Part I.
Partition Of The Empire
By The French And Venetians, Five
Latin Emperors Of The
Houses Of Flanders And Courtenay.
Their Wars Against The
Bulgarians And Greeks. Weakness And
Poverty Of The Latin
Empire. Recovery Of Constantinople By
The Greeks. General
Consequences Of The Crusades.
After the death of the lawful princes,
the French and Venetians, confident of justice and
victory, agreed to divide and regulate their future
possessions. It was stipulated by treaty, that
twelve electors, six of either nation, should be nominated;
that a majority should choose the emperor of the East;
and that, if the votes were equal, the decision of
chance should ascertain the successful candidate.
To him, with all the titles and prerogatives of the
Byzantine throne, they assigned the two palaces of
Boucoleon and Blachernæ, with a fourth part of the
Greek monarchy. It was defined that the three
remaining portions should be equally shared between
the republic of Venice and the barons of France; that
each feudatory, with an honorable exception for the
doge, should acknowledge and perform the duties of
homage and military service to the supreme head of
the empire; that the nation which gave an emperor,
should resign to their brethren the choice of a patriarch;
and that the pilgrims, whatever might be their impatience
to visit the Holy Land, should devote another year
to the conquest and defence of the Greek provinces.
After the conquest of Constantinople by the Latins,
the treaty was confirmed and executed; and the first
and most important step was the creation of an emperor.
The six electors of the French nation were all ecclesiastics,
the abbot of Loces, the archbishop elect of Acre in
Palestine, and the bishops of Troyes, Soissons, Halberstadt,
and Bethlehem, the last of whom exercised in the camp
the office of pope’s legate: their profession
and knowledge were respectable; and as they
could not be the objects, they were best qualified
to be the authors of the choice. The six Venetians
were the principal servants of the state, and in this
list the noble families of Querini and Contarini are
still proud to discover their ancestors. The
twelve assembled in the chapel of the palace; and after
the solemn invocation of the Holy Ghost, they proceeded
to deliberate and vote. A just impulse of respect
and gratitude prompted them to crown the virtues of
the doge; his wisdom had inspired their enterprise;
and the most youthful knights might envy and applaud
the exploits of blindness and age. But the patriot
Dandolo was devoid of all personal ambition, and fully
satisfied that he had been judged worthy to reign.
His nomination was overruled by the Venetians themselves:
his countrymen, and perhaps his friends, represented,
with the eloquence of truth, the mischiefs that might
arise to national freedom and the common cause, from
the union of two incompatible characters, of the first
magistrate of a republic and the emperor of the East.
The exclusion of the doge left room for the more equal
merits of Boniface and Baldwin; and at their names
all meaner candidates respectfully withdrew. The
marquis of Montferrat was recommended by his mature
age and fair reputation, by the choice of the adventurers,
and the wishes of the Greeks; nor can I believe that
Venice, the mistress of the sea, could be seriously
apprehensive of a petty lord at the foot of the Alps.
But the count of Flanders was the chief of a wealthy
and warlike people: he was valiant, pious, and
chaste; in the prime of life, since he was only thirty-two
years of age; a descendant of Charlemagne, a cousin
of the king of France, and a compeer of the prelates
and barons who had yielded with reluctance to the
command of a foreigner. Without the chapel, these
barons, with the doge and marquis at their head, expected
the decision of the twelve electors. It was announced
by the bishop of Soissons, in the name of his colleagues:
“Ye have sworn to obey the prince whom we should
choose: by our unanimous suffrage, Baldwin count
of Flanders and Hainault is now your sovereign, and
the emperor of the East.” He was saluted
with loud applause, and the proclamation was reechoed
through the city by the joy of the Latins, and the
trembling adulation of the Greeks. Boniface was
the first to kiss the hand of his rival, and to raise
him on the buckler: and Baldwin was transported
to the cathedral, and solemnly invested with the purple
buskins. At the end of three weeks he was crowned
by the legate, in the vacancy of the patriarch; but
the Venetian clergy soon filled the chapter of St.
Sophia, seated Thomas Morosini on the ecclesiastical
throne, and employed every art to perpetuate in their
own nation the honors and bénéfices of the Greek
church. Without delay the successor of Constantine
instructed Palestine, France, and Rome, of this memorable
revolution. To Palestine he sent, as a trophy,
the gates of Constantinople, and the chain of the
harbor; and adopted, from the Assise of Jerusalem,
the laws or customs best adapted to a French colony
and conquest in the East. In his epistles, the
natives of France are encouraged to swell that colony,
and to secure that conquest, to people a magnificent
city and a fertile land, which will reward the labors
both of the priest and the soldier. He congratulates
the Roman pontiff on the restoration of his authority
in the East; invites him to extinguish the Greek schism
by his presence in a general council; and implores
his blessing and forgiveness for the disobedient pilgrims.
Prudence and dignity are blended in the answer of
Innocent. In the subversion of the Byzantine empire,
he arraigns the vices of man, and adores the providence
of God; the conquerors will be absolved or condemned
by their future conduct; the validity of their treaty
depends on the judgment of St. Peter; but he inculcates
their most sacred duty of establishing a just subordination
of obedience and tribute, from the Greeks to the Latins,
from the magistrate to the clergy, and from the clergy
to the pope.
In the division of the Greek provinces,
the share of the Venetians was more ample than
that of the Latin emperor. No more than one fourth
was appropriated to his domain; a clear moiety of the
remainder was reserved for Venice; and the other moiety
was distributed among the adventures of France and
Lombardy. The venerable Dandolo was proclaimed
despot of Romania, and invested after the Greek fashion
with the purple buskins. He ended at Constantinople
his long and glorious life; and if the prerogative
was personal, the title was used by his successors
till the middle of the fourteenth century, with the
singular, though true, addition of lords of one fourth
and a half of the Roman empire. The doge, a slave
of state, was seldom permitted to depart from the helm
of the republic; but his place was supplied by the
bail, or regent, who exercised a supreme jurisdiction
over the colony of Venetians: they possessed
three of the eight quarters of the city; and his independent
tribunal was composed of six judges, four counsellors,
two chamberlains two fiscal advocates, and a constable.
Their long experience of the Eastern trade enabled
them to select their portion with discernment:
they had rashly accepted the dominion and defence of
Adrianople; but it was the more reasonable aim of
their policy to form a chain of factories, and cities,
and islands, along the maritime coast, from the neighborhood
of Ragusa to the Hellespont and the Bosphorus.
The labor and cost of such extensive conquests exhausted
their treasury: they abandoned their maxims of
government, adopted a feudal system, and contented
themselves with the homage of their nobles, for
the possessions which these private vassals undertook
to reduce and maintain. And thus it was that
the family of Sanut acquired the duchy of Naxos, which
involved the greatest part of the archipelago.
For the price of ten thousand marks, the republic
purchased of the marquis of Montferrat the fertile
Island of Crete or Candia, with the ruins of a hundred
cities; but its improvement was stinted by the
proud and narrow spirit of an aristocracy; and
the wisest senators would confess that the sea, not
the land, was the treasury of St. Mark. In the
moiety of the adventurers the marquis Boniface might
claim the most liberal reward; and, besides the Isle
of Crete, his exclusion from the throne was compensated
by the royal title and the provinces beyond the Hellespont.
But he prudently exchanged that distant and difficult
conquest for the kingdom of Thessalonica Macedonia,
twelve days’ journey from the capital, where
he might be supported by the neighboring powers of
his brother-in-law the king of Hungary. His progress
was hailed by the voluntary or reluctant acclamations
of the natives; and Greece, the proper and ancient
Greece, again received a Latin conqueror, who
trod with indifference that classic ground. He
viewed with a careless eye the beauties of the valley
of Tempe; traversed with a cautious step the straits
of Thermopylæ; occupied the unknown cities of Thebes,
Athens, and Argos; and assaulted the fortifications
of Corinth and Napoli, which resisted his arms.
The lots of the Latin pilgrims were regulated by chance,
or choice, or subsequent exchange; and they abused,
with intemperate joy, their triumph over the lives
and fortunes of a great people. After a minute
survey of the provinces, they weighed in the scales
of avarice the revenue of each district, the advantage
of the situation, and the ample on scanty supplies
for the maintenance of soldiers and horses. Their
presumption claimed and divided the long-lost dependencies
of the Roman sceptre: the Nile and Euphrates rolled
through their imaginary realms; and happy was the
warrior who drew for his prize the palace of the Turkish
sultan of Iconium. I shall not descend to the
pedigree of families and the rent-roll of estates,
but I wish to specify that the counts of Blois and
St. Pol were invested with the duchy of Nice and the
lordship of Demotica: the principal fiefs
were held by the service of constable, chamberlain,
cup-bearer, butler, and chief cook; and our historian,
Jeffrey of Villehardouin, obtained a fair establishment
on the banks of the Hebrus, and united the double office
of marshal of Champagne and Romania. At the head
of his knights and archers, each baron mounted on
horseback to secure the possession of his share, and
their first efforts were generally successful.
But the public force was weakened by their dispersion;
and a thousand quarrels must arise under a law, and
among men, whose sole umpire was the sword. Within
three months after the conquest of Constantinople,
the emperor and the king of Thessalonica drew their
hostile followers into the field; they were reconciled
by the authority of the doge, the advice of the marshal,
and the firm freedom of their peers.
Two fugitives, who had reigned at
Constantinople, still asserted the title of emperor;
and the subjects of their fallen throne might be moved
to pity by the misfortunes of the elder Alexius, or
excited to revenge by the spirit of Mourzoufle.
A domestic alliance, a common interest, a similar
guilt, and the merit of extinguishing his enemies,
a brother and a nephew, induced the more recent usurper
to unite with the former the relics of his power.
Mourzoufle was received with smiles and honors in
the camp of his father Alexius; but the wicked can
never love, and should rarely trust, their fellow-criminals;
he was seized in the bath, deprived of his eyes, stripped
of his troops and treasures, and turned out to wander
an object of horror and contempt to those who with
more propriety could hate, and with more justice could
punish, the assassin of the emperor Isaac and his
son. As the tyrant, pursued by fear or remorse,
was stealing over to Asia, he was seized by the Latins
of Constantinople, and condemned, after an open trial,
to an ignominious death. His judges debated the
mode of his execution, the axe, the wheel, or the
stake; and it was resolved that Mourzoufle should
ascend the Theodosian column, a pillar of white marble
of one hundred and forty-seven feet in height.
From the summit he was cast down headlong, and dashed
in pieces on the pavement, in the presence of innumerable
spectators, who filled the forum of Taurus, and admired
the accomplishment of an old prediction, which was
explained by this singular event. The fate of
Alexius is less tragical: he was sent by the
marquis a captive to Italy, and a gift to the king
of the Romans; but he had not much to applaud his
fortune, if the sentence of imprisonment and exile
were changed from a fortress in the Alps to a monastery
in Asia. But his daughter, before the national
calamity, had been given in marriage to a young hero
who continued the succession, and restored the throne,
of the Greek princes. The valor of Theodore Lascaris
was signalized in the two sieges of Constantinople.
After the flight of Mourzoufle, when the Latins were
already in the city, he offered himself as their emperor
to the soldiers and people; and his ambition, which
might be virtuous, was undoubtedly brave. Could
he have infused a soul into the multitude, they might
have crushed the strangers under their feet:
their abject despair refused his aid; and Theodore
retired to breathe the air of freedom in Anatolia,
beyond the immediate view and pursuit of the conquerors.
Under the title, at first of despot, and afterwards
of emperor, he drew to his standard the bolder spirits,
who were fortified against slavery by the contempt
of life; and as every means was lawful for the public
safety implored without scruple the alliance of the
Turkish sultan Nice, where Theodore established his
residence, Prusa and Philadelphia, Smyrna and Ephesus,
opened their gates to their deliverer: he derived
strength and reputation from his victories, and even
from his defeats; and the successor of Constantine
preserved a fragment of the empire from the banks of
the Mæander to the suburbs of Nicomedia, and at length
of Constantinople. Another portion, distant and
obscure, was possessed by the lineal heir of the Comneni,
a son of the virtuous Manuel, a grandson of the tyrant
Andronicus. His name was Alexius; and the epithet
of great was applied perhaps to his stature,
rather than to his exploits. By the indulgence
of the Angeli, he was appointed governor or duke of
Trebizond: his birth gave him ambition,
the revolution independence; and, without changing
his title, he reigned in peace from Sinope to
the Phasis, along the coast of the Black Sea.
His nameless son and successor is described as
the vassal of the sultan, whom he served with two hundred
lances: that Comnenian prince was no more than
duke of Trebizond, and the title of emperor was first
assumed by the pride and envy of the grandson of Alexius.
In the West, a third fragment was saved from the common
shipwreck by Michael, a bastard of the house of Angeli,
who, before the revolution, had been known as a hostage,
a soldier, and a rebel. His flight from the camp
of the marquis Boniface secured his freedom; by his
marriage with the governor’s daughter, he commanded
the important place of Durazzo, assumed the title
of despot, and founded a strong and conspicuous principality
in Epirus, Ætolia, and Thessaly, which have ever
been peopled by a warlike race. The Greeks, who
had offered their service to their new sovereigns,
were excluded by the haughty Latins from all
civil and military honors, as a nation born to tremble
and obey. Their resentment prompted them to show
that they might have been useful friends, since they
could be dangerous enemies: their nerves were
braced by adversity: whatever was learned or holy,
whatever was noble or valiant, rolled away into the
independent states of Trebizond, Epirus, and Nice;
and a single patrician is marked by the ambiguous praise
of attachment and loyalty to the Franks. The
vulgar herd of the cities and the country would have
gladly submitted to a mild and regular servitude;
and the transient disorders of war would have been
obliterated by some years of industry and peace.
But peace was banished, and industry was crushed,
in the disorders of the feudal system. The Roman
emperors of Constantinople, if they were endowed with
abilities, were armed with power for the protection
of their subjects: their laws were wise, and
their administration was simple. The Latin throne
was filled by a titular prince, the chief, and often
the servant, of his licentious confederates; the fiefs
of the empire, from a kingdom to a castle, were held
and ruled by the sword of the barons; and their discord,
poverty, and ignorance, extended the ramifications
of tyranny to the most sequestered villages.
The Greeks were oppressed by the double weight of
the priest, who were invested with temporal power,
and of the soldier, who was inflamed by fanatic hatred;
and the insuperable bar of religion and language forever
separated the stranger and the native. As long
as the crusaders were united at Constantinople, the
memory of their conquest, and the terror of their
arms, imposed silence on the captive land: their
dispersion betrayed the smallness of their numbers
and the defects of their discipline; and some failures
and mischances revealed the secret, that they were
not invincible. As the fears of the Greeks abated,
their hatred increased. They murdered; they conspired;
and before a year of slavery had elapsed, they implored,
or accepted, the succor of a Barbarian, whose power
they had felt, and whose gratitude they trusted.
The Latin conquerors had been saluted
with a solemn and early embassy from John, or Joannice,
or Calo-John, the revolted chief of the Bulgarians
and Walachians. He deemed himself their brother,
as the votary of the Roman pontiff, from whom he had
received the regal title and a holy banner; and in
the subversion of the Greek monarchy, he might aspire
to the name of their friend and accomplice. But
Calo-John was astonished to find, that the Count of
Flanders had assumed the pomp and pride of the successors
of Constantine; and his ambassadors were dismissed
with a haughty message, that the rebel must deserve
a pardon, by touching with his forehead the footstool
of the Imperial throne. His resentment would
have exhaled in acts of violence and blood: his
cooler policy watched the rising discontent of the
Greeks; affected a tender concern for their sufferings;
and promised, that their first struggles for freedom
should be supported by his person and kingdom.
The conspiracy was propagated by national hatred, the
firmest band of association and secrecy: the
Greeks were impatient to sheathe their daggers in
the breasts of the victorious strangers; but the execution
was prudently delayed, till Henry, the emperor’s
brother, had transported the flower of his troops
beyond the Hellespont. Most of the towns and
villages of Thrace were true to the moment and the
signal; and the Latins, without arms or suspicion,
were slaughtered by the vile and merciless revenge
of their slaves. From Demotica, the first scene
of the massacre, the surviving vassals of the count
of St. Pol escaped to Adrianople; but the French and
Venetians, who occupied that city, were slain or expelled
by the furious multitude: the garrisons that could
effect their retreat fell back on each other towards
the metropolis; and the fortresses, that separately
stood against the rebels, were ignorant of each other’s
and of their sovereign’s fate. The voice
of fame and fear announced the revolt of the Greeks
and the rapid approach of their Bulgarian ally; and
Calo-John, not depending on the forces of his own
kingdom, had drawn from the Scythian wilderness a body
of fourteen thousand Comans, who drank, as it was
said, the blood of their captives, and sacrificed
the Christians on the altars of their gods.
Alarmed by this sudden and growing
danger, the emperor despatched a swift messenger to
recall Count Henry and his troops; and had Baldwin
expected the return of his gallant brother, with a
supply of twenty thousand Armenians, he might have
encountered the invader with equal numbers and a decisive
superiority of arms and discipline. But the spirit
of chivalry could seldom discriminate caution from
cowardice; and the emperor took the field with a hundred
and forty knights, and their train of archers and
sergeants. The marshal, who dissuaded and obeyed,
led the vanguard in their march to Adrianople; the
main body was commanded by the count of Blois; the
aged doge of Venice followed with the rear; and their
scanty numbers were increased from all sides by the
fugitive Latins. They undertook to besiege the
rebels of Adrianople; and such was the pious tendency
of the crusades that they employed the holy week in
pillaging the country for their subsistence, and in
framing engines for the destruction of their fellow-Christians.
But the Latins were soon interrupted and alarmed by
the light cavalry of the Comans, who boldly skirmished
to the edge of their imperfect lines: and a proclamation
was issued by the marshal of Romania, that, on the
trumpet’s sound, the cavalry should mount and
form; but that none, under pain of death, should abandon
themselves to a desultory and dangerous pursuit.
This wise injunction was first disobeyed by the count
of Blois, who involved the emperor in his rashness
and ruin. The Comans, of the Parthian or Tartar
school, fled before their first charge; but after
a career of two leagues, when the knights and their
horses were almost breathless, they suddenly turned,
rallied, and encompassed the heavy squadrons of the
Franks. The count was slain on the field; the
emperor was made prisoner; and if the one disdained
to fly, if the other refused to yield, their personal
bravery made a poor atonement for their ignorance,
or neglect, of the duties of a general.
Part II.
Proud of his victory and his royal
prize, the Bulgarian advanced to relieve Adrianople
and achieve the destruction of the Latins. They
must inevitably have been destroyed, if the marshal
of Romania had not displayed a cool courage and consummate
skill; uncommon in all ages, but most uncommon in
those times, when war was a passion, rather than a
science. His grief and fears were poured into
the firm and faithful bosom of the doge; but in the
camp he diffused an assurance of safety, which could
only be realized by the general belief. All day
he maintained his perilous station between the city
and the Barbarians: Villehardouin decamped in
silence at the dead of night; and his masterly retreat
of three days would have deserved the praise of Xenophon
and the ten thousand. In the rear, the marshal
supported the weight of the pursuit; in the front,
he moderated the impatience of the fugitives; and
wherever the Comans approached, they were repelled
by a line of impenetrable spears. On the third
day, the weary troops beheld the sea, the solitary
town of Rodosta, and their friends, who had landed
from the Asiatic shore. They embraced, they wept;
but they united their arms and counsels; and in his
brother’s absence, Count Henry assumed the regency
of the empire, at once in a state of childhood and
caducity. If the Comans withdrew from the summer
heats, seven thousand Latins, in the hour of danger,
deserted Constantinople, their brethren, and their
vows. Some partial success was overbalanced by
the loss of one hundred and twenty knights in the
field of Rusium; and of the Imperial domain, no more
was left than the capital, with two or three adjacent
fortresses on the shores of Europe and Asia.
The king of Bulgaria was resistless and inexorable;
and Calo-John respectfully eluded the demands of the
pope, who conjured his new proselyte to restore peace
and the emperor to the afflicted Latins. The
deliverance of Baldwin was no longer, he said, in
the power of man: that prince had died in prison;
and the manner of his death is variously related by
ignorance and credulity. The lovers of a tragic
legend will be pleased to hear, that the royal captive
was tempted by the amorous queen of the Bulgarians;
that his chaste refusal exposed him to the falsehood
of a woman and the jealousy of a savage; that his
hands and feet were severed from his body; that his
bleeding trunk was cast among the carcasses of dogs
and horses; and that he breathed three days, before
he was devoured by the birds of prey. About twenty
years afterwards, in a wood of the Netherlands, a hermit
announced himself as the true Baldwin, the emperor
of Constantinople, and lawful sovereign of Flanders.
He related the wonders of his escape, his adventures,
and his penance, among a people prone to believe and
to rebel; and, in the first transport, Flanders acknowledged
her long-lost sovereign. A short examination
before the French court detected the impostor, who
was punished with an ignominious death; but the Flemings
still adhered to the pleasing error; and the countess
Jane is accused by the gravest historians of sacrificing
to her ambition the life of an unfortunate father.
In all civilized hostility, a treaty
is established for the exchange or ransom of prisoners;
and if their captivity be prolonged, their condition
is known, and they are treated according to their rank
with humanity or honor. But the savage Bulgarian
was a stranger to the laws of war: his prisons
were involved in darkness and silence; and above a
year elapsed before the Latins could be assured of
the death of Baldwin, before his brother, the regent
Henry, would consent to assume the title of emperor.
His moderation was applauded by the Greeks as an act
of rare and inimitable virtue. Their light and
perfidious ambition was eager to seize or anticipate
the moment of a vacancy, while a law of succession,
the guardian both of the prince and people, was gradually
defined and confirmed in the hereditary monarchies
of Europe. In the support of the Eastern empire,
Henry was gradually left without an associate, as the
heroes of the crusade retired from the world or from
the war. The doge of Venice, the venerable Dandolo,
in the fulness of years and glory, sunk into the grave.
The marquis of Montferrat was slowly recalled from
the Peloponnesian war to the revenge of Baldwin and
the defence of Thessalonica. Some nice disputes
of feudal homage and service were reconciled in a
personal interview between the emperor and the king;
they were firmly united by mutual esteem and the common
danger; and their alliance was sealed by the nuptials
of Henry with the daughter of the Italian prince.
He soon deplored the loss of his friend and father.
At the persuasion of some faithful Greeks, Boniface
made a bold and successful inroad among the hills
of Rhodope: the Bulgarians fled on his approach;
they assembled to harass his retreat. On the intelligence
that his rear was attacked, without waiting for any
defensive armor, he leaped on horseback, couched his
lance, and drove the enemies before him; but in the
rash pursuit he was pierced with a mortal wound; and
the head of the king of Thessalonica was presented
to Calo-John, who enjoyed the honors, without the
merit, of victory. It is here, at this melancholy
event, that the pen or the voice of Jeffrey of Villehardouin
seems to drop or to expire; and if he still exercised
his military office of marshal of Romania, his subsequent
exploits are buried in oblivion. The character
of Henry was not unequal to his arduous situation:
in the siege of Constantinople, and beyond the Hellespont,
he had deserved the fame of a valiant knight and a
skilful commander; and his courage was tempered with
a degree of prudence and mildness unknown to his impetuous
brother. In the double war against the Greeks
of Asia and the Bulgarians of Europe, he was ever
the foremost on shipboard or on horseback; and though
he cautiously provided for the success of his arms,
the drooping Latins were often roused by his example
to save and to second their fearless emperor.
But such efforts, and some supplies of men and money
from France, were of less avail than the errors, the
cruelty, and death, of their most formidable adversary.
When the despair of the Greek subjects invited Calo-John
as their deliverer, they hoped that he would protect
their liberty and adopt their laws: they were
soon taught to compare the degrees of national ferocity,
and to execrate the savage conqueror, who no longer
dissembled his intention of dispeopling Thrace, of
demolishing the cities, and of transplanting the inhabitants
beyond the Danube. Many towns and villages of
Thrace were already evacuated: a heap of ruins
marked the place of Philippopolis, and a similar calamity
was expected at Demotica and Adrianople, by the first
authors of the revolt. They raised a cry of grief
and repentance to the throne of Henry; the emperor
alone had the magnanimity to forgive and trust them.
No more than four hundred knights, with their sergeants
and archers, could be assembled under his banner; and
with this slender force he fought and repulsed
the Bulgarian, who, besides his infantry, was at the
head of forty thousand horse. In this expedition,
Henry felt the difference between a hostile and a friendly
country: the remaining cities were preserved
by his arms; and the savage, with shame and loss,
was compelled to relinquish his prey. The siege
of Thessalonica was the last of the evils which Calo-John
inflicted or suffered: he was stabbed in the
night in his tent; and the general, perhaps the assassin,
who found him weltering in his blood, ascribed the
blow, with general applause, to the lance of St. Demetrius.
After several victories, the prudence of Henry
concluded an honorable peace with the successor of
the tyrant, and with the Greek princes of Nice and
Epirus. If he ceded some doubtful limits, an ample
kingdom was reserved for himself and his feudatories;
and his reign, which lasted only ten years, afforded
a short interval of prosperity and peace. Far
above the narrow policy of Baldwin and Boniface, he
freely intrusted to the Greeks the most important
offices of the state and army; and this liberality
of sentiment and practice was the more seasonable,
as the princes of Nice and Epirus had already learned
to seduce and employ the mercenary valor of the Latins.
It was the aim of Henry to unite and reward his deserving
subjects, of every nation and language; but he appeared
less solicitous to accomplish the impracticable union
of the two churches. Pelagius, the pope’s
legate, who acted as the sovereign of Constantinople,
had interdicted the worship of the Greeks, and sternly
imposed the payment of tithes, the double procession
of the Holy Ghost, and a blind obedience to the Roman
pontiff. As the weaker party, they pleaded the
duties of conscience, and implored the rights of toleration:
“Our bodies,” they said, “are Cæsar’s,
but our souls belong only to God.” The
persecution was checked by the firmness of the emperor:
and if we can believe that the same prince was
poisoned by the Greeks themselves, we must entertain
a contemptible idea of the sense and gratitude of
mankind. His valor was a vulgar attribute, which
he shared with ten thousand knights; but Henry possessed
the superior courage to oppose, in a superstitious
age, the pride and avarice of the clergy. In the
cathedral of St. Sophia he presumed to place his throne
on the right hand of the patriarch; and this presumption
excited the sharpest censure of Pope Innocent the
Third. By a salutary edict, one of the first
examples of the laws of mortmain, he prohibited the
alienation of fiefs: many of the Latins,
desirous of returning to Europe, resigned their estates
to the church for a spiritual or temporal reward; these
holy lands were immediately discharged from military
service, and a colony of soldiers would have been
gradually transformed into a college of priests.
The virtuous Henry died at Thessalonica,
in the defence of that kingdom, and of an infant,
the son of his friend Boniface. In the two first
emperors of Constantinople the male line of the counts
of Flanders was extinct. But their sister Yolande
was the wife of a French prince, the mother of a numerous
progeny; and one of her daughters had married Andrew
king of Hungary, a brave and pious champion of the
cross. By seating him on the Byzantine throne,
the barons of Romania would have acquired the forces
of a neighboring and warlike kingdom; but the prudent
Andrew revered the laws of succession; and the princess
Yolande, with her husband Peter of Courtenay, count
of Auxerre, was invited by the Latins to assume the
empire of the East. The royal birth of his father,
the noble origin of his mother, recommended to the
barons of France the first cousin of their king.
His reputation was fair, his possessions were ample,
and in the bloody crusade against the Albigeois, the
soldiers and the priests had been abundantly satisfied
of his zeal and valor. Vanity might applaud the
elevation of a French emperor of Constantinople; but
prudence must pity, rather than envy, his treacherous
and imaginary greatness. To assert and adorn his
title, he was reduced to sell or mortgage the best
of his patrimony. By these expedients, the liberality
of his royal kinsman Philip Augustus, and the national
spirit of chivalry, he was enabled to pass the Alps
at the head of one hundred and forty knights, and
five thousand five hundred sergeants and archers.
After some hesitation, Pope Honorius the Third was
persuaded to crown the successor of Constantine:
but he performed the ceremony in a church without
the walls, lest he should seem to imply or to bestow
any right of sovereignty over the ancient capital of
the empire. The Venetians had engaged to transport
Peter and his forces beyond the Adriatic, and the
empress, with her four children, to the Byzantine
palace; but they required, as the price of their service,
that he should recover Durazzo from the despot of
Epirus. Michael Angelus, or Comnenus, the first
of his dynasty, had bequeathed the succession of his
power and ambition to Theodore, his legitimate brother,
who already threatened and invaded the establishments
of the Latins. After discharging his debt by
a fruitless assault, the emperor raised the siege
to prosecute a long and perilous journey over land
from Durazzo to Thessalonica. He was soon lost
in the mountains of Epirus: the passes were fortified;
his provisions exhausted; he was delayed and deceived
by a treacherous negotiation; and, after Peter of
Courtenay and the Roman legate had been arrested in
a banquet, the French troops, without leaders or hopes,
were eager to exchange their arms for the delusive
promise of mercy and bread. The Vatican thundered;
and the impious Theodore was threatened with the vengeance
of earth and heaven; but the captive emperor and his
soldiers were forgotten, and the reproaches of the
pope are confined to the imprisonment of his legate.
No sooner was he satisfied by the deliverance of the
priests and a promise of spiritual obedience, than
he pardoned and protected the despot of Epirus.
His peremptory commands suspended the ardor of the
Venetians and the king of Hungary; and it was only
by a natural or untimely death that Peter of
Courtenay was released from his hopeless captivity.
The long ignorance of his fate, and
the presence of the lawful sovereign, of Yolande,
his wife or widow, delayed the proclamation of a new
emperor. Before her death, and in the midst of
her grief, she was delivered of a son, who was named
Baldwin, the last and most unfortunate of the Latin
princes of Constantinople. His birth endeared
him to the barons of Romania; but his childhood would
have prolonged the troubles of a minority, and his
claims were superseded by the elder claims of his
brethren. The first of these, Philip of Courtenay,
who derived from his mother the inheritance of Namur,
had the wisdom to prefer the substance of a marquisate
to the shadow of an empire; and on his refusal, Robert,
the second of the sons of Peter and Yolande, was called
to the throne of Constantinople. Warned by his
father’s mischance, he pursued his slow and
secure journey through Germany and along the Danube:
a passage was opened by his sister’s marriage
with the king of Hungary; and the emperor Robert was
crowned by the patriarch in the cathedral of St. Sophia.
But his reign was an æra of calamity and disgrace;
and the colony, as it was styled, of New France yielded
on all sides to the Greeks of Nice and Epirus.
After a victory, which he owed to his perfidy rather
than his courage, Theodore Angelus entered the kingdom
of Thessalonica, expelled the feeble Demetrius, the
son of the marquis Boniface, erected his standard
on the walls of Adrianople; and added, by his vanity,
a third or a fourth name to the list of rival emperors.
The relics of the Asiatic province were swept away
by John Vataces, the son-in-law and successor of Theodore
Lascaris, and who, in a triumphant reign of thirty-three
years, displayed the virtues both of peace and war.
Under his discipline, the swords of the French mercenaries
were the most effectual instruments of his conquests,
and their desertion from the service of their country
was at once a symptom and a cause of the rising ascendant
of the Greeks. By the construction of a fleet,
he obtained the command of the Hellespont, reduced
the islands of Lesbos and Rhodes, attacked the Venetians
of Candia, and intercepted the rare and parsimonious
succors of the West. Once, and once only, the
Latin emperor sent an army against Vataces; and in
the defeat of that army, the veteran knights, the
last of the original conquerors, were left on the
field of battle. But the success of a foreign
enemy was less painful to the pusillanimous Robert
than the insolence of his Latin subjects, who confounded
the weakness of the emperor and of the empire.
His personal misfortunes will prove the anarchy of
the government and the ferociousness of the times.
The amorous youth had neglected his Greek bride, the
daughter of Vataces, to introduce into the palace a
beautiful maid, of a private, though noble family
of Artois; and her mother had been tempted by the
lustre of the purple to forfeit her engagements with
a gentleman of Burgundy. His love was converted
into rage; he assembled his friends, forced the palace
gates, threw the mother into the sea, and inhumanly
cut off the nose and lips of the wife or concubine
of the emperor. Instead of punishing the offender,
the barons avowed and applauded the savage deed,
which, as a prince and as a man, it was impossible
that Robert should forgive. He escaped from the
guilty city to implore the justice or compassion of
the pope: the emperor was coolly exhorted to
return to his station; before he could obey, he sunk
under the weight of grief, shame, and impotent resentment.
It was only in the age of chivalry,
that valor could ascend from a private station to
the thrones of Jerusalem and Constantinople. The
titular kingdom of Jerusalem had devolved to Mary,
the daughter of Isabella and Conrad of Montferrat,
and the granddaughter of Almeric or Amaury. She
was given to John of Brienne, of a noble family in
Champagne, by the public voice, and the judgment of
Philip Augustus, who named him as the most worthy
champion of the Holy Land. In the fifth crusade,
he led a hundred thousand Latins to the conquest of
Egypt: by him the siege of Damietta was achieved;
and the subsequent failure was justly ascribed to
the pride and avarice of the legate. After the
marriage of his daughter with Frederic the Second,
he was provoked by the emperor’s ingratitude
to accept the command of the army of the church; and
though advanced in life, and despoiled of royalty,
the sword and spirit of John of Brienne were still
ready for the service of Christendom. In the
seven years of his brother’s reign, Baldwin of
Courtenay had not emerged from a state of childhood,
and the barons of Romania felt the strong necessity
of placing the sceptre in the hands of a man and a
hero. The veteran king of Jerusalem might have
disdained the name and office of regent; they agreed
to invest him for his life with the title and prerogatives
of emperor, on the sole condition that Baldwin should
marry his second daughter, and succeed at a mature
age to the throne of Constantinople. The expectation,
both of the Greeks and Latins, was kindled by the
renown, the choice, and the presence of John of Brienne;
and they admired his martial aspect, his green and
vigorous age of more than fourscore years, and his
size and stature, which surpassed the common measure
of mankind. But avarice, and the love of ease,
appear to have chilled the ardor of enterprise:
his troops were disbanded, and two years rolled
away without action or honor, till he was awakened
by the dangerous alliance of Vataces emperor of Nice,
and of Azan king of Bulgaria. They besieged Constantinople
by sea and land, with an army of one hundred thousand
men, and a fleet of three hundred ships of war; while
the entire force of the Latin emperor was reduced
to one hundred and sixty knights, and a small addition
of sergeants and archers. I tremble to relate,
that instead of defending the city, the hero made
a sally at the head of his cavalry; and that of forty-eight
squadrons of the enemy, no more than three escaped
from the edge of his invincible sword. Fired
by his example, the infantry and the citizens boarded
the vessels that anchored close to the walls; and
twenty-five were dragged in triumph into the harbor
of Constantinople. At the summons of the emperor,
the vassals and allies armed in her defence; broke
through every obstacle that opposed their passage;
and, in the succeeding year, obtained a second victory
over the same enemies. By the rude poets of the
age, John of Brienne is compared to Hector, Roland,
and Judas Machabæus: but their credit, and
his glory, receive some abatement from the silence
of the Greeks. The empire was soon deprived of
the last of her champions; and the dying monarch was
ambitious to enter paradise in the habit of a Franciscan
friar.
In the double victory of John of Brienne,
I cannot discover the name or exploits of his pupil
Baldwin, who had attained the age of military service,
and who succeeded to the imperial dignity on the decease
of his adoptive father. The royal youth was employed
on a commission more suitable to his temper; he was
sent to visit the Western courts, of the pope more
especially, and of the king of France; to excite their
pity by the view of his innocence and distress; and
to obtain some supplies of men or money for the relief
of the sinking empire. He thrice repeated these
mendicant visits, in which he seemed to prolong his
stay and postpone his return; of the five-and-twenty
years of his reign, a greater number were spent abroad
than at home; and in no place did the emperor deem
himself less free and secure than in his native country
and his capital. On some public occasions, his
vanity might be soothed by the title of Augustus,
and by the honors of the purple; and at the general
council of Lyons, when Frederic the Second was excommunicated
and deposed, his Oriental colleague was enthroned on
the right hand of the pope. But how often was
the exile, the vagrant, the Imperial beggar, humbled
with scorn, insulted with pity, and degraded in his
own eyes and those of the nations! In his first
visit to England, he was stopped at Dover by a severe
reprimand, that he should presume, without leave, to
enter an independent kingdom. After some delay,
Baldwin, however, was permitted to pursue his journey,
was entertained with cold civility, and thankfully
departed with a present of seven hundred marks.
From the avarice of Rome he could only obtain the
proclamation of a crusade, and a treasure of indulgences;
a coin whose currency was depreciated by too frequent
and indiscriminate abuse. His birth and misfortunes
recommended him to the generosity of his cousin Louis
the Ninth; but the martial zeal of the saint was diverted
from Constantinople to Egypt and Palestine; and the
public and private poverty of Baldwin was alleviated,
for a moment, by the alienation of the marquisate of
Namur and the lordship of Courtenay, the last remains
of his inheritance. By such shameful or ruinous
expedients, he once more returned to Romania, with
an army of thirty thousand soldiers, whose numbers
were doubled in the apprehension of the Greeks.
His first despatches to France and England announced
his victories and his hopes: he had reduced the
country round the capital to the distance of three
days’ journey; and if he succeeded against an
important, though nameless, city, (most probably Chiorli,)
the frontier would be safe and the passage accessible.
But these expectations (if Baldwin was sincere) quickly
vanished like a dream: the troops and treasures
of France melted away in his unskilful hands; and
the throne of the Latin emperor was protected by a
dishonorable alliance with the Turks and Comans.
To secure the former, he consented to bestow his niece
on the unbelieving sultan of Cogni; to please the latter,
he complied with their Pagan rites; a dog was sacrificed
between the two armies; and the contracting parties
tasted each other’s blood, as a pledge of their
fidelity. In the palace, or prison, of Constantinople,
the successor of Augustus demolished the vacant houses
for winter fuel, and stripped the lead from the churches
for the daily expense of his family. Some usurious
loans were dealt with a scanty hand by the merchants
of Italy; and Philip, his son and heir, was pawned
at Venice as the security for a debt. Thirst,
hunger, and nakedness, are positive evils: but
wealth is relative; and a prince who would be rich
in a private station, may be exposed by the increase
of his wants to all the anxiety and bitterness of
poverty.
Part III.
But in this abject distress, the emperor
and empire were still possessed of an ideal treasure,
which drew its fantastic value from the superstition
of the Christian world. The merit of the true
cross was somewhat impaired by its frequent division;
and a long captivity among the infidels might shed
some suspicion on the fragments that were produced
in the East and West. But another relic of the
Passion was preserved in the Imperial chapel of Constantinople;
and the crown of thorns which had been placed on the
head of Christ was equally precious and authentic.
It had formerly been the practice of the Egyptian debtors
to deposit, as a security, the mummies of their parents;
and both their honor and religion were bound for the
redemption of the pledge. In the same manner,
and in the absence of the emperor, the barons of Romania
borrowed the sum of thirteen thousand one hundred and
thirty-four pieces of gold on the credit of the
holy crown: they failed in the performance of
their contract; and a rich Venetian, Nicholas Querini,
undertook to satisfy their impatient creditors, on
condition that the relic should be lodged at Venice,
to become his absolute property, if it were not redeemed
within a short and definite term. The barons apprised
their sovereign of the hard treaty and impending loss
and as the empire could not afford a ransom of seven
thousand pounds sterling, Baldwin was anxious to snatch
the prize from the Venetians, and to vest it with more
honor and emolument in the hands of the most Christian
king. Yet the negotiation was attended with some
delicacy. In the purchase of relics, the saint
would have started at the guilt of simony; but if the
mode of expression were changed, he might lawfully
repay the debt, accept the gift, and acknowledge the
obligation. His ambassadors, two Dominicans,
were despatched to Venice to redeem and receive the
holy crown which had escaped the dangers of the sea
and the galleys of Vataces. On opening a wooden
box, they recognized the seals of the doge and barons,
which were applied on a shrine of silver; and within
this shrine the monument of the Passion was enclosed
in a golden vase. The reluctant Venetians yielded
to justice and power: the emperor Frederic granted
a free and honorable passage; the court of France
advanced as far as Troyes in Champagne, to meet with
devotion this inestimable relic: it was borne
in triumph through Paris by the king himself, barefoot,
and in his shirt; and a free gift of ten thousand
marks of silver reconciled Baldwin to his loss.
The success of this transaction tempted the Latin emperor
to offer with the same generosity the remaining furniture
of his chapel; a large and authentic portion
of the true cross; the baby-linen of the Son of God,
the lance, the sponge, and the chain, of his Passion;
the rod of Moses, and part of the skull of St. John
the Baptist. For the reception of these spiritual
treasures, twenty thousand marks were expended by
St. Louis on a stately foundation, the holy chapel
of Paris, on which the muse of Boileau has bestowed
a comic immortality. The truth of such remote
and ancient relics, which cannot be proved by any human
testimony, must be admitted by those who believe in
the miracles which they have performed. About
the middle of the last age, an inveterate ulcer was
touched and cured by a holy prickle of the holy crown:
the prodigy is attested by the most pious and
enlightened Christians of France; nor will the fact
be easily disproved, except by those who are armed
with a general antidote against religious credulity.
The Latins of Constantinople
were on all sides encompassed and pressed; their sole
hope, the last delay of their ruin, was in the division
of their Greek and Bulgarian enemies; and of this hope
they were deprived by the superior arms and policy
of Vataces, emperor of Nice. From the Propontis
to the rocky coast of Pamphylia, Asia was peaceful
and prosperous under his reign; and the events of every
campaign extended his influence in Europe. The
strong cities of the hills of Macedonia and Thrace
were rescued from the Bulgarians; and their kingdom
was circumscribed by its present and proper limits,
along the southern banks of the Danube. The sole
emperor of the Romans could no longer brook that a
lord of Epirus, a Comnenian prince of the West, should
presume to dispute or share the honors of the purple;
and the humble Demetrius changed the color of his
buskins, and accepted with gratitude the appellation
of despot. His own subjects were exasperated
by his baseness and incapacity; they implored the protection
of their supreme lord. After some resistance,
the kingdom of Thessalonica was united to the empire
of Nice; and Vataces reigned without a competitor
from the Turkish borders to the Adriatic Gulf.
The princes of Europe revered his merit and power;
and had he subscribed an orthodox creed, it should
seem that the pope would have abandoned without reluctance
the Latin throne of Constantinople. But the death
of Vataces, the short and busy reign of Theodore his
son, and the helpless infancy of his grandson John,
suspended the restoration of the Greeks. In the
next chapter, I shall explain their domestic revolutions;
in this place, it will be sufficient to observe, that
the young prince was oppressed by the ambition of
his guardian and colleague, Michael Palæologus, who
displayed the virtues and vices that belong to the
founder of a new dynasty. The emperor Baldwin
had flattered himself, that he might recover some
provinces or cities by an impotent negotiation.
His ambassadors were dismissed from Nice with mockery
and contempt. At every place which they named,
Palæologus alleged some special reason, which rendered
it dear and valuable in his eyes: in the one he
was born; in another he had been first promoted to
military command; and in a third he had enjoyed, and
hoped long to enjoy, the pleasures of the chase.
“And what then do you propose to give us?”
said the astonished deputies. “Nothing,”
replied the Greek, “not a foot of land.
If your master be desirous of peace, let him pay me,
as an annual tribute, the sum which he receives from
the trade and customs of Constantinople. On these
terms, I may allow him to reign. If he refuses,
it is war. I am not ignorant of the art of war,
and I trust the event to God and my sword.”
An expedition against the despot of Epirus was
the first prelude of his arms. If a victory was
followed by a defeat; if the race of the Comneni or
Angeli survived in those mountains his efforts and
his reign; the captivity of Villehardouin, prince
of Achaia, deprived the Latins of the most active
and powerful vassal of their expiring monarchy.
The republics of Venice and Genoa disputed, in the
first of their naval wars, the command of the sea
and the commerce of the East. Pride and interest
attached the Venetians to the defence of Constantinople;
their rivals were tempted to promote the designs of
her enemies, and the alliance of the Genoese with
the schismatic conqueror provoked the indignation
of the Latin church.
Intent on his great object, the emperor
Michael visited in person and strengthened the troops
and fortifications of Thrace. The remains of
the Latins were driven from their last possessions:
he assaulted without success the suburb of Galata;
and corresponded with a perfidious baron, who proved
unwilling, or unable, to open the gates of the metropolis.
The next spring, his favorite general, Alexius Strategopulus,
whom he had decorated with the title of Cæsar, passed
the Hellespont with eight hundred horse and some infantry,
on a secret expedition. His instructions
enjoined him to approach, to listen, to watch, but
not to risk any doubtful or dangerous enterprise against
the city. The adjacent territory between the
Propontis and the Black Sea was cultivated by a hardy
race of peasants and outlaws, exercised in arms, uncertain
in their allegiance, but inclined by language, religion,
and present advantage, to the party of the Greeks.
They were styled the volunteers; and by
their free service the army of Alexius, with the regulars
of Thrace and the Coman auxiliaries, was augmented
to the number of five-and-twenty thousand men.
By the ardor of the volunteers, and by his own ambition,
the Cæsar was stimulated to disobey the precise orders
of his master, in the just confidence that success
would plead his pardon and reward. The weakness
of Constantinople, and the distress and terror of
the Latins, were familiar to the observation of the
volunteers; and they represented the present moment
as the most propitious to surprise and conquest.
A rash youth, the new governor of the Venetian colony,
had sailed away with thirty galleys, and the best
of the French knights, on a wild expedition to Daphnusia,
a town on the Black Sea, at the distance of forty
leagues; and the remaining Latins were without
strength or suspicion. They were informed that
Alexius had passed the Hellespont; but their apprehensions
were lulled by the smallness of his original numbers;
and their imprudence had not watched the subsequent
increase of his army. If he left his main body
to second and support his operations, he might advance
unperceived in the night with a chosen detachment.
While some applied scaling-ladders to the lowest part
of the walls, they were secure of an old Greek, who
would introduce their companions through a subterraneous
passage into his house; they could soon on the inside
break an entrance through the golden gate, which had
been long obstructed; and the conqueror would be in
the heart of the city before the Latins were conscious
of their danger. After some debate, the Cæsar
resigned himself to the faith of the volunteers; they
were trusty, bold, and successful; and in describing
the plan, I have already related the execution and
success. But no sooner had Alexius passed the
threshold of the golden gate, than he trembled at
his own rashness; he paused, he deliberated; till
the desperate volunteers urged him forwards, by the
assurance that in retreat lay the greatest and most
inevitable danger. Whilst the Cæsar kept his
regulars in firm array, the Comans dispersed themselves
on all sides; an alarm was sounded, and the threats
of fire and pillage compelled the citizens to a decisive
resolution. The Greeks of Constantinople remembered
their native sovereigns; the Genoese merchants their
recent alliance and Venetian foes; every quarter was
in arms; and the air resounded with a general acclamation
of “Long life and victory to Michael and John,
the august emperors of the Romans!” Their rival,
Baldwin, was awakened by the sound; but the most pressing
danger could not prompt him to draw his sword in the
defence of a city which he deserted, perhaps, with
more pleasure than regret: he fled from the palace
to the seashore, where he descried the welcome sails
of the fleet returning from the vain and fruitless
attempt on Daphnusia. Constantinople was irrecoverably
lost; but the Latin emperor and the principal families
embarked on board the Venetian galleys, and steered
for the Isle of Euba, and afterwards for Italy, where
the royal fugitive was entertained by the pope and
Sicilian king with a mixture of contempt and pity.
From the loss of Constantinople to his death, he consumed
thirteen years, soliciting the Catholic powers to join
in his restoration: the lesson had been familiar
to his youth; nor was his last exile more indigent
or shameful than his three former pilgrimages to the
courts of Europe. His son Philip was the heir
of an ideal empire; and the pretensions of his daughter
Catherine were transported by her marriage to Charles
of Valois, the brother of Philip the Fair, king of
France. The house of Courtenay was represented
in the female line by successive alliances, till the
title of emperor of Constantinople, too bulky and
sonorous for a private name, modestly expired in silence
and oblivion.
After this narrative of the expeditions
of the Latins to Palestine and Constantinople, I cannot
dismiss the subject without resolving the general
consequences on the countries that were the scene,
and on the nations that were the actors, of these
memorable crusades. As soon as the arms of the
Franks were withdrawn, the impression, though not
the memory, was erased in the Mahometan realms of Egypt
and Syria. The faithful disciples of the prophet
were never tempted by a profane desire to study the
laws or language of the idolaters; nor did the simplicity
of their primitive manners receive the slightest alteration
from their intercourse in peace and war with the unknown
strangers of the West. The Greeks, who thought
themselves proud, but who were only vain, showed a
disposition somewhat less inflexible. In the efforts
for the recovery of their empire, they emulated the
valor, discipline, and tactics of their antagonists.
The modern literature of the West they might justly
despise; but its free spirit would instruct them in
the rights of man; and some institutions of public
and private life were adopted from the French.
The correspondence of Constantinople and Italy diffused
the knowledge of the Latin tongue; and several of
the fathers and classics were at length honored with
a Greek version. But the national and religious
prejudices of the Orientals were inflamed by persecution,
and the reign of the Latins confirmed the separation
of the two churches.
If we compare the æra of the
crusades, the Latins of Europe with the Greeks and
Arabians, their respective degrees of knowledge, industry,
and art, our rude ancestors must be content with the
third rank in the scale of nations. Their successive
improvement and present superiority may be ascribed
to a peculiar energy of character, to an active and
imitative spirit, unknown to their more polished rivals,
who at that time were in a stationary or retrograde
state. With such a disposition, the Latins should
have derived the most early and essential benefits
from a series of events which opened to their eyes
the prospect of the world, and introduced them to
a long and frequent intercourse with the more cultivated
regions of the East. The first and most obvious
progress was in trade and manufactures, in the arts
which are strongly prompted by the thirst of wealth,
the calls of necessity, and the gratification of the
sense or vanity. Among the crowd of unthinking
fanatics, a captive or a pilgrim might sometimes observe
the superior refinements of Cairo and Constantinople:
the first importer of windmills was the benefactor
of nations; and if such blessings are enjoyed without
any grateful remembrance, history has condescended
to notice the more apparent luxuries of silk and sugar,
which were transported into Italy from Greece and
Egypt. But the intellectual wants of the Latins
were more slowly felt and supplied; the ardor of studious
curiosity was awakened in Europe by different causes
and more recent events; and, in the age of the crusades,
they viewed with careless indifference the literature
of the Greeks and Arabians. Some rudiments of
mathematical and medicinal knowledge might be imparted
in practice and in figures; necessity might produce
some interpreters for the grosser business of merchants
and soldiers; but the commerce of the Orientals
had not diffused the study and knowledge of their
languages in the schools of Europe. If a similar
principle of religion repulsed the idiom of the Koran,
it should have excited their patience and curiosity
to understand the original text of the gospel; and
the same grammar would have unfolded the sense of
Plato and the beauties of Homer. Yet in a reign
of sixty years, the Latins of Constantinople disdained
the speech and learning of their subjects; and the
manuscripts were the only treasures which the natives
might enjoy without rapine or envy. Aristotle
was indeed the oracle of the Western universities,
but it was a barbarous Aristotle; and, instead of
ascending to the fountain head, his Latin votaries
humbly accepted a corrupt and remote version, from
the Jews and Moors of Andalusia. The principle
of the crusades was a savage fanaticism; and the most
important effects were analogous to the cause.
Each pilgrim was ambitious to return with his sacred
spoils, the relics of Greece and Palestine; and
each relic was preceded and followed by a train of
miracles and visions. The belief of the Catholics
was corrupted by new legends, their practice by new
superstitions; and the establishment of the inquisition,
the mendicant orders of monks and friars, the last
abuse of indulgences, and the final progress of idolatry,
flowed from the baleful fountain of the holy war.
The active spirit of the Latins preyed on the vitals
of their reason and religion; and if the ninth and
tenth centuries were the times of darkness, the thirteenth
and fourteenth were the age of absurdity and fable.
Part IV.
In the profession of Christianity,
in the cultivation of a fertile land, the northern
conquerors of the Roman empire insensibly mingled with
the provincials, and rekindled the embers of
the arts of antiquity. Their settlements about
the age of Charlemagne had acquired some degree of
order and stability, when they were overwhelmed by
new swarms of invaders, the Normans, Saracens,
and Hungarians, who replunged the western countries
of Europe into their former state of anarchy and barbarism.
About the eleventh century, the second tempest had
subsided by the expulsion or conversion of the enemies
of Christendom: the tide of civilization, which
had so long ebbed, began to flow with a steady and
accelerated course; and a fairer prospect was opened
to the hopes and efforts of the rising generations.
Great was the increase, and rapid the progress, during
the two hundred years of the crusades; and some philosophers
have applauded the propitious influence of these holy
wars, which appear to me to have checked rather than
forwarded the maturity of Europe. The lives and
labors of millions, which were buried in the East,
would have been more profitably employed in the improvement
of their native country: the accumulated stock
of industry and wealth would have overflowed in navigation
and trade; and the Latins would have been enriched
and enlightened by a pure and friendly correspondence
with the climates of the East. In one respect
I can indeed perceive the accidental operation of
the crusades, not so much in producing a benefit as
in removing an evil. The larger portion of the
inhabitants of Europe was chained to the soil, without
freedom, or property, or knowledge; and the two orders
of ecclesiastics and nobles, whose numbers were comparatively
small, alone deserved the name of citizens and men.
This oppressive system was supported by the arts of
the clergy and the swords of the barons. The
authority of the priests operated in the darker ages
as a salutary antidote: they prevented the total
extinction of letters, mitigated the fierceness of
the times, sheltered the poor and defenceless, and
preserved or revived the peace and order of civil
society. But the independence, rapine, and discord
of the feudal lords were unmixed with any semblance
of good; and every hope of industry and improvement
was crushed by the iron weight of the martial aristocracy.
Among the causes that undermined that Gothic edifice,
a conspicuous place must be allowed to the crusades.
The estates of the barons were dissipated, and their
race was often extinguished, in these costly and perilous
expeditions. Their poverty extorted from their
pride those charters of freedom which unlocked the
fetters of the slave, secured the farm of the peasant
and the shop of the artificer, and gradually restored
a substance and a soul to the most numerous and useful
part of the community. The conflagration which
destroyed the tall and barren trees of the forest
gave air and scope to the vegetation of the smaller
and nutritive plants of the soil.
Digression On The Family Of Courtenay.
The purple of three emperors, who
have reigned at Constantinople, will authorize or
excuse a digression on the origin and singular fortunes
of the house of Courtenay, in the three principal
branches: I. Of Edessa; II. Of France; and
III. Of England; of which the last only has survived
the revolutions of eight hundred years.
I. Before the introduction of trade,
which scatters riches, and of knowledge, which dispels
prejudice, the prerogative of birth is most strongly
felt and most humbly acknowledged. In every age,
the laws and manners of the Germans have discriminated
the ranks of society; the dukes and counts, who shared
the empire of Charlemagne, converted their office
to an inheritance; and to his children, each feudal
lord bequeathed his honor and his sword. The
proudest families are content to lose, in the darkness
of the middle ages, the tree of their pedigree, which,
however deep and lofty, must ultimately rise from a
plebeian root; and their historians must descend ten
centuries below the Christian æra, before they
can ascertain any lineal succession by the evidence
of surnames, of arms, and of authentic records.
With the first rays of light, we discern the
nobility and opulence of Atho, a French knight; his
nobility, in the rank and title of a nameless father;
his opulence, in the foundation of the castle of Courtenay
in the district of Gatinois, about fifty-six miles
to the south of Paris. From the reign of Robert,
the son of Hugh Capet, the barons of Courtenay are
conspicuous among the immediate vassals of the crown;
and Joscelin, the grandson of Atho and a noble dame,
is enrolled among the heroes of the first crusade.
A domestic alliance (their mothers were sisters) attached
him to the standard of Baldwin of Bruges, the second
count of Edessa; a princely fief, which he was worthy
to receive, and able to maintain, announces the number
of his martial followers; and after the departure
of his cousin, Joscelin himself was invested with the
county of Edessa on both sides of the Euphrates.
By economy in peace, his territories were replenished
with Latin and Syrian subjects; his magazines with
corn, wine, and oil; his castles with gold and silver,
with arms and horses. In a holy warfare of thirty
years, he was alternately a conqueror and a captive:
but he died like a soldier, in a horse litter at the
head of his troops; and his last glance beheld the
flight of the Turkish invaders who had presumed on
his age and infirmities. His son and successor,
of the same name, was less deficient in valor than
in vigilance; but he sometimes forgot that dominion
is acquired and maintained by the same arms.
He challenged the hostility of the Turks, without
securing the friendship of the prince of Antioch; and,
amidst the peaceful luxury of Turbessel, in Syria,
Joscelin neglected the defence of the Christian
frontier beyond the Euphrates. In his absence,
Zenghi, the first of the Atabeks, besieged and stormed
his capital, Edessa, which was feebly defended by
a timorous and disloyal crowd of Orientals:
the Franks were oppressed in a bold attempt for its
recovery, and Courtenay ended his days in the prison
of Aleppo. He still left a fair and ample patrimony
But the victorious Turks oppressed on all sides the
weakness of a widow and orphan; and, for the equivalent
of an annual pension, they resigned to the Greek emperor
the charge of defending, and the shame of losing,
the last relics of the Latin conquest. The countess-dowager
of Edessa retired to Jerusalem with her two children;
the daughter, Agnes, became the wife and mother of
a king; the son, Joscelin the Third, accepted the
office of seneschal, the first of the kingdom, and
held his new estates in Palestine by the service of
fifty knights. His name appears with honor in
the transactions of peace and war; but he finally
vanishes in the fall of Jerusalem; and the name of
Courtenay, in this branch of Edessa, was lost by the
marriage of his two daughters with a French and German
baron.
II. While Joscelin reigned beyond
the Euphrates, his elder brother Milo, the son of
Joscelin, the son of Atho, continued, near the Seine,
to possess the castle of their fathers, which was
at length inherited by Rainaud, or Reginald, the youngest
of his three sons. Examples of genius or virtue
must be rare in the annals of the oldest families;
and, in a remote age their pride will embrace a deed
of rapine and violence; such, however, as could not
be perpetrated without some superiority of courage,
or, at least, of power. A descendant of Reginald
of Courtenay may blush for the public robber, who
stripped and imprisoned several merchants, after they
had satisfied the king’s duties at Sens and
Orleans. He will glory in the offence, since the
bold offender could not be compelled to obedience
and restitution, till the regent and the count of
Champagne prepared to march against him at the head
of an army. Reginald bestowed his estates on
his eldest daughter, and his daughter on the seventh
son of King Louis the Fat; and their marriage was crowned
with a numerous offspring. We might expect that
a private should have merged in a royal name; and
that the descendants of Peter of France and Elizabeth
of Courtenay would have enjoyed the titles and honors
of princes of the blood. But this legitimate
claim was long neglected, and finally denied; and
the causes of their disgrace will represent the story
of this second branch. 1. Of all the families
now extant, the most ancient, doubtless, and the most
illustrious, is the house of France, which has occupied
the same throne above eight hundred years, and descends,
in a clear and lineal series of males, from the middle
of the ninth century. In the age of the crusades,
it was already revered both in the East and West.
But from Hugh Capet to the marriage of Peter, no more
than five reigns or generations had elapsed; and so
precarious was their title, that the eldest sons, as
a necessary precaution, were previously crowned during
the lifetime of their fathers. The peers of France
have long maintained their precedency before the younger
branches of the royal line, nor had the princes of
the blood, in the twelfth century, acquired that hereditary
lustre which is now diffused over the most remote
candidates for the succession. 2. The barons
of Courtenay must have stood high in their own estimation,
and in that of the world, since they could impose on
the son of a king the obligation of adopting for himself
and all his descendants the name and arms of their
daughter and his wife. In the marriage of an heiress
with her inferior or her equal, such exchange often
required and allowed: but as they continued to
diverge from the regal stem, the sons of Louis the
Fat were insensibly confounded with their maternal
ancestors; and the new Courtenays might deserve to
forfeit the honors of their birth, which a motive
of interest had tempted them to renounce. 3.
The shame was far more permanent than the reward, and
a momentary blaze was followed by a long darkness.
The eldest son of these nuptials, Peter of Courtenay,
had married, as I have already mentioned, the sister
of the counts of Flanders, the two first emperors of
Constantinople: he rashly accepted the invitation
of the barons of Romania; his two sons, Robert and
Baldwin, successively held and lost the remains of
the Latin empire in the East, and the granddaughter
of Baldwin the Second again mingled her blood with
the blood of France and of Valois. To support
the expenses of a troubled and transitory reign, their
patrimonial estates were mortgaged or sold: and
the last emperors of Constantinople depended on the
annual charity of Rome and Naples.
While the elder brothers dissipated
their wealth in romantic adventures, and the castle
of Courtenay was profaned by a plebeian owner, the
younger branches of that adopted name were propagated
and multiplied. But their splendor was clouded
by poverty and time: after the decease of Robert,
great butler of France, they descended from princes
to barons; the next generations were confounded with
the simple gentry; the descendants of Hugh Capet could
no longer be visible in the rural lords of Tanlay
and of Champignelles. The more adventurous embraced
without dishonor the profession of a soldier:
the least active and opulent might sink, like their
cousins of the branch of Dreux, into the condition
of peasants. Their royal descent, in a dark period
of four hundred years, became each day more obsolete
and ambiguous; and their pedigree, instead of being
enrolled in the annals of the kingdom, must be painfully
searched by the minute diligence of heralds and genealogists.
It was not till the end of the sixteenth century,
on the accession of a family almost as remote as their
own, that the princely spirit of the Courtenays again
revived; and the question of the nobility provoked
them to ascertain the royalty of their blood.
They appealed to the justice and compassion of Henry
the Fourth; obtained a favorable opinion from twenty
lawyers of Italy and Germany, and modestly compared
themselves to the descendants of King David, whose
prerogatives were not impaired by the lapse of ages
or the trade of a carpenter. But every ear was
deaf, and every circumstance was adverse, to their
lawful claims. The Bourbon kings were justified
by the neglect of the Valois; the princes of the blood,
more recent and lofty, disdained the alliance of his
humble kindred: the parliament, without denying
their proofs, eluded a dangerous precedent by an arbitrary
distinction, and established St. Louis as the first
father of the royal line. A repetition of complaints
and protests was repeatedly disregarded; and the hopeless
pursuit was terminated in the present century by the
death of the last male of the family. Their painful
and anxious situation was alleviated by the pride
of conscious virtue: they sternly rejected the
temptations of fortune and favor; and a dying Courtenay
would have sacrificed his son, if the youth could
have renounced, for any temporal interest, the right
and title of a legitimate prince of the blood of France.
III. According to the old register
of Ford Abbey, the Courtenays of Devonshire are descended
from Prince Florus, the second son of Peter,
and the grandson of Louis the Fat. This fable
of the grateful or venal monks was too respectfully
entertained by our antiquaries, Cambden and Dugdale:
but it is so clearly repugnant to truth and time,
that the rational pride of the family now refuses to
accept this imaginary founder. Their most faithful
historians believe, that, after giving his daughter
to the king’s son, Reginald of Courtenay abandoned
his possessions in France, and obtained from the English
monarch a second wife and a new inheritance.
It is certain, at least, that Henry the Second distinguished
in his camps and councils a Reginald, of the name
and arms, and, as it may be fairly presumed, of the
genuine race, of the Courtenays of France. The
right of wardship enabled a feudal lord to reward
his vassal with the marriage and estate of a noble
heiress; and Reginald of Courtenay acquired a fair
establishment in Devonshire, where his posterity has
been seated above six hundred years. From a Norman
baron, Baldwin de Brioniis, who had been invested by
the Conqueror, Hawise, the wife of Reginald, derived
the honor of Okehampton, which was held by the service
of ninety-three knights; and a female might claim
the manly offices of hereditary viscount or sheriff,
and of captain of the royal castle of Exeter.
Their son Robert married the sister of the earl of
Devon: at the end of a century, on the failure
of the family of Rivers, his great-grandson, Hugh
the Second, succeeded to a title which was still considered
as a territorial dignity; and twelve earls of Devonshire,
of the name of Courtenay, have flourished in a period
of two hundred and twenty years. They were ranked
among the chief of the barons of the realm; nor was
it till after a strenuous dispute, that they yielded
to the fief of Arundel the first place in the parliament
of England: their alliances were contracted with
the noblest families, the Veres, Despensers, St. Johns,
Talbots, Bohuns, and even the Plantagenets themselves;
and in a contest with John of Lancaster, a Courtenay,
bishop of London, and afterwards archbishop of Canterbury,
might be accused of profane confidence in the strength
and number of his kindred. In peace, the earls
of Devon resided in their numerous castles and manors
of the west; their ample revenue was appropriated
to devotion and hospitality; and the epitaph of Edward,
surnamed from his misfortune, the blind, from
his virtues, the good, earl, inculcates with
much ingenuity a moral sentence, which may, however,
be abused by thoughtless generosity. After a grateful
commemoration of the fifty-five years of union and
happiness which he enjoyed with Mabe his wife, the
good earl thus speaks from the tomb:
“What we gave,
we have;
What we spent, we had;
What we left, we lost.”
But their losses, in this sense,
were far superior to their gifts and expenses; and
their heirs, not less than the poor, were the objects
of their paternal care. The sums which they paid
for livery and seizin attest the greatness of their
possessions; and several estates have remained in
their family since the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
In war, the Courtenays of England fulfilled the duties,
and deserved the honors, of chivalry. They were
often intrusted to levy and command the militia of
Devonshire and Cornwall; they often attended their
supreme lord to the borders of Scotland; and in foreign
service, for a stipulated price, they sometimes maintained
fourscore men-at-arms and as many archers. By
sea and land they fought under the standard of the
Edwards and Henries: their names are conspicuous
in battles, in tournaments, and in the original list
of the Order of the Garter; three brothers shared
the Spanish victory of the Black Prince; and in the
lapse of six generations, the English Courtenays had
learned to despise the nation and country from which
they derived their origin. In the quarrel of
the two roses, the earls of Devon adhered to the house
of Lancaster; and three brothers successively died
either in the field or on the scaffold. Their
honors and estates were restored by Henry the Seventh;
a daughter of Edward the Fourth was not disgraced by
the nuptials of a Courtenay; their son, who was created
Marquis of Exeter, enjoyed the favor of his cousin
Henry the Eighth; and in the camp of Cloth of Gold,
he broke a lance against the French monarch. But
the favor of Henry was the prelude of disgrace; his
disgrace was the signal of death; and of the victims
of the jealous tyrant, the marquis of Exeter is one
of the most noble and guiltless. His son Edward
lived a prisoner in the Tower, and died in exile at
Padua; and the secret love of Queen Mary, whom he
slighted, perhaps for the princess Elizabeth, has
shed a romantic color on the story of this beautiful
youth. The relics of his patrimony were conveyed
into strange families by the marriages of his four
aunts; and his personal honors, as if they had been
legally extinct, were revived by the patents of succeeding
princes. But there still survived a lineal descendant
of Hugh, the first earl of Devon, a younger branch
of the Courtenays, who have been seated at Powderham
Castle above four hundred years, from the reign of
Edward the Third to the present hour. Their estates
have been increased by the grant and improvement of
lands in Ireland, and they have been recently restored
to the honors of the peerage. Yet the Courtenays
still retain the plaintive motto, which asserts the
innocence, and deplores the fall, of their ancient
house. While they sigh for past greatness, they
are doubtless sensible of present blessings:
in the long series of the Courtenay annals, the most
splendid æra is likewise the most unfortunate;
nor can an opulent peer of Britain be inclined to envy
the emperors of Constantinople, who wandered over
Europe to solicit alms for the support of their dignity
and the defence of their capital.
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