Gibbon's The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire
Home | Prev
| Next
| Contents
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 they could not be the objects, they were best
qualified to be the authors of the choice. The six Venetians were the
principal servants of the state, and in this list the noble families of
Querini and Contarini are still proud to discover their ancestors. The
twelve assembled in the chapel of the palace; and after the solemn
invocation of the Holy Ghost, they proceeded to deliberate and vote. A
just impulse of respect and gratitude prompted them to crown the virtues
of the doge; his wisdom had inspired their enterprise; and the most
youthful knights might envy and applaud the exploits of blindness and
age. But the patriot Dandolo was devoid of all personal ambition, and
fully satisfied that he had been judged worthy to reign. His nomination
was overruled by the Venetians themselves: his countrymen, and perhaps
his friends, ^2 represented, with the eloquence of truth, the mischiefs
that might arise to national freedom and the common cause, from the
union of two incompatible characters, of the first magistrate of a
republic and the emperor of the East. The exclusion of the doge left
room for the more equal merits of Boniface and Baldwin; and at their
names all meaner candidates respectfully withdrew. The marquis of
Montferrat was recommended by his mature age and fair reputation, by the
choice of the adventurers, and the wishes of the Greeks; nor can I
believe that Venice, the mistress of the sea, could be seriously
apprehensive of a petty lord at the foot of the Alps. ^3 But the count
of Flanders was the chief of a wealthy and warlike people: he was
valiant, pious, and chaste; in the prime of life, since he was only
thirty-two years of age; a descendant of Charlemagne, a cousin of the
king of France, and a compeer of the prelates and barons who had yielded
with reluctance to the command of a foreigner. Without the chapel, these
barons, with the doge and marquis at their head, expected the decision
of the twelve electors. It was announced by the bishop of Soissons, in
the name of his colleagues: "Ye have sworn to obey the prince whom we
should choose: by our unanimous suffrage, Baldwin count of Flanders and
Hainault is now your sovereign, and the emperor of the East." He was
saluted with loud applause, and the proclamation was reechoed through
the city by the joy of the Latins, and the trembling adulation of the
Greeks. Boniface was the first to kiss the hand of his rival, and to
raise him on the buckler: and Baldwin was transported to the cathedral,
and solemnly invested with the purple buskins. At the end of three weeks
he was crowned by the legate, in the vacancy of the patriarch; but the
Venetian clergy soon filled the chapter of St. Sophia, seated Thomas
Morosini on the ecclesiastical throne, and employed every art to
perpetuate in their own nation the honors and benefices of the Greek
church. ^4 Without delay the successor of Constantine instructed
Palestine, France, and Rome, of this memorable revolution. To Palestine
he sent, as a trophy, the gates of Constantinople, and the chain of the
harbor; ^5 and adopted, from the Assise of Jerusalem, the laws or
customs best adapted to a French colony and conquest in the East. In his
epistles, the natives of France are encouraged to swell that colony, and
to secure that conquest, to people a magnificent city and a fertile
land, which will reward the labors both of the priest and the soldier.
He congratulates the Roman pontiff on the restoration of his authority
in the East; invites him to extinguish the Greek schism by his presence
in a general council; and implores his blessing and forgiveness for the
disobedient pilgrims. Prudence and dignity are blended in the answer of
Innocent. ^6 In the subversion of the Byzantine empire, he arraigns the
vices of man, and adores the providence of God; the conquerors will be
absolved or condemned by their future conduct; the validity of their
treaty depends on the judgment of St. Peter; but he inculcates their
most sacred duty of establishing a just subordination of obedience and
tribute, from the Greeks to the Latins, from the magistrate to the
clergy, and from the clergy to the pope.
[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 maritime power. 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.
-
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 quartæ partis et dimidiæ imperii
Romani, till Giovanni Dolfino, who was elected doge in the year of 1356,
(Sanuto, p. 530, 641.) For the government of Constantinople, see
Ducange, Histoire de C. P. i. 37.]
[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.
-
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 Roman emperors of
Constantinople, if they were endowed with abilities, were armed with
power for the protection of their subjects: their laws were wise, and
their administration was simple. The Latin throne was filled by a
titular prince, the chief, and often the servant, of his licentious
confederates; the fiefs of the empire, from a kingdom to a castle, were
held and ruled by the sword of the barons; and their discord, poverty,
and ignorance, extended the ramifications of tyranny to the most
sequestered villages. The Greeks were oppressed by the double weight of
the 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,
-
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 Familiæ Byzantinæ of Ducange.]
[Footnote *: This was a title, not a personal appellation. Joinville
speaks of the "Grant Comnenie, et sire de Traffezzontes." Fallmerayer,
-
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. --
Prev
| Next
| Contents
|