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After the death of the lawful princes, the French and
Venetians, confident of justice and victory, agreed to
divide and regulate their future possessions. (1) It was
stipulated by treaty, that twelve electors, six of either
nation, should be nominated; that a majority should choose
the emperor of the East; and that, if the votes were equal,
the decision of chance should ascertain the successful
candidate. To him, with all the titles and prerogatives of
the Byzantine throne, they assigned the two palaces of
Boucoleon and Blachernae, with a fourth part of the Greek
monarchy. It was defined that the three remaining portions
should be equally shared between the republic of Venice and
the barons of France; that each feudatory, with an honorable
exception for the doge, should acknowledge and perform the
duties of homage and military service to the supreme head of
the empire; that the nation which gave an emperor, should
resign to their brethren the choice of a patriarch; and that
the pilgrims, whatever might be their impatience to visit
the Holy Land, should devote another year to the conquest
and defence of the Greek provinces. After the conquest of
Constantinople by the Latins, the treaty was confirmed and
executed; and the first and most important step was the
creation of an emperor. The six electors of the French
nation were all ecclesiastics, the abbot of Loces, the
archbishop elect of Acre in Palestine, and the bishops of
Troyes, Soissons, Halberstadt, and Bethlehem, the last of
whom exercised in the camp the office of pope's legate:
their profession and knowledge were respectable; and as they
could not be the objects, they were best qualified to be the
authors of the choice. The six Venetians were the principal
servants of the state, and in this list the noble families
of Querini and Contarini are still proud to discover their
ancestors. The twelve assembled in the chapel of the
palace; and after the solemn invocation of the Holy Ghost,
they proceeded to deliberate and vote. A just impulse of
respect and gratitude prompted them to crown the virtues of
the doge; his wisdom had inspired their enterprise; and the
most youthful knights might envy and applaud the exploits of
blindness and age. But the patriot Dandolo was devoid of
all personal ambition, and fully satisfied that he had been
judged worthy to reign. His nomination was overruled by the
Venetians themselves: his countrymen, and perhaps his
friends, (2) represented, with the eloquence of truth, the
mischiefs that might arise to national freedom and the
common cause, from the union of two incompatible characters,
of the first magistrate of a republic and the emperor of the
East. The exclusion of the doge left room for the more
equal merits of Boniface and Baldwin; and at their names all
meaner candidates respectfully withdrew. The marquis of
Montferrat was recommended by his mature age and fair
reputation, by the choice of the adventurers, and the wishes
of the Greeks; nor can I believe that Venice, the mistress
of the sea, could be seriously apprehensive of a petty lord
at the foot of the Alps. (3) But the count of Flanders was
the chief of a wealthy and warlike people: he was valiant,
pious, and chaste; in the prime of life, since he was only
thirty- two years of age; a descendant of Charlemagne, a
cousin of the king of France, and a compeer of the prelates
and barons who had yielded with reluctance to the command of
a foreigner. Without the chapel, these barons, with the
doge and marquis at their head, expected the decision of the
twelve electors. It was announced by the bishop of
Soissons, in the name of his colleagues: "Ye have sworn to
obey the prince whom we should choose: by our unanimous
suffrage, Baldwin count of Flanders and Hainault is now your
sovereign, and the emperor of the East." He was saluted with
loud applause, and the proclamation was reechoed through the
city by the joy of the Latins, and the trembling adulation
of the Greeks. Boniface was the first to kiss the hand of
his rival, and to raise him on the buckler: and Baldwin was
transported to the cathedral, and solemnly invested with the
purple buskins. At the end of three weeks he was crowned by
the legate, in the vacancy of the patriarch; but the
Venetian clergy soon filled the chapter of St. Sophia,
seated Thomas Morosini on the ecclesiastical throne, and
employed every art to perpetuate in their own nation the
honors and benefices of the Greek church. (4) Without delay
the successor of Constantine instructed Palestine, France,
and Rome, of this memorable revolution. To Palestine he
sent, as a trophy, the gates of Constantinople, and the
chain of the harbor; (5) and adopted, from the Assise of
Jerusalem, the laws or customs best adapted to a French
colony and conquest in the East. In his epistles, the
natives of France are encouraged to swell that colony, and
to secure that conquest, to people a magnificent city and a
fertile land, which will reward the labors both of the
priest and the soldier. He congratulates the Roman pontiff
on the restoration of his authority in the East; invites him
to extinguish the Greek schism by his presence in a general
council; and implores his blessing and forgiveness for the
disobedient pilgrims. Prudence and dignity are blended in
the answer of Innocent. (6) In the subversion of the
Byzantine empire, he arraigns the vices of man, and adores
the providence of God; the conquerors will be absolved or
condemned by their future conduct; the validity of their
treaty depends on the judgment of St. Peter; but he
inculcates their most sacred duty of establishing a just
subordination of obedience and tribute, from the Greeks to
the Latins, from the magistrate to the clergy, and from the
clergy to the pope.
of the Venetians was more ample than that of the Latin
emperor. No more than one fourth was appropriated to his
domain; a clear moiety of the remainder was reserved for
Venice; and the other moiety was distributed among the
adventures of France and Lombardy. The venerable Dandolo
was proclaimed despot of Romania, and invested after the
Greek fashion with the purple buskins. He ended at
Constantinople his long and glorious life; and if the
prerogative was personal, the title was used by his
successors till the middle of the fourteenth century, with
the singular, though true, addition of lords of one fourth
and a half of the Roman empire. (8) The doge, a slave of
state, was seldom permitted to depart from the helm of the
republic; but his place was supplied by the bail, or regent,
who exercised a supreme jurisdiction over the colony of
Venetians: they possessed three of the eight quarters of the
city; and his independent tribunal was composed of six
judges, four counsellors, two chamberlains two fiscal
advocates, and a constable. Their long experience of the
Eastern trade enabled them to select their portion with
discernment: they had rashly accepted the dominion and
defence of Adrianople; but it was the more reasonable aim of
their policy to form a chain of factories, and cities, and
islands, along the maritime coast, from the neighborhood of
Ragusa to the Hellespont and the Bosphorus. The labor and
cost of such extensive conquests exhausted their treasury:
they abandoned their maxims of government, adopted a feudal
system, and contented themselves with the homage of their
nobles, (9) for the possessions which these private vassals
undertook to reduce and maintain. And thus it was that the
family of Sanut acquired the duchy of Naxos, which involved
the greatest part of the archipelago. For the price of ten
thousand marks, the republic purchased of the marquis of
Montferrat the fertile Island of Crete or Candia, with the
ruins of a hundred cities; (10) but its improvement was
stinted by the proud and narrow spirit of an aristocracy;
(11) and the wisest senators would confess that the sea, not
the land, was the treasury of St. Mark. In the moiety of
the adventurers the marquis Boniface might claim the most
liberal reward; and, besides the Isle of Crete, his
exclusion from the throne was compensated by the royal title
and the provinces beyond the Hellespont. But he prudently
exchanged that distant and difficult conquest for the
kingdom of Thessalonica Macedonia, twelve days' journey from
the capital, where he might be supported by the neighboring
powers of his brother-in-law the king of Hungary. His
progress was hailed by the voluntary or reluctant
acclamations of the natives; and Greece, the proper and
ancient Greece, again received a Latin conqueror, (12) who
trod with indifference that classic ground. He viewed with a
careless eye the beauties of the valley of Tempe; traversed
with a cautious step the straits of Thermopylae; occupied
the unknown cities of Thebes, Athens, and Argos; and
assaulted the fortifications of Corinth and Napoli, (13)
which resisted his arms. The lots of the Latin pilgrims
were regulated by chance, or choice, or subsequent exchange;
and they abused, with intemperate joy, their triumph over
the lives and fortunes of a great people. After a minute
survey of the provinces, they weighed in the scales of
avarice the revenue of each district, the advantage of the
situation, and the ample on scanty supplies for the
maintenance of soldiers and horses. Their presumption
claimed and divided the long-lost dependencies of the Roman
sceptre: the Nile and Euphrates rolled through their
imaginary realms; and happy was the warrior who drew for his
prize the palace of the Turkish sultan of Iconium. (14) I
shall not descend to the pedigree of families and the rent-
roll of estates, but I wish to specify that the counts of
Blois and St. Pol were invested with the duchy of Nice and
the lordship of Demotica: (15) the principal fiefs were held
by the service of constable, chamberlain, cup- bearer,
butler, and chief cook; and our historian, Jeffrey of
Villehardouin, obtained a fair establishment on the banks of
the Hebrus, and united the double office of marshal of
Champagne and Romania. At the head of his knights and
archers, each baron mounted on horseback to secure the
possession of his share, and their first efforts were
generally successful. But the public force was weakened by
their dispersion; and a thousand quarrels must arise under a
law, and among men, whose sole umpire was the sword. Within
three months after the conquest of Constantinople, the
emperor and the king of Thessalonica drew their hostile
followers into the field; they were reconciled by the
authority of the doge, the advice of the marshal, and the
firm freedom of their peers. (16)
Two fugitives, who had reigned at Constantinople, still
asserted the title of emperor; and the subjects of their
fallen throne might be moved to pity by the misfortunes of
the elder Alexius, or excited to revenge by the spirit of
Mourzoufle. A domestic alliance, a common interest, a
similar guilt, and the merit of extinguishing his enemies, a
brother and a nephew, induced the more recent usurper to
unite with the former the relics of his power. Mourzoufle
was received with smiles and honors in the camp of his
father Alexius; but the wicked can never love, and should
rarely trust, their fellow-criminals; he was seized in the
bath, deprived of his eyes, stripped of his troops and
treasures, and turned out to wander an object of horror and
contempt to those who with more propriety could hate, and
with more justice could punish, the assassin of the emperor
Isaac and his son. As the tyrant, pursued by fear or
remorse, was stealing over to Asia, he was seized by the
Latins of Constantinople, and condemned, after an open
trial, to an ignominious death. His judges debated the mode
of his execution, the axe, the wheel, or the stake; and it
was resolved that Mourzoufle (17) should ascend the
Theodosian column, a pillar of white marble of one hundred
and forty-seven feet in height. (18) From the summit he was
cast down headlong, and dashed in pieces on the pavement, in
the presence of innumerable spectators, who filled the forum
of Taurus, and admired the accomplishment of an old
prediction, which was explained by this singular event. (19)
The fate of Alexius is less tragical: he was sent by the
marquis a captive to Italy, and a gift to the king of the
Romans; but he had not much to applaud his fortune, if the
sentence of imprisonment and exile were changed from a
fortress in the Alps to a monastery in Asia. But his
daughter, before the national calamity, had been given in
marriage to a young hero who continued the succession, and
restored the throne, of the Greek princes. (20) The valor of
Theodore Lascaris was signalized in the two sieges of
Constantinople. After the flight of Mourzoufle, when the
Latins were already in the city, he offered himself as their
emperor to the soldiers and people; and his ambition, which
might be virtuous, was undoubtedly brave. Could he have
infused a soul into the multitude, they might have crushed
the strangers under their feet: their abject despair refused
his aid; and Theodore retired to breathe the air of freedom
in Anatolia, beyond the immediate view and pursuit of the
conquerors. Under the title, at first of despot, and
afterwards of emperor, he drew to his standard the bolder
spirits, who were fortified against slavery by the contempt
of life; and as every means was lawful for the public safety
implored without scruple the alliance of the Turkish sultan
Nice, where Theodore established his residence, Prusa and
Philadelphia, Smyrna and Ephesus, opened their gates to
their deliverer: he derived strength and reputation from his
victories, and even from his defeats; and the successor of
Constantine preserved a fragment of the empire from the
banks of the Maeander to the suburbs of Nicomedia, and at
length of Constantinople. Another portion, distant and
obscure, was possessed by the lineal heir of the Comneni, a
son of the virtuous Manuel, a grandson of the tyrant
Andronicus. His name was Alexius; and the epithet of great
(A) was applied perhaps to his stature, rather than to his
exploits. By the indulgence of the Angeli, he was appointed
governor or duke of Trebizond: (21) (B) his birth gave him
ambition, the revolution independence; and, without changing
his title, he reigned in peace from Sinope to the Phasis,
along the coast of the Black Sea. His nameless son and
successor (C)! is described as the vassal of the sultan, whom
he served with two hundred lances: that Comnenian prince was
no more than duke of Trebizond, and the title of emperor was
first assumed by the pride and envy of the grandson of
Alexius. In the West, a third fragment was saved from the
common shipwreck by Michael, a bastard of the house of
Angeli, who, before the revolution, had been known as a
hostage, a soldier, and a rebel. His flight from the camp
of the marquis Boniface secured his freedom; by his marriage
with the governor's daughter, he commanded the important
place of Durazzo, assumed the title of despot, and founded a
strong and conspicuous principality in Epirus, Aetolia, and
Thessaly, which have ever been peopled by a warlike race.
The Greeks, who had offered their service to their new
sovereigns, were excluded by the haughty Latins (22) from all
civil and military honors, as a nation born to tremble and
obey. Their resentment prompted them to show that they
might have been useful friends, since they could be
dangerous enemies: their nerves were braced by adversity:
whatever was learned or holy, whatever was noble or valiant,
rolled away into the independent states of Trebizond,
Epirus, and Nice; and a single patrician is marked by the
ambiguous praise of attachment and loyalty to the Franks.
The vulgar herd of the cities and the country would have
gladly submitted to a mild and regular servitude; and the
transient disorders of war would have been obliterated by
some years of industry and peace. But peace was banished,
and industry was crushed, in the disorders of the feudal
system. The Roman emperors of Constantinople, if they were
endowed with abilities, were armed with power for the
protection of their subjects: their laws were wise, and
their administration was simple. The Latin throne was
filled by a titular prince, the chief, and often the
servant, of his licentious confederates; the fiefs of the
empire, from a kingdom to a castle, were held and ruled by
the sword of the barons; and their discord, poverty, and
ignorance, extended the ramifications of tyranny to the most
sequestered villages. The Greeks were oppressed by the
double weight of the priest, who were invested with temporal
power, and of the soldier, who was inflamed by fanatic
hatred; and the insuperable bar of religion and language
forever separated the stranger and the native. As long as
the crusaders were united at Constantinople, the memory of
their conquest, and the terror of their arms, imposed
silence on the captive land: their dispersion betrayed the
smallness of their numbers and the defects of their
discipline; and some failures and mischances revealed the
secret, that they were not invincible. As the fears of the
Greeks abated, their hatred increased. They murdered; they
conspired; and before a year of slavery had elapsed, they
implored, or accepted, the succor of a Barbarian, whose
power they had felt, and whose gratitude they trusted. (23)
title, not a personal appellation. Joinville speaks of the
"Grant Comnenie, et sire de Traffezzontes." Fallmerayer, p.
82. - M.] [Footnote 21: Except some facts in Pachymer and
Nicephorus Gregoras, which will hereafter be used, the
Byzantine writers disdain to speak of the empire of
Trebizond, or principality of the Lazi; and among the
Latins, it is conspicuous only in the romancers of the xivth
or xvth centuries. Yet the indefatigable Ducange has dug
out (Fam. Byz. p. 192) two authentic passages in Vincent of
Beauvais (l. xxxi. c. 144) and the prothonotary Ogerius,
(apud Wading, A.D. 1279, No. 4.)]
The Latin conquerors had been saluted with a solemn and
early embassy from John, or Joannice, or Calo-John, the
revolted chief of the Bulgarians and Walachians. He deemed
himself their brother, as the votary of the Roman pontiff,
from whom he had received the regal title and a holy banner;
and in the subversion of the Greek monarchy, he might aspire
to the name of their friend and accomplice. But Calo-John
was astonished to find, that the Count of Flanders had
assumed the pomp and pride of the successors of Constantine;
and his ambassadors were dismissed with a haughty message,
that the rebel must deserve a pardon, by touching with his
forehead the footstool of the Imperial throne. His
resentment (24) would have exhaled in acts of violence and
blood: his cooler policy watched the rising discontent of
the Greeks; affected a tender concern for their sufferings;
and promised, that their first struggles for freedom should
be supported by his person and kingdom. The conspiracy was
propagated by national hatred, the firmest band of
association and secrecy: the Greeks were impatient to
sheathe their daggers in the breasts of the victorious
strangers; but the execution was prudently delayed, till
Henry, the emperor's brother, had transported the flower of
his troops beyond the Hellespont. Most of the towns and
villages of Thrace were true to the moment and the signal;
and the Latins, without arms or suspicion, were slaughtered
by the vile and merciless revenge of their slaves. From
Demotica, the first scene of the massacre, the surviving
vassals of the count of St. Pol escaped to Adrianople; but
the French and Venetians, who occupied that city, were slain
or expelled by the furious multitude: the garrisons that
could effect their retreat fell back on each other towards
the metropolis; and the fortresses, that separately stood
against the rebels, were ignorant of each other's and of
their sovereign's fate. The voice of fame and fear
announced the revolt of the Greeks and the rapid approach of
their Bulgarian ally; and Calo-John, not depending on the
forces of his own kingdom, had drawn from the Scythian
wilderness a body of fourteen thousand Comans, who drank, as
it was said, the blood of their captives, and sacrificed the
Christians on the altars of their gods. (25)
Alarmed by this sudden and growing danger, the emperor
despatched a swift messenger to recall Count Henry and his
troops; and had Baldwin expected the return of his gallant
brother, with a supply of twenty thousand Armenians, he
might have encountered the invader with equal numbers and a
decisive superiority of arms and discipline. But the spirit
of chivalry could seldom discriminate caution from
cowardice; and the emperor took the field with a hundred and
forty knights, and their train of archers and sergeants.
The marshal, who dissuaded and obeyed, led the vanguard in
their march to Adrianople; the main body was commanded by
the count of Blois; the aged doge of Venice followed with
the rear; and their scanty numbers were increased from all
sides by the fugitive Latins. They undertook to besiege the
rebels of Adrianople; and such was the pious tendency of the
crusades that they employed the holy week in pillaging the
country for their subsistence, and in framing engines for
the destruction of their fellow- Christians. But the Latins
were soon interrupted and alarmed by the light cavalry of
the Comans, who boldly skirmished to the edge of their
imperfect lines: and a proclamation was issued by the
marshal of Romania, that, on the trumpet's sound, the
cavalry should mount and form; but that none, under pain of
death, should abandon themselves to a desultory and
dangerous pursuit. This wise injunction was first disobeyed
by the count of Blois, who involved the emperor in his
rashness and ruin. The Comans, of the Parthian or Tartar
school, fled before their first charge; but after a career
of two leagues, when the knights and their horses were
almost breathless, they suddenly turned, rallied, and
encompassed the heavy squadrons of the Franks. The count
was slain on the field; the emperor was made prisoner; and
if the one disdained to fly, if the other refused to yield,
their personal bravery made a poor atonement for their
ignorance, or neglect, of the duties of a general. (26)
Proud of his victory and his royal prize, the Bulgarian
advanced to relieve Adrianople and achieve the destruction
of the Latins. They must inevitably have been destroyed, if
the marshal of Romania had not displayed a cool courage and
consummate skill; uncommon in all ages, but most uncommon in
those times, when war was a passion, rather than a science.
His grief and fears were poured into the firm and faithful
bosom of the doge; but in the camp he diffused an assurance
of safety, which could only be realized by the general
belief. All day he maintained his perilous station between
the city and the Barbarians: Villehardouin decamped in
silence at the dead of night; and his masterly retreat of
three days would have deserved the praise of Xenophon and
the ten thousand. In the rear, the marshal supported the
weight of the pursuit; in the front, he moderated the
impatience of the fugitives; and wherever the Comans
approached, they were repelled by a line of impenetrable
spears. On the third day, the weary troops beheld the sea,
the solitary town of Rodosta, (27) and their friends, who had
landed from the Asiatic shore. They embraced, they wept;
but they united their arms and counsels; and in his
brother's absence, Count Henry assumed the regency of the
empire, at once in a state of childhood and caducity. (28) If
the Comans withdrew from the summer heats, seven thousand
Latins, in the hour of danger, deserted Constantinople,
their brethren, and their vows. Some partial success was
overbalanced by the loss of one hundred and twenty knights
in the field of Rusium; and of the Imperial domain, no more
was left than the capital, with two or three adjacent
fortresses on the shores of Europe and Asia. The king of
Bulgaria was resistless and inexorable; and Calo-John
respectfully eluded the demands of the pope, who conjured
his new proselyte to restore peace and the emperor to the
afflicted Latins. The deliverance of Baldwin was no longer,
he said, in the power of man: that prince had died in
prison; and the manner of his death is variously related by
ignorance and credulity. The lovers of a tragic legend will
be pleased to hear, that the royal captive was tempted by
the amorous queen of the Bulgarians; that his chaste refusal
exposed him to the falsehood of a woman and the jealousy of
a savage; that his hands and feet were severed from his
body; that his bleeding trunk was cast among the carcasses
of dogs and horses; and that he breathed three days, before
he was devoured by the birds of prey. (29) About twenty years
afterwards, in a wood of the Netherlands, a hermit announced
himself as the true Baldwin, the emperor of Constantinople,
and lawful sovereign of Flanders. He related the wonders of
his escape, his adventures, and his penance, among a people
prone to believe and to rebel; and, in the first transport,
Flanders acknowledged her long-lost sovereign. A short
examination before the French court detected the impostor,
who was punished with an ignominious death; but the Flemings
still adhered to the pleasing error; and the countess Jane
is accused by the gravest historians of sacrificing to her
ambition the life of an unfortunate father. (30)
In all civilized hostility, a treaty is established for the
exchange or ransom of prisoners; and if their captivity be
prolonged, their condition is known, and they are treated
according to their rank with humanity or honor. But the
savage Bulgarian was a stranger to the laws of war: his
prisons were involved in darkness and silence; and above a
year elapsed before the Latins could be assured of the death
of Baldwin, before his brother, the regent Henry, would
consent to assume the title of emperor. His moderation was
applauded by the Greeks as an act of rare and inimitable
virtue. Their light and perfidious ambition was eager to
seize or anticipate the moment of a vacancy, while a law of
succession, the guardian both of the prince and people, was
gradually defined and confirmed in the hereditary monarchies
of Europe. In the support of the Eastern empire, Henry was
gradually left without an associate, as the heroes of the
crusade retired from the world or from the war. The doge of
Venice, the venerable Dandolo, in the fulness of years and
glory, sunk into the grave. The marquis of Montferrat was
slowly recalled from the Peloponnesian war to the revenge of
Baldwin and the defence of Thessalonica. Some nice disputes
of feudal homage and service were reconciled in a personal
interview between the emperor and the king; they were firmly
united by mutual esteem and the common danger; and their
alliance was sealed by the nuptials of Henry with the
daughter of the Italian prince. He soon deplored the loss of
his friend and father. At the persuasion of some faithful
Greeks, Boniface made a bold and successful inroad among the
hills of Rhodope: the Bulgarians fled on his approach; they
assembled to harass his retreat. On the intelligence that
his rear was attacked, without waiting for any defensive
armor, he leaped on horseback, couched his lance, and drove
the enemies before him; but in the rash pursuit he was
pierced with a mortal wound; and the head of the king of
Thessalonica was presented to Calo-John, who enjoyed the
honors, without the merit, of victory. It is here, at this
melancholy event, that the pen or the voice of Jeffrey of
Villehardouin seems to drop or to expire; (31) and if he
still exercised his military office of marshal of Romania,
his subsequent exploits are buried in oblivion. (32) The
character of Henry was not unequal to his arduous situation:
in the siege of Constantinople, and beyond the Hellespont,
he had deserved the fame of a valiant knight and a skilful
commander; and his courage was tempered with a degree of
prudence and mildness unknown to his impetuous brother. In
the double war against the Greeks of Asia and the Bulgarians
of Europe, he was ever the foremost on shipboard or on
horseback; and though he cautiously provided for the success
of his arms, the drooping Latins were often roused by his
example to save and to second their fearless emperor. But
such efforts, and some supplies of men and money from
France, were of less avail than the errors, the cruelty, and
death, of their most formidable adversary. When the despair
of the Greek subjects invited Calo- John as their deliverer,
they hoped that he would protect their liberty and adopt
their laws: they were soon taught to compare the degrees of
national ferocity, and to execrate the savage conqueror, who
no longer dissembled his intention of dispeopling Thrace, of
demolishing the cities, and of transplanting the inhabitants
beyond the Danube. Many towns and villages of Thrace were
already evacuated: a heap of ruins marked the place of
Philippopolis, and a similar calamity was expected at
Demotica and Adrianople, by the first authors of the revolt.
They raised a cry of grief and repentance to the throne of
Henry; the emperor alone had the magnanimity to forgive and
trust them. No more than four hundred knights, with their
sergeants and archers, could be assembled under his banner;
and with this slender force he fought (D) and repulsed the
Bulgarian, who, besides his infantry, was at the head of
forty thousand horse. In this expedition, Henry felt the
difference between a hostile and a friendly country: the
remaining cities were preserved by his arms; and the savage,
with shame and loss, was compelled to relinquish his prey.
The siege of Thessalonica was the last of the evils which
Calo-John inflicted or suffered: he was stabbed in the night
in his tent; and the general, perhaps the assassin, who
found him weltering in his blood, ascribed the blow, with
general applause, to the lance of St. Demetrius. (33) After
several victories, the prudence of Henry concluded an
honorable peace with the successor of the tyrant, and with
the Greek princes of Nice and Epirus. If he ceded some
doubtful limits, an ample kingdom was reserved for himself
and his feudatories; and his reign, which lasted only ten
years, afforded a short interval of prosperity and peace.
Far above the narrow policy of Baldwin and Boniface, he
freely intrusted to the Greeks the most important offices of
the state and army; and this liberality of sentiment and
practice was the more seasonable, as the princes of Nice and
Epirus had already learned to seduce and employ the
mercenary valor of the Latins. It was the aim of Henry to
unite and reward his deserving subjects, of every nation and
language; but he appeared less solicitous to accomplish the
impracticable union of the two churches. Pelagius, the
pope's legate, who acted as the sovereign of Constantinople,
had interdicted the worship of the Greeks, and sternly
imposed the payment of tithes, the double procession of the
Holy Ghost, and a blind obedience to the Roman pontiff. As
the weaker party, they pleaded the duties of conscience, and
implored the rights of toleration: "Our bodies," they said,
"are Caesar's, but our souls belong only to God. The
persecution was checked by the firmness of the emperor: (34)
and if we can believe that the same prince was poisoned by
the Greeks themselves, we must entertain a contemptible idea
of the sense and gratitude of mankind. His valor was a
vulgar attribute, which he shared with ten thousand knights;
but Henry possessed the superior courage to oppose, in a
superstitious age, the pride and avarice of the clergy. In
the cathedral of St. Sophia he presumed to place his throne
on the right hand of the patriarch; and this presumption
excited the sharpest censure of Pope Innocent the Third. By
a salutary edict, one of the first examples of the laws of
mortmain, he prohibited the alienation of fiefs: many of the
Latins, desirous of returning to Europe, resigned their
estates to the church for a spiritual or temporal reward;
these holy lands were immediately discharged from military
service, and a colony of soldiers would have been gradually
transformed into a college of priests. (35)
The virtuous Henry died at Thessalonica, in the defence of
that kingdom, and of an infant, the son of his friend
Boniface. In the two first emperors of Constantinople the
male line of the counts of Flanders was extinct. But their
sister Yolande was the wife of a French prince, the mother
of a numerous progeny; and one of her daughters had married
Andrew king of Hungary, a brave and pious champion of the
cross. By seating him on the Byzantine throne, the barons
of Romania would have acquired the forces of a neighboring
and warlike kingdom; but the prudent Andrew revered the laws
of succession; and the princess Yolande, with her husband
Peter of Courtenay, count of Auxerre, was invited by the
Latins to assume the empire of the East. The royal birth of
his father, the noble origin of his mother, recommended to
the barons of France the first cousin of their king. His
reputation was fair, his possessions were ample, and in the
bloody crusade against the Albigeois, the soldiers and the
priests had been abundantly satisfied of his zeal and valor.
Vanity might applaud the elevation of a French emperor of
Constantinople; but prudence must pity, rather than envy,
his treacherous and imaginary greatness. To assert and
adorn his title, he was reduced to sell or mortgage the best
of his patrimony. By these expedients, the liberality of
his royal kinsman Philip Augustus, and the national spirit
of chivalry, he was enabled to pass the Alps at the head of
one hundred and forty knights, and five thousand five
hundred sergeants and archers. After some hesitation, Pope
Honorius the Third was persuaded to crown the successor of
Constantine: but he performed the ceremony in a church
without the walls, lest he should seem to imply or to bestow
any right of sovereignty over the ancient capital of the
empire. The Venetians had engaged to transport Peter and
his forces beyond the Adriatic, and the empress, with her
four children, to the Byzantine palace; but they required,
as the price of their service, that he should recover
Durazzo from the despot of Epirus. Michael Angelus, or
Comnenus, the first of his dynasty, had bequeathed the
succession of his power and ambition to Theodore, his
legitimate brother, who already threatened and invaded the
establishments of the Latins. After discharging his debt by
a fruitless assault, the emperor raised the siege to
prosecute a long and perilous journey over land from Durazzo
to Thessalonica. He was soon lost in the mountains of
Epirus: the passes were fortified; his provisions exhausted;
he was delayed and deceived by a treacherous negotiation;
and, after Peter of Courtenay and the Roman legate had been
arrested in a banquet, the French troops, without leaders or
hopes, were eager to exchange their arms for the delusive
promise of mercy and bread. The Vatican thundered; and the
impious Theodore was threatened with the vengeance of earth
and heaven; but the captive emperor and his soldiers were
forgotten, and the reproaches of the pope are confined to
the imprisonment of his legate. No sooner was he satisfied
by the deliverance of the priests and a promise of spiritual
obedience, than he pardoned and protected the despot of
Epirus. His peremptory commands suspended the ardor of the
Venetians and the king of Hungary; and it was only by a
natural or untimely death (36) that Peter of Courtenay was
released from his hopeless captivity. (37)
The long ignorance of his fate, and the presence of the
lawful sovereign, of Yolande, his wife or widow, delayed the
proclamation of a new emperor. Before her death, and in the
midst of her grief, she was delivered of a son, who was
named Baldwin, the last and most unfortunate of the Latin
princes of Constantinople. His birth endeared him to the
barons of Romania; but his childhood would have prolonged
the troubles of a minority, and his claims were superseded
by the elder claims of his brethren. The first of these,
Philip of Courtenay, who derived from his mother the
inheritance of Namur, had the wisdom to prefer the substance
of a marquisate to the shadow of an empire; and on his
refusal, Robert, the second of the sons of Peter and
Yolande, was called to the throne of Constantinople. Warned
by his father's mischance, he pursued his slow and secure
journey through Germany and along the Danube: a passage was
opened by his sister's marriage with the king of Hungary;
and the emperor Robert was crowned by the patriarch in the
cathedral of St. Sophia. But his reign was an aera of
calamity and disgrace; and the colony, as it was styled, of
New France yielded on all sides to the Greeks of Nice and
Epirus. After a victory, which he owed to his perfidy rather
than his courage, Theodore Angelus entered the kingdom of
Thessalonica, expelled the feeble Demetrius, the son of the
marquis Boniface, erected his standard on the walls of
Adrianople; and added, by his vanity, a third or a fourth
name to the list of rival emperors. The relics of the
Asiatic province were swept away by John Vataces, the
son-in-law and successor of Theodore Lascaris, and who, in a
triumphant reign of thirty-three years, displayed the
virtues both of peace and war. Under his discipline, the
swords of the French mercenaries were the most effectual
instruments of his conquests, and their desertion from the
service of their country was at once a symptom and a cause
of the rising ascendant of the Greeks. By the construction
of a fleet, he obtained the command of the Hellespont,
reduced the islands of Lesbos and Rhodes, attacked the
Venetians of Candia, and intercepted the rare and
parsimonious succors of the West. Once, and once only, the
Latin emperor sent an army against Vataces; and in the
defeat of that army, the veteran knights, the last of the
original conquerors, were left on the field of battle. But
the success of a foreign enemy was less painful to the
pusillanimous Robert than the insolence of his Latin
subjects, who confounded the weakness of the emperor and of
the empire. His personal misfortunes will prove the anarchy
of the government and the ferociousness of the times. The
amorous youth had neglected his Greek bride, the daughter of
Vataces, to introduce into the palace a beautiful maid, of a
private, though noble family of Artois; and her mother had
been tempted by the lustre of the purple to forfeit her
engagements with a gentleman of Burgundy. His love was
converted into rage; he assembled his friends, forced the
palace gates, threw the mother into the sea, and inhumanly
cut off the nose and lips of the wife or concubine of the
emperor. Instead of punishing the offender, the barons
avowed and applauded the savage deed, (38) which, as a prince
and as a man, it was impossible that Robert should forgive.
He escaped from the guilty city to implore the justice or
compassion of the pope: the emperor was coolly exhorted to
return to his station; before he could obey, he sunk under
the weight of grief, shame, and impotent resentment. (39)
It was only in the age of chivalry, that valor could ascend
from a private station to the thrones of Jerusalem and
Constantinople. The titular kingdom of Jerusalem had
devolved to Mary, the daughter of Isabella and Conrad of
Montferrat, and the granddaughter of Almeric or Amaury. She
was given to John of Brienne, of a noble family in
Champagne, by the public voice, and the judgment of Philip
Augustus, who named him as the most worthy champion of the
Holy Land. (40) In the fifth crusade, he led a hundred
thousand Latins to the conquest of Egypt: by him the siege
of Damietta was achieved; and the subsequent failure was
justly ascribed to the pride and avarice of the legate.
After the marriage of his daughter with Frederic the Second,
(41) he was provoked by the emperor's ingratitude to accept
the command of the army of the church; and though advanced
in life, and despoiled of royalty, the sword and spirit of
John of Brienne were still ready for the service of
Christendom. In the seven years of his brother's reign,
Baldwin of Courtenay had not emerged from a state of
childhood, and the barons of Romania felt the strong
necessity of placing the sceptre in the hands of a man and a
hero. The veteran king of Jerusalem might have disdained
the name and office of regent; they agreed to invest him for
his life with the title and prerogatives of emperor, on the
sole condition that Baldwin should marry his second
daughter, and succeed at a mature age to the throne of
Constantinople. The expectation, both of the Greeks and
Latins, was kindled by the renown, the choice, and the
presence of John of Brienne; and they admired his martial
aspect, his green and vigorous age of more than fourscore
years, and his size and stature, which surpassed the common
measure of mankind. (42) But avarice, and the love of ease,
appear to have chilled the ardor of enterprise: (E) his
troops were disbanded, and two years rolled away without
action or honor, till he was awakened by the dangerous
alliance of Vataces emperor of Nice, and of Azan king of
Bulgaria. They besieged Constantinople by sea and land, with
an army of one hundred thousand men, and a fleet of three
hundred ships of war; while the entire force of the Latin
emperor was reduced to one hundred and sixty knights, and a
small addition of sergeants and archers. I tremble to
relate, that instead of defending the city, the hero made a
sally at the head of his cavalry; and that of forty- eight
squadrons of the enemy, no more than three escaped from the
edge of his invincible sword. Fired by his example, the
infantry and the citizens boarded the vessels that anchored
close to the walls; and twenty-five were dragged in triumph
into the harbor of Constantinople. At the summons of the
emperor, the vassals and allies armed in her defence; broke
through every obstacle that opposed their passage; and, in
the succeeding year, obtained a second victory over the same
enemies. By the rude poets of the age, John of Brienne is
compared to Hector, Roland, and Judas Machabaeus: (43) but
their credit, and his glory, receive some abatement from the
silence of the Greeks. The empire was soon deprived of the
last of her champions; and the dying monarch was ambitious
to enter paradise in the habit of a Franciscan friar. (44)
In the double victory of John of Brienne, I cannot discover
the name or exploits of his pupil Baldwin, who had attained
the age of military service, and who succeeded to the
imperial dignity on the decease of his adoptive father. (45)
The royal youth was employed on a commission more suitable
to his temper; he was sent to visit the Western courts, of
the pope more especially, and of the king of France; to
excite their pity by the view of his innocence and distress;
and to obtain some supplies of men or money for the relief
of the sinking empire. He thrice repeated these mendicant
visits, in which he seemed to prolong his stay and postpone
his return; of the five-and-twenty years of his reign, a
greater number were spent abroad than at home; and in no
place did the emperor deem himself less free and secure than
in his native country and his capital. On some public
occasions, his vanity might be soothed by the title of
Augustus, and by the honors of the purple; and at the
general council of Lyons, when Frederic the Second was
excommunicated and deposed, his Oriental colleague was
enthroned on the right hand of the pope. But how often was
the exile, the vagrant, the Imperial beggar, humbled with
scorn, insulted with pity, and degraded in his own eyes and
those of the nations! In his first visit to England, he was
stopped at Dover by a severe reprimand, that he should
presume, without leave, to enter an independent kingdom.
After some delay, Baldwin, however, was permitted to pursue
his journey, was entertained with cold civility, and
thankfully departed with a present of seven hundred marks.
(46) From the avarice of Rome he could only obtain the
proclamation of a crusade, and a treasure of indulgences; a
coin whose currency was depreciated by too frequent and
indiscriminate abuse. His birth and misfortunes recommended
him to the generosity of his cousin Louis the Ninth; but the
martial zeal of the saint was diverted from Constantinople
to Egypt and Palestine; and the public and private poverty
of Baldwin was alleviated, for a moment, by the alienation
of the marquisate of Namur and the lordship of Courtenay,
the last remains of his inheritance. (47) By such shameful or
ruinous expedients, he once more returned to Romania, with
an army of thirty thousand soldiers, whose numbers were
doubled in the apprehension of the Greeks. His first
despatches to France and England announced his victories and
his hopes: he had reduced the country round the capital to
the distance of three days' journey; and if he succeeded
against an important, though nameless, city, (most probably
Chiorli,) the frontier would be safe and the passage
accessible. But these expectations (if Baldwin was sincere)
quickly vanished like a dream: the troops and treasures of
France melted away in his unskilful hands; and the throne of
the Latin emperor was protected by a dishonorable alliance
with the Turks and Comans. To secure the former, he
consented to bestow his niece on the unbelieving sultan of
Cogni; to please the latter, he complied with their Pagan
rites; a dog was sacrificed between the two armies; and the
contracting parties tasted each other's blood, as a pledge
of their fidelity. (48) In the palace, or prison, of
Constantinople, the successor of Augustus demolished the
vacant houses for winter fuel, and stripped the lead from
the churches for the daily expense of his family. Some
usurious loans were dealt with a scanty hand by the
merchants of Italy; and Philip, his son and heir, was pawned
at Venice as the security for a debt. (49) Thirst, hunger,
and nakedness, are positive evils: but wealth is relative;
and a prince who would be rich in a private station, may be
exposed by the increase of his wants to all the anxiety and
bitterness of poverty.
But in this abject distress, the emperor and empire were
still possessed of an ideal treasure, which drew its
fantastic value from the superstition of the Christian
world. The merit of the true cross was somewhat impaired by
its frequent division; and a long captivity among the
infidels might shed some suspicion on the fragments that
were produced in the East and West. But another relic of
the Passion was preserved in the Imperial chapel of
Constantinople; and the crown of thorns which had been
placed on the head of Christ was equally precious and
authentic. It had formerly been the practice of the
Egyptian debtors to deposit, as a security, the mummies of
their parents; and both their honor and religion were bound
for the redemption of the pledge. In the same manner, and
in the absence of the emperor, the barons of Romania
borrowed the sum of thirteen thousand one hundred and
thirty-four pieces of gold (50) on the credit of the holy
crown: they failed in the performance of their contract; and
a rich Venetian, Nicholas Querini, undertook to satisfy
their impatient creditors, on condition that the relic
should be lodged at Venice, to become his absolute property,
if it were not redeemed within a short and definite term.
The barons apprised their sovereign of the hard treaty and
impending loss and as the empire could not afford a ransom
of seven thousand pounds sterling, Baldwin was anxious to
snatch the prize from the Venetians, and to vest it with
more honor and emolument in the hands of the most Christian
king. (51) Yet the negotiation was attended with some
delicacy. In the purchase of relics, the saint would have
started at the guilt of simony; but if the mode of
expression were changed, he might lawfully repay the debt,
accept the gift, and acknowledge the obligation. His
ambassadors, two Dominicans, were despatched to Venice to
redeem and receive the holy crown which had escaped the
dangers of the sea and the galleys of Vataces. On opening a
wooden box, they recognized the seals of the doge and
barons, which were applied on a shrine of silver; and within
this shrine the monument of the Passion was enclosed in a
golden vase. The reluctant Venetians yielded to justice and
power: the emperor Frederic granted a free and honorable
passage; the court of France advanced as far as Troyes in
Champagne, to meet with devotion this inestimable relic: it
was borne in triumph through Paris by the king himself,
barefoot, and in his shirt; and a free gift of ten thousand
marks of silver reconciled Baldwin to his loss. The success
of this transaction tempted the Latin emperor to offer with
the same generosity the remaining furniture of his chapel;
(52) a large and authentic portion of the true cross; the
baby-linen of the Son of God, the lance, the sponge, and the
chain, of his Passion; the rod of Moses, and part of the
skull of St. John the Baptist. For the reception of these
spiritual treasures, twenty thousand marks were expended by
St. Louis on a stately foundation, the holy chapel of Paris,
on which the muse of Boileau has bestowed a comic
immortality. The truth of such remote and ancient relics,
which cannot be proved by any human testimony, must be
admitted by those who believe in the miracles which they
have performed. About the middle of the last age, an
inveterate ulcer was touched and cured by a holy prickle of
the holy crown: (53) the prodigy is attested by the most
pious and enlightened Christians of France; nor will the
fact be easily disproved, except by those who are armed with
a general antidote against religious credulity. (54)
The Latins of Constantinople (55) were on all sides
encompassed and pressed; their sole hope, the last delay of
their ruin, was in the division of their Greek and Bulgarian
enemies; and of this hope they were deprived by the superior
arms and policy of Vataces, emperor of Nice. From the
Propontis to the rocky coast of Pamphylia, Asia was peaceful
and prosperous under his reign; and the events of every
campaign extended his influence in Europe. The strong cities
of the hills of Macedonia and Thrace were rescued from the
Bulgarians; and their kingdom was circumscribed by its
present and proper limits, along the southern banks of the
Danube. The sole emperor of the Romans could no longer
brook that a lord of Epirus, a Comnenian prince of the West,
should presume to dispute or share the honors of the purple;
and the humble Demetrius changed the color of his buskins,
and accepted with gratitude the appellation of despot. His
own subjects were exasperated by his baseness and
incapacity; they implored the protection of their supreme
lord. After some resistance, the kingdom of Thessalonica
was united to the empire of Nice; and Vataces reigned
without a competitor from the Turkish borders to the
Adriatic Gulf. The princes of Europe revered his merit and
power; and had he subscribed an orthodox creed, it should
seem that the pope would have abandoned without reluctance
the Latin throne of Constantinople. But the death of
Vataces, the short and busy reign of Theodore his son, and
the helpless infancy of his grandson John, suspended the
restoration of the Greeks. In the next chapter, I shall
explain their domestic revolutions; in this place, it will
be sufficient to observe, that the young prince was
oppressed by the ambition of his guardian and colleague,
Michael Palaeologus, who displayed the virtues and vices
that belong to the founder of a new dynasty. The emperor
Baldwin had flattered himself, that he might recover some
provinces or cities by an impotent negotiation. His
ambassadors were dismissed from Nice with mockery and
contempt. At every place which they named, Palaeologus
alleged some special reason, which rendered it dear and
valuable in his eyes: in the one he was born; in another he
had been first promoted to military command; and in a third
he had enjoyed, and hoped long to enjoy, the pleasures of
the chase. "And what then do you propose to give us?" said
the astonished deputies. "Nothing," replied the Greek, "not
a foot of land. If your master be desirous of peace, let
him pay me, as an annual tribute, the sum which he receives
from the trade and customs of Constantinople. On these
terms, I may allow him to reign. If he refuses, it is war.
I am not ignorant of the art of war, and I trust the event
to God and my sword." (56) An expedition against the despot
of Epirus was the first prelude of his arms. If a victory
was followed by a defeat; if the race of the Comneni or
Angeli survived in those mountains his efforts and his
reign; the captivity of Villehardouin, prince of Achaia,
deprived the Latins of the most active and powerful vassal
of their expiring monarchy. The republics of Venice and
Genoa disputed, in the first of their naval wars, the
command of the sea and the commerce of the East. Pride and
interest attached the Venetians to the defence of
Constantinople; their rivals were tempted to promote the
designs of her enemies, and the alliance of the Genoese with
the schismatic conqueror provoked the indignation of the
Latin church. (57)
Intent on his great object, the emperor Michael visited in
person and strengthened the troops and fortifications of
Thrace. The remains of the Latins were driven from their
last possessions: he assaulted without success the suburb of
Galata; and corresponded with a perfidious baron, who proved
unwilling, or unable, to open the gates of the metropolis.
The next spring, his favorite general, Alexius
Strategopulus, whom he had decorated with the title of
Caesar, passed the Hellespont with eight hundred horse and
some infantry, (58) on a secret expedition. His instructions
enjoined him to approach, to listen, to watch, but not to
risk any doubtful or dangerous enterprise against the city.
The adjacent territory between the Propontis and the Black
Sea was cultivated by a hardy race of peasants and outlaws,
exercised in arms, uncertain in their allegiance, but
inclined by language, religion, and present advantage, to
the party of the Greeks. They were styled the volunteers;
(59) and by their free service the army of Alexius, with the
regulars of Thrace and the Coman auxiliaries, (60) was
augmented to the number of five-and-twenty thousand men. By
the ardor of the volunteers, and by his own ambition, the
Caesar was stimulated to disobey the precise orders of his
master, in the just confidence that success would plead his
pardon and reward. The weakness of Constantinople, and the
distress and terror of the Latins, were familiar to the
observation of the volunteers; and they represented the
present moment as the most propitious to surprise and
conquest. A rash youth, the new governor of the Venetian
colony, had sailed away with thirty galleys, and the best of
the French knights, on a wild expedition to Daphnusia, a
town on the Black Sea, at the distance of forty leagues; (F)
and the remaining Latins were without strength or suspicion.
They were informed that Alexius had passed the Hellespont;
but their apprehensions were lulled by the smallness of his
original numbers; and their imprudence had not watched the
subsequent increase of his army. If he left his main body
to second and support his operations, he might advance
unperceived in the night with a chosen detachment. While
some applied scaling-ladders to the lowest part of the
walls, they were secure of an old Greek, who would introduce
their companions through a subterraneous passage into his
house; they could soon on the inside break an entrance
through the golden gate, which had been long obstructed; and
the conqueror would be in the heart of the city before the
Latins were conscious of their danger. After some debate,
the Caesar resigned himself to the faith of the volunteers;
they were trusty, bold, and successful; and in describing
the plan, I have already related the execution and success.
(61) But no sooner had Alexius passed the threshold of the
golden gate, than he trembled at his own rashness; he
paused, he deliberated; till the desperate volunteers urged
him forwards, by the assurance that in retreat lay the
greatest and most inevitable danger. Whilst the Caesar kept
his regulars in firm array, the Comans dispersed themselves
on all sides; an alarm was sounded, and the threats of fire
and pillage compelled the citizens to a decisive resolution.
The Greeks of Constantinople remembered their native
sovereigns; the Genoese merchants their recent alliance and
Venetian foes; every quarter was in arms; and the air
resounded with a general acclamation of "Long life and
victory to Michael and John, the august emperors of the
Romans!" Their rival, Baldwin, was awakened by the sound;
but the most pressing danger could not prompt him to draw
his sword in the defence of a city which he deserted,
perhaps, with more pleasure than regret: he fled from the
palace to the seashore, where he descried the welcome sails
of the fleet returning from the vain and fruitless attempt
on Daphnusia. Constantinople was irrecoverably lost; but the
Latin emperor and the principal families embarked on board
the Venetian galleys, and steered for the Isle of Euboea,
and afterwards for Italy, where the royal fugitive was
entertained by the pope and Sicilian king with a mixture of
contempt and pity. From the loss of Constantinople to his
death, he consumed thirteen years, soliciting the Catholic
powers to join in his restoration: the lesson had been
familiar to his youth; nor was his last exile more indigent
or shameful than his three former pilgrimages to the courts
of Europe. His son Philip was the heir of an ideal empire;
and the pretensions of his daughter Catherine were
transported by her marriage to Charles of Valois, the
brother of Philip the Fair, king of France. The house of
Courtenay was represented in the female line by successive
alliances, till the title of emperor of Constantinople, too
bulky and sonorous for a private name, modestly expired in
silence and oblivion. (62)
After this narrative of the expeditions of the Latins to
Palestine and Constantinople, I cannot dismiss the subject
without resolving the general consequences on the countries
that were the scene, and on the nations that were the
actors, of these memorable crusades. (63) As soon as the arms
of the Franks were withdrawn, the impression, though not the
memory, was erased in the Mahometan realms of Egypt and
Syria. The faithful disciples of the prophet were never
tempted by a profane desire to study the laws or language of
the idolaters; nor did the simplicity of their primitive
manners receive the slightest alteration from their
intercourse in peace and war with the unknown strangers of
the West. The Greeks, who thought themselves proud, but who
were only vain, showed a disposition somewhat less
inflexible. In the efforts for the recovery of their
empire, they emulated the valor, discipline, and tactics of
their antagonists. The modern literature of the West they
might justly despise; but its free spirit would instruct
them in the rights of man; and some institutions of public
and private life were adopted from the French. The
correspondence of Constantinople and Italy diffused the
knowledge of the Latin tongue; and several of the fathers
and classics were at length honored with a Greek version.
(64) But the national and religious prejudices of the
Orientals were inflamed by persecution, and the reign of the
Latins confirmed the separation of the two churches.
If we compare the aera of the crusades, the Latins of Europe
with the Greeks and Arabians, their respective degrees of
knowledge, industry, and art, our rude ancestors must be
content with the third rank in the scale of nations. Their
successive improvement and present superiority may be
ascribed to a peculiar energy of character, to an active and
imitative spirit, unknown to their more polished rivals, who
at that time were in a stationary or retrograde state. With
such a disposition, the Latins should have derived the most
early and essential benefits from a series of events which
opened to their eyes the prospect of the world, and
introduced them to a long and frequent intercourse with the
more cultivated regions of the East. The first and most
obvious progress was in trade and manufactures, in the arts
which are strongly prompted by the thirst of wealth, the
calls of necessity, and the gratification of the sense or
vanity. Among the crowd of unthinking fanatics, a captive
or a pilgrim might sometimes observe the superior
refinements of Cairo and Constantinople: the first importer
of windmills (65) was the benefactor of nations; and if such
blessings are enjoyed without any grateful remembrance,
history has condescended to notice the more apparent
luxuries of silk and sugar, which were transported into
Italy from Greece and Egypt. But the intellectual wants of
the Latins were more slowly felt and supplied; the ardor of
studious curiosity was awakened in Europe by different
causes and more recent events; and, in the age of the
crusades, they viewed with careless indifference the
literature of the Greeks and Arabians. Some rudiments of
mathematical and medicinal knowledge might be imparted in
practice and in figures; necessity might produce some
interpreters for the grosser business of merchants and
soldiers; but the commerce of the Orientals had not diffused
the study and knowledge of their languages in the schools of
Europe. (66) If a similar principle of religion repulsed the
idiom of the Koran, it should have excited their patience
and curiosity to understand the original text of the gospel;
and the same grammar would have unfolded the sense of Plato
and the beauties of Homer. Yet in a reign of sixty years,
the Latins of Constantinople disdained the speech and
learning of their subjects; and the manuscripts were the
only treasures which the natives might enjoy without rapine
or envy. Aristotle was indeed the oracle of the Western
universities, but it was a barbarous Aristotle; and, instead
of ascending to the fountain head, his Latin votaries humbly
accepted a corrupt and remote version, from the Jews and
Moors of Andalusia. The principle of the crusades was a
savage fanaticism; and the most important effects were
analogous to the cause. Each pilgrim was ambitious to
return with his sacred spoils, the relics of Greece and
Palestine; (67) and each relic was preceded and followed by a
train of miracles and visions. The belief of the Catholics
was corrupted by new legends, their practice by new
superstitions; and the establishment of the inquisition, the
mendicant orders of monks and friars, the last abuse of
indulgences, and the final progress of idolatry, flowed from
the baleful fountain of the holy war. The active spirit of
the Latins preyed on the vitals of their reason and
religion; and if the ninth and tenth centuries were the
times of darkness, the thirteenth and fourteenth were the
age of absurdity and fable.
In the profession of Christianity, in the cultivation of a
fertile land, the northern conquerors of the Roman empire
insensibly mingled with the provincials, and rekindled the
embers of the arts of antiquity. Their settlements about
the age of Charlemagne had acquired some degree of order and
stability, when they were overwhelmed by new swarms of
invaders, the Normans, Saracens, (68) and Hungarians, who
replunged the western countries of Europe into their former
state of anarchy and barbarism. About the eleventh century,
the second tempest had subsided by the expulsion or
conversion of the enemies of Christendom: the tide of
civilization, which had so long ebbed, began to flow with a
steady and accelerated course; and a fairer prospect was
opened to the hopes and efforts of the rising generations.
Great was the increase, and rapid the progress, during the
two hundred years of the crusades; and some philosophers
have applauded the propitious influence of these holy wars,
which appear to me to have checked rather than forwarded the
maturity of Europe. (69) The lives and labors of millions,
which were buried in the East, would have been more
profitably employed in the improvement of their native
country: the accumulated stock of industry and wealth would
have overflowed in navigation and trade; and the Latins
would have been enriched and enlightened by a pure and
friendly correspondence with the climates of the East. In
one respect I can indeed perceive the accidental operation
of the crusades, not so much in producing a benefit as in
removing an evil. The larger portion of the inhabitants of
Europe was chained to the soil, without freedom, or
property, or knowledge; and the two orders of ecclesiastics
and nobles, whose numbers were comparatively small, alone
deserved the name of citizens and men. This oppressive
system was supported by the arts of the clergy and the
swords of the barons. The authority of the priests operated
in the darker ages as a salutary antidote: they prevented
the total extinction of letters, mitigated the fierceness of
the times, sheltered the poor and defenceless, and preserved
or revived the peace and order of civil society. But the
independence, rapine, and discord of the feudal lords were
unmixed with any semblance of good; and every hope of
industry and improvement was crushed by the iron weight of
the martial aristocracy. Among the causes that undermined
that Gothic edifice, a conspicuous place must be allowed to
the crusades. The estates of the barons were dissipated, and
their race was often extinguished, in these costly and
perilous expeditions. Their poverty extorted from their
pride those charters of freedom which unlocked the fetters
of the slave, secured the farm of the peasant and the shop
of the artificer, and gradually restored a substance and a
soul to the most numerous and useful part of the community.
The conflagration which destroyed the tall and barren trees
of the forest gave air and scope to the vegetation of the
smaller and nutritive plants of the soil.
Digression On The Family Of Courtenay.
The purple of three emperors, who have reigned at
Constantinople, will authorize or excuse a digression on the
origin and singular fortunes of the house of Courtenay, (70)
in the three principal branches: I. Of Edessa; II. Of
France; and III. Of England; of which the last only has
survived the revolutions of eight hundred years.
I. Before the introduction of trade, which scatters riches,
and of knowledge, which dispels prejudice, the prerogative
of birth is most strongly felt and most humbly acknowledged.
In every age, the laws and manners of the Germans have
discriminated the ranks of society; the dukes and counts,
who shared the empire of Charlemagne, converted their office
to an inheritance; and to his children, each feudal lord
bequeathed his honor and his sword. The proudest families
are content to lose, in the darkness of the middle ages, the
tree of their pedigree, which, however deep and lofty, must
ultimately rise from a plebeian root; and their historians
must descend ten centuries below the Christian aera, before
they can ascertain any lineal succession by the evidence of
surnames, of arms, and of authentic records. With the first
rays of light, (71) we discern the nobility and opulence of
Atho, a French knight; his nobility, in the rank and title
of a nameless father; his opulence, in the foundation of the
castle of Courtenay in the district of Gatinois, about
fifty-six miles to the south of Paris. From the reign of
Robert, the son of Hugh Capet, the barons of Courtenay are
conspicuous among the immediate vassals of the crown; and
Joscelin, the grandson of Atho and a noble dame, is enrolled
among the heroes of the first crusade. A domestic alliance
(their mothers were sisters) attached him to the standard of
Baldwin of Bruges, the second count of Edessa; a princely
fief, which he was worthy to receive, and able to maintain,
announces the number of his martial followers; and after the
departure of his cousin, Joscelin himself was invested with
the county of Edessa on both sides of the Euphrates. By
economy in peace, his territories were replenished with
Latin and Syrian subjects; his magazines with corn, wine,
and oil; his castles with gold and silver, with arms and
horses. In a holy warfare of thirty years, he was
alternately a conqueror and a captive: but he died like a
soldier, in a horse litter at the head of his troops; and
his last glance beheld the flight of the Turkish invaders
who had presumed on his age and infirmities. His son and
successor, of the same name, was less deficient in valor
than in vigilance; but he sometimes forgot that dominion is
acquired and maintained by the same arms. He challenged the
hostility of the Turks, without securing the friendship of
the prince of Antioch; and, amidst the peaceful luxury of
Turbessel, in Syria, (72) Joscelin neglected the defence of
the Christian frontier beyond the Euphrates. In his
absence, Zenghi, the first of the Atabeks, besieged and
stormed his capital, Edessa, which was feebly defended by a
timorous and disloyal crowd of Orientals: the Franks were
oppressed in a bold attempt for its recovery, and Courtenay
ended his days in the prison of Aleppo. He still left a
fair and ample patrimony But the victorious Turks oppressed
on all sides the weakness of a widow and orphan; and, for
the equivalent of an annual pension, they resigned to the
Greek emperor the charge of defending, and the shame of
losing, the last relics of the Latin conquest. The
countess-dowager of Edessa retired to Jerusalem with her two
children; the daughter, Agnes, became the wife and mother of
a king; the son, Joscelin the Third, accepted the office of
seneschal, the first of the kingdom, and held his new
estates in Palestine by the service of fifty knights. His
name appears with honor in the transactions of peace and
war; but he finally vanishes in the fall of Jerusalem; and
the name of Courtenay, in this branch of Edessa, was lost by
the marriage of his two daughters with a French and German
baron. (73)
II. While Joscelin reigned beyond the Euphrates, his elder
brother Milo, the son of Joscelin, the son of Atho,
continued, near the Seine, to possess the castle of their
fathers, which was at length inherited by Rainaud, or
Reginald, the youngest of his three sons. Examples of
genius or virtue must be rare in the annals of the oldest
families; and, in a remote age their pride will embrace a
deed of rapine and violence; such, however, as could not be
perpetrated without some superiority of courage, or, at
least, of power. A descendant of Reginald of Courtenay may
blush for the public robber, who stripped and imprisoned
several merchants, after they had satisfied the king's
duties at Sens and Orleans. He will glory in the offence,
since the bold offender could not be compelled to obedience
and restitution, till the regent and the count of Champagne
prepared to march against him at the head of an army. (74)
Reginald bestowed his estates on his eldest daughter, and
his daughter on the seventh son of King Louis the Fat; and
their marriage was crowned with a numerous offspring. We
might expect that a private should have merged in a royal
name; and that the descendants of Peter of France and
Elizabeth of Courtenay would have enjoyed the titles and
honors of princes of the blood. But this legitimate claim
was long neglected, and finally denied; and the causes of
their disgrace will represent the story of this second
branch. 1. Of all the families now extant, the most
ancient, doubtless, and the most illustrious, is the house
of France, which has occupied the same throne above eight
hundred years, and descends, in a clear and lineal series of
males, from the middle of the ninth century. (75) In the age
of the crusades, it was already revered both in the East and
West. But from Hugh Capet to the marriage of Peter, no more
than five reigns or generations had elapsed; and so
precarious was their title, that the eldest sons, as a
necessary precaution, were previously crowned during the
lifetime of their fathers. The peers of France have long
maintained their precedency before the younger branches of
the royal line, nor had the princes of the blood, in the
twelfth century, acquired that hereditary lustre which is
now diffused over the most remote candidates for the
succession. 2. The barons of Courtenay must have stood high
in their own estimation, and in that of the world, since
they could impose on the son of a king the obligation of
adopting for himself and all his descendants the name and
arms of their daughter and his wife. In the marriage of an
heiress with her inferior or her equal, such exchange often
required and allowed: but as they continued to diverge from
the regal stem, the sons of Louis the Fat were insensibly
confounded with their maternal ancestors; and the new
Courtenays might deserve to forfeit the honors of their
birth, which a motive of interest had tempted them to
renounce. 3. The shame was far more permanent than the
reward, and a momentary blaze was followed by a long
darkness. The eldest son of these nuptials, Peter of
Courtenay, had married, as I have already mentioned, the
sister of the counts of Flanders, the two first emperors of
Constantinople: he rashly accepted the invitation of the
barons of Romania; his two sons, Robert and Baldwin,
successively held and lost the remains of the Latin empire
in the East, and the granddaughter of Baldwin the Second
again mingled her blood with the blood of France and of
Valois. To support the expenses of a troubled and
transitory reign, their patrimonial estates were mortgaged
or sold: and the last emperors of Constantinople depended on
the annual charity of Rome and Naples.
While the elder brothers dissipated their wealth in romantic
adventures, and the castle of Courtenay was profaned by a
plebeian owner, the younger branches of that adopted name
were propagated and multiplied. But their splendor was
clouded by poverty and time: after the decease of Robert,
great butler of France, they descended from princes to
barons; the next generations were confounded with the simple
gentry; the descendants of Hugh Capet could no longer be
visible in the rural lords of Tanlay and of Champignelles.
The more adventurous embraced without dishonor the
profession of a soldier: the least active and opulent might
sink, like their cousins of the branch of Dreux, into the
condition of peasants. Their royal descent, in a dark period
of four hundred years, became each day more obsolete and
ambiguous; and their pedigree, instead of being enrolled in
the annals of the kingdom, must be painfully searched by the
minute diligence of heralds and genealogists. It was not
till the end of the sixteenth century, on the accession of a
family almost as remote as their own, that the princely
spirit of the Courtenays again revived; and the question of
the nobility provoked them to ascertain the royalty of their
blood. They appealed to the justice and compassion of Henry
the Fourth; obtained a favorable opinion from twenty lawyers
of Italy and Germany, and modestly compared themselves to
the descendants of King David, whose prerogatives were not
impaired by the lapse of ages or the trade of a carpenter.
(76) But every ear was deaf, and every circumstance was
adverse, to their lawful claims. The Bourbon kings were
justified by the neglect of the Valois; the princes of the
blood, more recent and lofty, disdained the alliance of his
humble kindred: the parliament, without denying their
proofs, eluded a dangerous precedent by an arbitrary
distinction, and established St. Louis as the first father
of the royal line. (77) A repetition of complaints and
protests was repeatedly disregarded; and the hopeless
pursuit was terminated in the present century by the death
of the last male of the family. (78) Their painful and
anxious situation was alleviated by the pride of conscious
virtue: they sternly rejected the temptations of fortune and
favor; and a dying Courtenay would have sacrificed his son,
if the youth could have renounced, for any temporal
(79) interest, the right and title of a legitimate prince of the
blood of France. [Footnote 76: Of the various petitions,
apologies, &c., published by the princes of Courtenay, I
have seen the three following, all in octavo: 1. De Stirpe
et Origine Domus de Courtenay: addita sunt Responsa
celeberrimorum Europae Jurisconsultorum; Paris, 1607. 2.
Representation du Procede tenu a l'instance faicte devant le
Roi, par Messieurs de Courtenay, pour la conservation de
l'Honneur et Dignite de leur Maison, branche de la royalle
Maison de France; a Paris, 1613. 3. Representation du
subject qui a porte Messieurs de Salles et de Fraville, de
la Maison de Courtenay, a se retirer hors du Royaume, 1614.
It was a homicide, for which the Courtenays expected to be
pardoned, or tried, as princes of the blood.]
III. According to the old register of Ford Abbey, the
Courtenays of Devonshire are descended from Prince Florus,
the second son of Peter, and the grandson of Louis the Fat.
(80) This fable of the grateful or venal monks was too
respectfully entertained by our antiquaries, Cambden (81) and
Dugdale: (82) but it is so clearly repugnant to truth and
time, that the rational pride of the family now refuses to
accept this imaginary founder. Their most faithful
historians believe, that, after giving his daughter to the
king's son, Reginald of Courtenay abandoned his possessions
in France, and obtained from the English monarch a second
wife and a new inheritance. It is certain, at least, that
Henry the Second distinguished in his camps and councils a
Reginald, of the name and arms, and, as it may be fairly
presumed, of the genuine race, of the Courtenays of France.
The right of wardship enabled a feudal lord to reward his
vassal with the marriage and estate of a noble heiress; and
Reginald of Courtenay acquired a fair establishment in
Devonshire, where his posterity has been seated above six
hundred years. (83) From a Norman baron, Baldwin de Brioniis,
who had been invested by the Conqueror, Hawise, the wife of
Reginald, derived the honor of Okehampton, which was held by
the service of ninety-three knights; and a female might
claim the manly offices of hereditary viscount or sheriff,
and of captain of the royal castle of Exeter. Their son
Robert married the sister of the earl of Devon: at the end
of a century, on the failure of the family of Rivers, (84)
his great-grandson, Hugh the Second, succeeded to a title
which was still considered as a territorial dignity; and
twelve earls of Devonshire, of the name of Courtenay, have
flourished in a period of two hundred and twenty years.
They were ranked among the chief of the barons of the realm;
nor was it till after a strenuous dispute, that they yielded
to the fief of Arundel the first place in the parliament of
England: their alliances were contracted with the noblest
families, the Veres, Despensers, St. Johns, Talbots, Bohuns,
and even the Plantagenets themselves; and in a contest with
John of Lancaster, a Courtenay, bishop of London, and
afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, might be accused of
profane confidence in the strength and number of his
kindred. In peace, the earls of Devon resided in their
numerous castles and manors of the west; their ample revenue
was appropriated to devotion and hospitality; and the
epitaph of Edward, surnamed from his misfortune, the blind,
from his virtues, the good, earl, inculcates with much
ingenuity a moral sentence, which may, however, be abused by
thoughtless generosity. After a grateful commemoration of
the fifty-five years of union and happiness which he enjoyed
with Mabel his wife, the good earl thus speaks from the
tomb: - "What we gave, we have; What we spent, we had; What
we left, we lost." (85)
But their losses, in this sense, were far superior to their
gifts and expenses; and their heirs, not less than the poor,
were the objects of their paternal care. The sums which
they paid for livery and seizin attest the greatness of
their possessions; and several estates have remained in
their family since the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
In war, the Courtenays of England fulfilled the duties, and
deserved the honors, of chivalry. They were often intrusted
to levy and command the militia of Devonshire and Cornwall;
they often attended their supreme lord to the borders of
Scotland; and in foreign service, for a stipulated price,
they sometimes maintained fourscore men-at-arms and as many
archers. By sea and land they fought under the standard of
the Edwards and Henries: their names are conspicuous in
battles, in tournaments, and in the original list of the
Order of the Garter; three brothers shared the Spanish
victory of the Black Prince; and in the lapse of six
generations, the English Courtenays had learned to despise
the nation and country from which they derived their origin.
In the quarrel of the two roses, the earls of Devon adhered
to the house of Lancaster; and three brothers successively
died either in the field or on the scaffold. Their honors
and estates were restored by Henry the Seventh; a daughter
of Edward the Fourth was not disgraced by the nuptials of a
Courtenay; their son, who was created Marquis of Exeter,
enjoyed the favor of his cousin Henry the Eighth; and in the
camp of Cloth of Gold, he broke a lance against the French
monarch. But the favor of Henry was the prelude of
disgrace; his disgrace was the signal of death; and of the
victims of the jealous tyrant, the marquis of Exeter is one
of the most noble and guiltless. His son Edward lived a
prisoner in the Tower, and died in exile at Padua; and the
secret love of Queen Mary, whom he slighted, perhaps for the
princess Elizabeth, has shed a romantic color on the story
of this beautiful youth. The relics of his patrimony were
conveyed into strange families by the marriages of his four
aunts; and his personal honors, as if they had been legally
extinct, were revived by the patents of succeeding princes.
But there still survived a lineal descendant of Hugh, the
first earl of Devon, a younger branch of the Courtenays, who
have been seated at Powderham Castle above four hundred
years, from the reign of Edward the Third to the present
hour. Their estates have been increased by the grant and
improvement of lands in Ireland, and they have been recently
restored to the honors of the peerage. Yet the Courtenays
still retain the plaintive motto, which asserts the
innocence, and deplores the fall, of their ancient house.
(86) While they sigh for past greatness, they are doubtless
sensible of present blessings: in the long series of the
Courtenay annals, the most splendid aera is likewise the
most unfortunate; nor can an opulent peer of Britain be
inclined to envy the emperors of Constantinople, who
wandered over Europe to solicit alms for the support of
their dignity and the defence of their capital.