Usbeks of Charasm, or Carizme, (A.D. 1644--1663.) He is of most value
and credit for the names, pedigrees, and manners of his nation. Of his
nine parts, the ist descends from Adam to Mogul Khan; the iid, from
Mogul to Zingis; the iiid is the life of Zingis; the ivth, vth, vith,
and viith, the general history of his four sons and their posterity; the
viiith and ixth, the particular history of the descendants of Sheibani
Khan, who reigned in Maurenahar and Charasm.]

[Footnote 8: Histoire de Gentchiscan, et de toute la Dinastie des
Mongous ses Successeurs, Conquerans de la Chine; tirée de l'Histoire de
la Chine par le R. P. Gaubil, de la Sociétéde Jesus, Missionaire
àPeking; àParis, 1739, in 4to. This translation is stamped with the
Chinese character of domestic accuracy and foreign ignorance.]

[Footnote 9: See the Histoire du Grand Genghizcan, premier Empereur des
Moguls et Tartares, par M. Petit de la Croix, àParis, 1710, in 12mo.; a
work of ten years' labor, chiefly drawn from the Persian writers, among
whom Nisavi, the secretary of Sultan Gelaleddin, has the merit and
prejudices of a contemporary. A slight air of romance is the fault of
the originals, or the compiler. See likewise the articles of Genghizcan,
Mohammed, Gelaleddin, &c., in the Bibliothèque Orientale of D'Herbelot.

Note:  The preface to the Hist. des Mongols, (Paris, 1824) gives a
catalogue of the Arabic and Persian authorities. -- M.]

[Footnote 10: Haithonus, or Aithonus, an Armenian prince, and afterwards
a monk of Premontré, (Fabric, Bibliot. Lat. Medii Ævi, tom. i. p. 34,)
dictated in the French language, his book de Tartaris, his old
fellow-soldiers. It was immediately translated into Latin, and is
inserted in the Novus Orbis of Simon Grynæus, (Basil, 1555, in folio.) *

Note: * A précis at the end of the new edition of Le Beau, Hist. des
Empereurs, vol. xvii., by M. Brosset, gives large extracts from the
accounts of the Armenian historians relating to the Mogul conquests. --
M.]

[Footnote 11: Zingis Khan, and his first successors, occupy the
conclusion of the ixth Dynasty of Abulpharagius, (vers. Pocock, Oxon.
1663, in 4to.;) and his xth Dynasty is that of the Moguls of Persia.
Assemannus (Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii.) has extracted some facts from his
Syriac writings, and the lives of the Jacobite maphrians, or primates of
the East.]

[Footnote 12: Among the Arabians, in language and religion, we may
distinguish Abulfeda, sultan of Hamah in Syria, who fought in person,
under the Mamaluke standard, against the Moguls.]

[Footnote 13: Nicephorus Gregoras (l. ii. c. 5, 6) has felt the
necessity of connecting the Scythian and Byzantine histories. He
describes with truth and elegance the settlement and manners of the
Moguls of Persia, but he is ignorant of their origin, and corrupts the
names of Zingis and his sons.]

[Footnote 14: M. Levesque (Histoire de Russie, tom. ii.) has described
the conquest of Russia by the Tartars, from the patriarch Nicon, and the
old chronicles.]

[Footnote 15: For Poland, I am content with the Sarmatia Asiatica et
Europæa of Matthew àMichou, or De Michoviâ, a canon and physician of
Cracow, (A.D. 1506,) inserted in the Novus Orbis of Grynæus. Fabric
Bibliot. Latin. Mediæet InfimæÆtatis, tom. v. p. 56.]

[Footnote 16: I should quote Thuroczius, the oldest general historian
(pars ii. c. 74, p. 150) in the 1st volume of the Scriptores Rerum
Hungaricarum, did not the same volume contain the original narrative of
a contemporary, an eye-witness, and a sufferer, (M. Rogerii, Hungari,
Varadiensis Capituli Canonici, Carmen miserabile, seu Historia super
Destructione Regni HungariæTemporibus BelæIV. Regis per Tartaros facta,
p. 292--321;) the best picture that I have ever seen of all the
circumstances of a Barbaric invasion.]

[Footnote 17: Matthew Paris has represented, from authentic documents,
the danger and distress of Europe, (consult the word Tartariin his
copious Index.) From motives of zeal and curiosity, the court of the
great khan in the xiiith century was visited by two friars, John de
Plano Carpini, and William Rubruquis, and by Marco Polo, a Venetian
gentleman. The Latin relations of the two former are inserted in the 1st
volume of Hackluyt; the Italian original or version of the third
(Fabric. Bibliot. Latin. Medii Ævi, tom. ii. p. 198, tom. v. p. 25) may
be found in the second tome of Ramusio.]

[Footnote 18: In his great History of the Huns, M. de Guignes has most
amply treated of Zingis Khan and his successors. See tom. iii. l.
xv.--xix., and in the collateral articles of the Seljukians of Roum,
tom. ii. l. xi., the Carizmians, l. xiv., and the Mamalukes, tom. iv. l.
xxi.; consult likewise the tables of the 1st volume. He is ever learned
and accurate; yet I am only indebted to him for a general view, and some
passages of Abulfeda, which are still latent in the Arabic text. *

Note: * To this catalogue of the historians of the Moguls may be added
D'Ohson, Histoire des Mongols; Histoire des Mongols, (from Arabic and
Persian authorities,) Paris, 1824. Schmidt, Geschichte der Ost Mongolen,
St. Petersburgh, 1829. This curious work, by Ssanang Ssetsen
Chungtaidschi, published in the original Mongol, was written after the
conversion of the nation to Buddhism: it is enriched with very valuable
notes by the editor and translator; but, unfortunately, is very barren
of information about the European and even the western Asiatic conquests
of the Mongols. -- M.]

Chapter LXIV: Moguls, Ottoman Turks. -- Part II.

The arms of Zingis and his lieutenants successively reduced the hordes
of the desert, who pitched their tents between the wall of China and the
Volga; and the Mogul emperor became the monarch of the pastoral world,
the lord of many millions of shepherds and soldiers, who felt their
united strength, and were impatient to rush on the mild and wealthy
climates of the south. His ancestors had been the tributaries of the
Chinese emperors; and Temugin himself had been disgraced by a title of
honor and servitude. The court of Pekin was astonished by an embassy
from its former vassal, who, in the tone of the king of nations, exacted
the tribute and obedience which he had paid, and who affected to treat
the son of heavenas the most contemptible of mankind. A haughty answer
disguised their secret apprehensions; and their fears were soon
justified by the march of innumerable squadrons, who pierced on all
sides the feeble rampart of the great wall. Ninety cities were stormed,
or starved, by the Moguls; ten only escaped; and Zingis, from a
knowledge of the filial piety of the Chinese, covered his vanguard with
their captive parents; an unworthy, and by degrees a fruitless, abuse of
the virtue of his enemies. His invasion was supported by the revolt of a
hundred thousand Khitans, who guarded the frontier: yet he listened to a
treaty; and a princess of China, three thousand horses, five hundred
youths, and as many virgins, and a tribute of gold and silk, were the
price of his retreat. In his second expedition, he compelled the Chinese
emperor to retire beyond the yellow river to a more southern residence.
The siege of Pekin ^19 was long and laborious: the inhabitants were
reduced by famine to decimate and devour their fellow-citizens; when
their ammunition was spent, they discharged ingots of gold and silver
from their engines; but the Moguls introduced a mine to the centre of
the capital; and the conflagration of the palace burnt above thirty
days. China was desolated by Tartar war and domestic faction; and the
five northern provinces were added to the empire of Zingis.

[Footnote 19: More properly Yen-king, an ancient city, whose ruins still
appear some furlongs to the south-east of the modern Pekin, which was
built by Cublai Khan, (Gaubel, p. 146.) Pe-king and Nan-king are vague
titles, the courts of the north and of the south. The identity and
change of names perplex the most skilful readers of the Chinese
geography, (p. 177.) *

Note: * And likewise in Chinese history -- see Abel Remusat, Mel. Asiat.
2d tom. ii. p. 5. -- M.]

In the West, he touched the dominions of Mohammed, sultan of Carizme,
who reigned from the Persian Gulf to the borders of India and Turkestan;
and who, in the proud imitation of Alexander the Great, forgot the
servitude and ingratitude of his fathers to the house of Seljuk. It was
the wish of Zingis to establish a friendly and commercial intercourse
with the most powerful of the Moslem princes: nor could he be tempted by
the secret solicitations of the caliph of Bagdad, who sacrificed to his
personal wrongs the safety of the church and state. A rash and inhuman
deed provoked and justified the Tartar arms in the invasion of the
southern Asia. ^! A caravan of three ambassadors and one hundred and
fifty merchants were arrested and murdered at Otrar, by the command of
Mohammed; nor was it till after a demand and denial of justice, till he
had prayed and fasted three nights on a mountain, that the Mogul emperor
appealed to the judgment of God and his sword. Our European battles,
says a philosophic writer, ^20 are petty skirmishes, if compared to the
numbers that have fought and fallen in the fields of Asia. Seven hundred
thousand Moguls and Tartars are said to have marched under the standard
of Zingis and his four sons. In the vast plains that extend to the north
of the Sihon or Jaxartes, they were encountered by four hundred thousand
soldiers of the sultan; and in the first battle, which was suspended by
the night, one hundred and sixty thousand Carizmians were slain.
Mohammed was astonished by the multitude and valor of his enemies: he
withdrew from the scene of danger, and distributed his troops in the
frontier towns; trusting that the Barbarians, invincible in the field,
would be repulsed by the length and difficulty of so many regular
sieges. But the prudence of Zingis had formed a body of Chinese
engineers, skilled in the mechanic arts; informed perhaps of the secret
of gunpowder, and capable, under his discipline, of attacking a foreign
country with more vigor and success than they had defended their own.
The Persian historians will relate the sieges and reduction of Otrar,
Cogende, Bochara, Samarcand, Carizme, Herat, Merou, Nisabour, Balch, and
Candahar; and the conquest of the rich and populous countries of
Transoxiana, Carizme, and Chorazan. ^* The destructive hostilities of
Attila and the Huns have long since been elucidated by the example of
Zingis and the Moguls; and in this more proper place I shall be content
to observe, that, from the Caspian to the Indus, they ruined a tract of
many hundred miles, which was adorned with the habitations and labors of
mankind, and that five centuries have not been sufficient to repair the
ravages of four years. The Mogul emperor encouraged or indulged the fury
of his troops: the hope of future possession was lost in the ardor of
rapine and slaughter; and the cause of the war exasperated their native
fierceness by the pretence of justice and revenge. The downfall and
death of the sultan Mohammed, who expired, unpitied and alone, in a
desert island of the Caspian Sea, is a poor atonement for the calamities
of which he was the author. Could the Carizmian empire have been saved
by a single hero, it would have been saved by his son Gelaleddin, whose
active valor repeatedly checked the Moguls in the career of victory.
Retreating, as he fought, to the banks of the Indus, he was oppressed by
their innumerable host, till, in the last moment of despair, Gelaleddin
spurred his horse into the waves, swam one of the broadest and most
rapid rivers of Asia, and extorted the admiration and applause of Zingis
himself. It was in this camp that the Mogul conqueror yielded with
reluctance to the murmurs of his weary and wealthy troops, who sighed
for the enjoyment of their native land. Eucumbered with the spoils of
Asia, he slowly measured back his footsteps, betrayed some pity for the
misery of the vanquished, and declared his intention of rebuilding the
cities which had been swept away by the tempest of his arms. After he
had repassed the Oxus and Jaxartes, he was joined by two generals, whom
he had detached with thirty thousand horse, to subdue the western
provinces of Persia. They had trampled on the nations which opposed
their passage, penetrated through the gates of Derbent, traversed the
Volga and the desert, and accomplished the circuit of the Caspian Sea,
by an expedition which had never been attempted, and has never been
repeated. The return of Zingis was signalized by the overthrow of the
rebellious or independent kingdoms of Tartary; and he died in the
fulness of years and glory, with his last breath exhorting and
instructing his sons to achieve the conquest of the Chinese empire. ^*

[Footnote !: See the particular account of this transaction, from the
Kholauesut el Akbaur, in Price, vol. ii. p. 402. -- M.]

[Footnote 20: M. de Voltaire, Essai sur l'Histoire Générale, tom. iii.
c. 60, p. 8. His account of Zingis and the Moguls contains, as usual,
much general sense and truth, with some particular errors.]

[Footnote *: Every where they massacred all classes, except the
artisans, whom they made slaves. Hist. des Mongols. -- M.]

[Footnote *: Their first duty, which he bequeathed to them, was to
massacre the king of Tangcoute and all the inhabitants of Ninhia, the
surrender of the city being already agreed upon, Hist. des Mongols. vol.
i. p. 286. -- M.]

The harem of Zingis was composed of five hundred wives and concubines;
and of his numerous progeny, four sons, illustrious by their birth and
merit, exercised under their father the principal offices of peace and
war. Toushi was his great huntsman, Zagatai ^21 his judge, Octai his
minister, and Tuli his general; and their names and actions are often
conspicuous in the history of his conquests. Firmly united for their own
and the public interest, the three brothers and their families were
content with dependent sceptres; and Octai, by general consent, was
proclaimed great khan, or emperor of the Moguls and Tartars. He was
succeeded by his son Gayuk, after whose death the empire devolved to his
cousins Mangou and Cublai, the sons of Tuli, and the grandsons of
Zingis. In the sixty-eight years of his four first successors, the Mogul
subdued almost all Asia, and a large portion of Europe. Without
confining myself to the order of time, without expatiating on the detail
of events, I shall present a general picture of the progress of their
arms; I. In the East; II. In the South; III. In the West; and IV. In the
North.

[Footnote 21: Zagatai gave his name to his dominions of Maurenahar, or
Transoxiana; and the Moguls of Hindostan, who emigrated from that
country, are styled Zagatais by the Persians. This certain etymology,
and the similar example of Uzbek, Nogai, &c., may warn us not absolutely
to reject the derivations of a national, from a personal, name.

Note:  See a curious anecdote of Tschagatai. Hist. des Mongols, p. 370.
-- M.]

I. Before the invasion of Zingis, China was divided into two empires or
dynasties of the North and South; ^22 and the difference of origin and
interest was smoothed by a general conformity of laws, language, and
national manners. The Northern empire, which had been dismembered by
Zingis, was finally subdued seven years after his death. After the loss
of Pekin, the emperor had fixed his residence at Kaifong, a city many
leagues in circumference, and which contained, according to the Chinese
annals, fourteen hundred thousand families of inhabitants and fugitives.
He escaped from thence with only seven horsemen, and made his last stand
in a third capital, till at length the hopeless monarch, protesting his
innocence and accusing his fortune, ascended a funeral pile, and gave
orders, that, as soon as he had stabbed himself, the fire should be
kindled by his attendants. The dynasty of the Song, the native and
ancient sovereigns of the whole empire, survived about forty-five years
the fall of the Northern usurpers; and the perfect conquest was reserved
for the arms of Cublai. During this interval, the Moguls were often
diverted by foreign wars; and, if the Chinese seldom dared to meet their
victors in the field, their passive courage presented and endless
succession of cities to storm and of millions to slaughter. In the
attack and defence of places, the engines of antiquity and the Greek
fire were alternately employed: the use of gunpowder in cannon and bombs
appears as a familiar practice; ^23 and the sieges were conducted by the
Mahometans and Franks, who had been liberally invited into the service
of Cublai. After passing the great river, the troops and artillery were
conveyed along a series of canals, till they invested the royal
residence of Hamcheu, or Quinsay, in the country of silk, the most
delicious climate of China. The emperor, a defenceless youth,
surrendered his person and sceptre; and before he was sent in exile into
Tartary, he struck nine times the ground with his forehead, to adore in
prayer or thanksgiving the mercy of the great khan. Yet the war (it was
now styled a rebellion) was still maintained in the southern provinces
from Hamcheu to Canton; and the obstinate remnant of independence and
hostility was transported from the land to the sea. But when the fleet
of the Songwas surrounded and oppressed by a superior armament, their
last champion leaped into the waves with his infant emperor in his arms.
"It is more glorious," he cried, "to die a prince, than to live a
slave." A hundred thousand Chinese imitated his example; and the whole
empire, from Tonkin to the great wall, submitted to the dominion of
Cublai. His boundless ambition aspired to the conquest of Japan: his
fleet was twice shipwrecked; and the lives of a hundred thousand Moguls
and Chinese were sacrificed in the fruitless expedition. But the
circumjacent kingdoms, Corea, Tonkin, Cochinchina, Pegu, Bengal, and
Thibet, were reduced in different degrees of tribute and obedience by
the effort or terror of his arms. He explored the Indian Ocean with a
fleet of a thousand ships: they sailed in sixty-eight days, most
probably to the Isle of Borneo, under the equinoctial line; and though
they returned not without spoil or glory, the emperor was dissatisfied
that the savage king had escaped from their hands.

[Footnote 22: In Marco Polo, and the Oriental geographers, the names of
Cathay and Mangi distinguish the northern and southern empires, which,
from A.D. 1234 to 1279, were those of the great khan, and of the
Chinese. The search of Cathay, after China had been found, excited and
misled our navigators of the sixteenth century, in their attempts to
discover the north-east passage.]

[Footnote 23: I depend on the knowledge and fidelity of the Père Gaubil,
who translates the Chinese text of the annals of the Moguls or Yuen, (p.
71, 93, 153;) but I am ignorant at what time these annals were composed
and published. The two uncles of Marco Polo, who served as engineers at
the siege of Siengyangfou, * (l. ii. 61, in Ramusio, tom. ii. See
Gaubil, p. 155, 157) must have felt and related the effects of this
destructive powder, and their silence is a weighty, and almost decisive
objection. I entertain a suspicion, that their recent discovery was
carried from Europe to China by the caravans of the xvth century and
falsely adopted as an old national discovery before the arrival of the
Portuguese and Jesuits in the xvith. Yet the Père Gaubil affirms, that
the use of gunpowder has been known to the Chinese above 1600 years. **

Note: * Sou-houng-kian-lou. Abel Remusat. -- M.

Note: ** La poudre àcanon et d'autres compositions inflammantes, dont
ils se servent pour construire des pièces d'artifice d'un effet
suprenant, leur étaient connues depuis très long-temps, et l'on croit
que des bombardes et des pierriers, dont ils avaient enseignél'usage aux
Tartares, ont pu donner en Europe l'idée d'artillerie, quoique la forme
des fusils et des canons dont ils se servent actuellement, leur ait
étéapportée par les Francs, ainsi que l'attestent les noms mêmes qu'ils
donnent àces sortes d'armes. Abel Remusat, Mélanges Asiat. 2d ser. tom.
i. p. 23. -- M.]

II. The conquest of Hindostan by the Moguls was reserved in a later
period for the house of Timour; but that of Iran, or Persia, was
achieved by Holagou Khan, ^* the grandson of Zingis, the brother and
lieutenant of the two successive emperors, Mangou and Cublai. I shall
not enumerate the crowd of sultans, emirs, and atabeks, whom he trampled
into dust; but the extirpation of the Assassins, or Ismaelians ^24 of
Persia, may be considered as a service to mankind. Among the hills to
the south of the Caspian, these odious sectaries had reigned with
impunity above a hundred and sixty years; and their prince, or Imam,
established his lieutenant to lead and govern the colony of Mount
Libanus, so famous and formidable in the history of the crusades. ^25
With the fanaticism of the Koran the Ismaelians had blended the Indian
transmigration, and the visions of their own prophets; and it was their
first duty to devote their souls and bodies in blind obedience to the
vicar of God. The daggers of his missionaries were felt both in the East
and West: the Christians and the Moslems enumerate, and persons
multiply, the illustrious victims that were sacrificed to the zeal,
avarice, or resentment of the old man(as he was corruptly styled) of the
mountain. But these daggers, his only arms, were broken by the sword of
Holagou, and not a vestige is left of the enemies of mankind, except the
word assassin, which, in the most odious sense, has been adopted in the
languages of Europe. The extinction of the Abbassides cannot be
indifferent to the spectators of their greatness and decline. Since the
fall of their Seljukian tyrants the caliphs had recovered their lawful
dominion of Bagdad and the Arabian Irak; but the city was distracted by
theological factions, and the commander of the faithful was lost in a
harem of seven hundred concubines. The invasion of the Moguls he
encountered with feeble arms and haughty embassies. "On the divine
decree," said the caliph Mostasem, "is founded the throne of the sons of
Abbas: and their foes shall surely be destroyed in this world and in the
next. Who is this Holagou that dares to rise against them? If he be
desirous of peace, let him instantly depart from the sacred territory;
and perhaps he may obtain from our clemency the pardon of his fault."
This presumption was cherished by a perfidious vizier, who assured his
master, that, even if the Barbarians had entered the city, the women and
children, from the terraces, would be sufficient to overwhelm them with
stones. But when Holagou touched the phantom, it instantly vanished into
smoke. After a siege of two months, Bagdad was stormed and sacked by the
Moguls; ^* and their savage commander pronounced the death of the caliph
Mostasem, the last of the temporal successors of Mahomet; whose noble
kinsmen, of the race of Abbas, had reigned in Asia above five hundred
years. Whatever might be the designs of the conqueror, the holy cities
of Mecca and Medina ^26 were protected by the Arabian desert; but the
Moguls spread beyond the Tigris and Euphrates, pillaged Aleppo and
Damascus, and threatened to join the Franks in the deliverance of
Jerusalem. Egypt was lost, had she been defended only by her feeble
offspring; but the Mamalukes had breathed in their infancy the keenness
of a Scythian air: equal in valor, superior in discipline, they met the
Moguls in many a well-fought field; and drove back the stream of
hostility to the eastward of the Euphrates. ^! But it overflowed with
resistless violence the kingdoms of Armenia ^!! and Anatolia, of which
the former was possessed by the Christians, and the latter by the Turks.
The sultans of Iconium opposed some resistance to the Mogul arms, till
Azzadin sought a refuge among the Greeks of Constantinople, and his
feeble successors, the last of the Seljukian dynasty, were finally
extirpated by the khans of Persia. ^*

[Footnote *: See the curious account of the expedition of Holagou,
translated from the Chinese, by M. Abel Remusat, Mélanges Asiat. 2d ser.
tom. i. p. 171. -- M.]

[Footnote 24: All that can be known of the Assassins of Persia and Syria
is poured from the copious, and even profuse, erudition of M. Falconet,
in two Mémoiresread before the Academy of Inscriptions, (tom. xvii. p.
127--170.)

Note:  Von Hammer's History of the Assassins has now thrown Falconet's
Dissertation into the shade. -- M.]

[Footnote 25: The Ismaelians of Syria, 40,000 Assassins, had acquired or
founded ten castles in the hills above Tortosa. About the year 1280,
they were extirpated by the Mamalukes.]

[Footnote *: Compare Von Hammer, Geschichte der Assassinen, p. 283, 307.
Wilken, Geschichte der Kreuzzüge, vol. vii. p. 406. Price, Chronological
Retrospect, vol. ii. p. 217--223. -- M.]

[Footnote 26: As a proof of the ignorance of the Chinese in foreign
transactions, I must observe, that some of their historians extend the
conquest of Zingis himself to Medina, the country of Mahomet, (Gaubil p.
42.)]

[Footnote !: Compare Wilken, vol. vii. p. 410. -- M.]

[Footnote !!: On the friendly relations of the Armenians with the
Mongols see Wilken, Geschichte der Kreuzzüge, vol. vii. p. 402. They
eagerly desired an alliance against the Mahometan powers. -- M.]

[Footnote *: Trebizond escaped, apparently by the dexterous politics of
the sovereign, but it acknowledged the Mogul supremacy. Falmerayer, p.
172. -- M.]

III. No sooner had Octai subverted the northern empire of China, than he
resolved to visit with his arms the most remote countries of the West.
Fifteen hundred thousand Moguls and Tartars were inscribed on the
military roll: of these the great khan selected a third, which he
intrusted to the command of his nephew Batou, the son of Tuli; who
reigned over his father's conquests to the north of the Caspian Sea. ^!
After a festival of forty days, Batou set forwards on this great
expedition; and such was the speed and ardor of his innumerable
squadrons, than in less than six years they had measured a line of
ninety degrees of longitude, a fourth part of the circumference of the
globe. The great rivers of Asia and Europe, the Volga and Kama, the Don
and Borysthenes, the Vistula and Danube, they either swam with their
horses or passed on the ice, or traversed in leathern boats, which
followed the camp, and transported their wagons and artillery. By the
first victories of Batou, the remains of national freedom were
eradicated in the immense plains of Turkestan and Kipzak. ^27 In his
rapid progress, he overran the kingdoms, as they are now styled, of
Astracan and Cazan; and the troops which he detached towards Mount
Caucasus explored the most secret recesses of Georgia and Circassia. The
civil discord of the great dukes, or princes, of Russia, betrayed their
country to the Tartars. They spread from Livonia to the Black Sea, and
both Moscow and Kiow, the modern and the ancient capitals, were reduced
to ashes; a temporary ruin, less fatal than the deep, and perhaps
indelible, mark, which a servitude of two hundred years has imprinted on
the character of the Russians. The Tartars ravaged with equal fury the
countries which they hoped to possess, and those which they were
hastening to leave. From the permanent conquest of Russia they made a
deadly, though transient, inroad into the heart of Poland, and as far as
the borders of Germany. The cities of Lublin and Cracow were
obliterated: ^* they approached the shores of the Baltic; and in the
battle of Lignitz they defeated the dukes of Silesia, the Polish
palatines, and the great master of the Teutonic order, and filled nine
sacks with the right ears of the slain. From Lignitz, the extreme point
of their western march, they turned aside to the invasion of Hungary;
and the presence or spirit of Batou inspired the host of five hundred
thousand men: the Carpathian hills could not be long impervious to their
divided columns; and their approach had been fondly disbelieved till it
was irresistibly felt. The king, Bela the Fourth, assembled the military
force of his counts and bishops; but he had alienated the nation by
adopting a vagrant horde of forty thousand families of Comans, and these
savage guests were provoked to revolt by the suspicion of treachery and
the murder of their prince. The whole country north of the Danube was
lost in a day, and depopulated in a summer; and the ruins of cities and
churches were overspread with the bones of the natives, who expiated the
sins of their Turkish ancestors. An ecclesiastic, who fled from the sack
of Waradin, describes the calamities which he had seen, or suffered; and
the sanguinary rage of sieges and battles is far less atrocious than the
treatment of the fugitives, who had been allured from the woods under a
promise of peace and pardon and who were coolly slaughtered as soon as
they had performed the labors of the harvest and vintage. In the winter
the Tartars passed the Danube on the ice, and advanced to Gran or
Strigonium, a German colony, and the metropolis of the kingdom. Thirty
engines were planted against the walls; the ditches were filled with
sacks of earth and dead bodies; and after a promiscuous massacre, three
hundred noble matrons were slain in the presence of the khan. Of all the
cities and fortresses of Hungary, three alone survived the Tartar
invasion, and the unfortunate Bata hid his head among the islands of the
Adriatic.

[Footnote !: See the curious extracts from the Mahometan writers, Hist.
des Mongols, p. 707. -- M.]

[Footnote 27: The DashtéKipzak, or plain of Kipzak, extends on either
side of the Volga, in a boundless space towards the Jaik and
Borysthenes, and is supposed to contain the primitive name and nation of
the Cossacks.]

[Footnote *: Olmutz was gallantly and successfully defended by Stenberg,
Hist. des Mongols, p. 396. -- M.]

The Latin world was darkened by this cloud of savage hostility: a
Russian fugitive carried the alarm to Sweden; and the remote nations of
the Baltic and the ocean trembled at the approach of the Tartars, ^28
whom their fear and ignorance were inclined to separate from the human
species. Since the invasion of the Arabs in the eighth century, Europe
had never been exposed to a similar calamity: and if the disciples of
Mahomet would have oppressed her religion and liberty, it might be
apprehended that the shepherds of Scythia would extinguish her cities,
her arts, and all the institutions of civil society. The Roman pontiff
attempted to appease and convert these invincible Pagans by a mission of
Franciscan and Dominican friars; but he was astonished by the reply of
the khan, that the sons of God and of Zingis were invested with a divine
power to subdue or extirpate the nations; and that the pope would be
involved in the universal destruction, unless he visited in person, and
as a suppliant, the royal horde. The emperor Frederic the Second
embraced a more generous mode of defence; and his letters to the kings
of France and England, and the princes of Germany, represented the
common danger, and urged them to arm their vassals in this just and
rational crusade. ^29 The Tartars themselves were awed by the fame and
valor of the Franks; the town of Newstadt in Austria was bravely
defended against them by fifty knights and twenty crossbows; and they
raised the siege on the appearance of a German army. After wasting the
adjacent kingdoms of Servia, Bosnia, and Bulgaria, Batou slowly
retreated from the Danube to the Volga to enjoyed the rewards of victory
in the city and palace of Serai, which started at his command from the
midst of the desert. ^*

[Footnote 28: In the year 1238, the inhabitants of Gothia (Sweden) and
Frise were prevented, by their fear of the Tartars, from sending, as
usual, their ships to the herring fishery on the coast of England; and
as there was no exportation, forty or fifty of these fish were sold for
a shilling, (Matthew Paris, p. 396.) It is whimsical enough, that the
orders of a Mogul khan, who reigned on the borders of China, should have
lowered the price of herrings in the English market.]

[Footnote 29: I shall copy his characteristic or flattering epithets of
the different countries of Europe: Furens ac fervens ad arma Germania,
strenuæmilitiægenitrix et alumna Francia, bellicosa et audax Hispania,
virtuosa viris et classe munita fertilis Anglia, impetuosis bellatoribus
referta Alemannia, navalis Dacia, indomita Italia, pacis ignara
Burgundia, inquieta Apulia, cum maris Græci, Adriatici et Tyrrheni
insulis pyraticis et invictis, Cretâ, Cypro, Siciliâ, cum Oceano
conterterminis insulis, et regionibus, cruenta Hybernia, cum agili
Wallia palustris Scotia, glacialis Norwegia, suam electam militiam sub
vexillo Crucis destinabunt, &c. (Matthew Paris, p. 498.)]

[Footnote *: He was recalled by the death of Octai. -- M.]

IV. Even the poor and frozen regions of the north attracted the arms of
the Moguls: Sheibani khan, the brother of the great Batou, led a horde
of fifteen thousand families into the wilds of Siberia; and his
descendants reigned at Tobolskoi above three centuries, till the Russian
conquest. The spirit of enterprise which pursued the course of the Oby
and Yenisei must have led to the discovery of the icy sea. After
brushing away the monstrous fables, of men with dogs' heads and cloven
feet, we shall find, that, fifteen years after the death of Zingis, the
Moguls were informed of the name and manners of the Samoyedes in the
neighborhood of the polar circle, who dwelt in subterraneous huts, and
derived their furs and their food from the sole occupation of hunting.
^30

[Footnote 30: See Carpin's relation in Hackluyt, vol. i. p. 30. The
pedigree of the khans of Siberia is given by Abulghazi, (part viii. p.
485--495.) Have the Russians found no Tartar chronicles at Tobolskoi? *

Note: * See the account of the Mongol library in Bergman, Nomadische
Streifereyen, vol. iii. p. 185, 205, and Remusat, Hist. des Langues
Tartares, p. 327, and preface to Schmidt, Geschichte der Ost-Mongolen.
-- M.]

While China, Syria, and Poland, were invaded at the same time by the
Moguls and Tartars, the authors of the mighty mischief were content with
the knowledge and declaration, that their word was the sword of death.
Like the first caliphs, the first successors of Zingis seldom appeared
in person at the head of their victorious armies. On the banks of the
Onon and Selinga, the royal or golden hordeexhibited the contrast of
simplicity and greatness; of the roasted sheep and mare's milk which
composed their banquets; and of a distribution in one day of five
hundred wagons of gold and silver. The ambassadors and princes of Europe
and Asia were compelled to undertake this distant and laborious
pilgrimage; and the life and reign of the great dukes of Russia, the
kings of Georgia and Armenia, the sultans of Iconium, and the emirs of
Persia, were decided by the frown or smile of the great khan. The sons
and grandsons of Zingis had been accustomed to the pastoral life; but
the village of Caracorum ^31 was gradually ennobled by their election
and residence. A change of manners is implied in the removal of Octai
and Mangou from a tent to a house; and their example was imitated by the
princes of their family and the great officers of the empire. Instead of
the boundless forest, the enclosure of a park afforded the more indolent
pleasures of the chase; their new habitations were decorated with
painting and sculpture; their superfluous treasures were cast in
fountains, and basins, and statues of massy silver; and the artists of
China and Paris vied with each other in the service of the great khan.
^32 Caracorum contained two streets, the one of Chinese mechanics, the
other of Mahometan traders; and the places of religious worship, one
Nestorian church, two mosques, and twelve temples of various idols, may
represent in some degree the number and division of inhabitants. Yet a
French missionary declares, that the town of St. Denys, near Paris, was
more considerable than the Tartar capital; and that the whole palace of
Mangou was scarcely equal to a tenth part of that Benedictine abbey. The
conquests of Russia and Syria might amuse the vanity of the great khans;
but they were seated on the borders of China; the acquisition of that
empire was the nearest and most interesting object; and they might learn
from their pastoral economy, that it is for the advantage of the
shepherd to protect and propagate his flock. I have already celebrated
the wisdom and virtue of a Mandarin who prevented the desolation of five
populous and cultivated provinces. In a spotless administration of
thirty years, this friend of his country and of mankind continually
labored to mitigate, or suspend, the havoc of war; to save the
monuments, and to rekindle the flame, of science; to restrain the
military commander by the restoration of civil magistrates; and to
instil the love of peace and justice into the minds of the Moguls. He
struggled with the barbarism of the first conquerors; but his salutary
lessons produced a rich harvest in the second generation. ^* The
northern, and by degrees the southern, empire acquiesced in the
government of Cublai, the lieutenant, and afterwards the successor, of
Mangou; and the nation was loyal to a prince who had been educated in
the manners of China. He restored the forms of her venerable
constitution; and the victors submitted to the laws, the fashions, and
even the prejudices, of the vanquished people. This peaceful triumph,
which has been more than once repeated, may be ascribed, in a great
measure, to the numbers and servitude of the Chinese. The Mogul army was
dissolved in a vast and populous country; and their emperors adopted
with pleasure a political system, which gives to the prince the solid
substance of despotism, and leaves to the subject the empty names of
philosophy, freedom, and filial obedience. ^* Under the reign of Cublai,
letters and commerce, peace and justice, were restored; the great canal,
of five hundred miles, was opened from Nankin to the capital: he fixed
his residence at Pekin; and displayed in his court the magnificence of
the greatest monarch of Asia. Yet this learned prince declined from the
pure and simple religion of his great ancestor: he sacrificed to the
idol Fo; and his blind attachment to the lamas of Thibet and the bonzes
of China ^33 provoked the censure of the disciples of Confucius. His
successors polluted the palace with a crowd of eunuchs, physicians, and
astrologers, while thirteen millions of their subjects were consumed in
the provinces by famine. One hundred and forty years after the death of
Zingis, his degenerate race, the dynasty of the Yuen, was expelled by a
revolt of the native Chinese; and the Mogul emperors were lost in the
oblivion of the desert. Before this revolution, they had forfeited their
supremacy over the dependent branches of their house, the khans of
Kipzak and Russia, the khans of Zagatai, or Transoxiana, and the khans
of Iran or Persia. By their distance and power, these royal lieutenants
had soon been released from the duties of obedience; and after the death
of Cublai, they scorned to accept a sceptre or a title from his unworthy
successors. According to their respective situations, they maintained
the simplicity of the pastoral life, or assumed the luxury of the cities
of Asia; but the princes and their hordes were alike disposed for the
reception of a foreign worship. After some hesitation between the Gospel
and the Koran, they conformed to the religion of Mahomet; and while they
adopted for their brethren the Arabs and Persians, they renounced all
intercourse with the ancient Moguls, the idolaters of China.

[Footnote 31: The Map of D'Anville and the Chinese Itineraries (De
Guignes, tom. i. part ii. p. 57) seem to mark the position of Holin, or
Caracorum, about six hundred miles to the north-west of Pekin. The
distance between Selinginsky and Pekin is near 2000 Russian versts,
between 1300 and 1400 English miles, (Bell's Travels, vol. ii. p. 67.)]

[Footnote 32: Rubruquis found at Caracorum his countryman Guillaume
Boucher, orfevre de Paris, who had executed for the khan a silver tree
supported by four lions, and ejecting four different liquors. Abulghazi
(part iv. p. 366) mentions the painters of Kitay or China.]

[Footnote *: See the interesting sketch of the life of this minister
(Yelin-Thsouthsai) in the second volume of the second series of
Recherches Asiatiques, par A Remusat, p. 64. -- M.]

[Footnote *: Compare Hist. des Mongols, p. 616. -- M.]

[Footnote 33: The attachment of the khans, and the hatred of the
mandarins, to the bonzes and lamas (Duhalde, Hist. de la Chine, tom. i.
p. 502, 503) seems to represent them as the priests of the same god, of
the Indian Fo, whose worship prevails among the sects of Hindostan Siam,
Thibet, China, and Japan. But this mysterious subject is still lost in a
cloud, which the researchers of our Asiatic Society may gradually
dispel.]

Chapter LXIV: Moguls, Ottoman Turks. -- Part III.

In this shipwreck of nations, some surprise may be excited by the escape
of the Roman empire, whose relics, at the time of the Mogul invasion,
were dismembered by the Greeks and Latins. Less potent than Alexander,
they were pressed, like the Macedonian, both in Europe and Asia, by the
shepherds of Scythia; and had the Tartars undertaken the siege,
Constantinople must have yielded to the fate of Pekin, Samarcand, and
Bagdad. The glorious and voluntary retreat of Batou from the Danube was
insulted by the vain triumph of the Franks and Greeks; ^34 and in a
second expedition death surprised him in full march to attack the
capital of the Cæsars. His brother Borga carried the Tartar arms into
Bulgaria and Thrace; but he was diverted from the Byzantine war by a
visit to Novogorod, in the fifty-seventh degree of latitude, where he
numbered the inhabitants and regulated the tributes of Russia. The Mogul
khan formed an alliance with the Mamalukes against his brethren of
Persia: three hundred thousand horse penetrated through the gates of
Derbend; and the Greeks might rejoice in the first example of domestic
war. After the recovery of Constantinople, Michael Palæologus, ^35 at a
distance from his court and army, was surprised and surrounded in a
Thracian castle, by twenty thousand Tartars. But the object of their
march was a private interest: they came to the deliverance of Azzadin,
the Turkish sultan; and were content with his person and the treasure of
the emperor. Their general Noga, whose name is perpetuated in the hordes
of Astracan, raised a formidable rebellion against Mengo Timour, the
third of the khans of Kipzak; obtained in marriage Maria, the natural
daughter of Palæologus; and guarded the dominions of his friend and
father. The subsequent invasions of a Scythian cast were those of
outlaws and fugitives: and some thousands of Alani and Comans, who had
been driven from their native seats, were reclaimed from a vagrant life,
and enlisted in the service of the empire. Such was the influence in
Europe of the invasion of the Moguls. The first terror of their arms
secured, rather than disturbed, the peace of the Roman Asia. The sultan
of Iconium solicited a personal interview with John Vataces; and his
artful policy encouraged the Turks to defend their barrier against the
common enemy. ^36 That barrier indeed was soon overthrown; and the
servitude and ruin of the Seljukians exposed the nakedness of the
Greeks. The formidable Holagou threatened to march to Constantinople at
the head of four hundred thousand men; and the groundless panic of the
citizens of Nice will present an image of the terror which he had
inspired. The accident of a procession, and the sound of a doleful
litany, "From the fury of the Tartars, good Lord, deliver us," had
scattered the hasty report of an assault and massacre. In the blind
credulity of fear, the streets of Nice were crowded with thousands of
both sexes, who knew not from what or to whom they fled; and some hours
elapsed before the firmness of the military officers could relieve the
city from this imaginary foe. But the ambition of Holagou and his
successors was fortunately diverted by the conquest of Bagdad, and a
long vicissitude of Syrian wars; their hostility to the Moslems inclined
them to unite with the Greeks and Franks; ^37 and their generosity or
contempt had offered the kingdom of Anatolia as the reward of an
Armenian vassal. The fragments of the Seljukian monarchy were disputed
by the emirs who had occupied the cities or the mountains; but they all
confessed the supremacy of the khans of Persia; and he often interposed
his authority, and sometimes his arms, to check their depredations, and
to preserve the peace and balance of his Turkish frontier. The death of
Cazan, ^38 one of the greatest and most accomplished princes of the
house of Zingis, removed this salutary control; and the decline of the
Moguls gave a free scope to the rise and progress of the Ottoman Empire.
^39

[Footnote 34: Some repulse of the Moguls in Hungary (Matthew Paris, p.
545, 546) might propagate and color the report of the union and victory
of the kings of the Franks on the confines of Bulgaria. Abulpharagius
(Dynast. p. 310) after forty years, beyond the Tigris, might be easily
deceived.]

[Footnote 35: See Pachymer, l. iii. c. 25, and l. ix. c. 26, 27; and the
false alarm at Nice, l. iii. c. 27. Nicephorus Gregoras, l. iv. c. 6.]

[Footnote 36: G. Acropolita, p. 36, 37. Nic. Greg. l. ii. c. 6, l. iv.
c. 5.]

[Footnote 37: Abulpharagius, who wrote in the year 1284, declares that
the Moguls, since the fabulous defeat of Batou, had not attacked either
the Franks or Greeks; and of this he is a competent witness. Hayton
likewise, the Armenian prince, celebrates their friendship for himself
and his nation.]

[Footnote 38: Pachymer gives a splendid character of Cazan Khan, the
rival of Cyrus and Alexander, (l. xii. c. 1.) In the conclusion of his
history (l. xiii. c. 36) he hopesmuch from the arrival of 30,000
Tochars, or Tartars, who were ordered by the successor of Cazan to
restrain the Turks of Bithynia, A.D. 1308.]

[Footnote 39: The origin of the Ottoman dynasty is illustrated by the
critical learning of Mm. De Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. iv. p.
329--337) and D'Anville, (Empire Turc, p. 14--22,) two inhabitants of
Paris, from whom the Orientals may learn the history and geography of
their own country. *

Note: * They may be still more enlightened by the Geschichte des Osman
Reiches, by M. von Hammer Purgstall of Vienna. -- M.]

After the retreat of Zingis, the sultan Gelaleddin of Carizme had
returned from India to the possession and defence of his Persian
kingdoms. In the space of eleven years, than hero fought in person
fourteen battles; and such was his activity, that he led his cavalry in
seventeen days from Teflis to Kerman, a march of a thousand miles. Yet
he was oppressed by the jealousy of the Moslem princes, and the
innumerable armies of the Moguls; and after his last defeat, Gelaleddin
perished ignobly in the mountains of Curdistan. His death dissolved a
veteran and adventurous army, which included under the name of
Carizmians or Corasmins many Turkman hordes, that had attached
themselves to the sultan's fortune. The bolder and more powerful chiefs
invaded Syria, and violated the holy sepulchre of Jerusalem: the more
humble engaged in the service of Aladin, sultan of Iconium; and among
these were the obscure fathers of the Ottoman line. They had formerly
pitched their tents near the southern banks of the Oxus, in the plains
of Mahan and Nesa; and it is somewhat remarkable, that the same spot
should have produced the first authors of the Parthian and Turkish
empires. At the head, or in the rear, of a Carizmian army, Soliman Shah
was drowned in the passage of the Euphrates: his son Orthogrul became
the soldier and subject of Aladin, and established at Surgut, on the
banks of the Sangar, a camp of four hundred families or tents, whom he
governed fifty-two years both in peace and war. He was the father of
Thaman, or Athman, whose Turkish name has been melted into the
appellation of the caliph Othman; and if we describe that pastoral chief
as a shepherd and a robber, we must separate from those characters all
idea of ignominy and baseness. Othman possessed, and perhaps surpassed,
the ordinary virtues of a soldier; and the circumstances of time and
place were propitious to his independence and success. The Seljukian
dynasty was no more; and the distance and decline of the Mogul khans
soon enfranchised him from the control of a superior. He was situate on
the verge of the Greek empire: the Koran sanctified his gazi, or holy
war, against the infidels; and their political errors unlocked the
passes of Mount Olympus, and invited him to descend into the plains of
Bithynia. Till the reign of Palæologus, these passes had been vigilantly
guarded by the militia of the country, who were repaid by their own
safety and an exemption from taxes. The emperor abolished their
privilege and assumed their office; but the tribute was rigorously
collected, the custody of the passes was neglected, and the hardy
mountaineers degenerated into a trembling crowd of peasants without
spirit or discipline. It was on the twenty-seventh of July, in the year
twelve hundred and ninety-nine of the Christian æra, that Othman first
invaded the territory of Nicomedia; ^40 and the singular accuracy of the
date seems to disclose some foresight of the rapid and destructive
growth of the monster. The annals of the twenty-seven years of his reign
would exhibit a repetition of the same inroads; and his hereditary
troops were multiplied in each campaign by the accession of captives and
volunteers. Instead of retreating to the hills, he maintained the most
useful and defensive posts; fortified the towns and castles which he had
first pillaged; and renounced the pastoral life for the baths and
palaces of his infant capitals. But it was not till Othman was oppressed
by age and infirmities, that he received the welcome news of the
conquest of Prusa, which had been surrendered by famine or treachery to
the arms of his son Orchan. The glory of Othman is chiefly founded on
that of his descendants; but the Turks have transcribed or composed a
royal testament of his last counsels of justice and moderation. ^41

[Footnote 40: See Pachymer, l. x. c. 25, 26, l. xiii. c. 33, 34, 36; and
concerning the guard of the mountains, l. i. c. 3--6: Nicephorus
Gregoras, l. vii. c. l., and the first book of Laonicus Chalcondyles,
the Athenian.]

[Footnote 41: I am ignorant whether the Turks have any writers older
than Mahomet II., * nor can I reach beyond a meagre chronicle (Annales
Turcici ad Annum 1550) translated by John Gaudier, and published by
Leunclavius, (ad calcem Laonic. Chalcond. p. 311--350,) with copious
pandects, or commentaries. The history of the Growth and Decay (A.D.
1300--1683) of the Othman empire was translated into English from the
Latin MS. of Demetrius Cantemir, prince of Moldavia, (London, 1734, in
folio.) The author is guilty of strange blunders in Oriental history;
but he was conversant with the language, the annals, and institutions of
the Turks. Cantemir partly draws his materials from the Synopsis of
Saadi Effendi of Larissa, dedicated in the year 1696 to Sultan Mustapha,
and a valuable abridgment of the original historians. In one of the
Ramblers, Dr. Johnson praises Knolles (a General History of the Turks to
the present Year. London, 1603) as the first of historians, unhappy only
in the choice of his subject. Yet I much doubt whether a partial and
verbose compilation from Latin writers, thirteen hundred folio pages of
speeches and battles, can either instruct or amuse an enlightened age,
which requires from the historian some tincture of philosophy and
criticism.

Note: * We could have wished that M. von Hammer had given a more clear
and distinct reply to this question of Gibbon. In a note, vol. i. p.
630. M. von Hammer shows that they had not only sheiks (religious
writers) and learned lawyers, but poets and authors on medicine. But the
inquiry of Gibbon obviously refers to historians. The oldest of their
historical works, of which V. Hammer makes use, is the "Tarichi Aaschik
Paschasade," i. e. the History of the Great Grandson of Aaschik Pasha,
who was a dervis and celebrated ascetic poet in the reign of Murad
(Amurath) I. Ahmed, the author of the work, lived during the reign of
Bajazet II., but, he says, derived much information from the book of
Scheik Jachshi, the son of Elias, who was Imaum to Sultan Orchan, (the
second Ottoman king) and who related, from the lips of his father, the
circumstances of the earliest Ottoman history. This book (having
searched for it in vain for five-and-twenty years) our author found at
length in the Vatican. All the other Turkish histories on his list, as
indeed this, were writtenduring the reign of Mahomet II. It does not
appear whether any of the rest cite earlier authorities of equal value
with that claimed by the "Tarichi Aaschik Paschasade." -- M. (in
Quarterly Review, vol. xlix. p. 292.)]

From the conquest of Prusa, we may date the true æra of the Ottoman
empire. The lives and possessions of the Christian subjects were
redeemed by a tribute or ransom of thirty thousand crowns of gold; and
the city, by the labors of Orchan, assumed the aspect of a Mahometan
capital; Prusa was decorated with a mosque, a college, and a hospital,
of royal foundation; the Seljukian coin was changed for the name and
impression of the new dynasty: and the most skilful professors, of human
and divine knowledge, attracted the Persian and Arabian students from
the ancient schools of Oriental learning. The office of vizier was
instituted for Aladin, the brother of Orchan; ^* and a different habit
distinguished the citizens from the peasants, the Moslems from the
infidels. All the troops of Othman had consisted of loose squadrons of
Turkman cavalry; who served without pay and fought without discipline:
but a regular body of infantry was first established and trained by the
prudence of his son. A great number of volunteers was enrolled with a
small stipend, but with the permission of living at home, unless they
were summoned to the field: their rude manners, and seditious temper,
disposed Orchan to educate his young captives as his soldiers and those
of the prophet; but the Turkish peasants were still allowed to mount on
horseback, and follow his standard, with the appellation and the hopes
of freebooters. ^! By these arts he formed an army of twenty-five
thousand Moslems: a train of battering engines was framed for the use of
sieges; and the first successful experiment was made on the cities of
Nice and Nicomedia. Orchan granted a safe-conduct to all who were
desirous of departing with their families and effects; but the widows of
the slain were given in marriage to the conquerors; and the sacrilegious
plunder, the books, the vases, and the images, were sold or ransomed at
Constantinople. The emperor Andronicus the Younger was vanquished and
wounded by the son of Othman: ^42 ^!! he subdued the whole province or
kingdom of Bithynia, as far as the shores of the Bosphorus and
Hellespont; and the Christians confessed the justice and clemency of a
reign which claimed the voluntary attachment of the Turks of Asia. Yet
Orchan was content with the modest title of emir; and in the list of his
compeers, the princes of Roum or Anatolia, ^43 his military forces were
surpassed by the emirs of Ghermian and Caramania, each of whom could
bring into the field an army of forty thousand men. Their domains were
situate in the heart of the Seljukian kingdom; but the holy warriors,
though of inferior note, who formed new principalities on the Greek
empire, are more conspicuous in the light of history. The maritime
country from the Propontis to the Mæander and the Isle of Rhodes, so
long threatened and so often pillaged, was finally lost about the
thirteenth year of Andronicus the Elder. ^44 Two Turkish chieftains,
Sarukhan and Aidin, left their names to their conquests, and their
conquests to their posterity. The captivity or ruin of the sevenchurches
of Asia was consummated; and the barbarous lords of Ionia and Lydia
still trample on the monuments of classic and Christian antiquity. In
the loss of Ephesus, the Christians deplored the fall of the first
angel, the extinction of the first candlestick, of the Revelations; ^45
the desolation is complete; and the temple of Diana, or the church of
Mary, will equally elude the search of the curious traveller. The circus
and three stately theatres of Laodicea are now peopled with wolves and
foxes; Sardes is reduced to a miserable village; the God of Mahomet,
without a rival or a son, is invoked in the mosques of Thyatira and
Pergamus; and the populousness of Smyrna is supported by the foreign
trade of the Franks and Armenians. Philadelphia alone has been saved by
prophecy, or courage. At a distance from the sea, forgotten by the
emperors, encompassed on all sides by the Turks, her valiant citizens
defended their religion and freedom above fourscore years; and at length
capitulated with the proudest of the Ottomans. Among the Greek colonies
and churches of Asia, Philadelphia is still erect; a column in a scene
of ruins; a pleasing example, that the paths of honor and safety may
sometimes be the same. The servitude of Rhodes was delayed about two
centuries by the establishment of the knights of St. John of Jerusalem:
^46 under the discipline of the order, that island emerged into fame and
opulence; the noble and warlike monks were renowned by land and sea: and
the bulwark of Christendom provoked, and repelled, the arms of the Turks
and Saracens.

[Footnote *: Von Hammer, Osm. Geschichte, vol. i. p. 82. -- M.]

[Footnote !: Ibid. p. 91. -- M.]

[Footnote 42: Cantacuzene, though he relates the battle and heroic
flight of the younger Andronicus, (l. ii. c. 6, 7, 8,) dissembles by his
silence the loss of Prusa, Nice, and Nicomedia, which are fairly
confessed by Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. viii. 15, ix. 9, 13, xi. 6.) It
appears that Nice was taken by Orchan in 1330, and Nicomedia in 1339,
which are somewhat different from the Turkish dates.]

[Footnote !!: For the conquests of Orchan over the ten pachaliks, or
kingdoms of the Seljukians, in Asia Minor. see V. Hammer, vol. i. p.
112. -- M.]

[Footnote 43: The partition of the Turkish emirs is extracted from two
contemporaries, the Greek Nicephorus Gregoras (l. vii. 1) and the
Arabian Marakeschi, (De Guignes, tom. ii. P. ii. p. 76, 77.) See
likewise the first book of Laonicus Chalcondyles.]

[Footnote 44: Pachymer, l. xiii. c. 13.]

[Footnote 45: See the Travels of Wheeler and Spon, of Pocock and
Chandler, and more particularly Smith's Survey of the Seven Churches of
Asia, p. 205--276. The more pious antiquaries labor to reconcile the
promises and threats of the author of the Revelations with the
presentstate of the seven cities. Perhaps it would be more prudent to
confine his predictions to the characters and events of his own times.]

[Footnote 46: Consult the ivth book of the Histoire de l'Ordre de
Malthe, par l'Abbéde Vertot. That pleasing writer betrays his ignorance,
in supposing that Othman, a freebooter of the Bithynian hills, could
besiege Rhodes by sea and land.]

The Greeks, by their intestine divisions, were the authors of their
final ruin. During the civil wars of the elder and younger Andronicus,
the son of Othman achieved, almost without resistance, the conquest of
Bithynia; and the same disorders encouraged the Turkish emirs of Lydia
and Ionia to build a fleet, and to pillage the adjacent islands and the
sea-coast of Europe. In the defence of his life and honor, Cantacuzene
was tempted to prevent, or imitate, his adversaries, by calling to his
aid the public enemies of his religion and country. Amir, the son of
Aidin, concealed under a Turkish garb the humanity and politeness of a
Greek; he was united with the great domestic by mutual esteem and
reciprocal services; and their friendship is compared, in the vain
rhetoric of the times, to the perfect union of Orestes and Pylades. ^47
On the report of the danger of his friend, who was persecuted by an
ungrateful court, the prince of Ionia assembled at Smyrna a fleet of
three hundred vessels, with an army of twenty-nine thousand men; sailed
in the depth of winter, and cast anchor at the mouth of the Hebrus. From
thence, with a chosen band of two thousand Turks, he marched along the
banks of the river, and rescued the empress, who was besieged in
Demotica by the wild Bulgarians. At that disastrous moment, the life or
death of his beloved Cantacuzene was concealed by his flight into
Servia: but the grateful Irene, impatient to behold her deliverer,
invited him to enter the city, and accompanied her message with a
present of rich apparel and a hundred horses. By a peculiar strain of
delicacy, the Gentle Barbarian refused, in the absence of an unfortunate
friend, to visit his wife, or to taste the luxuries of the palace;
sustained in his tent the rigor of the winter; and rejected the
hospitable gift, that he might share the hardships of two thousand
companions, all as deserving as himself of that honor and distinction.
Necessity and revenge might justify his predatory excursions by sea and
land: he left nine thousand five hundred men for the guard of his fleet;
and persevered in the fruitless search of Cantacuzene, till his
embarkation was hastened by a fictitious letter, the severity of the
season, the clamors of his independent troops, and the weight of his
spoil and captives. In the prosecution of the civil war, the prince of
Ionia twice returned to Europe; joined his arms with those of the
emperor; besieged Thessalonica, and threatened Constantinople. Calumny
might affix some reproach on his imperfect aid, his hasty departure, and
a bribe of ten thousand crowns, which he accepted from the Byzantine
court; but his friend was satisfied; and the conduct of Amir is excused
by the more sacred duty of defending against the Latins his hereditary
dominions. The maritime power of the Turks had united the pope, the king
of Cyprus, the republic of Venice, and the order of St. John, in a
laudable crusade; their galleys invaded the coast of Ionia; and Amir was
slain with an arrow, in the attempt to wrest from the Rhodian knights
the citadel of Smyrna. ^48 Before his death, he generously recommended
another ally of his own nation; not more sincere or zealous than
himself, but more able to afford a prompt and powerful succor, by his
situation along the Propontis and in the front of Constantinople. By the
prospect of a more advantageous treaty, the Turkish prince of Bithynia
was detached from his engagements with Anne of Savoy; and the pride of
Orchan dictated the most solemn protestations, that if he could obtain
the daughter of Cantacuzene, he would invariably fulfil the duties of a
subject and a son. Parental tenderness was silenced by the voice of
ambition: the Greek clergy connived at the marriage of a Christian
princess with a sectary of Mahomet; and the father of Theodora
describes, with shameful satisfaction, the dishonor of the purple. ^49 A
body of Turkish cavalry attended the ambassadors, who disembarked from
thirty vessels, before his camp of Selybria. A stately pavilion was
erected, in which the empress Irene passed the night with her daughters.
In the morning, Theodora ascended a throne, which was surrounded with
curtains of silk and gold: the troops were under arms; but the emperor
alone was on horseback. At a signal the curtains were suddenly withdrawn
to disclose the bride, or the victim, encircled by kneeling eunuchs and
hymeneal torches: the sound of flutes and trumpets proclaimed the joyful
event; and her pretended happiness was the theme of the nuptial song,
which was chanted by such poets as the age could produce. Without the
rites of the church, Theodora was delivered to her barbarous lord: but
it had been stipulated, that she should preserve her religion in the
harem of Bursa; and her father celebrates her charity and devotion in
this ambiguous situation. After his peaceful establishment on the throne
of Constantinople, the Greek emperor visited his Turkish ally, who with
four sons, by various wives, expected him at Scutari, on the Asiatic
shore. The two princes partook, with seeming cordiality, of the
pleasures of the banquet and the chase; and Theodora was permitted to
repass the Bosphorus, and to enjoy some days in the society of her
mother. But the friendship of Orchan was subservient to his religion and
interest; and in the Genoese war he joined without a blush the enemies
of Cantacuzene.

[Footnote 47: Nicephorus Gregoras has expatiated with pleasure on this
amiable character, (l. xii. 7, xiii. 4, 10, xiv. 1, 9, xvi. 6.)
Cantacuzene speaks with honor and esteem of his ally, (l. iii. c. 56,
57, 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 86, 89, 95, 96;) but he seems ignorant of his
own sentimental passion for the Turks, and indirectly denies the
possibility of such unnatural friendship, (l. iv. c. 40.)]

[Footnote 48: After the conquest of Smyrna by the Latins, the defence of
this fortress was imposed by Pope Gregory XI. on the knights of Rhodes,
(see Vertot, l. v.)]

[Footnote 49: See Cantacuzenus, l. iii. c. 95. Nicephorus Gregoras, who,
for the light of Mount Thabor, brands the emperor with the names of
tyrant and Herod, excuses, rather than blames, this Turkish marriage,
and alleges the passion and power of Orchan, eggutatoV, kai th dunamo?
touV kat' auton hdh PersikouV (Turkish) uperairwn SatrapaV, (l. xv. 5.)
He afterwards celebrates his kingdom and armies. See his reign in
Cantemir, p. 24--30.]

In the treaty with the empress Anne, the Ottoman prince had inserted a
singular condition, that it should be lawful for him to sell his
prisoners at Constantinople, or transport them into Asia. A naked crowd
of Christians of both sexes and every age, of priests and monks, of
matrons and virgins, was exposed in the public market; the whip was
frequently used to quicken the charity of redemption; and the indigent
Greeks deplored the fate of their brethren, who were led away to the
worst evils of temporal and spiritual bondage ^50 Cantacuzene was
reduced to subscribe the same terms; and their execution must have been
still more pernicious to the empire: a body of ten thousand Turks had
been detached to the assistance of the empress Anne; but the entire
forces of Orchan were exerted in the service of his father. Yet these
calamities were of a transient nature; as soon as the storm had passed
away, the fugitives might return to their habitations; and at the
conclusion of the civil and foreign wars, Europe was completely
evacuated by the Moslems of Asia. It was in his last quarrel with his
pupil that Cantacuzene inflicted the deep and deadly wound, which could
never be healed by his successors, and which is poorly expiated by his
theological dialogues against the prophet Mahomet. Ignorant of their own
history, the modern Turks confound their first and their final passage
of the Hellespont, ^51 and describe the son of Orchan as a nocturnal
robber, who, with eighty companions, explores by stratagem a hostile and
unknown shore. Soliman, at the head of ten thousand horse, was
transported in the vessels, and entertained as the friend, of the Greek
emperor. In the civil wars of Romania, he performed some service and
perpetrated more mischief; but the Chersonesus was insensibly filled
with a Turkish colony; and the Byzantine court solicited in vain the
restitution of the fortresses of Thrace. After some artful delays
between the Ottoman prince and his son, their ransom was valued at sixty
thousand crowns, and the first payment had been made when an earthquake
shook the walls and cities of the provinces; the dismantled places were
occupied by the Turks; and Gallipoli, the key of the Hellespont, was
rebuilt and repeopled by the policy of Soliman. The abdication of
Cantacuzene dissolved the feeble bands of domestic alliance; and his
last advice admonished his countrymen to decline a rash contest, and to
compare their own weakness with the numbers and valor, the discipline
and enthusiasm, of the Moslems. His prudent counsels were despised by
the headstrong vanity of youth, and soon justified by the victories of
the Ottomans. But as he practised in the field the exercise of the
jerid, Soliman was killed by a fall from his horse; and the aged Orchan
wept and expired on the tomb of his valiant son. ^*

[Footnote 50: The most lively and concise picture of this captivity may
be found in the history of Ducas, (c. 8,) who fairly describes what
Cantacuzene confesses with a guilty blush!]

[Footnote 51: In this passage, and the first conquests in Europe,
Cantemir (p. 27, &c.) gives a miserable idea of his Turkish guides; nor
am I much better satisfied with Chalcondyles, (l. i. p. 12, &c.) They
forget to consult the most authentic record, the ivth book of
Cantacuzene. I likewise regret the last books, which are still
manuscript, of Nicephorus Gregoras. *

Note: * Von Hammer excuses the silence with which the Turkish historians
pass over the earlier intercourse of the Ottomans with the European
continent, of which he enumerates sixteen different occasions, as if
they disdained those peaceful incursions by which they gained no
conquest, and established no permanent footing on the Byzantine
territory. Of the romantic account of Soliman's first expedition, he
says, "As yet the prose of history had not asserted its right over the
poetry of tradition." This defence would scarcely be accepted as
satisfactory by the historian of the Decline and Fall. -- M. (in
Quarterly Review, vol. xlix. p. 293.)]

[Footnote *: In the 75th year of his age, the 35th of his reign. V.
Hammer. M.]

Chapter LXIV: Moguls, Ottoman Turks. -- Part IV.

But the Greeks had not time to rejoice in the death of their enemies;
and the Turkish cimeter was wielded with the same spirit by Amurath the
First, the son of Orchan, and the brother of Soliman. By the pale and
fainting light of the Byzantine annals, ^52 we can discern, that he
subdued without resistance the whole province of Romania or Thrace, from
the Hellespont to Mount Hæmus, and the verge of the capital; and that
Adrianople was chosen for the royal seat of his government and religion
in Europe. Constantinople, whose decline is almost coeval with her
foundation, had often, in the lapse of a thousand years, been assaulted
by the Barbarians of the East and West; but never till this fatal hour
had the Greeks been surrounded, both in Asia and Europe, by the arms of
the same hostile monarchy. Yet the prudence or generosity of Amurath
postponed for a while this easy conquest; and his pride was satisfied
with the frequent and humble attendance of the emperor John Palæologus
and his four sons, who followed at his summons the court and camp of the
Ottoman prince. He marched against the Sclavonian nations between the
Danube and the Adriatic, the Bulgarians, Servians, Bosnians, and
Albanians; and these warlike tribes, who had so often insulted the
majesty of the empire, were repeatedly broken by his destructive
inroads. Their countries did not abound either in gold or silver; nor
were their rustic hamlets and townships enriched by commerce or
decorated by the arts of luxury. But the natives of the soil have been
distinguished in every age by their hardiness of mind and body; and they
were converted by a prudent institution into the firmest and most
faithful supporters of the Ottoman greatness. ^53 The vizier of Amurath
reminded his sovereign that, according to the Mahometan law, he was
entitled to a fifth part of the spoil and captives; and that the duty
might easily be levied, if vigilant officers were stationed in
Gallipoli, to watch the passage, and to select for his use the stoutest
and most beautiful of the Christian youth. The advice was followed: the
edict was proclaimed; many thousands of the European captives were
educated in religion and arms; and the new militia was consecrated and
named by a celebrated dervis. Standing in the front of their ranks, he
stretched the sleeve of his gown over the head of the foremost soldier,
and his blessing was delivered in these words: "Let them be called
Janizaries, (Yengi cheri, or new soldiers;) may their countenance be
ever bright! their hand victorious! their sword keen! may their spear
always hang over the heads of their enemies! and wheresoever they go,
may they return with a white face!" ^54 ^* Such was the origin of these
haughty troops, the terror of the nations, and sometimes of the sultans
themselves. Their valor has declined, their discipline is relaxed, and
their tumultuary array is incapable of contending with the order and
weapons of modern tactics; but at the time of their institution, they
possessed a decisive superiority in war; since a regular body of
infantry, in constant exercise and pay, was not maintained by any of the
princes of Christendom. The Janizaries fought with the zeal of
proselytes against their idolatrouscountrymen; and in the battle of
Cossova, the league and independence of the Sclavonian tribes was
finally crushed. As the conqueror walked over the field, he observed
that the greatest part of the slain consisted of beardless youths; and
listened to the flattering reply of his vizier, that age and wisdom
would have taught them not to oppose his irresistible arms. But the
sword of his Janizaries could not defend him from the dagger of despair;
a Servian soldier started from the crowd of dead bodies, and Amurath was
pierced in the belly with a mortal wound. ^* The grandson of Othman was
mild in his temper, modest in his apparel, and a lover of learning and
virtue; but the Moslems were scandalized at his absence from public
worship; and he was corrected by the firmness of the mufti, who dared to
reject his testimony in a civil cause: a mixture of servitude and
freedom not unfrequent in Oriental history. ^55

[Footnote 52: After the conclusion of Cantacuzene and Gregoras, there
follows a dark interval of a hundred years. George Phranza, Michael
Ducas, and Laonicus Chalcondyles, all three wrote after the taking of
Constantinople.]

[Footnote 53: See Cantemir, p. 37--41, with his own large and curious
annotations.]

[Footnote 54: Whiteand blackface are common and proverbial expressions
of praise and reproach in the Turkish language. Hic nigerest, hunc tu
Romane caveto, was likewise a Latin sentence.]

[Footnote *: According to Von Hammer. vol. i. p. 90, Gibbon and the
European writers assign too late a date to this enrolment of the
Janizaries. It took place not in the reign of Amurath, but in that of
his predecessor Orchan. -- M.]

[Footnote *: Ducas has related this as a deliberate act of self-devotion
on the part of a Servian noble who pretended to desert, and stabbed
Amurath during a conference which he had requested. The Italian
translator of Ducas, published by Bekker in the new edition of the
Byzantines, has still further heightened the romance. See likewise in
Von Hammer (Osmanische Geschichte, vol. i. p. 138) the popular Servian
account, which resembles that of Ducas, and may have been the source of
that of his Italian translator. The Turkish account agrees more nearly
with Gibbon; but the Servian, (Milosch Kohilovisch) while he lay among
the heap of the dead, pretended to have some secret to impart to
Amurath, and stabbed him while he leaned over to listen. -- M.]

[Footnote 55: See the life and death of Morad, or Amurath I., in
Cantemir, (p 33--45,) the first book of Chalcondyles, and the Annales
Turcici of Leunclavius. According to another story, the sultan was
stabbed by a Croat in his tent; and this accident was alleged to
Busbequius (Epist i. p. 98) as an excuse for the unworthy precaution of
pinioning, as if were, between two attendants, an ambassador's arms,
when he is introduced to the royal presence.]

The character of Bajazet, the son and successor of Amurath, is strongly
expressed in his surname of Ilderim, or the lightning; and he might
glory in an epithet, which was drawn from the fiery energy of his soul
and the rapidity of his destructive march. In the fourteen years of his
reign, ^56 he incessantly moved at the head of his armies, from Boursa
to Adrianople, from the Danube to the Euphrates; and, though he
strenuously labored for the propagation of the law, he invaded, with
impartial ambition, the Christian and Mahometan princes of Europe and
Asia. From Angora to Amasia and Erzeroum, the northern regions of
Anatolia were reduced to his obedience: he stripped of their hereditary
possessions his brother emirs of Ghermian and Caramania, of Aidin and
Sarukhan; and after the conquest of Iconium the ancient kingdom of the
Seljukians again revived in the Ottoman dynasty. Nor were the conquests
of Bajazet less rapid or important in Europe. No sooner had he imposed a
regular form of servitude on the Servians and Bulgarians, than he passed
the Danube to seek new enemies and new subjects in the heart of
Moldavia. ^57 Whatever yet adhered to the Greek empire in Thrace,
Macedonia, and Thessaly, acknowledged a Turkish master: an obsequious
bishop led him through the gates of Thermopylæinto Greece; and we may
observe, as a singular fact, that the widow of a Spanish chief, who
possessed the ancient seat of the oracle of Delphi, deserved his favor
by the sacrifice of a beauteous daughter. The Turkish communication
between Europe and Asia had been dangerous and doubtful, till he
stationed at Gallipoli a fleet of galleys, to command the Hellespont and
intercept the Latin succors of Constantinople. While the monarch
indulged his passions in a boundless range of injustice and cruelty, he
imposed on his soldiers the most rigid laws of modesty and abstinence;
and the harvest was peaceably reaped and sold within the precincts of
his camp. Provoked by the loose and corrupt administration of justice,
he collected in a house the judges and lawyers of his dominions, who
expected that in a few moments the fire would be kindled to reduce them
to ashes. His ministers trembled in silence: but an Æthiopian buffoon
presumed to insinuate the true cause of the evil; and future venality
was left without excuse, by annexing an adequate salary to the office of
cadhi. ^58 The humble title of emir was no longer suitable to the
Ottoman greatness; and Bajazet condescended to accept a patent of sultan
from the caliphs who served in Egypt under the yoke of the Mamalukes:
^59 a last and frivolous homage that was yielded by force to opinion; by
the Turkish conquerors to the house of Abbas and the successors of the
Arabian prophet. The ambition of the sultan was inflamed by the
obligation of deserving this august title; and he turned his arms
against the kingdom of Hungary, the perpetual theatre of the Turkish
victories and defeats. Sigismond, the Hungarian king, was the son and
brother of the emperors of the West: his cause was that of Europe and
the church; and, on the report of his danger, the bravest knights of
France and Germany were eager to march under his standard and that of
the cross. In the battle of Nicopolis, Bajazet defeated a confederate
army of a hundred thousand Christians, who had proudly boasted, that if
the sky should fall, they could uphold it on their lances. The far
greater part were slain or driven into the Danube; and Sigismond,
escaping to Constantinople by the river and the Black Sea, returned
after a long circuit to his exhausted kingdom. ^60 In the pride of
victory, Bajazet threatened that he would besiege Buda; that he would
subdue the adjacent countries of Germany and Italy, and that he would
feed his horse with a bushel of oats on the altar of St. Peter at Rome.
His progress was checked, not by the miraculous interposition of the
apostle, not by a crusade of the Christian powers, but by a long and
painful fit of the gout. The disorders of the moral, are sometimes
corrected by those of the physical, world; and an acrimonious humor
falling on a single fibre of one man, may prevent or suspend the misery
of nations.

[Footnote 56: The reign of Bajazet I., or Ilderim Bayazid, is contained
in Cantemir, (p. 46,) the iid book of Chalcondyles, and the Annales
Turcici. The surname of Ilderim, or lightning, is an example, that the
conquerors and poets of every age have feltthe truth of a system which
derives the sublime from the principle of terror.]

[Footnote 57: Cantemir, who celebrates the victories of the great
Stephen over the Turks, (p. 47,) had composed the ancient and modern
state of his principality of Moldavia, which has been long promised, and
is still unpublished.]

[Footnote 58: Leunclav. Annal. Turcici, p. 318, 319. The venality of the
cadhis has long been an object of scandal and satire; and if we distrust
the observations of our travellers, we may consult the feeling of the
Turks themselves, (D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orientale, p. 216, 217, 229,
230.)]

[Footnote 59: The fact, which is attested by the Arabic history of Ben
Schounah, a contemporary Syrian, (De Guignes Hist. des Huns. tom. iv. p.
336.) destroys the testimony of Saad Effendi and Cantemir, (p. 14, 15,)
of the election of Othman to the dignity of sultan.]

[Footnote 60: See the Decades Rerum Hungaricarum (Dec. iii. l. ii. p.
379) of Bonfinius, an Italian, who, in the xvth century, was invited
into Hungary to compose an eloquent history of that kingdom. Yet, if it
be extant and accessible, I should give the preference to some homely
chronicle of the time and country.]

Such is the general idea of the Hungarian war; but the disastrous
adventure of the French has procured us some memorials which illustrate
the victory and character of Bajazet. ^61 The duke of Burgundy,
sovereign of Flanders, and uncle of Charles the Sixth, yielded to the
ardor of his son, John count of Nevers; and the fearless youth was
accompanied by four princes, his cousins, and those of the French
monarch. Their inexperience was guided by the Sire de Coucy, one of the
best and oldest captain of Christendom; ^62 but the constable, admiral,
and marshal of France ^63 commanded an army which did not exceed the
number of a thousand knights and squires. ^* These splendid names were
the source of presumption and the bane of discipline. So many might
aspire to command, that none were willing to obey; their national spirit
despised both their enemies and their allies; and in the persuasion that
Bajazet wouldfly, or mustfall, they began to compute how soon they
should visit Constantinople and deliver the holy sepulchre. When their
scouts announced the approach of the Turks, the gay and thoughtless
youths were at table, already heated with wine; they instantly clasped
their armor, mounted their horses, rode full speed to the vanguard, and
resented as an affront the advice of Sigismond, which would have
deprived them of the right and honor of the foremost attack. The battle
of Nicopolis would not have been lost, if the French would have obeyed
the prudence of the Hungarians; but it might have been gloriously won,
had the Hungarians imitated the valor of the French. They dispersed the
first line, consisting of the troops of Asia; forced a rampart of
stakes, which had been planted against the cavalry; broke, after a
bloody conflict, the Janizaries themselves; and were at length
overwhelmed by the numerous squadrons that issued from the woods, and
charged on all sides this handful of intrepid warriors. In the speed and
secrecy of his march, in the order and evolutions of the battle, his
enemies felt and admired the military talents of Bajazet. They accuse
his cruelty in the use of victory. After reserving the count of Nevers,
and four-and-twenty lords, ^* whose birth and riches were attested by
his Latin interpreters, the remainder of the French captives, who had
survived the slaughter of the day, were led before his throne; and, as
they refused to abjure their faith, were successively beheaded in his
presence. The sultan was exasperated by the loss of his bravest
Janizaries; and if it be true, that, on the eve of the engagement, the
French had massacred their Turkish prisoners, ^64 they might impute to
themselves the consequences of a just retaliation. ^! A knight, whose
life had been spared, was permitted to return to Paris, that he might
relate the deplorable tale, and solicit the ransom of the noble
captives. In the mean while, the count of Nevers, with the princes and
barons of France, were dragged along in the marches of the Turkish camp,
exposed as a grateful trophy to the Moslems of Europe and Asia, and
strictly confined at Boursa, as often as Bajazet resided in his capital.
The sultan was pressed each day to expiate with their blood the blood of
his martyrs; but he had pronounced that they should live, and either for
mercy or destruction his word was irrevocable. He was assured of their
value and importance by the return of the messenger, and the gifts and
intercessions of the kings of France and of Cyprus. Lusignan presented
him with a gold saltcellar of curious workmanship, and of the price of
ten thousand ducats; and Charles the Sixth despatched by the way of
Hungary a cast of Norwegian hawks, and six horse-loads of scarlet cloth,
of fine linen of Rheims, and of Arras tapestry, representing the battles
of the great Alexander. After much delay, the effect of distance rather
than of art, Bajazet agreed to accept a ransom of two hundred thousand
ducats for the count of Nevers and the surviving princes and barons: the
marshal Boucicault, a famous warrior, was of the number of the
fortunate; but the admiral of France had been slain in battle; and the
constable, with the Sire de Coucy, died in the prison of Boursa. This
heavy demand, which was doubled by incidental costs, fell chiefly on the
duke of Burgundy, or rather on his Flemish subjects, who were bound by
the feudal laws to contribute for the knighthood and captivity of the
eldest son of their lord. For the faithful discharge of the debt, some
merchants of Genoa gave security to the amount of five times the sum; a
lesson to those warlike times, that commerce and credit are the links of
the society of nations. It had been stipulated in the treaty, that the
French captives should swear never to bear arms against the person of
their conqueror; but the ungenerous restraint was abolished by Bajazet
himself. "I despise," said he to the heir of Burgundy, "thy oaths and
thy arms. Thou art young, and mayest be ambitious of effacing the
disgrace or misfortune of thy first chivalry. Assemble thy powers,
proclaim thy design, and be assured that Bajazet will rejoice to meet
thee a second time in a field of battle." Before their departure, they
were indulged in the freedom and hospitality of the court of Boursa. The
French princes admired the magnificence of the Ottoman, whose hunting
and hawking equipage was composed of seven thousand huntsmen and seven
thousand falconers. ^65 In their presence, and at his command, the belly
of one of his chamberlains was cut open, on a complaint against him for
drinking the goat's milk of a poor woman. The strangers were astonished
by this act of justice; but it was the justice of a sultan who disdains
to balance the weight of evidence, or to measure the degrees of guilt.

[Footnote 61: I should not complain of the labor of this work, if my
materials were always derived from such books as the chronicle of honest
Froissard, (vol. iv. c. 67, 72, 74, 79--83, 85, 87, 89,) who read
little, inquired much, and believed all. The original Mémoires of the
Maréchal de Boucicault (Partie i. c. 22--28) add some facts, but they
are dry and deficient, if compared with the pleasant garrulity of
Froissard.]

[Footnote 62: An accurate Memoir on the Life of Enguerrand VII., Sire de
Coucy, has been given by the Baron de Zurlauben, (Hist. de l'Académie
des Inscriptions, tom. xxv.) His rank and possessions were equally
considerable in France and England; and, in 1375, he led an army of
adventurers into Switzerland, to recover a large patrimony which he
claimed in right of his grandmother, the daughter of the emperor Albert
I. of Austria, (Sinner, Voyage dans la Suisse Occidentale, tom. i. p.
118--124.)]

[Footnote 63: That military office, so respectable at present, was still
more conspicuous when it was divided between two persons, (Daniel, Hist.
de la Milice Françoise, tom. ii. p. 5.) One of these, the marshal of the
crusade, was the famous Boucicault, who afterwards defended
Constantinople, governed Genoa, invaded the coast of Asia, and died in
the field of Azincour.]

[Footnote *: Daru, Hist. de Venice, vol. ii. p. 104, makes the whole
French army amount to 10,000 men, of whom 1000 were knights. The curious
volume of Schiltberger, a German of Munich, who was taken prisoner in
the battle, (edit. Munich, 1813,) and which V. Hammer receives as
authentic, gives the whole number at 6000. See Schiltberger. Reise in
dem Orient. and V. Hammer, note, p. 610. -- M.]

[Footnote *: According to Schiltberger there were only twelve French
lords granted to the prayer of the "duke of Burgundy," and "Herr Stephan
Synther, and Johann von Bodem." Schiltberger, p. 13. -- M.]

[Footnote 64: For this odious fact, the Abbéde Vertot quotes the Hist.
Anonyme de St. Denys, l. xvi. c. 10, 11. (Ordre de Malthe, tom. ii. p.
310.]

[Footnote !: See Schiltberger's very graphic account of the massacre. He
was led out to be slaughtered in cold blood with the rest f the
Christian prisoners, amounting to 10,000. He was spared at the
intercession of the son of Bajazet, with a few others, on account of
their extreme youth. No one under 20 years of age was put to death. The
"duke of Burgundy" was obliged to be a spectator of this butchery which
lasted from early in the morning till four o'clock, P. M. It ceased only
at the supplication of the leaders of Bajazet's army. Schiltberger, p.
14. -- M.]

[Footnote 65: Sherefeddin Ali (Hist. de Timour Bec, l. v. c. 13) allows
Bajazet a round number of 12,000 officers and servants of the chase. A
part of his spoils was afterwards displayed in a hunting-match of
Timour, l. hounds with satin housings; 2. leopards with collars set with
jewels; 3. Grecian greyhounds; and 4, dogs from Europe, as strong as
African lions, (idem, l. vi. c. 15.) Bajazet was particularly fond of
flying his hawks at cranes, (Chalcondyles, l. ii. p. 85.)]

After his enfranchisement from an oppressive guardian, John Palæologus
remained thirty-six years, the helpless, and, as it should seem, the
careless spectator of the public ruin. ^66 Love, or rather lust, was his
only vigorous passion; and in the embraces of the wives and virgins of
the city, the Turkish slave forgot the dishonor of the emperor of the
RomansAndronicus, his eldest son, had formed, at Adrianople, an intimate
and guilty friendship with Sauzes, the son of Amurath; and the two
youths conspired against the authority and lives of their parents. The
presence of Amurath in Europe soon discovered and dissipated their rash
counsels; and, after depriving Sauzes of his sight, the Ottoman
threatened his vassal with the treatment of an accomplice and an enemy,
unless he inflicted a similar punishment on his own son. Palæologus
trembled and obeyed; and a cruel precaution involved in the same
sentence the childhood and innocence of John, the son of the criminal.
But the operation was so mildly, or so unskilfully, performed, that the
one retained the sight of an eye, and the other was afflicted only with
the infirmity of squinting. Thus excluded from the succession, the two
princes were confined in the tower of Anema; and the piety of Manuel,
the second son of the reigning monarch, was rewarded with the gift of
the Imperial crown. But at the end of two years, the turbulence of the
Latins and the levity of the Greeks, produced a revolution; ^* and the
two emperors were buried in the tower from whence the two prisoners were
exalted to the throne. Another period of two years afforded Palæologus
and Manuel the means of escape: it was contrived by the magic or
subtlety of a monk, who was alternately named the angel or the devil:
they fled to Scutari; their adherents armed in their cause; and the two
Byzantine factions displayed the ambition and animosity with which Cæsar
and Pompey had disputed the empire of the world. The Roman world was now
contracted to a corner of Thrace, between the Propontis and the Black
Sea, about fifty miles in length and thirty in breadth; a space of
ground not more extensive than the lesser principalities of Germany or
Italy, if the remains of Constantinople had not still represented the
wealth and populousness of a kingdom. To restore the public peace, it
was found necessary to divide this fragment of the empire; and while
Palæologus and Manuel were left in possession of the capital, almost all
that lay without the walls was ceded to the blind princes, who fixed
their residence at Rhodosto and Selybria. In the tranquil slumber of
royalty, the passions of John Palæologus survived his reason and his
strength: he deprived his favorite and heir of a blooming princess of
Trebizond; and while the feeble emperor labored to consummate his
nuptials, Manuel, with a hundred of the noblest Greeks, was sent on a
peremptory summons to the Ottoman porte. They served with honor in the
wars of Bajazet; but a plan of fortifying Constantinople excited his
jealousy: he threatened their lives; the new works were instantly
demolished; and we shall bestow a praise, perhaps above the merit of
Palæologus, if we impute this last humiliation as the cause of his
death.

[Footnote 66: For the reigns of John Palæologus and his son Manuel, from
1354 to 1402, see Ducas, c. 9--15, Phranza, l. i. c. 16--21, and the ist
and iid books of Chalcondyles, whose proper subject is drowned in a sea
of episode.]

[Footnote *: According to Von Hammer it was the power of Bajazet, vol.
i. p. 218.]

The earliest intelligence of that event was communicated to Manuel, who
escaped with speed and secrecy from the palace of Boursa to the
Byzantine throne. Bajazet affected a proud indifference at the loss of
this valuable pledge; and while he pursued his conquests in Europe and
Asia, he left the emperor to struggle with his blind cousin John of
Selybria, who, in eight years of civil war, asserted his right of
primogeniture. At length, the ambition of the victorious sultan pointed
to the conquest of Constantinople; but he listened to the advice of his
vizier, who represented that such an enterprise might unite the powers
of Christendom in a second and more formidable crusade. His epistle to
the emperor was conceived in these words: "By the divine clemency, our
invincible cimeter has reduced to our obedience almost all Asia, with
many and large countries in Europe, excepting only the city of
Constantinople; for beyond the walls thou hast nothing left. Resign that
city; stipulate thy reward; or tremble, for thyself and thy unhappy
people, at the consequences of a rash refusal." But his ambassadors were
instructed to soften their tone, and to propose a treaty, which was
subscribed with submission and gratitude. A truce of ten years was
purchased by an annual tribute of thirty thousand crowns of gold; the
Greeks deplored the public toleration of the law of Mahomet, and Bajazet
enjoyed the glory of establishing a Turkish cadhi, and founding a royal
mosque in the metropolis of the Eastern church. ^67 Yet this truce was
soon violated by the restless sultan: in the cause of the prince of
Selybria, the lawful emperor, an army of Ottomans again threatened
Constantinople; and the distress of Manuel implored the protection of
the king of France. His plaintive embassy obtained much pity and some
relief; and the conduct of the succor was intrusted to the marshal
Boucicault, ^68 whose religious chivalry was inflamed by the desire of
revenging his captivity on the infidels. He sailed with four ships of
war, from Aiguesmortes to the Hellespont; forced the passage, which was
guarded by seventeen Turkish galleys; landed at Constantinople a supply
of six hundred men-at-arms and sixteen hundred archers; and reviewed
them in the adjacent plain, without condescending to number or array the
multitude of Greeks. By his presence, the blockade was raised both by
sea and land; the flying squadrons of Bajazet were driven to a more
respectful distance; and several castles in Europe and Asia were stormed
by the emperor and the marshal, who fought with equal valor by each
other's side. But the Ottomans soon returned with an increase of
numbers; and the intrepid Boucicault, after a year's struggle, resolved
to evacuate a country which could no longer afford either pay or
provisions for his soldiers. The marshal offered to conduct Manuel to
the French court, where he might solicit in person a supply of men and
money; and advised, in the mean while, that, to extinguish all domestic
discord, he should leave his blind competitor on the throne. The
proposal was embraced: the prince of Selybria was introduced to the
capital; and such was the public misery, that the lot of the exile
seemed more fortunate than that of the sovereign. Instead of applauding
the success of his vassal, the Turkish sultan claimed the city as his
own; and on the refusal of the emperor John, Constantinople was more
closely pressed by the calamities of war and famine. Against such an
enemy prayers and resistance were alike unavailing; and the savage would
have devoured his prey, if, in the fatal moment, he had not been
overthrown by another savage stronger than himself. By the victory of
Timour or Tamerlane, the fall of Constantinople was delayed about fifty
years; and this important, though accidental, service may justly
introduce the life and character of the Mogul conqueror.

[Footnote 67: Cantemir, p. 50--53. Of the Greeks, Ducas alone (c. 13,
15) acknowledges the Turkish cadhi at Constantinople. Yet even Ducas
dissembles the mosque.]

[Footnote 68: Mémoires du bon Messire Jean le Maingre, dit Boucicault,
Maréchal de France, partie irec. 30, 35.]

Chapter LXV: Elevation Of Timour Or Tamerlane, And His Death.Part I.

Elevation Of Timour Or Tamerlane To The Throne Of Samarcand. -- His
Conquests In Persia, Georgia, Tartary Russia, India, Syria, And
Anatolia. -- His Turkish War. -- Defeat And Captivity Of Bajazet. --
Death Of Timour. -- Civil War Of The Sons Of Bajazet. -- Restoration Of
The Turkish Monarchy By Mahomet The First. -- Siege Of Constantinople By
Amurath The Second.

The conquest and monarchy of the world was the first object of the
ambition of Timour. To live in the memory and esteem of future ages was
the second wish of his magnanimous spirit. All the civil and military
transactions of his reign were diligently recorded in the journals of
his secretaries: ^1 the authentic narrative was revised by the persons
best informed of each particular transaction; and it is believed in the
empire and family of Timour, that the monarch himself composed the
commentaries^2 of his life, and the institutions^3 of his government. ^4
But these cares were ineffectual for the preservation of his fame, and
these precious memorials in the Mogul or Persian language were concealed
from the world, or, at least, from the knowledge of Europe. The nations
which he vanquished exercised a base and impotent revenge; and ignorance
has long repeated the tale of calumny, ^5 which had disfigured the birth
and character, the person, and even the name, of Tamerlane. ^6 Yet his
real merit would be enhanced, rather than debased, by the elevation of a
peasant to the throne of Asia; nor can his lameness be a theme of
reproach, unless he had the weakness to blush at a natural, or perhaps
an honorable, infirmity. ^*

[Footnote 1: These journals were communicated to Sherefeddin, or
Cherefeddin Ali, a native of Yezd, who composed in the Persian language
a history of Timour Beg, which has been translated into French by M.
Petit de la Croix, (Paris, 1722, in 4 vols. 12 mo.,) and has always been
my faithful guide. His geography and chronology are wonderfully
accurate; and he may be trusted for public facts, though he servilely
praises the virtue and fortune of the hero. Timour's attention to
procure intelligence from his own and foreign countries may be seen in
the Institutions, p. 215, 217, 349, 351.]

[Footnote 2: These Commentaries are yet unknown in Europe: but Mr. White
gives some hope that they may be imported and translated by his friend
Major Davy, who had read in the East this "minute and faithful narrative
of an interesting and eventful period." *

Note: * The manuscript of Major Davy has been translated by Major
Stewart, and published by the Oriental Translation Committee of London.
It contains the life of Timour, from his birth to his forty-first year;
but the last thirty years of western war and conquest are wanting. Major
Stewart intimates that two manuscripts exist in this country containing
the whole work, but excuses himself, on account of his age, from
undertaking the laborious task of completing the translation. It is to
be hoped that the European public will be soon enabled to judge of the
value and authenticity of the Commentaries of the Cæsar of the East.
Major Stewart's work commences with the Book of Dreams and Omens -- a
wild, but characteristic, chronicle of Visions and Sortes Koranicæ.
Strange that a life of Timour should awaken a reminiscence of the diary
of Archbishop Laud! The early dawn and the gradual expression of his not
less splendid but more real visions of ambition are touched with the
simplicity of truth and nature. But we long to escape from the petty
feuds of the pastoral chieftain, to the triumphs and the legislation of
the conqueror of the world. -- M.]

[Footnote 3: I am ignorant whether the original institution, in the
Turki or Mogul language, be still extant. The Persic version, with an
English translation, and most valuable index, was published (Oxford,
1783, in 4to.) by the joint labors of Major Davy and Mr. White, the
Arabic professor. This work has been since translated from the Persic
into French, (Paris, 1787,) by M. Langlès, a learned Orientalist, who
has added the life of Timour, and many curious notes.]

[Footnote 4: Shaw Allum, the present Mogul, reads, values, but cannot
imitate, the institutions of his great ancestor. The English translator
relies on their internal evidence; but if any suspicions should arise of
fraud and fiction, they will not be dispelled by Major Davy's letter.
The Orientals have never cultivated the art of criticism; the patronage
of a prince, less honorable, perhaps, is not less lucrative than that of
a bookseller; nor can it be deemed incredible that a Persian, the
realauthor, should renounce the credit, to raise the value and price, of
the work.]

[Footnote 5: The original of the tale is found in the following work,
which is much esteemed for its florid elegance of style: Ahmedis
Arabsiad(Ahmed Ebn Arabshah) Vitæet Rerum gestarum Timuri. Arabice et
Latine. Edidit Samuel Henricus Manger. Franequer, 1767, 2 tom. in 4to.
This Syrian author is ever a malicious, and often an ignorant enemy: the
very titles of his chapters are injurious; as how the wicked, as how the
impious, as how the viper, &c. The copious article of Timur, in
Bibliothèque Orientale, is of a mixed nature, as D'Herbelot
indifferently draws his materials (p. 877--888) from Khondemir Ebn
Schounah, and the Lebtarikh.]

[Footnote 6: Demiror Timoursignifies in the Turkish language, Iron; and
it is the appellation of a lord or prince. By the change of a letter or
accent, it is changed into Lenc, or Lame; and a European corruption
confounds the two words in the name of Tamerlane. *

Note: * According to the memoirs he was so called by a Shaikh, who, when
visited by his mother on his birth, was reading the verse of the Koran,
'Are you sure that he who dwelleth in heaven will not cause the earth to
swallow you up, and behold it shall shake, Tamûrn." The Shaikh then
stopped and said, "We have named your son Timûr," p. 21. -- M.]

[Footnote *: He was lamed by a wound at the siege of the capital of
Sistan. Sherefeddin, lib. iii. c. 17. p. 136. See Von Hammer, vol. i. p.
260. -- M.]

In the eyes of the Moguls, who held the indefeasible succession of the
house of Zingis, he was doubtless a rebel subject; yet he sprang from
the noble tribe of Berlass: his fifth ancestor, Carashar Nevian, had
been the vizier ^! of Zagatai, in his new realm of Transoxiana; and in
the ascent of some generations, the branch of Timour is confounded, at
least by the females, ^7 with the Imperial stem. ^8 He was born forty
miles to the south of Samarcand in the village of Sebzar, in the
fruitful territory of Cash, of which his fathers were the hereditary
chiefs, as well as of a toman of ten thousand horse. ^9 His birth ^10
was cast on one of those periods of anarchy, which announce the fall of
the Asiatic dynasties, and open a new field to adventurous ambition. The
khans of Zagatai were extinct; the emirs aspired to independence; and
their domestic feuds could only be suspended by the conquest and tyranny
of the khans of Kashgar, who, with an army of Getes or Calmucks, ^11
invaded the Transoxian kingdom. From the twelfth year of his age, Timour
had entered the field of action; in the twenty-fifth ^! he stood forth
as the deliverer of his country; and the eyes and wishes of the people
were turned towards a hero who suffered in their cause. The chiefs of
the law and of the army had pledged their salvation to support him with
their lives and fortunes; but in the hour of danger they were silent and
afraid; and, after waiting seven days on the hills of Samarcand, he
retreated to the desert with only sixty horsemen. The fugitives were
overtaken by a thousand Getes, whom he repulsed with incredible
slaughter, and his enemies were forced to exclaim, "Timour is a
wonderful man: fortune and the divine favor are with him." But in this
bloody action his own followers were reduced to ten, a number which was
soon diminished by the desertion of three Carizmians. ^!! He wandered in
the desert with his wife, seven companions, and four horses; and
sixty-two days was he plunged in a loathsome dungeon, from whence he
escaped by his own courage and the remorse of the oppressor. After
swimming the broad and rapid steam of the Jihoon, or Oxus, he led,
during some months, the life of a vagrant and outlaw, on the borders of
the adjacent states. But his fame shone brighter in adversity; he
learned to distinguish the friends of his person, the associates of his
fortune, and to apply the various characters of men for their advantage,
and, above all, for his own. On his return to his native country, Timour
was successively joined by the parties of his confederates, who
anxiously sought him in the desert; nor can I refuse to describe, in his
pathetic simplicity, one of their fortunate encounters. He presented
himself as a guide to three chiefs, who were at the head of seventy
horse. "When their eyes fell upon me," says Timour, "they were
overwhelmed with joy; and they alighted from their horses; and they came
and kneeled; and they kissed my stirrup. I also came down from my horse,
and took each of them in my arms. And I put my turban on the head of the
first chief; and my girdle, rich in jewels and wrought with gold, I
bound on the loins of the second; and the third I clothed in my own
coat. And they wept, and I wept also; and the hour of prayer was
arrived, and we prayed. And we mounted our horses, and came to my
dwelling; and I collected my people, and made a feast." His trusty bands
were soon increased by the bravest of the tribes; he led them against a
superior foe; and, after some vicissitudes of war the Getes were finally
driven from the kingdom of Transoxiana. He had done much for his own
glory; but much remained to be done, much art to be exerted, and some
blood to be spilt, before he could teach his equals to obey him as their
master. The birth and power of emir Houssein compelled him to accept a
vicious and unworthy colleague, whose sister was the best beloved of his
wives. Their union was short and jealous; but the policy of Timour, in
their frequent quarrels, exposed his rival to the reproach of injustice
and perfidy; and, after a final defeat, Houssein was slain by some
sagacious friends, who presumed, for the last time, to disobey the
commands of their lord. ^* At the age of thirty-four, ^12 and in a
general diet or couroultai, he was invested with Imperialcommand, but he
affected to revere the house of Zingis; and while the emir Timour
reigned over Zagatai and the East, a nominal khan served as a private
officer in the armies of his servant. A fertile kingdom, five hundred
miles in length and in breadth, might have satisfied the ambition of a
subject; but Timour aspired to the dominion of the world; and before his
death, the crown of Zagatai was one of the twenty-seven crowns which he
had placed on his head. Without expatiating on the victories of
thirty-five campaigns; without describing the lines of march, which he
repeatedly traced over the continent of Asia; I shall briefly represent
his conquests in, I. Persia, II. Tartary, and, III. India, ^13 and from
thence proceed to the more interesting narrative of his Ottoman war.

[Footnote !: In the memoirs, the title Gurgân is in one place (p. 23)
interpreted the son-in-law; in another (p. 28) as Kurkan, great prince,
generalissimo, and prime minister of Jagtai. -- M.]

[Footnote 7: After relating some false and foolish tales of Timour Lenc,
Arabshah is compelled to speak truth, and to own him for a kinsman of
Zingis, per mulieres, (as he peevishly adds,) laqueos Satanæ, (pars i.
c. i. p. 25.) The testimony of Abulghazi Khan (P. ii. c. 5, P. v. c. 4)
is clear, unquestionable, and decisive.]

[Footnote 8: According to one of the pedigrees, the fourth ancestor of
Zingis, and the ninth of Timour, were brothers; and they agreed, that
the posterity of the elder should succeed to the dignity of khan, and
that the descendants of the younger should fill the office of their
minister and general. This tradition was at least convenient to justify
the firststeps of Timour's ambition, (Institutions, p. 24, 25, from the
MS. fragments of Timour's History.)]

[Footnote 9: See the preface of Sherefeddin, and Abulfeda's Geography,
(Chorasmiæ, &c., Descriptio, p. 60, 61,) in the iiid volume of Hudson's
Minor Greek Geographers.]

[Footnote 10: See his nativity in Dr. Hyde, (Syntagma Dissertat. tom.
ii. p. 466,) as it was cast by the astrologers of his grandson Ulugh
Beg. He was born, A.D. 1336, April 9, 11°57'. p. m., lat. 36. I know not
whether they can prove the great conjunction of the planets from whence,
like other conquerors and prophets, Timour derived the surname of Saheb
Keran, or master of the conjunctions, (Bibliot. Orient. p. 878.)]

[Footnote 11: In the Institutions of Timour, these subjects of the khan
of Kashgar are most improperly styled Ouzbegs, or Usbeks, a name which
belongs to another branch and country of Tartars, (Abulghazi, P. v. c.
v. P. vii. c. 5.) Could I be sure that this word is in the Turkish
original, I would boldly pronounce, that the Institutions were framed a
century after the death of Timour, since the establishment of the Usbeks
in Transoxiana. *

Note: * Col. Stewart observes, that the Persian translator has sometimes
made use of the name Uzbek by anticipation. He observes, likewise, that
these Jits (Getes) are not to be confounded with the ancient Getæ: they
were unconverted Turks. Col. Tod (History of Rajasthan, vol. i. p. 166)
would identify the Jits with the ancient race. -- M.]

[Footnote !: He was twenty-seven before he served his first wars under
the emir Houssein, who ruled over Khorasan and Mawerainnehr. Von Hammer,
vol. i. p. 262. Neither of these statements agrees with the Memoirs. At
twelve he was a boy. "I fancied that I perceived in myself all the signs
of greatness and wisdom, and whoever came to visit me, I received with
great hauteur and dignity." At seventeen he undertook the management of
the flocks and herds of the family, (p. 24.) At nineteen he became
religious, and "left off playing chess," made a kind of Budhist vow
never to injure living thing and felt his foot paralyzed from having
accidentally trod upon an ant, (p. 30.) At twenty, thoughts of rebellion
and greatness rose in his mind; at twenty-one, he seems to have
performed his first feat of arms. He was a practised warrior when he
served, in his twenty-seventh year, under Emir Houssein.]

[Footnote !!: Compare Memoirs, page 61. The imprisonment is there stated
at fifty-three days. "At this time I made a vow to God that I would
never keep any person, whether guilty or innocent, for any length of
time, in prison or in chains." p. 63. -- M.]

[Footnote *: Timour, on one occasion, sent him this message: "He who
wishes to embrace the bride of royalty must kiss her across the edge of
the sharp sword," p. 83. The scene of the trial of Houssein, the
resistance of Timour gradually becoming more feeble, the vengeance of
the chiefs becoming proportionably more determined, is strikingly
portrayed. Mem. p 130. -- M.]

[Footnote 12: The ist book of Sherefeddin is employed on the private
life of the hero: and he himself, or his secretary, (Institutions, p.
3--77,) enlarges with pleasure on the thirteen designs and enterprises
which most truly constitute his personalmerit. It even shines through
the dark coloring of Arabshah, (P. i. c. 1--12.)]

[Footnote 13: The conquests of Persia, Tartary, and India, are
represented in the iid and iiid books of Sherefeddin, and by Arabshah,
(c. 13--55.) Consult the excellent Indexes to the Institutions. *

Note: * Compare the seventh book of Von Hammer, Geschichte des
Osmanischen Reiches. -- M.]

I. For every war, a motive of safety or revenge, of honor or zeal, of
right or convenience, may be readily found in the jurisprudence of
conquerors. No sooner had Timour reunited to the patrimony of Zagatai
the dependent countries of Carizme and Candahar, than he turned his eyes
towards the kingdoms of Iran or Persia. From the Oxus to the Tigris,
that extensive country was left without a lawful sovereign since the
death of Abousaid, the last of the descendants of the great Holacou.
Peace and justice had been banished from the land above forty years; and
the Mogul invader might seem to listen to the cries of an oppressed
people. Their petty tyrants might have opposed him with confederate
arms: they separately stood, and successively fell; and the difference
of their fate was only marked by the promptitude of submission or the
obstinacy of resistance. Ibrahim, prince of Shirwan, or Albania, kissed
the footstool of the Imperial throne. His peace-offerings of silks,
horses, and jewels, were composed, according to the Tartar fashion, each
article of nine pieces; but a critical spectator observed, that there
were only eight slaves. "I myself am the ninth," replied Ibrahim, who
was prepared for the remark; and his flattery was rewarded by the smile
of Timour. ^14 Shah Mansour, prince of Fars, or the proper Persia, was
one of the least powerful, but most dangerous, of his enemies. In a
battle under the walls of Shiraz, he broke, with three or four thousand
soldiers, the coulor main body of thirty thousand horse, where the
emperor fought in person. No more than fourteen or fifteen guards
remained near the standard of Timour: he stood firm as a rock, and
received on his helmet two weighty strokes of a cimeter: ^15 the Moguls
rallied; the head of Mansour was thrown at his feet; and he declared his
esteem of the valor of a foe, by extirpating all the males of so
intrepid a race. From Shiraz, his troops advanced to the Persian Gulf;
and the richness and weakness of Ormuz ^16 were displayed in an annual
tribute of six hundred thousand dinars of gold. Bagdad was no longer the
city of peace, the seat of the caliphs; but the noblest conquest of
Holacou could not be overlooked by his ambitious successor. The whole
course of the Tigris and Euphrates, from the mouth to the sources of
those rivers, was reduced to his obedience: he entered Edessa; and the
Turkmans of the black sheep were chastised for the sacrilegious pillage
of a caravan of Mecca. In the mountains of Georgia, the native
Christians still braved the law and the sword of Mahomet, by three
expeditions he obtained the merit of the gazie, or holy war; and the
prince of Teflis became his proselyte and friend.

[Footnote 14: The reverence of the Tartars for the mysterious number of
nineis declared by Abulghazi Khan, who, for that reason, divides his
Genealogical History into nine parts.]

[Footnote 15: According to Arabshah, (P. i. c. 28, p. 183,) the coward
Timour ran away to his tent, and hid himself from the pursuit of Shah
Mansour under the women's garments. Perhaps Sherefeddin (l. iii. c. 25)
has magnified his courage.]

[Footnote 16: The history of Ormuz is not unlike that of Tyre. The old
city, on the continent, was destroyed by the Tartars, and renewed in a
neighboring island, without fresh water or vegetation. The kings of
Ormuz, rich in the Indian trade and the pearl fishery, possessed large
territories both in Persia and Arabia; but they were at first the
tributaries of the sultans of Kerman, and at last were delivered (A.D.
1505) by the Portuguese tyrants from the tyranny of their own viziers,
(Marco Polo, l. i. c. 15, 16, fol. 7, 8. Abulfeda, Geograph. tabul. xi.
p. 261, 262, an original Chronicle of Ormuz, in Texeira, or Stevens's
History of Persia, p. 376--416, and the Itineraries inserted in the ist
volume of Ramusio, of Ludovico Barthema, (1503,) fol. 167, of Andrea
Corsali, (1517) fol. 202, 203, and of Odoardo Barbessa, (in 1516,) fol.
313--318.)]

II. A just retaliation might be urged for the invasion of Turkestan, or
the Eastern Tartary. The dignity of Timour could not endure the impunity
of the Getes: he passed the Sihoon, subdued the kingdom of Kashgar, and
marched seven times into the heart of their country. His most distant
camp was two months' journey, or four hundred and eighty leagues to the
north-east of Samarcand; and his emirs, who traversed the River Irtish,
engraved in the forests of Siberia a rude memorial of their exploits.
The conquest of Kipzak, or the Western Tartary, ^17 was founded on the
double motive of aiding the distressed, and chastising the ungrateful.
Toctamish, a fugitive prince, was entertained and protected in his
court: the ambassadors of Auruss Khan were dismissed with a haughty
denial, and followed on the same day by the armies of Zagatai; and their
success established Toctamish in the Mogul empire of the North. But,
after a reign of ten years, the new khan forgot the merits and the
strength of his benefactor; the base usurper, as he deemed him, of the
sacred rights of the house of Zingis. Through the gates of Derbend, he
entered Persia at the head of ninety thousand horse: with the
innumerable forces of Kipzak, Bulgaria, Circassia, and Russia, he passed
the Sihoon, burnt the palaces of Timour, and compelled him, amidst the
winter snows, to contend for Samarcand and his life. After a mild
expostulation, and a glorious victory, the emperor resolved on revenge;
and by the east, and the west, of the Caspian, and the Volga, he twice
invaded Kipzak with such mighty powers, that thirteen miles were
measured from his right to his left wing. In a march of five months,
they rarely beheld the footsteps of man; and their daily subsistence was
often trusted to the fortune of the chase. At length the armies
encountered each other; but the treachery of the standard-bearer, who,
in the heat of action, reversed the Imperial standard of Kipzak,
determined the victory of the Zagatais; and Toctamish (I peak the
language of the Institutions) gave the tribe of Toushi to the wind of
desolation. ^18 He fled to the Christian duke of Lithuania; again
returned to the banks of the Volga; and, after fifteen battles with a
domestic rival, at last perished in the wilds of Siberia. The pursuit of
a flying enemy carried Timour into the tributary provinces of Russia: a
duke of the reigning family was made prisoner amidst the ruins of his
capital; and Yeletz, by the pride and ignorance of the Orientals, might
easily be confounded with the genuine metropolis of the nation. Moscow
trembled at the approach of the Tartar, and the resistance would have
been feeble, since the hopes of the Russians were placed in a miraculous
image of the Virgin, to whose protection they ascribed the casual and
voluntary retreat of the conqueror. Ambition and prudence recalled him
to the South, the desolate country was exhausted, and the Mogul soldiers
were enriched with an immense spoil of precious furs, of linen of
Antioch, ^19 and of ingots of gold and silver. ^20 On the banks of the
Don, or Tanais, he received an humble deputation from the consuls and
merchants of Egypt, ^21 Venice, Genoa, Catalonia, and Biscay, who
occupied the commerce and city of Tana, or Azoph, at the mouth of the
river. They offered their gifts, admired his magnificence, and trusted
his royal word. But the peaceful visit of an emir, who explored the
state of the magazines and harbor, was speedily followed by the
destructive presence of the Tartars. The city was reduced to ashes; the
Moslems were pillaged and dismissed; but all the Christians, who had not
fled to their ships, were condemned either to death or slavery. ^22
Revenge prompted him to burn the cities of Serai and Astrachan, the
monuments of rising civilization; and his vanity proclaimed, that he had
penetrated to the region of perpetual daylight, a strange phenomenon,
which authorized his Mahometan doctors to dispense with the obligation
of evening prayer. ^23

[Footnote 17: Arabshah had travelled into Kipzak, and acquired a
singular knowledge of the geography, cities, and revolutions, of that
northern region, (P. i. c. 45--49.)]

[Footnote 18: Institutions of Timour, p. 123, 125. Mr. White, the
editor, bestows some animadversion on the superficial account of
Sherefeddin, (l. iii. c. 12, 13, 14,) who was ignorant of the designs of
Timour, and the true springs of action.]

[Footnote 19: The furs of Russia are more credible than the ingots. But
the linen of Antioch has never been famous: and Antioch was in ruins. I
suspect that it was some manufacture of Europe, which the Hanse
merchants had imported by the way of Novogorod.]

[Footnote 20: M. Levesque (Hist. de Russie, tom. ii. p. 247. Vie de
Timour, p. 64--67, before the French version of the Institutes) has
corrected the error of Sherefeddin, and marked the true limit of
Timour's conquests. His arguments are superfluous; and a simple appeal
to the Russian annals is sufficient to prove that Moscow, which six
years before had been taken by Toctamish, escaped the arms of a more
formidable invader.]

[Footnote 21: An Egyptian consul from Grand Cairo is mentioned in
Barbaro's voyage to Tana in 1436, after the city had been rebuilt,
(Ramusio, tom. ii. fol. 92.)]

[Footnote 22: The sack of Azoph is described by Sherefeddin, (l. iii. c.
55,) and much more particularly by the author of an Italian chronicle,
(Andreas de Redusiis de Quero, in Chron. Tarvisiano, in Muratori,
Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. xix. p. 802--805.) He had conversed with
the Mianis, two Venetian brothers, one of whom had been sent a deputy to
the camp of Timour, and the other had lost at Azoph three sons and
12,000 ducats.]

[Footnote 23: Sherefeddin only says (l. iii. c. 13) that the rays of the
setting, and those of the rising sun, were scarcely separated by any
interval; a problem which may be solved in the latitude of Moscow, (the
56th degree,) with the aid of the Aurora Borealis, and a long summer
twilight. But a dayof forty days (Khondemir apud D'Herbelot, p. 880)
would rigorously confine us within the polar circle.]

III. When Timour first proposed to his princes and emirs the invasion of
India or Hindostan, ^24 he was answered by a murmur of discontent: "The
rivers! and the mountains and deserts! and the soldiers clad in armor!
and the elephants, destroyers of men!" But the displeasure of the
emperor was more dreadful than all these terrors; and his superior
reason was convinced, that an enterprise of such tremendous aspect was
safe and easy in the execution. He was informed by his spies of the
weakness and anarchy of Hindostan: the soubahs of the provinces had
erected the standard of rebellion; and the perpetual infancy of Sultan
Mahmoud was despised even in the harem of Delhi. The Mogul army moved in
three great divisions; and Timour observes with pleasure, that the
ninety-two squadrons of a thousand horse most fortunately corresponded
with the ninety-two names or epithets of the prophet Mahomet. ^* Between
the Jihoon and the Indus they crossed one of the ridges of mountains,
which are styled by the Arabian geographers The Stony Girdles of the
Earth. The highland robbers were subdued or extirpated; but great
numbers of men and horses perished in the snow; the emperor himself was
let down a precipice on a portable scaffold -- the ropes were one
hundred and fifty cubits in length; and before he could reach the
bottom, this dangerous operation was five times repeated. Timour crossed
the Indus at the ordinary passage of Attok; and successively traversed,
in the footsteps of Alexander, the Punjab, or five rivers, ^25 that fall
into the master stream. From Attok to Delhi, the high road measures no
more than six hundred miles; but the two conquerors deviated to the
south-east; and the motive of Timour was to join his grandson, who had
achieved by his command the conquest of Moultan. On the eastern bank of
the Hyphasis, on the edge of the desert, the Macedonian hero halted and
wept: the Mogul entered the desert, reduced the fortress of Batmir, and
stood in arms before the gates of Delhi, a great and flourishing city,
which had subsisted three centuries under the dominion of the Mahometan
kings. ^! The siege, more especially of the castle, might have been a
work of time; but he tempted, by the appearance of weakness, the sultan
Mahmoud and his vizier to descend into the plain, with ten thousand
cuirassiers, forty thousand of his foot-guards, and one hundred and
twenty elephants, whose tusks are said to have been armed with sharp and
poisoned daggers. Against these monsters, or rather against the
imagination of his troops, he condescended to use some extraordinary
precautions of fire and a ditch, of iron spikes and a rampart of
bucklers; but the event taught the Moguls to smile at their own fears;
and as soon as these unwieldy animals were routed, the inferior species
(the men of India) disappeared from the field. Timour made his triumphal
entry into the capital of Hindostan; and admired, with a view to
imitate, the architecture of the stately mosque; but the order or
license of a general pillage and massacre polluted the festival of his
victory. He resolved to purify his soldiers in the blood of the
idolaters, or Gentoos, who still surpass, in the proportion of ten to
one, the numbers of the Moslems. ^* In this pious design, he advanced
one hundred miles to the north-east of Delhi, passed the Ganges, fought
several battles by land and water, and penetrated to the famous rock of
Coupele, the statue of the cow, ^! that seemsto discharge the mighty
river, whose source is far distant among the mountains of Thibet. ^26
His return was along the skirts of the northern hills; nor could this
rapid campaign of one year justify the strange foresight of his emirs,
that their children in a warm climate would degenerate into a race of
Hindoos.

[Footnote 24: For the Indian war, see the Institutions, (p. 129--139,)
the fourth book of Sherefeddin, and the history of Ferishta, (in Dow,
vol. ii. p. 1--20,) which throws a general light on the affairs of
Hindostan.]

[Footnote *: Gibbon (observes M. von Hammer) is mistaken in the
correspondence of the ninety-two squadrons of his army with the
ninety-two names of God: the names of God are ninety-nine. and Allah is
the hundredth, p. 286, note. But Gibbon speaks of the names or epithets
of Mahomet, not of God. -- M.]

[Footnote 25: The rivers of the Punjab, the five eastern branches of the
Indus, have been laid down for the first time with truth and accuracy in
Major Rennel's incomparable map of Hindostan. In this Critical Memoir he
illustrates with judgment and learning the marches of Alexander and
Timour. *

Note *: * See vol. i. ch. ii. note 1. -- M.]

[Footnote !: They took, on their march, 100,000 slaves, Guebers they
were all murdered. V. Hammer, vol. i. p. 286. They are called idolaters.
Briggs's Ferishta, vol. i. p. 491. -- M.]

[Footnote *: See a curious passage on the destruction of the Hindoo
idols, Memoirs, p. 15. -- M.]

[Footnote !: Consult the very striking description of the Cow's Mouth by
Captain Hodgson, Asiat. Res. vol. xiv. p. 117. "A most wonderful scene.
The B'hagiratha or Ganges issues from under a very low arch at the foot
of the grand snow bed. My guide, an illiterate mountaineer compared the
pendent icicles to Mahodeva's hair." (Compare Poems, Quarterly Rev. vol.
xiv. p. 37, and at the end of my translation of Nala.) "Hindoos of
research may formerly have been here; and f so. I cannot think of any
place to which they might more aptly give the name of a cow's mouth than
to this extraordinary debouche. -- M.]

[Footnote 26: The two great rivers, the Ganges and Burrampooter, rise in
Thibet, from the opposite ridges of the same hills, separate from each
other to the distance of 1200 miles, and, after a winding course of 2000
miles, again meet in one point near the Gulf of Bengal. Yet so
capricious is Fame, that the Burrampooter is a late discovery, while his
brother Ganges has been the theme of ancient and modern story Coupele,
the scene of Timour's last victory, must be situate near Loldong, 1100
miles from Calcutta; and in 1774, a British camp! (Rennel's Memoir, p.
7, 59, 90, 91, 99.)]

It was on the banks of the Ganges that Timour was informed, by his
speedy messengers, of the disturbances which had arisen on the confines
of Georgia and Anatolia, of the revolt of the Christians, and the
ambitious designs of the sultan Bajazet. His vigor of mind and body was
not impaired by sixty-three years, and innumerable fatigues; and, after
enjoying some tranquil months in the palace of Samarcand, he proclaimed
a new expedition of seven years into the western countries of Asia. ^27
To the soldiers who had served in the Indian war he granted the choice
of remaining at home, or following their prince; but the troops of all
the provinces and kingdoms of Persia were commanded to assemble at
Ispahan, and wait the arrival of the Imperial standard. It was first
directed against the Christians of Georgia, who were strong only in
their rocks, their castles, and the winter season; but these obstacles
were overcome by the zeal and perseverance of Timour: the rebels
submitted to the tribute or the Koran; and if both religions boasted of
their martyrs, that name is more justly due to the Christian prisoners,
who were offered the choice of abjuration or death. On his descent from
the hills, the emperor gave audience to the first ambassadors of
Bajazet, and opened the hostile correspondence of complaints and
menaces, which fermented two years before the final explosion. Between
two jealous and haughty neighbors, the motives of quarrel will seldom be
wanting. The Mogul and Ottoman conquests now touched each other in the
neighborhood of Erzeroum, and the Euphrates; nor had the doubtful limit
been ascertained by time and treaty. Each of these ambitious monarchs
might accuse his rival of violating his territory, of threatening his
vassals, and protecting his rebels; and, by the name of rebels, each
understood the fugitive princes, whose kingdoms he had usurped, and
whose life or liberty he implacably pursued. The resemblance of
character was still more dangerous than the opposition of interest; and
in their victorious career, Timour was impatient of an equal, and
Bajazet was ignorant of a superior. The first epistle ^28 of the Mogul
emperor must have provoked, instead of reconciling, the Turkish sultan,
whose family and nation he affected to despise. ^29 "Dost thou not know,
that the greatest part of Asia is subject to our arms and our laws? that
our invincible forces extend from one sea to the other? that the
potentates of the earth form a line before our gate? and that we have
compelled Fortune herself to watch over the prosperity of our empire.
What is the foundation of thy insolence and folly? Thou hast fought some
battles in the woods of Anatolia; contemptible trophies! Thou hast
obtained some victories over the Christians of Europe; thy sword was
blessed by the apostle of God; and thy obedience to the precept of the
Koran, in waging war against the infidels, is the sole consideration
that prevents us from destroying thy country, the frontier and bulwark
of the Moslem world. Be wise in time; reflect; repent; and avert the
thunder of our vengeance, which is yet suspended over thy head. Thou art
no more than a pismire; why wilt thou seek to provoke the elephants?
Alas! they will trample thee under their feet." In his replies, Bajazet
poured forth the indignation of a soul which was deeply stung by such
unusual contempt. After retorting the basest reproaches on the thief and
rebel of the desert, the Ottoman recapitulates his boasted victories in
Iran, Touran, and the Indies; and labors to prove, that Timour had never
triumphed unless by his own perfidy and the vices of his foes. "Thy
armies are innumerable: be they so; but what are the arrows of the
flying Tartar against the cimeters and battle-axes of my firm and
invincible Janizaries? I will guard the princes who have implored my
protection: seek them in my tents. The cities of Arzingan and Erzeroum
are mine; and unless the tribute be duly paid, I will demand the arrears
under the walls of Tauris and Sultania." The ungovernable rage of the
sultan at length betrayed him to an insult of a more domestic kind. "If
I fly from thy arms," said he, "may mywives be thrice divorced from my
bed: but if thou hast not courage to meet me in the field, mayest thou
again receive thywives after they have thrice endured the embraces of a
stranger." ^30 Any violation by word or deed of the secrecy of the harem
is an unpardonable offence among the Turkish nations; ^31 and the
political quarrel of the two monarchs was imbittered by private and
personal resentment. Yet in his first expedition, Timour was satisfied
with the siege and destruction of Siwas or Sebaste, a strong city on the
borders of Anatolia; and he revenged the indiscretion of the Ottoman, on
a garrison of four thousand Armenians, who were buried alive for the
brave and faithful discharge of their duty. ^! As a Mussulman, he seemed
to respect the pious occupation of Bajazet, who was still engaged in the
blockade of Constantinople; and after this salutary lesson, the Mogul
conqueror checked his pursuit, and turned aside to the invasion of Syria
and Egypt. In these transactions, the Ottoman prince, by the Orientals,
and even by Timour, is styled the Kaissar of Roum, the Cæsar of the
Romans; a title which, by a small anticipation, might be given to a
monarch who possessed the provinces, and threatened the city, of the
successors of Constantine. ^32

[Footnote 27: See the Institutions, p. 141, to the end of the 1st book,
and Sherefeddin, (l. v. c. 1--16,) to the entrance of Timour into
Syria.]

[Footnote 28: We have three copies of these hostile epistles in the
Institutions, (p. 147,) in Sherefeddin, (l. v. c. 14,) and in Arabshah,
(tom. ii. c. 19 p. 183--201;) which agree with each other in the spirit
and substance rather than in the style. It is probable, that they have
been translated, with various latitude, from the Turkish original into
the Arabic and Persian tongues. *

Note: * Von Hammer considers the letter which Gibbon inserted in the
text to be spurious. On the various copies of these letters, see his
note, p 116. -- M.]

[Footnote 29: The Mogul emir distinguishes himself and his countrymen by
the name of Turks, and stigmatizes the race and nation of Bajazet with
the less honorable epithet of Turkmans. Yet I do not understand how the
Ottomans could be descended from a Turkman sailor; those inland
shepherds were so remote from the sea, and all maritime affairs. *

Note: * Price translated the word pilot or boatman. -- M.]

[Footnote 30: According to the Koran, (c. ii. p. 27, and Sale's
Discourses, p. 134,) Mussulman who had thrice divorced his wife, (who
had thrice repeated the words of a divorce,) could not take her again,
till after she had been married to, and repudiated by, another husband;
an ignominious transaction, which it is needless to aggravate, by
supposing that the first husband must see her enjoyed by a second before
his face, (Rycaut's State of the Ottoman Empire, l. ii. c. 21.)]

[Footnote 31: The common delicacy of the Orientals, in never speaking of
their women, is ascribed in a much higher degree by Arabshah to the
Turkish nations; and it is remarkable enough, that Chalcondyles (l. ii.
p. 55) had some knowledge of the prejudice and the insult. *

Note: * See Von Hammer, p. 308, and note, p. 621. -- M.]

[Footnote !: Still worse barbarities were perpetrated on these brave
men. Von Hammer, vol. i. p. 295. -- M.]

[Footnote 32: For the style of the Moguls, see the Institutions, (p.
131, 147,) and for the Persians, the Bibliothèque Orientale, (p. 882;)
but I do not find that the title of Cæsar has been applied by the
Arabians, or assumed by the Ottomans themselves.]