HISTORY OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE FROM

A.D. 717 TO 1453

CHAPTER X.

THE FALL OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE

 

Sect. I

The Reign of Isaac II (Angelos), A.D. 1185-1195.

 

 

The Byzantine Empire was now hurrying rapidly to its end, and little is left to record except the progress of its dismemberment and destruction. The despotic power of the emperors was so firmly established, that every executive act emanated directly from the imperial cabinet. But, in perfecting this system of centralization, every tie of interest which had once attached the provincials to the imperial authority had been broken. The adhesion of the distant countries and various nations which composed the empire was destroyed; while, at the same time, the vital energy of the Greek population, which had grown to be the dominant race, was weakened by the immorality which, under the house of Comnenus, had spread through every rank of society. The defensive powers of the empire were consequently rapidly diminishing. The lavish expenditure of the imperial court impelled the government to carry its fiscal exactions so far, that the whole annual profits of the people’s industry were absorbed by taxation, and only the inferior classes of the cultivators of the soil and the day-labourers were able to retain the scanty surplus of wealth necessary to perpetuate their existence. Indeed, it is evident that encroachments were constantly made on the vested capital accumulated in past ages; and the funds appropriated in preceding times to uphold the most indispensable adjuncts of civilization were either annihilated or diverted from their destination. Ports, bridges, roads, aqueducts, and fortifications were seen falling to ruin in every province. Court spectacles and ecclesiastical ceremonies at the capital absorbed the funds which had been accumulated in distant municipalities for local improvements, hospitals, and schools. Everything that could inspire the people with zeal to defend their national independence had disappeared, or was rapidly disappearing, to aid in increasing the intensity of ecclesiastical bigotry.

Political despotism, national demoralization, ecclesiastical corruption, fiscal oppression, and habitual misgovernment, must therefore be considered responsible for the anarchical and disorderly state of Constantinople at the accession of Isaac Angelos; and the circumstance that a man so incapable and worthless was raised to the throne by the popular voice, fully testifies the degradation of the inhabitants of the capital.

After the people forced their way into the great palace, and established Isaac there as emperor, they remained for several days in possession of the greater part of the buildings which were enclosed within the circuit of its fortified walls. The residence of the emperors of the East was plundered like a sacked city; the furniture was carried away; the chapel was robbed of its plate, ornaments, images, and relics; the casket containing the letters said to have been written by our Saviour to Abgarus, king of Edessa, was stolen.

The private treasury of the emperor was broken into, and eighty-six thousand byzants in gold coin, thirty centners in silver coin, and two hundred of copper, were carried off, besides a considerable quantity of bullion. The new emperor did not venture to arrest the devastation going on before his eyes while his rival was still living. He removed to the palace of Blachern before Andronicus was taken; and it was only after the populace was gratified with the tyrant’s death, and their rapacity exhausted with plundering the residences of his partisans, that Isaac attempted to re-establish order.

The family of Comnenus had been distinguished for talent and courage. Isaac I, Alexius I, John II, and Manuel, were all men of great natural ability. The family of Angelos affords a strong contrast. The founder of the house was Constantine Angelos, a noble of Philadelphia, who married Theodora, the youngest daughter of Alexius I. In consequence of his incapacity the Byzantine fleet was defeated by the Sicilians in 1152. His son Andronicus was entrusted by Manuel with a high command in Asia Minor after the disastrous battle of Myriokephalon, and he conducted himself with so much cowardice during the campaign of 1178 that the emperor threatened to send him in procession through the streets of Constantinople clad in a female dress. The Emperors Isaac II and Alexius III were the children of this cowardly general.

Isaac Angelos may, nevertheless, be considered as a fair specimen of the Byzantine nobility in his age; and his government may be taken as a correct type of the society he ruled. A wise sovereign is as rarely found in a corrupt people as a virtuous population is seen groaning for any great length of time under a native tyrant. The vices of Isaac II were certainly those of his subjects; he was weak and presumptuous, cowardly and insolent, mean and rapacious, superstitious and vicious. The wonder is, not that his administration accelerated the ruin of the empire, but that the inhabitants of so many provinces submitted tamely to his government. No preceding emperor had paid less attention to public business; he seemed to consider the throne merely as a means of gratifying his passion for pompous dresses and unbounded luxury. The court was filled with an innumerable train of pages, mistresses, clowns, musicians, and comedians. The emperor made himself contemptible by strutting about publicly in gorgeous robes like a peacock; and hateful, by sharing the bribes which his courtiers and ministers openly exacted. The Emperor Isaac II had also a taste for building. New apartments were added to the old palaces, and new villas were constructed. Churches were pulled down, not only to rebuild others, but even to strengthen the palace of Blachern with their materials; and new hospitals were erected. The rapacity of Isaac was so great that it overcame his superstition. When he was besieged in Constantinople by Branas, he borrowed large sums of money from the churches, placing the imperial plate and jewels in deposit as security. But as soon as he was delivered from danger he sent for the plate, which the clergy were compelled to restore, and never repaid the money. Yet no emperor ever did more for ornamenting churches or for filling the public squares and street-corners with gilded pictures of the Virgin than Isaac. When reproached with his inconsistency, he replied that all things were permitted to the emperor, who represented the Divine Power; and to authorize his appropriation of church property to his own use, he quoted the example of Constantine the Great, who converted one of the nails of the holy cross into a bit for his charger, and put another in the front of his helmet. Authorized by this example, he plundered the richest churches in the provinces of their paintings and mosaics; and among these he carried off from Monemvasia a celebrated representation of our Saviour led out to be crucified, which was considered one of the finest works of art embodying Christ’s sufferings. His exactions and injustice might possibly have affected only some particular classes of society; but he rendered himself universally unpopular by adulterating the imperial coinage.

The reign of Isaac opened with victory over the Sicilian invaders. After the conquest of Thessalonica they had divided their forces; and while the troops were wasting their time in pillaging the villages of Thrace, the fleet under the command of Tancred entered the Propontis and advanced within sight of Constantinople. Weak as Isaac was, he saw that the empire was exposed to serious danger from the operations of the Sicilians; and he exerted himself to furnish the Byzantine army with the means of attacking the enemy. To prove the interest he took in the welfare of the troops, he dispatched a sum of four thousand pounds’ weight of gold to the military chest, in order to discharge arrears and furnish a donative. The first successes of the Sicilians had inspired their generals with unbounded presumption, and they viewed with contempt the assembly of a Byzantine army in their vicinity. Alexis Branas, who was an experienced officer, availed himself of their carelessness to drive in their advanced guards, and defeat one division of their army which had reached Mosynopolis. The remaining Sicilians concentrated their forces at Amphipolis, where another battle was fought on the 7th November 1185, at a place called Demerize, in which the Byzantine army was again victorious. This victory decided the fate of the expedition. The generals of the land forces, Counts Aldoin and Richard d'Acerra, were both made prisoners; and the fugitives who gained Thessalonica immediately embarked and put to sea, without any attempt to defend the place. As soon as Tancred heard of these disasters he abandoned the Propontis, and, collecting the shattered remains of the expedition, returned to Sicily. Dyrrachium was the only conquest retained; but King William II, considering the expense of guarding that fortress incommensurate with its political importance to Sicily, soon after ordered his garrison to abandon it. About four thousand Sicilian prisoners were sent by Branas to Constantinople. These unfortunate men were treated with the greatest cruelty by the worthless emperor, who ordered them to be thrown into dungeons, where they were left destitute of every succour, so that they owed the preservation of their lives to private charity. Isaac ought now to have directed all his attention, and devoted the whole force of the empire, to repel the incursions of the Turks, who were annually extending their ravages farther into the Asiatic provinces.

Kilidy-Arslan II, though more than seventy years of age, took advantage of the disorders that attended the death of Andronicus to send the Emir Sami into the Thrakesian theme, where he laid waste the district of Celbiane and the plain of the Caister, from whence he carried off an immense booty in slaves and cattle, leaving whole villages desolate. The emperor, instead of forming garrisons on the frontier, and establishing squadrons of light cavalry to protect the exposed districts by vigorous opposition, considered that he should be able to retain more money for his private pleasures by paying an annual tribute to the sultan, and distributing presents among the chiefs of the nomadic hordes. The reign of Isaac II is filled with a series of revolts, caused by his incapable administration and financial rapacity. The most important of these was the great rebellion of the Vallachian and Bulgarian population which occupied the country between Mount Haemus and the Danube. The immense population of this extensive country now separated itself finally from the government of the Eastern Empire, and its political destinies ceased to be united with those of the Greeks. A new European monarchy, called the Vallachian, or second Bulgarian kingdom, was formed, which for some time acted an important part in the affairs of the Byzantine Empire, and contributed powerfully to the depression of the Greek race. The sudden importance assumed by the Vallachian population in tins revolution, and the great extent of country then occupied by a people who had previously acted no prominent part in the political events of the East, render it necessary to give some account of their previous history. Four different countries are spoken of under the name of Wallachia by the Byzantine writers: Great Wallachia, which was the country round the plain of Thessaly, particularly the southern and south-western part; White Wallachia, or the modern Bulgaria, which formed the Wallacho-Bulgarian kingdom that revolted from Isaac II; Black Wallachia, Mavrowallachia, or Kara-bogdon, which is Moldavia; and Hungarowallachia, or the Wallachia of the present day, comprising a part of Transylvania.

There is no subject connected with the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, both in the East and West, of greater importance for tracing accurately the political and social progress of the inhabitants of Europe, than the history of the diminution, extinction, and modification of the population in the various nations subjected to the Roman domination. In the preceding pages I have pointed out that every class of society raised somewhat above the ranks of poverty was exposed to such constant fiscal extortion, and bound with so many local and social fetters, that in the latter days of the empire the middling classes lost the means of perpetuating their existence; and, consequently, the bulk of the inhabitants actually disappeared in many provinces, which were then easily occupied and colonized by the northern nations—as happened in the case of Serbia and Bulgaria. But it is more difficult to trace the modifications which gradually change a nation than to note the final extinction of a numerous class, though, in truth, we can rarely be assured that the extinction of any race of mankind is anything more than a modification of its elements. It is therefore necessary to distinguish accurately how far the causes which tended to extinguish the population operated on the different classes of society, without reference to their ethnological differences; and to inquire whether the causes which modified the civilization and language of the races that have survived the Roman domination had any direct connection with the increase or decrease of their numbers. No historical facts seem more evident than these two, that the Thracian race—which during the first century of the Christian era formed the most numerous ethnological division of the inhabitants of the eastern part of the Roman empire—has long ceased to exist; nor, on the other hand, that the modern Greeks are a modification of the ancient Achaian, Dorian, Ionian, Aeolian, and Hellenic population. And yet there are those who consider that the Albanians and Wallachians have quite as much right to be considered as the descendants of the ancient Thracians, who instructed the Greeks in the first elements of civilization, as the modern Greeks have to be regarded as the progeny of the Hellenes who were conquered by the Romans.

The universality of the causes which operated under the iron sway of Rome, both in diminishing the numbers of mankind, and in modifying national elements, renders it difficult to determine the limits of their separate effects. There is no doubt, however, that the inhabitants of the extensive plains and pastoral mountains of Thrace were more exposed to the material oppression of the Roman administration than the inhabitants of the narrow coasts and rocky mountains of Greece. While fiscal extortion and military operations exterminated the majority of the free Thracians, moral influences only modified the customs and language of Greece. In every province of her empire Rome planted colonies in which her usages, laws, and language were as completely national as they were in Rome itself. In Greece, Corinth, Patras, and Nicopolis were Latin cities; and for many ages they were almost the only flourishing cities in the country. The provincial administration, and particularly the fiscal, was everywhere carried on in Latin; the proconsular tribunals acknowledged the existence of no other language, and thus even the Greeks were bent from their original ideas, and compelled to adopt new habits, new thoughts, and new expressions. In the West, Gaul and Spain were modified according to a Roman type, of which they bear the impress to the present day; in the East, the same causes produced an effect on the more civilized inhabitants of Greece, though the change was of a modified nature. Similar influences, bearing powerfully on the whole Greek people wherever they might be scattered, effected the same ethnological change on the whole race. The rude mountaineers of Laconia could not well become less civilized than they had been before the Roman conquest, but they yielded to the same circumstances which affected Athens and Alexandria, Syracuse and Byzantium. The moral power of the Roman administration changed the ancient Hellenes into modern Greeks, according to the impress of one unvarying type; and of that change into Romaioi, or subjects of the Roman Empire, the Greek language bears ineffaceable marks. As the institutions of the great Transatlantic republic mould English, Irish, Celts, Dutch, Germans, French, and Spaniards who settle under its sway into one people, so the great empire of the ancient world moulded the Spartan, Athenian, Dorian, Ionian, and Aeolian into a homogeneous mass. There can be no doubt that a change similar to that which took place among the Greeks was wrought about the same time on the Thracian race, but a dark veil covers the history of the native proprietors of the soil in the countries between the Aegean Sea and the Danube for many centuries.

The Vallachian population of Thrace began to acquire some degree of importance during the reign of Alexius I, though the passages in which it is mentioned are vague. The number of the same race which then inhabited the countries north of the Danube is also recorded to have been considerable. We have already had occasion to notice that in the reign of Manuel I they were the masters of a considerable part of Thessaly, which was subsequently known by the name of Great Wallachia; and people were so struck by the resemblance which their language bore to Latin that they were generally pronounced to be the descendants of Italian colonists. Like the modern Greeks, they called themselves Romans, from having, like the Greeks, acquired the rights of Roman citizenship by the decree of Caracalla; and the name of Vlachs, or Wallachians, appears to have been first given them by the Sclavonians who colonized their depopulated plains. It may be observed that the Slavonians gave the Italians the same name, struck apparently by their general similarity, and that the name has always been repudiated by the Wallachians.

No portion of the Roman Empire was more rapidly changed or earlier depopulated by the severity of the government than the Thracian provinces, though they were among the last which were subjected to fiscal oppression. Several Roman legions were constantly quartered in these provinces, and numerous Roman colonies were founded in them. Roman veterans settled in the country, and young Thracians departed annually as recruits to distant legions. The Latin language appears also to have amalgamated more readily with the Thracian than with the Greek. We are informed by a Greek writer, who was himself a Roman ambassador, that in the middle of the fifth century the Greek language was unknown in the countries between the Adriatic, the Aegean, the Black Sea, and the Danube, except in the commercial towns on the coasts of Thrace and Illyria; but that Latin was the ordinary medium of communication among foreign races, both for commercial and political intercourse. In the sixth century, the Thracian dialect bore a strong resemblance to corrupt Latin, and to the Vallachian language spoken at the present day. This Vallachian language, too, like the modern Greek, bears strong marks of having been formed by the operation of one overwhelming influence, affecting every portion of the nation at the same time. And accordingly, as in the case of the Greeks, we find every distant and isolated tribe speaking the same language which is spoken on Mount Pindus by the last survivors of the population of Great Wallachia, as well as by the Romans beyond the Danube and the Carpathian Mountains, in the Bannat, and in Transylvania. But, after all this, the question remains undecided whether these Wallachians are the lineal descendants of the Thracian race, who Strabo tells us extended as far south as Thessaly, and as far north as to the borders of Pannonia; for of the Thracian language we know nothing.

From some causes which cannot now be traced, it is certain that the Vallachian population in the Byzantine Empire increased greatly in wealth and numbers during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Benjamin of Tudela gives a romantic account of the complete independence of those who inhabited Thessaly; but the general fact, that they were governed according to their own usages by a tributary prince—as the Sclavonians of the Peloponnesus had been in the ninth and tenth centuries—is confirmed by Nicetas, who informs us that they were able to defend their independence against the Crusaders, who conquered the Byzantine empire. Though the Wallachians of Mount Haemus had not, like their countrymen in Thessaly, aspired at self-legislation and independence, they had been gradually thrown more and more on their national resources by the oppressions of Manuel, by the disorders that prevailed in the central administration after his death, and by the invasion of the Sicilians. The immediate cause of their rebellion against the empire was the imposition of an additional tax by the Emperor Isaac in the year 1186, to defray the expenses of his marriage with Margaret, the daughter of Bela III, king of Hungary.

Three brothers, Peter, Asan, and John, placed themselves at the head of the insurrection, and claimed to be descended from the elder line of the Bulgarian monarchs, though they were Wallachians in their nurture and early associations. The Bulgarian and Sclavonian population, from Mount Haemus to the Danube, suffered from the same oppression as the Vallachian, and detested the Byzantine government and their Greek rulers with equal hatred. The hope of throwing off the domination of their oppressors, induced all to take up arms with enthusiasm; and as superstition was a feeling more deeply rooted in the human breast at this period than patriotism, it was announced, and generally believed, that Saint Demetrius, the favourite saint of the Wallachians, Bulgarians, and Sclavonians of these provinces, had forsaken the city of Thessalonica, of which he had hitherto been the patron, and had removed his sanctuary to a church lately erected to his honour by Peter. The fanatics considered it their duty to put every Greek to death who fell into their hands; and the people had suffered so much from the exactions of the fiscal officers of the Byzantine government, that they were incited to take part in these cruelties.

Peter having assembled an army in Mount Haemus, and assumed the imperial title, marched into the districts of Thrace, which were inhabited by the Greeks, and laid everything waste; but his first operations were unsuccessful. He was defeated, and compelled to seek refuge in the Patzinak territory, beyond the Danube. In the year 1187 the rebels were again defeated by the emperor’s uncle, John the Sevastokrator; but the jealousy of Isaac inducing him to remove his uncle from the command of the army, he sent John Cantacuzenos, who had been deprived of his sight, to take the command of the troops. The rebels now proved victorious; and, to arrest their progress, the emperor was compelled to entrust Alexis Branas with the conduct of the war. Branas drove the Wallachians beyond Mount Haemus; but as soon as he had driven the rebels out of Thrace, he left them to consolidate their power in Bulgaria, and marched his army to Adrianople. Seeing that rebellion was to a certain degree successful both in Bulgaria and Cyprus, and foreseeing that new insurrections would soon follow, he thought that it would be easy to turn the general discontent to his own profit. He therefore assumed the title of Emperor, and appeared before Constantinople at the head of a well-appointed force, not expecting to meet with any serious resistance.

But the persons connected with the general administration, and the people within the walls of the capital, entertained the greatest aversion to receive an emperor raised to the throne by the army. They feared that he would be compelled to effect a financial revolution, and make numerous personal changes in order to reward his followers. Alexis Branas, therefore, met with a more determined opposition than he had expected. But Isaac, in place of aiding the troops, consumed his time in prayers and processions, so that Branas, manning a number of fishing-boats which he had collected in the islands of the Propontis, rendered himself master of the imperial fleet. The capital seemed on the eve of falling into his hands, when it was saved by Conrad of Montferrat. That distinguished Crusader, who has transmitted the vain title of King of Jerusalem to the reigning family of Sardinia, had visited Constantinople on his way to Palestine. Having married Theodora, the sister of the Emperor Isaac, and received the rank of Caesar, he felt himself authorized to reproach his brother-in-law with his misconduct, and point out to him that, unless he exerted himself, he was likely to lose his crown. The alarming position of Constantinople rendered the Greeks willing to submit to the superior military skill of Conrad. His satirical observations at last roused Isaac to activity. He told him that things were in such a state, that swords and lances were the means Heaven would use if Isaac’s crown was to be saved, not priests and processions. When he found the emperor occupied in planning feasts, he coolly remarked that it would be time enough to think of the enjoyments of the table when he should be assured of the future; but, for the moment, the defence of Constantinople demanded all his care. Conrad fortunately found two hundred and fifty Latin knights and five hundred veteran infantry at Constantinople, who ranged themselves under his orders. All the Turkish and Georgian merchants who resided in the city, and whose expeditions had accustomed them to war, formed themselves into corps to defend their property. Isaac himself at last enrolled all the native soldiers in the capital, and roused the spirit of the troops by a donative, which he procured by pledging the imperial plate, and borrowing money from the church funds.

At the head of these forces Conrad took the field, accompanied by the emperor. Branas had encamped his army before Constantinople without attempting to form a regular siege. The two armies spent several hours in skirmishing; but Branas having examined the strength of the imperial army, at last drew together his best troops and prepared for a decisive attack. Conrad, who had closely watched his operations, and kept his Latin knights ready for some daring exploit, boldly anticipated the enemy’s movement. His defensive armour was a red linen body-coat of numerous folds, soddened together into a substance impenetrable to lance or sword; and with this light covering, and his small triangular shield, which made him appear to the Greeks almost defenceless, he led his cavalry to charge the centre of the rebel army. The shock bore down every opposition; and the cavalry of Branas were soon scattered in irretrievable confusion. Branas, attempting to rally them, was dashed from his saddle by Conrad’s lance; and when he demanded quarter on the ground, Conrad exclaimed—“You must pay your treason with your life”. His attendants immediately decapitated the prostrate general.

This victory was celebrated by Isaac as if it had been achieved by his own military prowess. He passed through Constantinople in triumph before the army, with the head of Branas borne before him on the point of a lance; and when he reached the imperial palace, he had the inhumanity to send this bloody trophy to Maria Comnena, the widow of Branas, whom the Emperor Manuel, her uncle, had called, for her virtues, an honour to the imperial family. The populace of the capital was allowed to make expeditions for the purpose of plundering the inhabitants of the islands of the Propontis who had declared in favour of Branas; and houses and villages were seen in flames on every side of Constantinople. The Latins availed themselves of the general anarchy to plunder the houses of many of the wealthy nobles who were considered hostile to the emperor’s policy; and at last a regular battle was fought by the Greeks and Latins in the streets, which the imperial officers had the greatest difficulty in terminating. Much blood was shed on both sides; and the hatred between the two races and religions became every day more bitter. Conrad finding that the state of affairs was not favourable to his ambition, his wife Theodora dying, and the news arriving that his father, the Marquis William, had been taken prisoner by Saladin at the battle of Tiberias, quitted Constantinople and arrived in Palestine, where he immediately increased his fame by defeating Saladin under the walls of Tyre.

The Vallachian war was resumed after the death of Branas, and Isaac took the field against the rebels; but though Peter and Asan were unable, with their Vallachian, Bulgarian, and Sclavonian levies, to encounter the imperial army, they prevented the campaign from producing any decided results. After besieging Lobitza for three months, the Byzantine army was compelled to retire, AD 1188.

 

THIRD CRUSADE, A.D. 1189

 

While the Wallachians were thus gradually forming an independent kingdom, a new crusade threatened the Byzantine Empire with fresh dangers. Fortunately for the Greeks, the only leader of the third crusade who passed through the dominions of Isaac was Frederic I (Barbarossa), Emperor of Germany, an experienced and prudent monarch, who wished to avoid all collision with the Byzantine government; and who, having passed through the empire with his uncle Conrad during the second crusade, knew how to adopt the most effectual measures for preserving order. He allowed no pilgrim to join his standard who did not possess three marks of silver to defray his expenses on the road. Never did a finer army, or a nobler and abler commander, leave Europe for the East; yet, in spite of the valour and discipline of the troops, and the experience of the general, fortune declared against this expedition, and it was as fruitless as the wildest enterprises of preceding Crusaders.

Before Frederic Barbarossa quitted Germany, he dispatched an embassy to Constantinople to ask permission to pass through the Byzantine empire, and Isaac sent Dukas, the intendant of posts, to arrange the articles of a treaty by which all disorders might be prevented during the march of the Crusaders, and a sufficient supply of provisions and forage might be furnished to them at reasonable prices. Frederic made all his dispositions with prudence; but he had not proceeded far on his march before the inconstancy of Isaac, who, like most of the Byzantine courtiers and the Greek clergy, heartily detested the Franks, induced him to send orders to throw obstacles in the way of the advance of the German army, and stop their supplies of provisions. Nicetas the historian was then governor of Philippopolis; and he informed us that he received from day to day the most contradictory orders from the court. By one dispatch he was ordered to repair the fortifications, by another to dismantle the place. Attempts were made to render the roads impracticable; large trees were cut down to block up the passes, and other measures were taken which only delayed and irritated the Germans, who punished the subjects of Isaac for obeying the orders of their emperor. Frederic reached Philippopolis on the 23d of August 1189, and entered the city without opposition. The Armenians, who had been for ages established in this city and its neighbourhood, and whose heretical opinions rendered them ill-disposed towards the Greeks, who treated them often with great injustice, welcomed the Latins, and afforded them exact information concerning the state of the empire, and the movements of the Byzantine troops.

The insolence of Isaac at last involved the two emperors in war; but the Greek troops were unable to resist the Germans, and were soon defeated. In their flight they plundered the inhabitants of the country far more cruelly than the Crusaders. The opposition he had met with, and the advanced time of the year, induced Frederic to take up his winter-quarters in Thrace. He felt that the proceedings of Isaac might force him to attack Constantinople; and he therefore made arrangements for assembling a fleet of Genoese, Pisan, and Venetian ships, which he could employ either against the Byzantine Empire, or for transporting his army to Asia, as circumstances might require.

As Isaac persisted in his hostile conduct, Frederic marched to Adrianople in the month of February 1190. He then took Didymoteichos by storm, and occupied Arcadiopolis. Isaac, who had trusted for success rather to the prophecies which the bigoted members of the Greek clergy had repeated to him than to his military arrangements, was now seriously alarmed, and sent to solicit peace on any terms. The conduct of the German emperor was in accordance with his previous declarations. He asked nothing but what Isaac had promised by their first treaty. Frederic had also afforded a proof of his generosity which ought to have made a deep impression even on a fool like Isaac, and on a herd of such knaves as composed the Byzantine court. Peter and Asan had offered to join the Crusaders with an army of forty thousand Wallachians and Bulgarians, on condition that the German emperor would invest one of the brothers with the crown of Bulgaria; but Frederic refused to intermeddle in the affairs of another Christian state, further than was necessary to remove the obstacles thrown in the way of his march to the Holy Land. The Byzantine government renewed its promises to supply the Crusaders with provisions as long as they remained in the imperial dominions, engaged to furnish them with vessels to convey them from Gallipoli to Asia, and gave hostages to Frederic, who were to be released when he reached Philadelphia. Frederic also insisted that the Emperor Isaac and five hundred of the principal officers of the empire should publicly take an oath to fulfil the articles of the treaty to his ambassadors in the Church of St Sophia, and in the presence of the Patriarch; and to this the Byzantine emperor was compelled to submit.

On the 28th of March 1190, Frederic passed over into Asia Minor with the last division of his army, and marched by Thyatira, Philadelphia, and Laodicea into the dominions of the Sultan of Iconium. He was generally received with as much ill-will as the Byzantine authorities ventured to show; but at Laodicea he found an independent Greek population accustomed to continual war with the Turks, and who trusted to their own exertions, not to the imperial court and the central government, for safety. These free citizens gave the Crusaders a sincere welcome, and afforded them every assistance in their power. Frederic was so touched by their conduct that he knelt down in the plain before his camp, and prayed that God would recompense the people of Laodicea.

The Sultan of Iconium had promised to allow the Crusaders to pass through his dominions without molestation, and permit them to purchase provisions; but, like the Emperor Isaac, he endeavoured to throw obstacles in their way. Frederic, however, used little ceremony with the Mohammedans; he defeated their army at Philomelium, and marched direct to Iconium, which the Emperors Alexius I, John II, and Manuel I had vainly endeavoured to reach. The capital of the sultan was taken by storm, and ample supplies of provisions were obtained for the army; but the sultan was allowed to remain quietly in the citadel of his capital, as he offered no further opposition. Frederic then pursued his march through the territories of the Armenians of Cilicia. The delivery of the Holy Land was now supposed by the Christians to be certain. A numerous and well-disciplined army, led by a general experienced in all the difficulties of Eastern warfare, was about to enter Syria, when death arrested the progress of Frederic Barbarossa. He died of a cold caught by bathing in the limpid stream of the Calycadnus, near Seleucia, the waters of which were chilled by the melted snow descending from Mount Taurus. The enemies of Frederic acknowledge that he was a valiant and noble prince.

The evils inflicted on the Greek race by the third crusade were rendered permanent by fortuitous circumstances, and fell heaviest on the island of Cyprus, which was already separated from the Byzantine Empire. Isaac Comnenos, who had assumed the title of Emperor in Cyprus during the reign of Andronicus, contracted an alliance with William II, king of Sicily. Isaac II of Constantinople, elated with his victory over the Sicilians, expected to reconquer Cyprus without difficulty. In the year 1186 he sent a fleet of seventy galleys with a numerous army to perform this service, but his jealousy of his best officers induced him to entrust the command to men incapable of performing military duty, as a security against their mounting the throne. One was an old man, named John Koutostephanos, and the other Alexis Comnenos, the natural son of Manuel, whom Andronicus had deprived of sight. The expedition reached Cyprus in safety, and the army was landed. But the King of Sicily sent a fleet to the assistance of his ally, under the command of the Admiral Margaritone, the ablest naval officer of the time, who surprised the Byzantine fleet, and captured most of the transports and galleys. In the meantime the land forces were also defeated, and the two generals, falling into the hands of the Sicilian admiral, were carried prisoners to Palermo. Isaac of Cyprus, after this victory, which he owed to the valour of foreigners, treated most of the prisoners with horrid cruelty. Those whom he did not wish to enrol in his own service were put to death with inhuman tortures. This victory secured the throne of Cyprus to Isaac, who showed that he was a worthless and rapacious tyrant; but as his political government favoured the trade of the Cypriots with Sicily, Syria, and Armenia, they submitted to his sway; and had he possessed ordinary prudence, he might have enjoyed his usurpation without danger. A wanton display of insolence caused his ruin. In the year 1191, as the fleet of Richard lion-hearted was proceeding from Messina to Palestine, it was assailed by a tempest, and three ships were wrecked on the coast of Cyprus. Isaac, who felt all the dislike to the Crusaders generally entertained by the Greeks, and who was ignorant of the power of the King of England, seized the opportunity of gratifying his own cruel disposition, and of proving his friendship for Saladin, with whom he had recently formed an alliance. He took possession of the property which was saved from the shipwrecked vessels, and imprisoned all the English who escaped the waves. Perhaps Isaac might have escaped with impunity had he only plundered the English, but he ventured to insult the king. The vessel which carried Joanna of Sicily, Richard’s sister, and Berengaria of Navarre, to whom he was betrothed, sought shelter from the storm in the port of Amathus (Limissol), but was refused entrance. The storm, however, had already abated, and this ship had joined Richard at Rhodes. The King of England immediately sailed to Cyprus; and when Isaac refused to deliver up the shipwrecked crusaders, and to restore their property, Richard landed his army and commenced a series of operations, which ended in his conquering the whole island, in which he abolished the administrative institutions of the Eastern Empire, enslaving the Greek race, introducing the feudal system, by which he riveted the chains of a foreign domination, and then gave it as a present to Guy of Lusignan, the titular King of Jerusalem, who became the founder of a dynasty of Frank kings in Cyprus. From that time to the present day the Greeks of Cyprus have suffered every misery that can be inflicted by foreign masters; and the island, which at the time of its conquest by Richard was the richest and most populous in the Mediterranean, is now almost uncultivated, and very thinly inhabited.

Isaac Angelos, who occupied the throne of Constantinople, was in constant danger of being precipitated from his elevation, like his namesake of Cyprus. When accident had placed the crown on a head so weak and incapable, every man of ambition hoped to be able to transfer it to his own, and rebellion succeeded rebellion. One of the most dangerous pretenders to the throne was a young man of Constantinople, who assumed the name of Alexius II, and whose singular resemblance to that prince and to his father Manuel induced many to credit his assertions. He visited Iconium while Kilidy-Arslan reigned; and the old sultan, struck with his resemblance to Manuel, allowed him to enrol troops, but he refused to break the treaty he had concluded with Isaac, and lose the tribute he received from the Byzantine Empire. The false Alexius assembled an army of eight thousand men, and ravaged the vale of the Meander, storming several cities in order to gratify his followers with plunder: among others he took the rich city of Chonae. Isaac sent his brother Alexius to encounter the pretender, but the imperial troops met with little success. The career of the rebel was, however, suddenly arrested by a priest, by whom he was assassinated, as a just vengeance for his alliance with the Infidels, by whose assistance he had plundered the richest cities of Asia Minor, and who under his banner had desecrated the churches in these cities. The assassin carried his head to Alexius the sevastokrator, who was so struck by its resemblance to the well-known features of Manuel, that he exclaimed, “Those who followed him may indeed be innocent!” After his death several persons assumed the name of Alexius II; one was taken in Paphlagonia, and put to death, and another at Nicomedia, who was deprived of sight.

Theodore Mankaphas, a noble of Philadelphia, also assumed the title of Emperor, and attempted to dethrone Isaac; but his historical importance is derived rather from the fact that he is recorded to have coined silver money with his effigy than from the importance of his rebellion. In the year 1189 he rendered himself master of the country round Philadelphia, and his progress alarmed Isaac to such a degree that he marched against him in person. The approach of Frederic Barbarossa made the emperor anxious to terminate the war, and he agreed to pardon Mankaphas, on the rebel making his submission, and laying aside the imperial ensigns. The pardoned rebel soon after fled to Iconium, where Gaiasheddin Kaikhosrou allowed him to enrol troops among the nomad tribes, and with these bands he ravaged the frontiers of the Byzantine Empire with the same barbarity as the false Alexius. At last Isaac bribed the sultan to deliver him up, on condition that his life should be spared, and his punishment should not exceed perpetual imprisonment. New claimants to the throne, however, continued to take the field, and the suspicions of Isaac induced him to punish many nobles of the highest rank for real or imaginary conspiracies.

The Vallachian insurrection in the meantime kept the northern provinces of the empire in a state of anarchy. In the year 1192 the emperor hoped to crush it by conducting in person a well-disciplined army against the half-disciplined bands of Wallachians, Bulgarians, and Sclavonians, who had taken up arms. But he led his army into the mountain-passes without taking any precautions, where it was attacked and its ranks broken. The valour of the imperial guard saved the emperor by breaking through the Wallachians, carrying with them Isaac, helpless and bareheaded. In the following year the Wallachians stormed Anchialus, Varna, Nyssa, and Stupion, and burned part of Triaditza (Sardica). The emperor boasted of a glorious campaign when he recovered possession of the plundered ruins of these cities. He, however, defeated the Zupan of Servia, who had invaded the empire and plundered Skupia. Subsequently he marched to the banks of the Save, and after an idle procession to meet his father-in-law, the King of Hungary, he returned to Constantinople. In 1194 the Byzantine army, under the command of the generals of the European and Asiatic native troops, was completely defeated by the Wallachians near Arcadiopolis; and the country round Philippopolis, Sardica, and Adrianople was laid waste by the insurgents.

The Emperor Isaac now felt the necessity of making some extraordinary exertions to terminate this war, which was daily approaching nearer to the walls of the capital. New levies were made in the empire, the foreign mercenaries were assembled from their different stations, and great numbers of Hungarian auxiliaries were brought into the field. Fifteen hundred pounds’ weight of gold and six thousand of silver were expended in equipping the troops and forming the necessary magazines; and in the month of March 1195, Isaac quitted Constantinople, accompanied by his brother Alexius, in whom he placed implicit confidence. But natural affection, as well as honour and truth, appears to have been banished from Byzantine society; and this brother had already formed a plot to seize the throne, which he carried into execution when the court reached Kypsela. While the Emperor Isaac was engaged in hunting, Alexius occupied his tent, and was proclaimed emperor by the nobles and troops he had gained to support his usurpation. The army, who despised Isaac, readily transferred their allegiance to Alexius, whose vices were then less known. The dethroned emperor, when informed of the catastrophe, turned his horse’s head from the camp and fled, he knew not whither. At Stagyra, then called Makri, he was overtaken by his brother’s agents, who immediately deprived him of sight. He was transported directly to Constantinople, where he was imprisoned in a dungeon, and supplied with rations of bread and water like a criminal.

Isaac II reigned nine years and seven months. He was middle-sized, of a healthy constitution, with a florid complexion and red hair. When dethroned, he was not forty years of age, (April 1195).

 

Sect. II

Reign of Alexius III (Angelos Comnenos) A.D. 1196-1203.

 

During the reign of Andronicus, Alexius Angelos, who was older than his brother Isaac II, fled for safety to the court of Saladin, where he was residing when he heard of his brother’s elevation to the throne. On his way to Constantinople he was arrested by the Prince of Antioch, and owed his release from captivity to his brother’s affection. This, and many other acts of kindness, he repaid with the basest treachery. Even the corrupt society of Constantinople required that some attempt should be made to throw a veil over the ingratitude of the new emperor. To effect this Alexius III assumed the name of Comnenus, insinuating thereby that his adoption into that imperial house had dissolved his connection with the humbler family of Angelos, and that duty compelled him to dethrone a worthless sovereign like Isaac. Alexius, being tall and well made, and possessing an agreeable and dignified manner, as well as more natural talent, a better education, and more command over his temper, appeared very much superior to his brother until he mounted the throne. As emperor, however, he laid aside his hypocrisy, and was as careless of public business, as lavish in his expenditure, as ignorant of military affairs, and as great a coward as Isaac. The first act of Alexius III was to reward the officers and troops who had shared his treason, by distributing among them the money his brother had collected for carrying on the war against the Wallachians. He then sent the army back to its usual quarters, and returned to the capital, leaving Thrace and Macedonia exposed to the incursions of the rebels. His wife Euphrosyne had prepared the senate and people to give him a favourable reception by a liberal distribution of bribes and promises of promotion; and his coronation was performed in St Sophia’s by the obsequious Patriarch. The behaviour of his horse alone caused some to reflect on the injustice of his conduct and the instability of his power. As he was about to mount on horseback at the steps of the great church, after the ceremony was finished, and return in procession to the palace, according to the immemorial usage of the Roman empire, his horse for a long time refused to allow him to mount; and when at last he had gained his seat, it reared and plunged until the emperor’s crown fell from his head, and was broken by the fall. It then completed the disaster by throwing the emperor himself on the ground. Alexius, however, escaped unhurt.

The public treasury was quickly emptied by the lavish expenditure of Alexius and Euphrosyne; and every species of extortion, injustice, and fraud, was then employed to collect money. When it was no longer possible to bestow money, places, pensions, and estates belonging to the imperial domain, were conferred on some favoured courtiers; and the right of collecting particular branches of the revenue in the provinces was granted to others. Nicetas sarcastically observes that Alexius III would have granted golden bulls to plough the sea or pile Athos on Olympus, had any courtier presented himself to solicit such gifts. This conduct completed the destruction of that wonderful financial and governmental mechanism which the Byzantine government had inherited from the Roman Empire.

Euphrosyne, who was better acquainted with her husband’s idle disposition than others, assumed a large share in conducting the business of the empire, and no minister dared to take any step without her approval. Her beauty, her talents, and her aptitude for business, gave her immense influence among the nobility; but her pride, extravagance, and licentiousness, often produced scandalous quarrels with Alexius. Nothing is generally supposed to mark more strongly the degraded condition of the proudest nobles of the Byzantine empire, at this time, than the fact that members of the celebrated families of Comnenos, Dukas, Paleologos, and Cantacuzenos contended for the honour of carrying Euphrosyne in her litter at public ceremonies; yet British peers now contend to be lords-in-waiting, their wives to be ladies of the bedchamber, and their daughters to be bedchamber-women. The insolence and license of Euphrosyne at last roused the anger and jealousy of the emperor. Alexius ordered her paramour, Vatatzes, to be assassinated, and her female slaves and the eunuchs of her household to be put to the torture. The beautiful and accomplished Euphrosyne herself was expelled from the palace, clad in the dress of a menial, and immured in the convent of Nematorea, near the entrance of the Black Sea, with only two foreign slaves as her attendants. Six months’ absence from court, however, taught her worthless husband the value of her talents and energy. Everything fell into disorder; even Alexius was alarmed at the peculations of the courtiers; and Euphrosyne was reinstated in all her former power, which she abused with all her former insolence. Her political energy, her superstitious follies, and her magnificent hunting parties excited the wonder of the inhabitants of Constantinople; and as she rode along with a falcon perched on her gold-embroidered glove, and encouraged the dogs with her voice, and the curveting of her horse, the crowd enjoyed the splendid spectacle, and only grave men like Nicetas thought that she was wasting the revenues which were required to defend the empire.

(The belief in magic and the power of incantations was so general that it excited little surprise at Constantinople when Euphrosyne, in order to insure the happy issue of some of her divinations, thought fit to order a bronze boar about to engage a lion, which formed one of the finest groups of ancient sculpture in the hippodrome, to be mutilated by cutting off its snout, and many other works of ancient art to be broken in pieces. Thus the Greeks began to destroy the most precious remains of Hellenic taste before the Latins entered Constantinople).

The venality and oppression of the imperial officers had caused so much discontent, that Alexius III, on ascending the throne, deemed it necessary to promise publicly that no official charge should be sold, but that all employments should be bestowed according to merit. This proclamation remained without effect. The emperor paid no attention to business, Euphrosyne cared nothing for the people, the courtiers persisted in profiting by their influence, and public employments continued to be an object of traffic. The empress, however, at length perceived the danger of these proceedings, and attempted to effect some reforms. Before her disgrace she persuaded Alexius to appoint Constantine Mesopotamites prime-minister, and this statesman succeeded in suppressing much venality and flagrant jobbing. But it required purer hands to root out inveterate corruption of Byzantine society. Mesopotamites, while calling on others to respect the laws, violated them himself. He thought that he could render his power more secure against the factions of the court, and at the same time extend his influence and patronage, by entering the church. But as the ecclesiastical canons of the Eastern Church forbade the clergy to hold civil offices, Mesopotamites, on becoming a priest, obtained a dispensation from the Patriarch to violate the law. In order to secure an independent position, he got himself appointed Archbishop of Thessalonica; but by this step he lost the emperor’s favour, and his enemies induced the Patriarch Xiphilinos to hold a synod, in which Mesopotamites was condemned for various crimes, and deposed from the archiepiscopal dignity, without being allowed an opportunity of refuting the charges brought against him. This contempt of justice on the part of the ecclesiastical dignitaries nourished the aversion felt by the people to the highest authorities both in the church and state; and though no popular cry was heard demanding reform either in church or state, the inhabitants began to feel as little inclined to defend the throne of their patriarch as the crown of their emperor.

The utter neglect of the moral and religious condition of the people by the hierarchy of the Eastern Church, during the twelfth century, proved a severe blow to the Greek nation. The provincial Greek saw no authority to which he could address himself in order to obtain justice against the violence and rapacity of the imperial officers, and consequently every friendly link which had once connected him with Constantinople was now broken. The apostasy of the prelates from the cause of the people, and the ignorance and selfishness of the monks, left the Greeks, as a nation, exposed to greater oppression and injustice than any other portion of the inhabitants of the empire; for they were less accustomed to bear arms, and their municipal institutions had been rendered completely subservient to the central administration. There is, perhaps, no feature in the history of the Christian church which suggests more melancholy reflections than the prostitution of the Greek clergy to the imperial power during this century. When we behold a priesthood which founded the hierarchy of the church, gave laws to the Christian world, and curbed the political presumption of the Popes of Rome, perverting an influence it had justly gained to serve the vices of a corrupt court, we learn how small is the measure of irresponsible power which can be entrusted to individuals, however sanctified their occupations may appear

The anarchy that prevailed in the Byzantine administration increased daily. Michael Stryphnos, the admiral of the fleet, being sure of impunity, as he had married a sister of the Empress Euphrosyne, sold the stores from the naval arsenal, and thought only of making as much profit as possible from his office. The seas round the empire were filled with pirates, and their profits appeared so considerable that the Emperor Alexius himself at last turned pirate. He sent six galleys into the Euxine, under the pretext of saving the cargo of a vessel wrecked near Kerasunt, but he gave the admiral secret orders to make prizes of all ships bound for Amisos. This infamous expedition proved extremely profitable to the court. Many merchants who were captured lost their whole fortunes, and some, whose complaints it was feared might excite dangerous inquiries, were murdered: others were put on shore, and found their way to Constantinople, where they vainly presented themselves at the courts of law and at the imperial palace, to demand justice. They carried their petitions to the staircase of the palace as suppliants, with wax tapers in their hands, and stood to receive the emperor in the vestibule of St Sophia’s: but all their endeavours were fruitless; it was a time when justice slept. Those merchants only who were subjects of Rokneddin, the sultan of Iconium, obtained an indemnity. The emperor, to avoid war, threw the whole blame of the piracies on his admiral, Constantine Francopulo, paid an indemnity to the merchants of Iconium, and promised to pay Rokneddin an annual tribute.

The conduct of the emperor on the high seas was imitated by the nobles in the capital. A rich banker named Kalomodios was envied by those who often borrowed his money, and who for some time attempted to cheat or rob him without success. A length a party of courtiers entered his house and made him prisoner, declaring that they would not release him until he paid them a large ransom. The merchants of Constantinople, hearing of this insolent assault, repaired in a body to the residence of the Patriarch John Kamateros, the brother of the Empress Euphrosyne, but found him not inclined to assist them by active interference. In the meantime, however, the populace became aware of the conduct of their superiors, and determined to use the same license to enforce justice. They assembled before the Patriarch’s palace, and informed him that they would plunder his residence and precipitate his holiness from the window, unless he obtained the liberation of Kalomodios. These threats opened the mind of the Patriarch to the claims of justice, and Kalomodios was released.

The foreigners in Constantinople conducted themselves in the same lawless manner as the natives. The Venetians and Pisans engaged in bloody battles in the streets, which the Greeks viewed with pleasure, and the imperial authorities with indifference. Rebellions in the provinces were also as common as seditions in the capital.

Fortunately for the Byzantine Empire, the Seljouk Empire of Roum or Iconium had been divided among the numerous sons of Kilidy-Arslan II, or the Turks, by forming an alliance with the rebel Vallachian, Bulgarian, and Sclavonian population in Europe, might have succeeded in taking Constantinople before the arrival of the Crusaders and Venetians. But Moeddin, the sultan of Angora, availed himself of the disorders in the Byzantine provinces to invade Paphlagonia and take the city of Dabyra. Alexius, after carrying on the war feebly for a year and a-half, purchased peace (A.D. 1197) by paying Moeddin five hundred pounds’ weight of coined silver, by presenting him with forty pieces of the rich brocaded silk which was manufactured at Thebes for the emperor’s especial use, and by engaging to remit to Angora an annual tribute of three hundred pounds’ weight of silver. In the following year Alexius involved himself in war with Gaiaseddin Kaikhosrou I, who then reigned at Iconium, in consequence of the detention of two Arabian horses by the Turk. In one of his thoughtless fits of passion, the emperor ordered all the Turkish merchants at Constantinople to be imprisoned and their property to be sequestrated. The sultan’s revenge was prompt and terrible. He broke into the vale of the Maeander, and ravaged the country to the walls of Antioch of Phrygia. Numbers of the inhabitants were carried away into slavery, but an agricultural colony of five thousand families was settled at Philomelium. They were furnished with good farm­houses, and everything necessary for cultivating the land; they were exempt from all taxation for five years, and after that period they were assured that a fixed contribution would be required without the arbitrary additions levied in the Byzantine Empire to cover the expense of collecting the public revenues. This humane policy inflicted a more serious wound on the empire than the devastations of the Turkish armies; for many Christian families, worn out by the financial exactions of the imperial officers, emigrated into the Turkish dominions; and Nicetas informs us that whole towns were abandoned by the Greek inhabitants. Rokneddin subsequently expelled his brother Kaikhosrou from Iconium, and compelled Alexius to purchase peace by the payment of a tribute. Kaikhosrou, after wandering from the court of Aleppo to that of Leo, king of Armenian Cilicia, reached Constantinople as a suppliant, where he was well treated, and remained until the death of Rokneddin, in 1202, enabled him again to mount the throne of Iconium. He had afterwards an opportunity of repaying the obligation he had received as an exile when Alexius III appeared as a fugitive at Iconium.

The whole Vallachian, Bulgarian, and Sclavonian population between Mount Haemus and the Danube was now in arms to secure their independence; and as society was in very much the same condition in these provinces as in the other parts of the Byzantine Empire, many of the native nobles aspired to the throne, or endeavoured to render themselves independent princes. The three Vallachian brothers, Peter, Asan, and John, however, maintained their position as the leaders of the rebellion, and Asan was considered the real founder of the Vallachian or second Bulgarian kingdom, though he was assassinated in the year 1196. His murderer was Ivan, a Bulgarian noble of great military talent, who expected to mount the throne; but both the Bulgarians and Wallachians recognised Peter as king and successor to his brother. Ivan was compelled to seek safety in the Byzantine Empire. Shortly after Peter was assassinated, but his youngest brother John, commonly called Joannice, who had escaped from Constantinople, where he was detained as a hostage, was acknowledged King of Bulgaria. Alexius entrusted the command of the passes of Mount Haemus to Ivan, who for three years (1197-1200) effectually protected Thrace and Macedonia from the incursions of the Wallachians.

During this time, a Vallachian officer in the Byzantine army, named Chryses, who had refused to join his rebellious countrymen, was entrusted with the command of the fortress of Strumitza. The anarchy he saw prevailing round him induced Chryses to declare himself independent; and the Emperor Alexius III, hoping to obtain an easy victory over so weak an enemy, took the field against him in person. In the second campaign, AD 1199, the emperor besieged Chryses in the fort of Prosakon, which was situated on high rocks overhanging the Axios (Vardar). The Byzantine troops stormed the outer enclosure of Prosakon, and attacked the citadel with such vigour that their showers of missiles drove the enemy behind the ramparts. But the emperor had no scaling-ladders, tools, or machines for an assault ready; the plate, provisions, wine, and baggage of the imperial household had been brought forward with the main body of the army, and the artillery and warlike stores had been left behind until fresh means of transport should be collected. After a vain attack, in which many of the bravest soldiers and officers perished, the troops were repulsed. Alexius, finding that it would require more time and labour to take Prosakon than he had expected, concluded a treaty with Chryses, leaving him in possession of Prosakon and Strumitza, on condition that he acknowledged himself a subject, and held his command as an officer named by the emperor.

The weak conduct of Alexius induced Ivan to aspire at forming an independent principality in Thrace and Macedonia. In 1200 he threw off his allegiance to the Byzantine Empire, defeated an army commanded by the protostrator Manuel Kamytzes, whom he took prisoner, and, descending the valley of the Nestos, roused all the Bulgarian and Sclavonian population to revolt, from Mosynopolis to Xantheia, Mount Pangaeum, and Abdera.

Alexius took the field against Ivan in person, but the campaign was almost immediately terminated by a treaty. The emperor, after taking possession of the fort of Stenimachos, agreed to allow Ivan to remain as governor of the country he occupied, promised him his grand-daughter in marriage, and allowed him to assume the ensigns of a member of the imperial family. Ivan, deceived by these proofs of amity, visited Constantinople, where he was thrown into prison, Alexius perverting a passage of the psalmist as an excuse for his treachery.

As soon as Ivan began to treat with Alexius, the Bulgarian guards of Manuel Kamytzes carried their prisoner into the dominions of Joannice, king of Bulgaria. Chryses, however, paid his ransom, and Kamytzes was brought to Strumitza. Alexius, with his usual rapacity and injustice, had sequestrated the immense private fortune of Kamytzes as soon as he heard of his defeat; and he now refused to repay Chryses 200 lb. of gold from the treasures he had so unjustly seized. Kamytzes, enraged at this act of injustice, formed an alliance with Chryses, and determined to raise the ransom by plundering the empire. The two generals invaded Pelagonia, and took Prilapos. Kamytzes then marched into Thessaly, and extended his ravages over all Greece, exciting considerable commotion in the Peloponnesus by his intrigues. In the meantime, a Cypriot of low rank, who was governor of Smolena, also raised the standard of revolt; and the Patzinaks and Komans plundered the empire. Joannice, king of Bulgaria, availed himself of the general confusion to take possession of the important commercial cities of Constantina and Varna.

The empire seemed on the eve of dissolution; but the danger roused the ministers to activity, and the central government still exercised great power through the existing remains of the old Roman administrative system. A powerful army was brought into the field. Peace was concluded with the King of Bulgaria, by sacrificing Constantina and Varna. Order was in some degree restored in the Peloponnesus and continental Greece. Kamytzes was driven from all his conquests. The Cypriot was compelled to abandon Smolena, and escape into Bulgaria; and Chryses himself surrendered Strumitza to purchase pardon.

 

RELATIONS WITH WESTERN EUROPE

 

The preceding review of the internal condition of the dominions of Alexius III, and of the conduct of his government, renders it by no means surprising that the Byzantine Empire was destroyed by the first energetic attack made on the capital, in spite of the great resources of which the central administration could still dispose. The insolence with which the Crusaders had been generally treated was deeply resented by the nobility and clergy throughout Western Europe. The Venetians had never forgotten the injustice they had suffered when the Emperor Manuel confiscated the property of their merchants, and they sought an opportunity for revenge; and the weakness of Alexius III now invited every enemy of the Greeks to assail the empire.

The Emperor Henry VI of Germany, son of Frederic Barbarossa, having effected the conquest of Sicily by means of the ransom he had extorted from Richard, king of England, formed the project of invading the Byzantine empire. His ambition, which knew no bounds, easily furnished him with a pretext for war. He claimed all the country from Dyrrachium to Thessalonica as having belonged to the Sicilian crown, and from which Isaac II had driven the troops of William II. Alexius III, on mounting the throne, had purchased peace by promising to pay the German emperor sixteen hundred pounds’ weight of gold. A considerable part of this treasure was collected, when the death of Henry VI (AD 1197) relieved Alexius from all further alarm on the side of Germany and Sicily; and the money was soon wasted in idle expenditure, and in the foolish war with the Sultan of Iconium about the two Arabian horses which has been mentioned. Philip, who succeeded his brother Henry V, was the son-in-law of Isaac; but he was involved in too many difficulties in Germany to attempt anything against Alexius. The dethroned emperor and his son Alexius were consequently guarded with little care, and at last the young Alexius escaped to Italy in a Pisan ship.

In the meantime the Venetians—who had sought in vain, by several embassies to Constantinople, to obtain payment of the sums which remained due to them under the treaty of indemnity concluded with the Emperor Manuel in 1174—found it prudent, after the death of Henry VI, to conclude a commercial treaty with Alexius III, which was ratified by a golden bull of the emperor in 1199. Though the emperor granted them extensive commercial privileges and immunity from many duties paid by his Greek subjects, he treated them as vassals of the empire; and the treaty, whether because it failed to secure payment of the indemnity, or because its provisions were not fairly carried into execution, seems to have increased rather than allayed the hostile feelings of the Venetians. Venice soon found allies to join her in seeking to obtain revenge by open war.

When the leaders of the fourth crusade assembled at Venice to embark for Palestine, they were unable to pay the stipulated sum for transport. Thirty-four thousand marks of silver were wanting to complete their contract. The Doge of Venice, Henry Dandolo, a blind hero of ninety years of age, then proposed that the republic should defer the claim, and allow the fleet to depart immediately, on condition that the Crusaders joined the Venetians in reducing the city of Zara, which had lately rebelled, and admitted a Hungarian garrison. In vain the greatest of the popes, Innocent III, menaced the Crusaders with excommunication if they dared to attack a city belonging to a monarch who, like Andrew of Hungary, had taken the cross. Dandolo, who was as able a statesman as Innocent, and a man of a firmer mind, set the threats of the Papal See at defiance, and persuaded the superstitious barons that the Pope was acting from motives of policy, not religion. He succeeded in conducting the greater part of the Crusaders to Zara, which was soon taken; and this unholy crusade commenced by plundering a Christian city, defended by the troops of a crusading king.

While the Crusaders were passing the winter at Zara, ambassadors from the Emperor Philip of Germany solicited their assistance to restore his nephew, the young Alexius Angelos, and his father, Isaac II, to the throne of Constantinople. In spite of the opposition of many French nobles, the Belgians, Venetians, and Lombards determined to attack the Byzantine Empire. A treaty was signed, by which the Crusaders and Venetians engaged to replace Isaac II and his son Alexius on the throne, and the young Alexius bound himself to pay them the sum of two hundred thousand marks of silver, and to furnish the whole expedition with provisions for a year. He engaged, also, to acknowledge the papal supremacy, to accompany the Crusaders in person to Egypt, or else to furnish a contingent of ten thousand men to their army, with pay for a year; and he promised to maintain during his life a corps of five hundred cavalry in Palestine for the defence of the Latin possessions. Thus, says Nicetas, Alexius, who was as young in mind as in years, consented to change the ancient usages of the Romans.

The storm that was gathering in the Adriatic seems to have caused Alexius III very little alarm. He wrote to Pope Innocent III, who was regarded as the head of this crusade, requesting him to prevent the expedition from visiting the Byzantine Empire, as such a proceeding would frustrate his plans for the deliverance of the Holy Land. To this letter Innocent returned an evasive answer, assuming the right of deciding to whom the Byzantine crown really belonged.

The fleet sailed from Zara in the month of April 1203, accompanied by the young Alexius, who joined the Crusaders with a numerous suite of German knights. It stopped at Dyrrachium, where the governor presented the keys to Alexius as the representative of his father, Isaac II. Corfu followed the example; and Andros and Euboea, at which the expedition touched, changed their allegiance with equal readiness. No one showed any disposition to defend the rights of Alexius III. A prosperous voyage conducted the fleet within sight of Constantinople on the 23d June, and the troops were soon landed near Chalcedon, which they occupied, as well as Chrysopolis (Scutari).

Constantinople was as ill prepared to receive the enemy as when it was saved by the valour of Conrad of Montferrat, whose younger brother, Boniface, now commanded the army that had arrived to attack it. The imperial fleet had been so neglected that only twenty galleys could be rendered fit for service; the discipline of the troops had been neglected; and in spite of the great wealth and population of the city, few of the citizens were inclined to take up arms to defend the empire. Alexius III endeavoured to negotiate, but all his offers were rejected, and the Crusaders transported their cavalry across the Bosphorus. The emperor had sent troops to prevent their landing; but when the Venetian transports approached close to the shore above Galata, and let down the bridges which opened in the sides of the vessels, the cavalry bounded on shore, and mounted with such order and rapidity that the Greek troops were immediately put to flight, and the imperial tent formed part of the first spoils of the empire. Galata was protected by fortifications, of which the line may be traced in some parts of the existing walls. Towards the sea they were flanked by a great tower, to which one end of the immense chain that closed the entrance of the port was secured. The other end was made fast in the citadel within the walls of the great palace. The besiegers prepared to attack the tower, the fleet to force the chain, when an unfortunate sortie of the Greeks enabled the Latin troops to render themselves masters of the tower by entering it along with the fugitives. The chain was soon after broken by one of the heaviest of the transports, armed with an immense pair of shears, which enabled the Venetians to bring the whole weight of the ship, impelled by a strong wind, to press on the chain. It broke in two, and the fleet ranged itself in the port near the present dockyard.

It now remained to storm Constantinople, which had once enjoyed the reputation of being impregnable, and which had, on eleven great occasions, repulsed the attacks of powerful armies. But Alexius I had destroyed the charm of its impregnability, and its walls were in a neglected state. The Emperor Manuel, during the second crusade, had found it prudent to strengthen the fortifications near the palace of Blachern at the northern angle. It was on this side that the Crusaders determined to attack the city, while the Venetians assailed it near the center of the port. The army, formed into six divisions, encamped on the hill above the modern suburb of Eyoub, with the powerful engines they had brought for the attack of Jerusalem. The young Alexius summoned the people of Constantinople to open their gates and replace his father on the throne; but the people, who considered him an apostate from the Orthodox Church, treated his propositions with scorn. The Crusaders, not being in sufficient force to occupy the whole line of the land wall from the port to the Propontis, contented themselves with guarding the gate near the palace of Blachern, and left the others open to the Greeks to make their sorties—convinced that, whenever they could meet the enemy in a fair field, they were sure of victory. But the garden walls and enclosures often enabled the besieged to harass the Crusaders with sudden attacks, in which they lost many men. At last, on the 17th of July, the Crusaders having effected a breach in one of the towers opposite their camp, a general attack was simultaneously made on the city both by sea and land.

The Crusaders assaulted the breach with desperate courage, but after a long and bloody struggle they were repulsed by the English and Danish guards, whose battle-axes were well adapted for defending the walls. The Pisan auxiliaries also distinguished themselves by their valour. The Emperor Alexius III viewed the defeat of the Crusaders from a tower in the palace of Blachern, and he was urged by the officers of his suite to put himself at the head of the Varangian guard and attack the disordered Franks. A vigorous attack of the Byzantine army, under the command of his son-in-law, Theodore Lascaris, who was then at his side ready for action, might at this moment have saved Constantinople. But Alexius was incapable of any exertion. The Byzantine army was nevertheless drawn out in order of battle without the walls.

While the Crusaders suffered a defeat by land, the Venetians were completely successful by sea. They had constructed high towers of woodwork in some of their vessels, and these towers were furnished with bridges which could be let down on the walls of the city. Many other galleys, whose tops were filled with archers and crossbowmen, supported the attack, and swept the defenders from the fortifications. The old doge, in complete armour on the deck of his galley, encouraged his countrymen; and when he gave the signal for the grand assault, he ordered the crew of his ship to press forward, in order to be the first to touch the walls. In a few minutes many bridges were firmly fixed on the battlements, and after a short and desperate struggle the banner of Saint Mark was seen waving on a lofty tower overlooking the center of the port. Twenty-five towers and the connecting line of wall were soon in possession of the Venetians. But the narrow streets of the city, and the vigorous defence of the Greeks, who defended their property with more valour than they had defended the walls, arrested the progress of the Venetians. In order to penetrate into the center of the city, and at the same time to keep open their communications with the port, they set fire to the houses before them. The conflagration soon extended from the foot of the hill of Blachern to the monastery of Evergetes, and as far as the Devteron. At this critical moment the news reached Dandolo that the attack of the Crusaders had failed, and that the Byzantine army was issuing from Constantinople to assail their camp. He immediately abandoned all his conquests, and hastened with the whole Venetian force to support his allies. But when he reached the camp the danger was already past. The Emperor Alexius, after examining the Crusaders for some time, ordered his troops to reenter Constantinople.

During the following night he assembled a few of his confidential creatures, and, carrying off as much of the imperial treasures and jewels as he was able to transport, he abandoned Constantinople, and escaped to Debeltos.

 

Sect. III

The Conquest of Constantinople and the Partition of the Byzantine Empire A.D. 1203-1204.

 

Before any of the ambitious nobles, who were usually watching for a revolution in order to place the imperial crown on their own heads, could take advantage of the cowardice and flight of Alexius III, the intendant of the imperial treasury, a eunuch named Constantine, contrived to induce the Varangian guard to replace Isaac II on the throne, by promising them a liberal donative. The blind emperor was immediately conducted from the monastery where he had been latterly confined, to the palace, and proclaimed emperor, with his son Alexius IV as his colleague. The administration underwent no change, and only those courtiers were driven from their places who were attached to the personal interests of the late emperor. Most of the Byzantine statesmen were satisfied with this arrangement. It purchased peace for the moment; and it might, in their opinion, afford the Greeks, who prided themselves on their intellectual superiority over the Latins, an opportunity of obtaining some diplomatic advantage over their enemies. The presumptuous vanity of Greeks made them overlook the profound knowledge of Eastern affairs possessed by the Venetians, who equalled their enemies in cunning, and far surpassed them in daring. Even the Crusaders, though incapable of steady counsels, had their suspicions fully awakened, and distrusted the intrigues of the Greeks.

As soon, therefore, as it was known in the Latin camp that Isaac II was restored to the throne, they were prepared to meet with chicane in place of open hostilities. Alexius IV was retained as a hostage until envoys of their own should bring back a report of the real state of affairs within the walls of Constantinople, and obtain from Isaac the ratification of the treaty concluded by his son at Zara. Isaac, on hearing the concessions made by his son, frankly informed the Crusaders that he saw no possibility of carrying the stipulations of the treaty into effect; but with his accustomed weakness he immediately consented to ratify it, in order to have the pleasure of embracing his son. Alexius IV then made his solemn entry into the capital on horseback, between Baldwin, count of Flanders, and the doge, Henry Dandolo, and on the 1st of August he was crowned as his father's colleague. The long imprisonment of Isaac II, and the loss of his eyesight, had weakened his feeble mind; while Alexius, an idle and ill-educated youth, destitute of natural talent, having contracted the habits and vices of the Franks, was incompetent to supply the deficiencies of his father. Both emperors, however, were sensible of the insurmountable difficulties of their position; they felt that they could not trust their own subjects, and they perceived the danger of relying on the Latins. The blindness of Isaac, and his constant attacks of gout, made him pay more attention to his own sufferings than to the dangers of the empire. As human aid promised no relief in either case, he sought consolation from monks and astrologers, who flattered him with imaginary prophetic revelations, and the supposed results of divination. These cursed monks, as Nicetas calls them, dined at the imperial table, where they consumed the finest fish of the Bosphorus, and the richest wines of the Archipelago, which they paid for by persuading Isaac that he was destined to recover his sight and health at the very time he was visibly sinking into the grave. The conduct of Alexius was as foolish as that of Isaac, and he was equally inattentive to public business. His thoughtless behaviour rendered him contemptible both to the Greeks and Latins. He spent whole days in the tents of the Crusaders, feasting and gambling with the young nobles, who, in their revels, sometimes took the imperial bonnet, ornamented with precious stones, from his head, and replaced it with the woollen cap commonly worn by the Latins.

It soon became evident that the Byzantine government was unable to satisfy the demands of the Crusaders; but the army and fleet were regularly supplied with provisions, and from time to time their leaders were furnished with such sums of money as the emperors were able to collect. These instalments were obtained from the money in the imperial treasury which had escaped Alexius III and his courtiers, from sums raised by confiscating the private wealth accumulated by the Empress Euphrosyne and some of her relations, and by collecting the gold and silver plate, and the jewels in the imperial palaces, the monasteries, and even the churches. But all was inadequate to discharge the debt, while the feelings of irritation between the Greeks and Latins were daily increasing. To avoid a collision, the Latin army was encamped close to Galata, and the soldiers were only allowed to visit Constantinople during the day in small numbers.

The 29th of September, St Michael’s Day, was nevertheless fixed for the departure of the Crusaders; and Alexius IV, in order to extend his power in the provinces, and collect additional sums of money, left Constantinople, accompanied by a considerable body of Latin troops under the command of the Marquis of Montferrat, a selfish intriguer, who increased the general difficulties by seeking to obtain clandestine profits for himself. He cheated Alexius with as little delicacy as knavish associates usually display in their dealings with foolish spendthrifts. Before Alexius mounted the throne, the marquis obtained a promise of the investiture of Crete; and he now exacted an engagement for the payment of one thousand six hundred pounds’ weight of gold before accompanying the young emperor. The movements of the dethroned Alexius rendered it absolutely necessary to attack him without delay; for, finding that he was not pursued, he had collected a considerable body of troops at Debeltos, occupied Adrianople, and secured his authority over the greater part of Thrace. The young Alexius IV soon drove him out of Adrianople, and took possession of Philippopolis and Kypsela; but it was found that no money could be hastily collected in a province exhausted by continual hostilities, beyond what was required for supplying the immediate wants of the troops in the field. The marquis and his followers, who thought more of securing payment of their subsidies than of assisting the empire, soon compelled Alexius IV to return to Constantinople, though their precipitate retreat left Alexius III in possession of Mosynopolis and all Macedonia, and allowed Joannice, king of Bulgaria, who had crossed Mount Haemus in order to profit by the disturbed state of the Byzantine empire, to conquer many places in Thrace.

The relations between the Byzantine government and the Crusaders were thus rendered every day more complicated and less friendly. The Crusaders insisted on the immediate fulfilment of all the stipulations of the treaty; the emperors complained that the Crusaders left the provinces from which great part of the revenues were derived in the hands of the usurper, while they employed themselves in plundering the property of the friendly population in the vicinity of Constantinople. As the emperors were unable to pay the immense sums they had promised, and the Crusaders had really only fulfilled a part of what they had engaged to perform, nothing but mutual concessions could prevent a quarrel. The complicated nature of the obligations between the Byzantine government and the Crusaders and Venetians on one side, and between the feudal barons and the Venetians on the other, rendered a peaceful termination of the expedition almost impossible. Things were in that peculiar state, when nothing but great talents and great moderation on the part of three different powers could insure tranquillity. One man alone possessed the talents and the authority capable of preserving order; and this very man, Henry Dandolo, was eagerly watching for every event tending to hasten the collision which he looked forward to as inevitable.

An accidental calamity tended greatly to increase the hatred of the Greeks to the Latins. On the 19th of August, while young Alexius was absent on his Thracian expedition, a dreadful fire destroyed a considerable part of Constantinople, adding greatly to the sufferings of the population, and to the embarrassments of the government. This conflagration originated in the wilful act of a few Flemish soldiers, who had crossed the port to visit some of their country­men established as merchants in the empire. After drinking together until they were nearly drunk, the Crusaders proposed attacking a Turkish mosque in the neighbourhood, and plundering the rich warehouses of the Turkish merchants who traded with Persia and Egypt. Their pillage was interrupted by the Greeks, who drove them back, and pursued them so hotly towards the port, that the Flemings, in order to save themselves, set fire to some houses in their rear. A strong wind caused the conflagration to spread with frightful rapidity, and it burned for the space of two days. The entire breadth of the city, from the port to the Propontis, was laid in ashes, forming a belt of cinders a mile and a half in extent, over which it was necessary to pass from one part of the town to the other. The fire passed close to the Church of St Sophia, destroying the richest quarter of the city. Splendid palaces, filled with works of ancient art and antique classic manuscripts, as well as warehouses stored with immense wealth, were destroyed by this conflagration, from the calamitous effects of which Constantinople never recovered. About fifteen thousand Latins had hitherto continued to reside in Constantinople as traders and artisans. The fury of the populace and the ruin of their houses now compelled them to seek refuge at Galata, under the protection of the Crusaders.

The losses caused by this fire, and the hostile disposition it caused in the breasts of the Greeks both against the emperors and the Latins, rendered it impossible to make the pecuniary payments required by the Crusaders. But their threats compelled the Byzantine government to seize the golden ornaments and immense silver candelabra that ornamented St Sophia’s and other churches in the capital. The golden shrines that enclosed the relics of saints and martyrs, and the silver frames of holy pictures, were melted down and handed over to the Venetian commissaries. A new treaty was negotiated with the Crusaders, for the prolongation of their stay until the following Easter. The emperors engaged to defray the whole expenses of the army and fleet during the interval, though the Venetians exacted an additional freight for their ships. The young Alexius IV promised to oblige the Patriarch to proclaim Innocent III head of the whole Christian church, and wrote to that ambitious pontiff an assurance that he was labouring to reunite the Eastern Church under papal supremacy. Many of the Crusaders were extremely unwilling to remain, and their army showed signs of discontent. The Greeks, on the other hand, enraged at their sufferings, and the insults offered to their Church, began to think of resistance. They remembered that they had repulsed the attack of the land troops, and their behaviour indicated an approaching insurrection. Alexius IV thought at times of placing himself at the head of the national party, and formed a friendship with Alexius Dukas Murtzuphlos, who was the most daring leader of the war party; but his father warned him of the danger, and convinced him that, without the assistance of the Crusaders, it would be impossible to defend the throne.

The monks and astrologers who surrounded Isaac II persuaded him to transport the bronze boar, which Euphrosyne had mutilated, from the hippodrome into the palace, as an effectual means of taming the fury of the populace of Constantinople, of which they said this boar was the type. The populace really resembled the emperor in superstition so closely that they emulated his astrological follies. They conceived a fancy that a splendid bronze statue of Minerva, thirty feet high, was the genius of the Latins, whom its attitude appeared to invite. This noble work of Hellenic art the Greeks destroyed.

Things at last reached a crisis. The Crusaders sent a formal declaration of war to the emperors, in case they failed to fulfil the conditions of the new treaty and pay the money due. The people of Constantinople rose in rebellion, and declared that they would no longer submit to be governed by emperors who had sold the empire and the church to the Latins. On the 25th of January 1204 the people assembled in St Sophia’s, and compelled the members of the senate, the clergy, and the principal nobles of the capital, to attend in order to elect a new emperor. 

But as every man of rank knew that the Latins would support the cause of Alexius IV, as a pretext for attacking the city, no one was found who would accept the proffered sovereignty. For three days the confusion continued, until a young man named Nikolas Kanavos was anointed emperor against his will. Isaac II died during this period of anarchy. Alexius IV sent to the Marquis of Montferrat, and made arrangements for introducing the Crusaders into Constantinople; but Alexius Murtzuphlos, hearing of this, placed himself at the head of his military partisans, and, having obtained admittance to the Emperor Alexius late in the evening, frightened him with dreadful accounts of the conduct of the enraged populace. The shouts of the followers of Murtzuphlos were heard at the palace gates. The fate of Andronicus presented itself to the imagination of Alexius, who begged Murtzuphlos to assist him in escaping to the Latins. The traitor, after receiving the ensigns of the imperial rank from the hands of the confiding prince, led him by long galleries to the dungeons of the palace. Alexius Murtzuphlos then returned to his followers, by whom he was proclaimed emperor; and the choice was ratified by all the troops. Kanavos was compelled to descend from the throne; and Alexius IV was strangled in the dungeon to which he had been conducted, after a reign of six months and eight days.

 

ALEXIUS V (MURTZUPHLOS), A.D. 1204.

 

Alexius V, who placed himself on the throne by this daring act of rebellion and assassination, was a member of the great family of Dukas, which had given two emperors to the East, and was closely allied with the families of Comnenos and Angelos. He had received the by-name of Murtzuphlos from his school companions on account of his large overhanging eye­brows. At this time he was generally looked up to by his countrymen as the bravest soldier among the nobility, and he had given proofs of his valour in several skirmishes with the Crusaders. His enemies admit that he was indefatigable in his exertions to re-establish order, and put the fortifications in a state of defence. He restored the discipline of the troops by appearing constantly at their exercises. He preserved tranquillity among the populace by traversing the city frequently on horseback, by night as well as by day, with his mace-of-arms in his hand, fie repaired the walls, strengthened the towers, improved the machines for throwing missiles, and formed scaffolds for new engines on the towers most exposed to attack from the side of the port, in order that they might command the decks of the Venetian ships.

As the military energy of the Byzantine empire, like that of modern states, depended in a great measure on its financial resources, and the circumstances under which Murtzuphlos mounted the throne rendered it impossible for him to think of imposing any new tax, even though it was well known that the treasury was empty, he took measures for raising the supplies necessary for the preparations he was carrying on, and for the payment of the mercenary troops, by sequestrating the fortunes of all who had acted as intendants of finance, as collectors of the imperial revenue, or as government contractors, whose property was generally confiscated on the ground that they were deeply indebted to the public. This mode of raising money was popular in the Roman Empire in every age, from the time of Augustus Caesar to that of Dukas Murtzuphlos. But it was impossible to infuse a warlike spirit into the breasts of the Greeks of Constantinople. Both nobles and citizens were equally disgusted with the severe military discipline introduced by the new emperor, who compelled every Greek who was unfit to perform the duties of an officer, or to serve in the cavalry, to range himself in the infantry and do duty on the walls. The merchants and shopkeepers were averse to serve in person, because they paid exorbitant taxes in order that government might find mercenary troops for their defence; and they were ashamed of the ridicule to which they exposed themselves by their awkwardness in military array beside the English, Danes, and Pisans of the imperial guard, who moved in complete armour as easily as the citizens in their holiday garments. Many Greeks, too, of every class, detested the imperial government, and had lost their attachment to the hierarchy of the church. Some looked forward to their destruction as a necessary reform; many viewed it with indifference, and some with pleasure.

For two months the new emperor and the Crusaders prepared themselves with all their energy for the struggle which was to decide the fate of the Byzantine Empire. Murtzuphlos, by repeated skirmishes, ably conducted, succeeded in circumscribing the foraging parties of the Crusaders in the immediate vicinity of the capital, and Henry of Flanders was obliged to march with a large body of cavalry as far as Philea on the Black Sea, in order to collect a supply of provisions. The emperor attempted to surprise this division on its return; but the Belgian soldiers of Henry, though suddenly attacked, closed their ranks without confusion, and completely defeated the Greeks. Twenty of the bravest horsemen of the imperial guard were slain in the first charge; and the grand standard of the Virgin, which always accompanied the emperor when he took the field in person, and which was regarded by the people as the talisman of the empire, was taken by Henry. The Byzantine troops suffered so severely in this encounter that Murtzuphlos did not again venture to lead them without the walls.

The Crusaders and Venetians had prepared everything for a new assault by the end of March 1204. A council was then held to arrange the manner in which the plunder of Constantinople was to be divided, and to settle the partition of the Byzantine Empire. The treaty then signed put an end to the Eastern Roman Empire; for neither the Latin empire of Romania, established by the conquerors, nor the Greek empires of Nicaea and of Constantinople which succeeded, have a just claim to be considered the legitimate representatives either of the policy or of the dignity of the Byzantine government.

This treaty was concluded by the Doge Henry Dandolo on the part of the Venetians, and by Boniface, marquis of Montferrat, Baldwin, count of Flanders, Louis, count of Blois, and Henry, count of St Pol, on the part of the Crusaders, in order to avoid all disputes, should it please God, for His honour and glory, to grant them the victory over their enemies. The Venetians very naturally considered that the freight of the expedition was the first debt which it was the duty of the Crusaders to discharge. But to prevent the whole booty from being absorbed by this claim, it was provided that the Venetians were to receive three quarters of the plunder, and the Crusaders one, until the whole sum due to Venice was discharged. In every case the rations necessary for the whole expedition were to be issued from the common stock according to the established rule. The Venetians were to enjoy all the privileges in the conquered territory which they possessed in their own country, and were to be governed by their own laws. Twelve electors were to be chosen as soon as Constantinople was taken, who were to elect an emperor; and they were to choose the man best able to govern the new conquests for the glory of God and the advantage of the Holy Roman Church: six of these electors were to be named by the barons, and six by the Venetians. The emperor was to possess as his immediate domain the palaces of Blachern and Bucoleon, with one quarter of the Byzantine empire; the remaining three quarters were to be equally divided between the Crusaders and the Venetians. The clergy of the party to which the emperor did not belong were to elect the patriarch of the Eastern Church, and the ecclesiastics of the two parties were to occupy the benefices in the territories assigned to their respective nations. The two parties bound themselves to remain united for another year—that is, until the 31st of March 1205; and all who then established themselves in the empire were to take an oath of fealty, and do homage to the emperor. Twelve commissioners were to be chosen by each party, in order to divide the conquered territory into fiefs, and determine the service due by the crown vassals to the emperor. No person belonging to any nation at war with the parties to the treaty was to be received in the empire as long as hostilities lasted. This stipulation was evidently inserted by the Venetians, and directed against their great commercial and political rivals, the Genoese. Both parties were to exert all their influence to induce the Pope to ratify and confirm the treaty, and excommunicate any who should refuse to execute its stipulations. The emperor was to swear to observe the treaty; and in case it should be found necessary to make any modifications in it before his election, the Doge of Venice and the Marquis of Montferrat, with the twelve electors, were empowered to make the change required, The doge, Henry Dandolo, as a personal honour, was dispensed from taking an oath of fealty to the future emperor for any fief or office he might hold.

It appears that an act of partition, describing the territories comprised in the quarter of the empire assigned to the emperor, in the quarter and half quarter assigned to the Venetians, and in the quarter and half quarter assigned to the Crusaders, was drawn up at the same time as the treaty. But the imperfect copies of this act which have been preserved, the manner in which the geographical names are disfigured, and the modifications to which it was immediately subjected, in consequence of disputes, exchanges, and sales of the various lots, render the fragments we possess a doubtful authority for determining the original partition of the empire.

On the 9th of April everything was ready for the assault, and at daybreak the whole force of the expedition moved forward to attack the towers on the side of the port, for it seemed doubtful whether the diminished numbers of the land forces would be able to make any impression on the numerous mercenaries who manned the land wall under the eye of a leader like Murtzuphlos. On the other hand, the long line of wall towards the port offered no flank defences beyond the slight projection and elevation of its towers; while the assailants could take advantage of the quays for landing merchandise in making their attack with ordinary scaling-ladders, and concentrate an overwhelming flight of missiles on any given point from three hundred engines planted on the decks of their ships. Murtzuphlos had, however, done much to strengthen this part of the fortifications, and it was found well prepared to offer a desperate resistance. The assault was commenced with the greatest fury, and persisted in with the fiercest perseverance. Many Crusaders landed on the quays, and planted their ladders against the walls, but every assailant who reached their summit was hurled down headlong. The machines of the defenders broke the yards of those ships that approached the towers, and swept the men from their decks. At length, after a contest of hours, and the loss of some of their bravest soldiers, the Crusaders were obliged to retire.

But the assailants were not men to be easily discouraged by danger, and they determined to renew the attack on the 12th of April. The interval was employed in preparing more powerful means of escalade. The largest ships of the fleet were bound together in pairs, their decks were protected by stronger bulwarks, and their tops were enlarged. The fleet, ranged in successive lines, was enabled to bring an overwhelming force against the defenders of any single tower. The attack commenced by an unremitted volley of missiles against the points which it was proposed to storm. When the defenders were compelled to conceal themselves from this volley, the ships destined for the assault were impelled rapidly to the wall, aided by a strong north wind, which carried the heaviest double ships with rapidity alongside the towers. The Pilgrim and the Paradise were the first to plant their platform on a Byzantine tower, and a band of Venetians and Crusaders sprang in eager emulation at the same instant on the hostile ramparts. The shout of victory spread instantaneously through the host, and four towers were immediately stormed. In a few minutes, three of the city gates were thrown open, and the knights began to land their horses from the ships in the rear. Murtzuphlos had pitched his tents and encamped the imperial guard at the monastery of Pantepoptes, in the open space left by the first conflagration. He saw the victory gained before it was in his power to send succours to the defenders; and when the hostile banners were already floating from the towers, his guards refused to march against the victorious enemy, and fled with their emperor to the palace of Bucoleon. The conquerors immediately occupied his encampment, and took possession of the neighbouring palace of Blachern; but the day was too far spent to do more than establish themselves firmly in the positions they had seized. The leaders deemed it imprudent to allow any part of their troops to advance into the streets of a city which had not yet capitulated, and to which the imperial palace formed a strong citadel, garrisoned by a numerous body of well-disciplined mercenaries. To increase the confusion among the Greeks, and prevent their attacking the camp during the night, the Crusaders set fire to the houses on their flank. This third conflagration destroyed the eastern part of the city beyond the monastery of Evergetes, and extended near the sea as far as the Drungarion. Villehardouin says that the three fires lighted by the Crusaders destroyed more houses than were contained in the three largest cities in France.

The Emperor Alexius V, finding no one disposed to defend his throne, embarked in a galley with the Empress Euphrosyne and her daughter Eudocia, whom he had married, and fled from the capital.

(The imperial families of Comnenos and Angeloe present us scenes as tragical as anything in the ancient drama “presenting Thebes and Pelops’ line”. Alexius II and his sister, the beautiful Maria, were murdered by Andronicus LI, whose horrid death was accompanied by the murder of his sons. Isaac, the tyrant of Cyprus, the blind Isaac II, the fugitive Alexius III, the murdered Alexius IV, and Eudocia, the daughter of Alexius III, all bore a part in fearful tragedies. Eudocia was married to Simeon, king of Servia, who retired into a monastery on Mount Papykes. His son Stephen, struck with the beauty of his young stepmother, married her, and had children by the marriage. A scandalous quarrel, however, arose; he divorced her, and expelled her from the palace, almost naked. As nobody dared to assist her, she would probably have perished, had not Fulk, the king’s brother, sent her to Constantinople. Murtzuphlos, who had already divorced two wives, married her; and after the execution of Murtzuphlos, she married Leo Sguros, the chief of Argos, Nauplia, and Corinth).

In the meantime, the people of every rank crowded to St Sophia’s, and exhibited a strange example of the political weakness and demoralization caused by the complete centralization of all executive action. No one thought of taking advantage of the numerous means of defence which were still available. The election of a new emperor was necessary to secure obedience to any order, and even in this scene of anarchy two claimants presented themselves as pretenders to the throne. Fortune determined the election in favour of Theodore Lascaris; but after a vain attempt to rally the imperial guard, and excite the Greeks to active resistance, he found it necessary to escape to Asia as soon as morning dawned; adding a third to the fugitive emperors who were wandering the Byzantine provinces in search of their empire.

The Crusaders and Venetians met with no further resistance. The Marquess of Montferrat occupied the palace of Bucoleon, and Henry of Flanders that of Blachern. The Byzantine troops laid down their arms on receiving assurance of personal safety. Guards were then placed over the imperial treasury and the arsenal, but the troops and sailors were allowed to plunder the city without restraint. The insolence of victory was never more haughtily displayed; every crime was perpetrated without shame. The houses of the peaceful citizens were plundered, their wives dishonoured, and their children enslaved. Churches and monasteries were rifled; monuments of religious zeal were defaced; horses and mules were stabled in temples whose architectural magnificence was unequalled in the rest of Europe. The ceremonies of the Greeks were ridiculed; the priests were insulted; the sacred plate, the precious shrines in which the relics of martyrs and saints were preserved, the rich altar-cloths, and the jewelled ornaments, were carried off. The soldiers and their female companions made the Church of St Sophia the scene of licentious orgies; and Nicetas recounts with grief and indignation that “one of the priestesses of Satan” who accompanied the Crusaders seated herself on the Patriarch’s throne, sang ribald songs before the high altar, and danced in the sacred edifice, to the delight of the infuriated soldiery. It is not necessary to detail all the miseries suffered by the unfortunate Greeks; Pope Innocent III has left a description of the scene so horrible that it will hardly bear a literal translation. The age was one of fierce wars and dreadful calamities; but the sack of Constantinople so far exceeded everything else that happened, both in its glory and shame, as to become the favourite theme of popular song and dramatic representation throughout the known world. Villehardouin says that every Crusader occupied the house that pleased his fancy; and men who the day before were in absolute poverty, suddenly found themselves possessed of wealth, and living in luxury.

Some of the Latin clergy vainly endeavoured to moderate the fury which their own bigoted precepts had instilled into the troops; but many thought only of collecting a rich booty of relics, and showed themselves as little scrupulous as the Venetians and soldiers in robbing churches and monasteries. Well might the Greeks contrast the conduct of this army of the soldiers of Christ under the especial care of its holy father the Pope, with the behaviour of the Mussulman troops under the command of Saladin, who conquered Jerusalem. The Christians had bound themselves by an oath not to shed the blood of Christians; they had made vows of abstinence and chastity. What attention they paid to these vows when they turned their arms against a Christian state, which for many centuries had formed the bulwark of Europe against the invasion of the Saracens, is recorded by the Pope himself.

The chiefs of the expedition at last determined to re-establish order; but before it was possible to restore the salutary restraint of military discipline, they were obliged to put several of their mutinous followers to death, and the Count of St Pol hung a French knight with his shield round his neck. This severe punishment was inflicted, not for an abuse of the rights of conquest towards the defenceless Greeks, but as an act of public vengeance against a traitor who had defrauded his companions by concealing a portion of the plunder. Thanks were then offered up to God with the greatest solemnity for the glorious conquest of a city containing half a million of inhabitants by an army composed of twenty thousand men; and “God wills it” was fervently shouted by the pious brigands.

A proclamation was published, ordering all the booty to be collected in three of the principal churches of the city, and promising personal protection to the inhabitants. Most of the Byzantine nobility availed themselves of this opportunity to escape from the city. Nicetas the historian, who for the last century has been our best guide in the Byzantine annals, has left us an account of his own adventures during the catastrophe of his country. The palace he occupied before the calamities commenced was situated in the quarter Sphoralrion, near St Sophia’s, and was enriched with many treasures of ancient art and literature. It was destroyed in the second conflagration, and the historian then retired to a smaller dwelling in a narrow street. In this house many of his friends sought refuge; and a Venetian whom he had protected in the days of his official power now armed himself as a Crusader, and guarded the entrance as if it was his own quarters. This succeeded for some days; but as soon as the proclamation was known, Nicetas and his friends resolved to quit Constantinople, and abandon their property in order to escape from insult. On Saturday, the fifth day after the capture of the city, while a cold wind from the Black Sea gave the morning a wintry aspect, Nicetas, accompanied by his pregnant wife, and surrounded by his children and friends, walked through the streets of the capital to gain the Golden Gate, where some wretched conveyance might be obtained, by means of which they could reach Selymbria. Several of the party carried infants in their arms, for their servants and slaves had deserted them. The young women of rank and beauty were placed in the midst of the band of exiles, their faces disfigured with dust, and their figures concealed in unsightly dresses. In this way the fugitives passed many bands of soldiers without interruption, but when they reached the Church of St Mokios a soldier seized a beautiful girl, and carried her off by force. The father, feeble from sickness, was unable to pursue the ravisher, and he implored Nicetas to save his daughter. The historian followed the soldier, imploring all the Latins he met to protect the honour of an innocent family, and save a noble lady from insult and slavery. He appealed to the proclamation which it was their duty to respect, until his eloquent and pathetic gestures, rather than his words, awakened compassion. A party of Crusaders accompanied Nicetas to the house into which the maiden had been carried, where they found the robber standing at the door. He denied all knowledge of the transaction; but when the house was searched, the young lady was found, and conducted back to her father. The sad procession soon after reached the Golden Gate, and gained the road to Selymbria. It was joined by the Patriarch, now travelling forth, like a true apostle, without attendants and sumpter-mules, and as destitute as the rest of his companions. The exiles reached Selymbria in safety; but the people generally treated their sufferings with derision, by which they were more galled than by the insolence of the Franks.

The financial oppression of the Byzantine government, the vices of the court, and the crimes of the recent emperors, were attributed by the people to the meanness and rapacity of the nobility and dignified clergy, who were supposed to have upheld the vicious fabric of the imperial administration for their own profit. The people, therefore, expressed their satisfaction in rude terms when they saw princes, patriarchs, and senators, reduced to the state of poverty in which they were themselves living. The calamity appeared to them an equitable dispensation of Divine justice. Nor was this judgment confined to the lower classes; on the contrary, it was the deliberate opinion of many Greeks throughout the provinces that the ruin of the Byzantine empire was caused by the base complicity of the senate and the clergy in all the abuses and rapacity which has disgraced the public administration since the death of Manuel I. Nicetas complains bitterly of the injustice of this opinion, and endeavours to throw the blame of the taking of Constantinople on the cowardice of the troops and the worthlessness of their officers; but it is certain that the civil government was more to blame than the troops for the fall of the empire.

The first care of the victors was to divide the plunder accumulated in the three churches they had selected for magazines. Sacred plate, golden crowns, images of saints, shrines of relics, candelabra of precious metals, statues of ancient gods, precious ornaments of Hellenic art and of Byzantine jewellery, were heaped up with coined money from the imperial treasury, and with silk, velvet, embroidered tissues, and jewels, collected from the warehouses of merchants, from the shops of goldsmiths, and by domestic spoliation. The booty, in spite of fraud, concealment, waste, and conflagration, amounted to three hundred thousand marks of silver, besides ten thousand horses and mules which had belonged to the cavalry or the imperial stables. Baldwin of Flanders, the future emperor, declares that the riches of Constantinople equalled the accumulated wealth of all Western Europe. The spoil was first divided into two equal parts, and the Crusaders then paid the Venetians from their portion the sum of fifty thousand marks, according to the original convention concluded at Venice. The remaining one hundred thousand marks were divided in the following proportion: each horseman received double the share of a foot-soldier, and each knight double the share of a horseman. The small difference between the shares of a common soldier and a knight proves that the feudal militia of this expedition, which was a fair type of the military force of the age in Western Europe, consisted of men in a higher social rank than those who form our modern armies. It was necessary to be born a gentleman in order to be a soldier in the twelfth century; and as great physical powers and long practice alone could enable a man to move with activity under the weight of the armour then worn, the power of raising recruits was restricted to a much smaller proportion of the population than it is in our days, when scientific manoeuvres and distant artillery do much of the work formerly achieved by the personal courage and the strong arm of the combatants.

On the 9th of May, Baldwin, count of Flanders, was elected Emperor of the East, and the sceptre passed into the hands of the Belgians. The personal character of Baldwin, his military accomplishments, his youth, power, and virtue, all pointed him out as the leader most likely to enjoy a long and prosperous reign. His piety and the purity of his private life commanded the respect of the Greeks, who vainly hoped to enjoy peace under his government. He was one of the few Crusaders who paid strict attention to his vows of abstinence; and a singular proclamation, which he thought it necessary to repeat twice a-week, forbidding all who were guilty of incontinency to sleep within the walls of his palace, shows that he knew the majority of his countrymen easily forgot their vows. The connection of the Belgians with the French, and the little jealousy entertained by the Venetians of a sovereign whose hereditary dominions were so far distant from the possessions of the republic, contributed to the preference of Baldwin.

The two fugitive Byzantine emperors, Alexius III and Alexius Murtzuphlos, wandered about in Macedonia, with little hope of finding partisans disposed to join their cause. Murtzuphlos joined his father-in-law, hoping by their united influence to assemble an army capable of preventing the Crusaders from reaching Thessalonica. But Alexius III feared his son-in-law on account of his military talents, and contrived to seize him, and have his eyes put out. The unfortunate Murtzuphlos was soon taken prisoner by the Crusaders, who carried him to Constantinople, where they tried him for the murder of Alexius IV. Murtzuphlos pleaded that the young Alexius had been deposed and condemned as a traitor by a lawful assembly; but the Crusaders found him guilty, and ordered him to be executed in a singular manner. The last of the Byzantine emperors was precipitated from the top of a column in the Tauros, one of the principal squares in the capital, and was dashed to pieces on the pavement of the city. Alexius III fled as the Crusaders advanced. To gain a new ally, he bestowed the accommodating Eudocia in marriage on Leo Sguros, who had occupied a great part of Greece; but when that chief was defeated by the Marquess of Montferrat, Alexius submitted to the conqueror, and received a pension. He soon fled to Michael, despot of Epirus; thence he repaired as a suppliant to the court of Gaiaseddin Kaikhosrou II sultan of Iconium, whom he had received with kindness when an exile. The power which Theodore Lascaris had acquired at Nicaea excited the envy of Alexius, though Theodore was the husband of his daughter Anna, and, with the aid of the Turks, he endeavoured to seize his throne. Theodore Lascaris defeated the sultan, and took Alexius prisoner. The dethroned and restless monarch was shut up in a monastery, where he passed the remainder of his life, universally despised as a worthless and cowardly emperor, and detested as an envious and cruel man, utterly void of every feeling of natural affection, honour, or gratitude.

 

CONCLUSION

End of the Byzantine Empire

 

Such was the termination of the Byzantine phase of the Eastern Roman Empire. Many new states were formed from its disjointed members, as had formerly happened at the fall of the Empire of the West. Three of these assumed the rank of empires, and the Belgian Emperor of Constantinople found himself compelled to dispute for the honour of representing the Roman Empire of the East with two Greek sovereigns, who assumed the imperial title at Nicaea and at Trebizond. Most of the European provinces were subjected to a new code of laws, and were forced to adopt new habits and manners. The feudal system was imposed on Greece by its conquerors, and a considerable portion of the Hellenic race never again recovered its independence; but when the power of its feudal princes and of its other masters, the Venetians, the Genoese, and the Knights of St John, declined, it passed under the dominion of the Ottoman Turks. The Greek emperor of Nicaea, even after he had expelled the Belgian emperor from Constantinople, never extended his power over more than a moiety of the Greek nation. The Greek empire of Constantinople was only a counterfeit representation of its Byzantine predecessor, in the same manner as the empire of Charlemagne formed a mere nominal revival of that of Rome. But more instruction would be derived by making the difference in the state of society at the fall of the empires of the East and West, than in tracing analogies which naturally occurred at the dissolution of two states long governed by the same principles of policy and jurisprudence.

The task here assumed is confined to a more restricted field. It will be enough to recapitulate the principal causes which produced the ruin of the Byzantine empire, and to indicate the various influences that operated in transforming the spirit of universality, which characterised the government of the Iconoclast emperors, into the confined Greek nationality that displayed itself under the houses of Comnenos and Angelos. A great modification in the official establishment of the empire took place by the consolidation of arbitrary power in the hands of the Basilian dynasty. The arbitrary nature of the executive power, as then exercised, circumscribed the class from which the higher officials in the administration were selected, and robbed intellectual cultivation, scientific knowledge, and long experience, of the guarantees they previously possessed for attaining high rank in the public service. Courtly privileges, political ignorance, decreased communications, restricted ideas, the decay of internal trade, and a stationary condition of the people, soon proclaimed the decline of society. We are apt to feel surprised that ancient nations submitted tamely to the severe oppression under which they are recorded to have bowed for many successive generations. A careful consideration of the constitution of society, that arose out of the existence of slavery, explains the difficulty. The slaves at Constantinople, as in ancient Rome, were very numerous; many were as well educated as their masters, and mingled habitually with the highest ranks of society. To a large body of these slaves, therefore, the feelings of every class, the extent of popular grievances, the strength of rival factions, and the resources of the central executive power, were as well-known as to the greater part of the free population. The mass of slaves lived in perpetual hostility to the existing order of things, ready to seize any opportunity that might present itself for effecting a social revolution; nor would leaders have been wanting among the slaves themselves, had a favourable moment been found. The free citizens knew the danger in which they lived, and hence their political conduct was fettered by perpetual bonds: they feared an insurrection of their slaves more than the arbitrary power of their emperors.

It may be asserted without hesitation, that the first irremediable injury inflicted on the Byzantine government was the corruption of the administration of justice by ignorant and venal courtiers, whom the Basilian emperors intrusted with the exercise of arbitrary power. The immense influence of the Byzantine judicial system, in maintaining order and activity throughout all ranks of society, is apt to be over­looked, because it was never fully appreciated by contemporary historians. Its social power may be justly estimated by reflecting that the Byzantine law approached much nearer to the principles of equity than the Eastern Church did to the principles of Christianity. As soon as judicial functions were ill performed, general civilization declined. The people, finding that justice was prostituted, and that there was no hope of reforming the administration, ceased to respect the central authority. The great moral tie which had attached the inhabitants of the provinces to the emperors was then broken. A practical separation of the interests of different nations and territories ensued; and a marked change in the relations of those provinces which possessed a national character to the central government was the first manifest sign of the weakness of the empire. The operation of fiscal oppression in accelerating the revolution, and in separating every subject race except the Greek from the government, has been fully treated in the preceding pages. The Armenians, Cappadocians, Cilicians, Bulgarians, Sclavonians, Wallachians, and Albanians were, one after the other, driven to assert their independence; and the supremacy of the Hellenic race in the Byzantine empire, which may be dated from the extinction of the Basilian dynasty, prepared the way for internal revolutions and foreign conquest. The other nations struggled to preserve their independence; the Greeks bartered theirs for official and ecclesiastical power.

The decline of the Byzantine Empire must also be considered as closely connected with the identification of the Greek Church with the Roman administration. This union of the ecclesiastical with the civil government may be also dated from the last years of the Basilian dynasty. It was consummated after the complete schism of the Greek and Latin churches in 1053, which was unfortunately effected by the Patriarch Michael Keroularios, with a degree of violence that implanted a deep hatred in the breasts of the priesthood of the rival sects. By this union of the ecclesiastical with the political administration, the power and influence of the Greek aristocracy was greatly extended and strengthened, but the spirit of the government was rendered more exclusive and bigoted. The Byzantine emperors, as they identified the ecclesiastical with the civil administration, always held the Eastern clergy in a state of abject dependence on the imperial power. They used the church as a ministerial department of government for the religious affairs and the education of the people. So that, when the loss of Sicily and Italy and the hostility of Armenia had excluded men of education belonging to these countries from the higher ecclesiastical charges at Constantinople, the general ignorance of the other subject-races threw every ecclesiastical office into the hands of the Greeks, who converted the oriental church into a national monopoly. From that period the administration of public affairs displayed an excess of bigotry from which it had been generally free in preceding ages. The union of the church and state grew constantly more intimate, and the Greeks, having no rivals in official power, became more blindly prepossessed in favour of their own national prejudices and ecclesiastical practices. This exclusive national spirit, combining religion with politics, has ever since proved a misfortune to the Greek race. During the latter years of the Byzantine Empire it prevented the people from learning those new social and religious ideas which were then beginning to enlarge the intelligence and the energies of the people in Western Europe. The religious hatred with which the Greeks regarded every nation that acknowledged the papal supremacy led them to reject many social, political, and ecclesiastical reforms that originated in Catholic countries. The twelfth century did much to improve the condition of the Western nations, but nothing to improve that of the Greeks. The consequence was that the arbitrary power of the Byzantine emperors was exercised without any civil or ecclesiastical restraint; for the Greeks repudiated every principle of civil liberty, and every ecclesiastical declaration in favour of the rights of humanity, as heretical and revolutionary innovations introduced by the popes to further their own ambitious projects. It must be remembered that the papal church was at this time often actively engaged in defending freedom, in establishing a machinery for the systematic administration of justice to the people, and in impressing men with the full value of fixed laws for the purpose of restraining the abuses of the temporal power of princes. In short, the papal church was then the great teacher of social and political reform, and those who scorned to listen to its words and study its policy could hardly perceive the changes which time was producing in the Christian world. The Byzantine Greeks immediately rejected the idea of progress; the papal church would have fain arrested the progressive impulse it had given to society a century or two later. The Greeks prided themselves on their conservative, or, as they called it, their Roman spirit. By clinging superstitiously to antiquated formulas, they rejected the means of alleviating the evils of a ruinous political fabric, and refused to better their condition by entering on paths of reform indicated by the Western nations, who were already emerging from their social degradation. While the rest of Europe was actively striving to attain a happier future, the Greeks were gazing backward on what they considered a more glorious past. This habit of appropriating to themselves the vanished glories of the Roman empire, or of ancient Greece, created a feeling of self-sufficiency which repudiated reform in the latter days of the Byzantine empire, and which has ever since retarded the progress of the modern Greeks in the career of European civilization.

 

 

CHAPTER XI.

EMPIRE OF NICAEA, AD. 1204-1261