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. 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.
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, 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. 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 by
the Son? or from the Father and the 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:
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. 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 Azyms was 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; 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.
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, 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 prosélytes 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.
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, which enumerates the
seven mortal hérésies 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.
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.
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. The two wives
of Manuel Comnenus 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; 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. 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. 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.
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, 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, 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.
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, 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,
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.
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.”
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. 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 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.
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, 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. 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; 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; the nobles of Champagne excelled in all
the exercises of war; 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,
marshal of Champagne, who has condescended, in
the rude idiom of his age and country, to write
or dictate 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. 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.
In the invasion of Italy by Attila,
I have mentioned 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.
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 lagunas
or 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: 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: 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.
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; 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, 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 sages
who 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. 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, 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.
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;
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, 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, a strong
city of the Sclavonian coast, which had renounced its
allegiance to Venice, and implored the protection of
the king of Hungary. 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, 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.
The assembly of such formidable powers
by sea and land had revived the hopes of young
Alexius; and both at Venice and Zara, he solicited
the arms of the crusaders, for his own restoration
and his father’s 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: 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. 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. 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.
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 palanders for 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.
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.
In the navigation 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. 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.
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 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. 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.
Our friendship and his allegiance 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.”
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;
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 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, 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; 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, 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 belief of those numbers will
equally exalt the fearless spirit of their assailants.
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.
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.
After ten days’ incessant labor, the ground
was levelled, the ditch filled, the approaches of
the besiegers were regularly made, and two hundred
and fifty engines of assault exercised their various
powers to clear the rampart, to batter the walls,
and to sap the foundations. On the first appearance
of a breach, the scaling-ladders were applied:
the numbers that defended the vantage ground repulsed
and oppressed the adventurous Latins; but they admired
the resolution of fifteen knights and sergeants, who
had gained the ascent, and maintained their perilous
station till they were precipitated or made prisoners
by the Imperial guards. On the side of the harbor
the naval attack was more successfully conducted by
the Venetians; and that industrious people employed
every resource that was known and practiced before
the invention of gunpowder. A double line, three
bow-shots in front, was formed by the galleys and ships;
and the swift motion of the former was supported by
the weight and loftiness of the latter, whose decks,
and poops, and turret, were the platforms of military
engines, that discharged their shot over the heads
of the first line. The soldiers, who leaped from
the galleys on shore, immediately planted and ascended
their scaling-ladders, while the large ships, advancing
more slowly into the intervals, and lowering a draw-bridge,
opened a way through the air from their masts to the
rampart. In the midst of the conflict, the doge,
a venerable and conspicuous form, stood aloft in complete
armor on the prow of his galley. The great standard
of St. Mark was displayed before him; his threats,
promises, and exhortations, urged the diligence of
the rowers; his vessel was the first that struck;
and Dandolo was the first warrior on the shore.
The nations admired the magnanimity of the blind old
man, without reflecting that his age and infirmities
diminished the price of life, and enhanced the value
of immortal glory. On a sudden, by an invisible
hand, (for the standard-bearer was probably slain,)
the banner of the republic was fixed on the rampart:
twenty-five towers were rapidly occupied; and, by
the cruel expedient of fire, the Greeks were driven
from the adjacent quarter. The doge had despatched
the intelligence of his success, when he was checked
by the danger of his confederates. Nobly declaring
that he would rather die with the pilgrims than gain
a victory by their destruction, Dandolo relinquished
his advantage, recalled his troops, and hastened to
the scene of action. He found the six weary diminutive
battles of the French encompassed by sixty squadrons
of the Greek cavalry, the least of which was more
numerous than the largest of their divisions.
Shame and despair had provoked Alexius to the last
effort of a general sally; but he was awed by the
firm order and manly aspect of the Latins; and, after
skirmishing at a distance, withdrew his troops in
the close of the evening. The silence or tumult
of the night exasperated his fears; and the timid
usurper, collecting a treasure of ten thousand pounds
of gold, basely deserted his wife, his people, and
his fortune; threw himself into a bark; stole through
the Bosphorus; and landed in shameful safety in an
obscure harbor of Thrace. As soon as they were
apprised of his flight, the Greek nobles sought pardon
and peace in the dungeon where the blind Isaac expected
each hour the visit of the executioner. Again
saved and exalted by the vicissitudes of fortune, the
captive in his Imperial robes was 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.
Part III.
But these generous deliverers were
unwilling to release their hostage, till they had
obtained from his father the payment, or at least the
promise, of their recompense. They chose four
ambassadors, Matthew of Montmorency, our historian
the marshal of Champagne, and two Venetians, to congratulate
the emperor. The gates were thrown open on their
approach, the streets on both sides were lined with
the battle axes of the Danish and English guard:
the presence-chamber glittered with gold and jewels,
the false substitute of virtue and power: by the
side of the blind Isaac his wife was seated, the sister
of the king of Hungary: and by her appearance,
the noble matrons of Greece were drawn from their
domestic retirement, and mingled with the circle of
senators and soldiers. The Latins, by the mouth
of the marshal, spoke like men conscious of their
merits, but who respected the work of their own hands;
and the emperor clearly understood, that his son’s
engagements with Venice and the pilgrims must be ratified
without hesitation or delay. Withdrawing into
a private chamber with the empress, a chamberlain,
an interpreter, and the four ambassadors, the father
of young Alexius inquired with some anxiety into the
nature of his stipulations. The submission of
the Eastern empire to the pope, the succor of the
Holy Land, and a present contribution of two hundred
thousand marks of silver. “These conditions
are weighty,” was his prudent reply: “they
are hard to accept, and difficult to perform.
But no conditions can exceed the measure of your services
and deserts.” After this satisfactory assurance,
the barons mounted on horseback, and introduced the
heir of Constantinople to the city and palace:
his youth and marvellous adventures engaged every
heart in his favor, and Alexius was solemnly crowned
with his father in the dome of St. Sophia. In
the first days of his reign, the people, already blessed
with the restoration of plenty and peace, was delighted
by the joyful catastrophe of the tragedy; and the
discontent of the nobles, their regret, and their
fears, were covered by the polished surface of pleasure
and loyalty The mixture of two discordant nations
in the same capital might have been pregnant with
mischief and danger; and the suburb of Galata, or
Pera, was assigned for the quarters of the French and
Venetians. But the liberty of trade and familiar
intercourse was allowed between the friendly nations:
and each day the pilgrims were tempted by devotion
or curiosity to visit the churches and palaces of Constantinople.
Their rude minds, insensible perhaps of the finer
arts, were astonished by the magnificent scenery:
and the poverty of their native towns enhanced the
populousness and riches of the first metropolis of
Christendom. 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. 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. 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.
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. 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. 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. 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.
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: 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, 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.
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. 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. 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, 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.
By the experience of the former siege, the Greeks
were instructed, but the Latins were animated; and
the knowledge that Constantinople might be taken,
was of more avail than the local precautions which
that knowledge had inspired for its defence. In
the third assault, two ships were linked together
to double their strength; a strong north wind drove
them on the shore; the bishops of Troyes and Soissons
led the van; and the auspicious names of the pilgrim
and the paradise resounded along the line.
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. 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.
In the close of evening, the barons checked their
troops, and fortified their stations: They were
awed by the extent and populousness of the capital,
which might yet require the labor of a month, if the
churches and palaces were conscious of their internal
strength. But in the morning, a suppliant procession,
with crosses and images, announced the submission
of the Greeks, and deprecated the wrath of the conquerors:
the usurper escaped through the golden gate: the
palaces of Blachernæ and Boucoleon were occupied by
the count of Flanders and the marquis of Montferrat;
and the empire, which still bore the name of Constantine,
and the title of Roman, was subverted by the arms
of the Latin pilgrims.
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;
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. 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 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. 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, 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.
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.
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 insulted
the splendid sobriety of the East. To expose
the arms of a people of scribes and scholars, they
affected to display a pen, an inkhorn, and a sheet
of paper, without discerning that the instruments
of science and valor were alike feeble and
useless in the hands of the modern Greeks.
Their reputation and their language
encouraged them, however, to despise the ignorance
and to overlook the progress of the Latins. 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. 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, in a florid and affected style; and
from his descriptions I shall select some interesting
particulars. 1. The victorious charioteers were
cast in bronze, at their own or the public charge,
and fitly placed in the hippodrome: they stood
aloft in their chariots, wheeling round the goal:
the spectators could admire their attitude, and judge
of the resemblance; and of these figures, the most
perfect might have been transported from the Olympic
stadium. 2. The sphinx, river-horse, and crocodile,
denote the climate and manufacture of Egypt and the
spoils of that ancient province. 3. The she-wolf
suckling Romulus and Remus, a subject alike pleasing
to the old and the new Romans, but which
could really be treated before the decline of the Greek
sculpture. 4. An eagle holding and tearing
a serpent in his talons, a domestic monument of the
Byzantines, which they ascribed, not to a human artist,
but to the magic power of the philosopher Apollonius,
who, by this talisman, delivered the city from such
venomous reptiles. 5. An ass and his driver,
which were erected by Augustus in his colony of Nicopolis,
to commemorate a verbal omen of the victory of Actium.
6. An equestrian statue which passed, in the
vulgar opinion, for Joshua, the Jewish conqueror,
stretching out his hand to stop the course of the
descending sun. A more classical tradition recognized
the figures of Bellerophon and Pegasus; and the free
attitude of the steed seemed to mark that he trod
on air, rather than on the earth. 7. A square
and lofty obelisk of brass; the sides were embossed
with a variety of picturesque and rural scenes, birds
singing; rustics laboring, or playing on their pipes;
sheep bleating; lambs skipping; the sea, and a scene
of fish and fishing; little naked cupids laughing,
playing, and pelting each other with apples; and,
on the summit, a female figure, turning with the slightest
breath, and thence denominated the wind’s
attendant. 8. The Phrygian shepherd presenting
to Venus the prize of beauty, the apple of discord.
9. The incomparable statue of Helen, which
is delineated by Nicetas in the words of admiration
and love: her well-turned feet, snowy arms, rosy
lips, bewitching smiles, swimming eyes, arched eyebrows,
the harmony of her shape, the lightness of her drapery,
and her flowing locks that waved in the wind; a beauty
that might have moved her Barbarian destroyers to
pity and remorse. 10. The manly or divine form
of Hercules, 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: 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. 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; but unless
they were crushed by some accidental injury, those
useless stones stood secure on their pedestals.
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. 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. 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.
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