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The long reign of Andronicus (1) the elder is chiefly
memorable by the disputes of the Greek church, the invasion
of the Catalans, and the rise of the Ottoman power. He is
celebrated as the most learned and virtuous prince of the
age; but such virtue, and such learning, contributed neither
to the perfection of the individual, nor to the happiness of
society A slave of the most abject superstition, he was
surrounded on all sides by visible and invisible enemies;
nor were the flames of hell less dreadful to his fancy, than
those of a Catalan or Turkish war. Under the reign of the
Palaeologi, the choice of the patriarch was the most
important business of the state; the heads of the Greek
church were ambitious and fanatic monks; and their vices or
virtues, their learning or ignorance, were equally
mischievous or contemptible. By his intemperate discipline,
the patriarch Athanasius (2) excited the hatred of the clergy
and people: he was heard to declare, that the sinner should
swallow the last dregs of the cup of penance; and the
foolish tale was propagated of his punishing a sacrilegious
ass that had tasted the lettuce of a convent garden. Driven
from the throne by the universal clamor, Athanasius composed
before his retreat two papers of a very opposite cast. His
public testament was in the tone of charity and resignation;
the private codicil breathed the direst anathemas against
the authors of his disgrace, whom he excluded forever from
the communion of the holy trinity, the angels, and the
saints. This last paper he enclosed in an earthen pot,
which was placed, by his order, on the top of one of the
pillars, in the dome of St. Sophia, in the distant hope of
discovery and revenge. At the end of four years, some
youths, climbing by a ladder in search of pigeons' nests,
detected the fatal secret; and, as Andronicus felt himself
touched and bound by the excommunication, he trembled on the
brink of the abyss which had been so treacherously dug under
his feet. A synod of bishops was instantly convened to
debate this important question: the rashness of these
clandestine anathemas was generally condemned; but as the
knot could be untied only by the same hand, as that hand was
now deprived of the crosier, it appeared that this
posthumous decree was irrevocable by any earthly power.
Some faint testimonies of repentance and pardon were
extorted from the author of the mischief; but the conscience
of the emperor was still wounded, and he desired, with no
less ardor than Athanasius himself, the restoration of a
patriarch, by whom alone he could be healed. At the dead of
night, a monk rudely knocked at the door of the royal
bed-chamber, announcing a revelation of plague and famine,
of inundations and earthquakes. Andronicus started from his
bed, and spent the night in prayer, till he felt, or thought
that he felt, a slight motion of the earth. The emperor on
foot led the bishops and monks to the cell of Athanasius;
and, after a proper resistance, the saint, from whom this
message had been sent, consented to absolve the prince, and
govern the church of Constantinople. Untamed by disgrace,
and hardened by solitude, the shepherd was again odious to
the flock, and his enemies contrived a singular, and as it
proved, a successful, mode of revenge. In the night, they
stole away the footstool or foot-cloth of his throne, which
they secretly replaced with the decoration of a satirical
picture. The emperor was painted with a bridle in his mouth,
and Athanasius leading the tractable beast to the feet of
Christ. The authors of the libel were detected and punished;
but as their lives had been spared, the Christian priest in
sullen indignation retired to his cell; and the eyes of
Andronicus, which had been opened for a moment, were again
closed by his successor.
If this transaction be one of the most curious and important
of a reign of fifty years, I cannot at least accuse the
brevity of my materials, since I reduce into some few pages
the enormous folios of Pachymer, (3) Cantacuzene, (4) and
Nicephorus Gregoras, (5) who have composed the prolix and
languid story of the times. The name and situation of the
emperor John Cantacuzene might inspire the most lively
curiosity. His memorials of forty years extend from the
revolt of the younger Andronicus to his own abdication of
the empire; and it is observed, that, like Moses and Caesar,
he was the principal actor in the scenes which he describes.
But in this eloquent work we should vainly seek the
sincerity of a hero or a penitent. Retired in a cloister
from the vices and passions of the world, he presents not a
confession, but an apology, of the life of an ambitious
statesman. Instead of unfolding the true counsels and
characters of men, he displays the smooth and specious
surface of events, highly varnished with his own praises and
those of his friends. Their motives are always pure; their
ends always legitimate: they conspire and rebel without any
views of interest; and the violence which they inflict or
suffer is celebrated as the spontaneous effect of reason and
virtue.
After the example of the first of the Palaeologi, the elder
Andronicus associated his son Michael to the honors of the
purple; and from the age of eighteen to his premature death,
that prince was acknowledged, above twenty- five years, as
the second emperor of the Greeks. (6) At the head of an army,
he excited neither the fears of the enemy, nor the jealousy
of the court; his modesty and patience were never tempted to
compute the years of his father; nor was that father
compelled to repent of his liberality either by the virtues
or vices of his son. The son of Michael was named Andronicus
from his grandfather, to whose early favor he was introduced
by that nominal resemblance. The blossoms of wit and beauty
increased the fondness of the elder Andronicus; and, with
the common vanity of age, he expected to realize in the
second, the hope which had been disappointed in the first,
generation. The boy was educated in the palace as an heir
and a favorite; and in the oaths and acclamations of the
people, the august triad was formed by the names of the
father, the son, and the grandson. But the younger
Andronicus was speedily corrupted by his infant greatness,
while he beheld with puerile impatience the double obstacle
that hung, and might long hang, over his rising ambition.
It was not to acquire fame, or to diffuse happiness, that he
so eagerly aspired: wealth and impunity were in his eyes the
most precious attributes of a monarch; and his first
indiscreet demand was the sovereignty of some rich and
fertile island, where he might lead a life of independence
and pleasure. The emperor was offended by the loud and
frequent intemperance which disturbed his capital; the sums
which his parsimony denied were supplied by the Genoese
usurers of Pera; and the oppressive debt, which consolidated
the interest of a faction, could be discharged only by a
revolution. A beautiful female, a matron in rank, a
prostitute in manners, had instructed the younger Andronicus
in the rudiments of love; but he had reason to suspect the
nocturnal visits of a rival; and a stranger passing through
the street was pierced by the arrows of his guards, who were
placed in ambush at her door. That stranger was his brother,
Prince Manuel, who languished and died of his wound; and the
emperor Michael, their common father, whose health was in a
declining state, expired on the eighth day, lamenting the
loss of both his children. (7) However guiltless in his
intention, the younger Andronicus might impute a brother's
and a father's death to the consequence of his own vices;
and deep was the sigh of thinking and feeling men, when they
perceived, instead of sorrow and repentance, his
ill-dissembled joy on the removal of two odious competitors.
By these melancholy events, and the increase of his
disorders, the mind of the elder emperor was gradually
alienated; and, after many fruitless reproofs, he
transferred on another grandson (8) his hopes and affection.
The change was announced by the new oath of allegiance to
the reigning sovereign, and the person whom he should
appoint for his successor; and the acknowledged heir, after
a repetition of insults and complaints, was exposed to the
indignity of a public trial. Before the sentence, which
would probably have condemned him to a dungeon or a cell,
the emperor was informed that the palace courts were filled
with the armed followers of his grandson; the judgment was
softened to a treaty of reconciliation; and the triumphant
escape of the prince encouraged the ardor of the younger
faction.
Yet the capital, the clergy, and the senate, adhered to the
person, or at least to the government, of the old emperor;
and it was only in the provinces, by flight, and revolt, and
foreign succor, that the malecontents could hope to
vindicate their cause and subvert his throne. The soul of
the enterprise was the great domestic John Cantacuzene; the
sally from Constantinople is the first date of his actions
and memorials; and if his own pen be most descriptive of his
patriotism, an unfriendly historian has not refused to
celebrate the zeal and ability which he displayed in the
service of the young emperor. That prince escaped from the
capital under the pretence of hunting; erected his standard
at Adrianople; and, in a few days, assembled fifty thousand
horse and foot, whom neither honor nor duty could have armed
against the Barbarians. Such a force might have saved or
commanded the empire; but their counsels were discordant,
their motions were slow and doubtful, and their progress was
checked by intrigue and negotiation. The quarrel of the two
Andronici was protracted, and suspended, and renewed, during
a ruinous period of seven years. In the first treaty, the
relics of the Greek empire were divided: Constantinople,
Thessalonica, and the islands, were left to the elder, while
the younger acquired the sovereignty of the greatest part of
Thrace, from Philippi to the Byzantine limit. By the second
treaty, he stipulated the payment of his troops, his
immediate coronation, and an adequate share of the power and
revenue of the state. The third civil war was terminated by
the surprise of Constantinople, the final retreat of the old
emperor, and the sole reign of his victorious grandson. The
reasons of this delay may be found in the characters of the
men and of the times. When the heir of the monarchy first
pleaded his wrongs and his apprehensions, he was heard with
pity and applause: and his adherents repeated on all sides
the inconsistent promise, that he would increase the pay of
the soldiers and alleviate the burdens of the people. The
grievances of forty years were mingled in his revolt; and
the rising generation was fatigued by the endless prospect
of a reign, whose favorites and maxims were of other times.
The youth of Andronicus had been without spirit, his age was
without reverence: his taxes produced an unusual revenue of
five hundred thousand pounds; yet the richest of the
sovereigns of Christendom was incapable of maintaining three
thousand horse and twenty galleys, to resist the destructive
progress of the Turks. (9) "How different," said the younger
Andronicus, "is my situation from that of the son of Philip!
Alexander might complain, that his father would leave him
nothing to conquer: alas! my grandsire will leave me nothing
to lose." But the Greeks were soon admonished, that the
public disorders could not be healed by a civil war; and
that their young favorite was not destined to be the savior
of a falling empire. On the first repulse, his party was
broken by his own levity, their intestine discord, and the
intrigues of the ancient court, which tempted each
malecontent to desert or betray the cause of the rebellion.
Andronicus the younger was touched with remorse, or fatigued
with business, or deceived by negotiation: pleasure rather
than power was his aim; and the license of maintaining a
thousand hounds, a thousand hawks, and a thousand huntsmen,
was sufficient to sully his fame and disarm his ambition.
Let us now survey the catastrophe of this busy plot, and the
final situation of the principal actors. (10) The age of
Andronicus was consumed in civil discord; and, amidst the
events of war and treaty, his power and reputation
continually decayed, till the fatal night in which the gates
of the city and palace were opened without resistance to his
grandson. His principal commander scorned the repeated
warnings of danger; and retiring to rest in the vain
security of ignorance, abandoned the feeble monarch, with
some priests and pages, to the terrors of a sleepless night.
These terrors were quickly realized by the hostile shouts,
which proclaimed the titles and victory of Andronicus the
younger; and the aged emperor, falling prostrate before an
image of the Virgin, despatched a suppliant message to
resign the sceptre, and to obtain his life at the hands of
the conqueror. The answer of his grandson was decent and
pious; at the prayer of his friends, the younger Andronicus
assumed the sole administration; but the elder still enjoyed
the name and preeminence of the first emperor, the use of
the great palace, and a pension of twenty-four thousand
pieces of gold, one half of which was assigned on the royal
treasury, and the other on the fishery of Constantinople.
But his impotence was soon exposed to contempt and oblivion;
the vast silence of the palace was disturbed only by the
cattle and poultry of the neighborhood, (A) which roved with
impunity through the solitary courts; and a reduced
allowance of ten thousand pieces of gold (11) was all that he
could ask, and more than he could hope. His calamities were
imbittered by the gradual extinction of sight; his
confinement was rendered each day more rigorous; and during
the absence and sickness of his grandson, his inhuman
keepers, by the threats of instant death, compelled him to
exchange the purple for the monastic habit and profession.
The monk Antony had renounced the pomp of the world; yet he
had occasion for a coarse fur in the winter season, and as
wine was forbidden by his confessor, and water by his
physician, the sherbet of Egypt was his common drink. It
was not without difficulty that the late emperor could
procure three or four pieces to satisfy these simple wants;
and if he bestowed the gold to relieve the more painful
distress of a friend, the sacrifice is of some weight in the
scale of humanity and religion. Four years after his
abdication, Andronicus or Antony expired in a cell, in the
seventy-fourth year of his age: and the last strain of
adulation could only promise a more splendid crown of glory
in heaven than he had enjoyed upon earth. (12)
Nor was the reign of the younger, more glorious or fortunate
than that of the elder, Andronicus. (13) He gathered the
fruits of ambition; but the taste was transient and bitter:
in the supreme station he lost the remains of his early
popularity; and the defects of his character became still
more conspicuous to the world. The public reproach urged
him to march in person against the Turks; nor did his
courage fail in the hour of trial; but a defeat and a wound
were the only trophies of his expedition in Asia, which
confirmed the establishment of the Ottoman monarchy. The
abuses of the civil government attained their full maturity
and perfection: his neglect of forms, and the confusion of
national dresses, are deplored by the Greeks as the fatal
symptoms of the decay of the empire. Andronicus was old
before his time; the intemperance of youth had accelerated
the infirmities of age; and after being rescued from a
dangerous malady by nature, or physic, or the Virgin, he was
snatched away before he had accomplished his forty-fifth
year. He was twice married; and, as the progress of the
Latins in arms and arts had softened the prejudices of the
Byzantine court, his two wives were chosen in the princely
houses of Germany and Italy. The first, Agnes at home,
Irene in Greece, was daughter of the duke of Brunswick. Her
father (14) was a petty lord (15) in the poor and savage
regions of the north of Germany: (16) yet he derived some
revenue from his silver mines; (17) and his family is
celebrated by the Greeks as the most ancient and noble of
the Teutonic name. (18) After the death of this childish
princess, Andronicus sought in marriage Jane, the sister of
the count of Savoy; (19) and his suit was preferred to that
of the French king. (20) The count respected in his sister
the superior majesty of a Roman empress: her retinue was
composed of knights and ladies; she was regenerated and
crowned in St. Sophia, under the more orthodox appellation
of Anne; and, at the nuptial feast, the Greeks and Italians
vied with each other in the martial exercises of tilts and
tournaments.
The empress Anne of Savoy survived her husband: heir son,
John Palaeologus, was left an orphan and an emperor in the
ninth year of his age; and his weakness was protected by the
first and most deserving of the Greeks. The long and cordial
friendship of his father for John Cantacuzene is alike
honorable to the prince and the subject. It had been formed
amidst the pleasures of their youth: their families were
almost equally noble; (21) and the recent lustre of the
purple was amply compensated by the energy of a private
education. We have seen that the young emperor was saved by
Cantacuzene from the power of his grandfather; and, after
six years of civil war, the same favorite brought him back
in triumph to the palace of Constantinople. Under the reign
of Andronicus the younger, the great domestic ruled the
emperor and the empire; and it was by his valor and conduct
that the Isle of Lesbos and the principality of Aetolia were
restored to their ancient allegiance. His enemies confess,
that, among the public robbers, Cantacuzene alone was
moderate and abstemious; and the free and voluntary account
which he produces of his own wealth (22) may sustain the
presumption that he was devolved by inheritance, and not
accumulated by rapine. He does not indeed specify the value
of his money, plate, and jewels; yet, after a voluntary gift
of two hundred vases of silver, after much had been secreted
by his friends and plundered by his foes, his forfeit
treasures were sufficient for the equipment of a fleet of
seventy galleys. He does not measure the size and number of
his estates; but his granaries were heaped with an
incredible store of wheat and barley; and the labor of a
thousand yoke of oxen might cultivate, according to the
practice of antiquity, about sixty-two thousand five hundred
acres of arable land. (23) His pastures were stocked with two
thousand five hundred brood mares, two hundred camels, three
hundred mules, five hundred asses, five thousand horned
cattle, fifty thousand hogs, and seventy thousand sheep: (24)
a precious record of rural opulence, in the last period of
the empire, and in a land, most probably in Thrace, so
repeatedly wasted by foreign and domestic hostility. The
favor of Cantacuzene was above his fortune. In the moments
of familiarity, in the hour of sickness, the emperor was
desirous to level the distance between them and pressed his
friend to accept the diadem and purple. The virtue of the
great domestic, which is attested by his own pen, resisted
the dangerous proposal; but the last testament of Andronicus
the younger named him the guardian of his son, and the
regent of the empire.
Had the regent found a suitable return of obedience and
gratitude, perhaps he would have acted with pure and zealous
fidelity in the service of his pupil. (25) A guard of five
hundred soldiers watched over his person and the palace; the
funeral of the late emperor was decently performed; the
capital was silent and submissive; and five hundred letters,
which Cantacuzene despatched in the first month, informed
the provinces of their loss and their duty. The prospect of
a tranquil minority was blasted by the great duke or admiral
Apocaucus, and to exaggerate his perfidy, the Imperial
historian is pleased to magnify his own imprudence, in
raising him to that office against the advice of his more
sagacious sovereign. Bold and subtle, rapacious and
profuse, the avarice and ambition of Apocaucus were by turns
subservient to each other; and his talents were applied to
the ruin of his country. His arrogance was heightened by the
command of a naval force and an impregnable castle, and
under the mask of oaths and flattery he secretly conspired
against his benefactor. The female court of the empress was
bribed and directed; he encouraged Anne of Savoy to assert,
by the law of nature, the tutelage of her son; the love of
power was disguised by the anxiety of maternal tenderness:
and the founder of the Palaeologi had instructed his
posterity to dread the example of a perfidious guardian.
The patriarch John of Apri was a proud and feeble old man,
encompassed by a numerous and hungry kindred. He produced
an obsolete epistle of Andronicus, which bequeathed the
prince and people to his pious care: the fate of his
predecessor Arsenius prompted him to prevent, rather than
punish, the crimes of a usurper; and Apocaucus smiled at the
success of his own flattery, when he beheld the Byzantine
priest assuming the state and temporal claims of the Roman
pontiff. (26) Between three persons so different in their
situation and character, a private league was concluded: a
shadow of authority was restored to the senate; and the
people was tempted by the name of freedom. By this powerful
confederacy, the great domestic was assaulted at first with
clandestine, at length with open, arms. His prerogatives
were disputed; his opinions slighted; his friends
persecuted; and his safety was threatened both in the camp
and city. In his absence on the public service, he was
accused of treason; proscribed as an enemy of the church and
state; and delivered with all his adherents to the sword of
justice, the vengeance of the people, and the power of the
devil; his fortunes were confiscated; his aged mother was
cast into prison; (B) all his past services were buried in
oblivion; and he was driven by injustice to perpetrate the
crime of which he was accused. (27) From the review of his
preceding conduct, Cantacuzene appears to have been
guiltless of any treasonable designs; and the only suspicion
of his innocence must arise from the vehemence of his
protestations, and the sublime purity which he ascribes to
his own virtue. While the empress and the patriarch still
affected the appearances of harmony, he repeatedly solicited
the permission of retiring to a private, and even a
monastic, life. After he had been declared a public enemy,
it was his fervent wish to throw himself at the feet of the
young emperor, and to receive without a murmur the stroke of
the executioner: it was not without reluctance that he
listened to the voice of reason, which inculcated the sacred
duty of saving his family and friends, and proved that he
could only save them by drawing the sword and assuming the
Imperial title.
In the strong city of Demotica, his peculiar domain, the
emperor John Cantacuzenus was invested with the purple
buskins: his right leg was clothed by his noble kinsmen, the
left by the Latin chiefs, on whom he conferred the order of
knighthood. But even in this act of revolt, he was still
studious of loyalty; and the titles of John Palaeologus and
Anne of Savoy were proclaimed before his own name and that
of his wife Irene. Such vain ceremony is a thin disguise of
rebellion, nor are there perhaps any personal wrongs that
can authorize a subject to take arms against his sovereign:
but the want of preparation and success may confirm the
assurance of the usurper, that this decisive step was the
effect of necessity rather than of choice. Constantinople
adhered to the young emperor; the king of Bulgaria was
invited to the relief of Adrianople: the principal cities of
Thrace and Macedonia, after some hesitation, renounced their
obedience to the great domestic; and the leaders of the
troops and provinces were induced, by their private
interest, to prefer the loose dominion of a woman and a
priest. (C) The army of Cantacuzene, in sixteen divisions,
was stationed on the banks of the Melas to tempt or to
intimidate the capital: it was dispersed by treachery or
fear; and the officers, more especially the mercenary
Latins, accepted the bribes, and embraced the service, of
the Byzantine court. After this loss, the rebel emperor (he
fluctuated between the two characters) took the road of
Thessalonica with a chosen remnant; but he failed in his
enterprise on that important place; and he was closely
pursued by the great duke, his enemy Apocaucus, at the head
of a superior power by sea and land. Driven from the coast,
in his march, or rather flight, into the mountains of
Servia, Cantacuzene assembled his troops to scrutinize those
who were worthy and willing to accompany his broken
fortunes. A base majority bowed and retired; and his trusty
band was diminished to two thousand, and at last to five
hundred, volunteers. The cral, (28) or despot of the
Servians received him with general hospitality; but the ally
was insensibly degraded to a suppliant, a hostage, a
captive; and in this miserable dependence, he waited at the
door of the Barbarian, who could dispose of the life and
liberty of a Roman emperor. The most tempting offers could
not persuade the cral to violate his trust; but he soon
inclined to the stronger side; and his friend was dismissed
without injury to a new vicissitude of hopes and perils.
Near six years the flame of discord burnt with various
success and unabated rage: the cities were distracted by the
faction of the nobles and the plebeians; the Cantacuzeni and
Palaeologi: and the Bulgarians, the Servians, and the Turks,
were invoked on both sides as the instruments of private
ambition and the common ruin. The regent deplored the
calamities, of which he was the author and victim: and his
own experience might dictate a just and lively remark on the
different nature of foreign and civil war. "The former,"
said he, "is the external warmth of summer, always
tolerable, and often beneficial; the latter is the deadly
heat of a fever, which consumes without a remedy the vitals
of the constitution." (29)
The introduction of barbarians and savages into the contests
of civilized nations, is a measure pregnant with shame and
mischief; which the interest of the moment may compel, but
which is reprobated by the best principles of humanity and
reason. It is the practice of both sides to accuse their
enemies of the guilt of the first alliances; and those who
fail in their negotiations are loudest in their censure of
the example which they envy and would gladly imitate. The
Turks of Asia were less barbarous perhaps than the shepherds
of Bulgaria and Servia; but their religion rendered them
implacable foes of Rome and Christianity. To acquire the
friendship of their emirs, the two factions vied with each
other in baseness and profusion: the dexterity of
Cantacuzene obtained the preference: but the succor and
victory were dearly purchased by the marriage of his
daughter with an infidel, the captivity of many thousand
Christians, and the passage of the Ottomans into Europe, the
last and fatal stroke in the fall of the Roman empire. The
inclining scale was decided in his favor by the death of
Apocaucus, the just though singular retribution of his
crimes. A crowd of nobles or plebeians, whom he feared or
hated, had been seized by his orders in the capital and the
provinces; and the old palace of Constantine was assigned as
the place of their confinement. Some alterations in raising
the walls, and narrowing the cells, had been ingeniously
contrived to prevent their escape, and aggravate their
misery; and the work was incessantly pressed by the daily
visits of the tyrant. His guards watched at the gate, and as
he stood in the inner court to overlook the architects,
without fear or suspicion, he was assaulted and laid
breathless on the ground, by two (D) resolute prisoners of
the Palaeologian race, (30) who were armed with sticks, and
animated by despair. On the rumor of revenge and liberty,
the captive multitude broke their fetters, fortified their
prison, and exposed from the battlements the tyrant's head,
presuming on the favor of the people and the clemency of the
empress. Anne of Savoy might rejoice in the fall of a
haughty and ambitious minister, but while she delayed to
resolve or to act, the populace, more especially the
mariners, were excited by the widow of the great duke to a
sedition, an assault, and a massacre. The prisoners (of
whom the far greater part were guiltless or inglorious of
the deed) escaped to a neighboring church: they were
slaughtered at the foot of the altar; and in his death the
monster was not less bloody and venomous than in his life.
Yet his talents alone upheld the cause of the young emperor;
and his surviving associates, suspicious of each other,
abandoned the conduct of the war, and rejected the fairest
terms of accommodation. In the beginning of the dispute,
the empress felt, and complained, that she was deceived by
the enemies of Cantacuzene: the patriarch was employed to
preach against the forgiveness of injuries; and her promise
of immortal hatred was sealed by an oath, under the penalty
of excommunication. (31) But Anne soon learned to hate
without a teacher: she beheld the misfortunes of the empire
with the indifference of a stranger: her jealousy was
exasperated by the competition of a rival empress; and on
the first symptoms of a more yielding temper, she threatened
the patriarch to convene a synod, and degrade him from his
office. Their incapacity and discord would have afforded the
most decisive advantage; but the civil war was protracted by
the weakness of both parties; and the moderation of
Cantacuzene has not escaped the reproach of timidity and
indolence. He successively recovered the provinces and
cities; and the realm of his pupil was measured by the walls
of Constantinople; but the metropolis alone counterbalanced
the rest of the empire; nor could he attempt that important
conquest till he had secured in his favor the public voice
and a private correspondence. An Italian, of the name of
Facciolati, (32) had succeeded to the office of great duke:
the ships, the guards, and the golden gate, were subject to
his command; but his humble ambition was bribed to become
the instrument of treachery; and the revolution was
accomplished without danger or bloodshed. Destitute of the
powers of resistance, or the hope of relief, the inflexible
Anne would have still defended the palace, and have smiled
to behold the capital in flames, rather than in the
possession of a rival. She yielded to the prayers of her
friends and enemies; and the treaty was dictated by the
conqueror, who professed a loyal and zealous attachment to
the son of his benefactor. The marriage of his daughter
with John Palaeologus was at length consummated: the
hereditary right of the pupil was acknowledged; but the sole
administration during ten years was vested in the guardian.
Two emperors and three empresses were seated on the
Byzantine throne; and a general amnesty quieted the
apprehensions, and confirmed the property, of the most
guilty subjects. The festival of the coronation and
nuptials was celebrated with the appearances of concord and
magnificence, and both were equally fallacious. During the
late troubles, the treasures of the state, and even the
furniture of the palace, had been alienated or embezzled;
the royal banquet was served in pewter or earthenware; and
such was the proud poverty of the times, that the absence of
gold and jewels was supplied by the paltry artifices of
glass and gilt-leather. (33)
I hasten to conclude the personal history of John
Cantacuzene. (34) He triumphed and reigned; but his reign and
triumph were clouded by the discontent of his own and the
adverse faction. His followers might style the general
amnesty an act of pardon for his enemies, and of oblivion
for his friends: (35) in his cause their estates had been
forfeited or plundered; and as they wandered naked and
hungry through the streets, they cursed the selfish
generosity of a leader, who, on the throne of the empire,
might relinquish without merit his private inheritance. The
adherents of the empress blushed to hold their lives and
fortunes by the precarious favor of a usurper; and the
thirst of revenge was concealed by a tender concern for the
succession, and even the safety, of her son. They were
justly alarmed by a petition of the friends of Cantacuzene,
that they might be released from their oath of allegiance to
the Palaeologi, and intrusted with the defence of some
cautionary towns; a measure supported with argument and
eloquence; and which was rejected (says the Imperial
historian) "by my sublime, and almost incredible virtue."
His repose was disturbed by the sound of plots and
seditions; and he trembled lest the lawful prince should be
stolen away by some foreign or domestic enemy, who would
inscribe his name and his wrongs in the banners of
rebellion. As the son of Andronicus advanced in the years
of manhood, he began to feel and to act for himself; and his
rising ambition was rather stimulated than checked by the
imitation of his father's vices. If we may trust his own
professions, Cantacuzene labored with honest industry to
correct these sordid and sensual appetites, and to raise the
mind of the young prince to a level with his fortune. In
the Servian expedition, the two emperors showed themselves
in cordial harmony to the troops and provinces; and the
younger colleague was initiated by the elder in the
mysteries of war and government. After the conclusion of
the peace, Palaeologus was left at Thessalonica, a royal
residence, and a frontier station, to secure by his absence
the peace of Constantinople, and to withdraw his youth from
the temptations of a luxurious capital. But the distance
weakened the powers of control, and the son of Andronicus
was surrounded with artful or unthinking companions, who
taught him to hate his guardian, to deplore his exile, and
to vindicate his rights. A private treaty with the cral or
despot of Servia was soon followed by an open revolt; and
Cantacuzene, on the throne of the elder Andronicus, defended
the cause of age and prerogative, which in his youth he had
so vigorously attacked. At his request the empress-mother
undertook the voyage of Thessalonica, and the office of
mediation: she returned without success; and unless Anne of
Savoy was instructed by adversity, we may doubt the
sincerity, or at least the fervor, of her zeal. While the
regent grasped the sceptre with a firm and vigorous hand,
she had been instructed to declare, that the ten years of
his legal administration would soon elapse; and that, after
a full trial of the vanity of the world, the emperor
Cantacuzene sighed for the repose of a cloister, and was
ambitious only of a heavenly crown. Had these sentiments
been genuine, his voluntary abdication would have restored
the peace of the empire, and his conscience would have been
relieved by an act of justice. Palaeologus alone was
responsible for his future government; and whatever might be
his vices, they were surely less formidable than the
calamities of a civil war, in which the Barbarians and
infidels were again invited to assist the Greeks in their
mutual destruction. By the arms of the Turks, who now struck
a deep and everlasting root in Europe, Cantacuzene prevailed
in the third contest in which he had been involved; and the
young emperor, driven from the sea and land, was compelled
to take shelter among the Latins of the Isle of Tenedos.
His insolence and obstinacy provoked the victor to a step
which must render the quarrel irreconcilable; and the
association of his son Matthew, whom he invested with the
purple, established the succession in the family of the
Cantacuzeni. But Constantinople was still attached to the
blood of her ancient princes; and this last injury
accelerated the restoration of the rightful heir. A noble
Genoese espoused the cause of Palaeologus, obtained a
promise of his sister, and achieved the revolution with two
galleys and two thousand five hundred auxiliaries. Under
the pretence of distress, they were admitted into the lesser
port; a gate was opened, and the Latin shout of, "Long life
and victory to the emperor, John Palaeologus!" was answered
by a general rising in his favor. A numerous and loyal
party yet adhered to the standard of Cantacuzene: but he
asserts in his history (does he hope for belief?) that his
tender conscience rejected the assurance of conquest; that,
in free obedience to the voice of religion and philosophy,
he descended from the throne and embraced with pleasure the
monastic habit and profession. (36) So soon as he ceased to
be a prince, his successor was not unwilling that he should
be a saint: the remainder of his life was devoted to piety
and learning; in the cells of Constantinople and Mount
Athos, the monk Joasaph was respected as the temporal and
spiritual father of the emperor; and if he issued from his
retreat, it was as the minister of peace, to subdue the
obstinacy, and solicit the pardon, of his rebellious son.
(37)
Yet in the cloister, the mind of Cantacuzene was still
exercised by theological war. He sharpened a controversial
pen against the Jews and Mahometans; (38) and in every state
he defended with equal zeal the divine light of Mount
Thabor, a memorable question which consummates the religious
follies of the Greeks. The fakirs of India, (39) and the
monks of the Oriental church, were alike persuaded, that in
the total abstraction of the faculties of the mind and body,
the purer spirit may ascend to the enjoyment and vision of
the Deity. The opinion and practice of the monasteries of
Mount Athos (40) will be best represented in the words of an
abbot, who flourished in the eleventh century. "When thou
art alone in thy cell," says the ascetic teacher, "shut thy
door, and seat thyself in a corner: raise thy mind above all
things vain and transitory; recline thy beard and chin on
thy breast; turn thy eyes and thy thoughts toward the middle
of thy belly, the region of the navel; and search the place
of the heart, the seat of the soul. At first, all will be
dark and comfortless; but if you persevere day and night,
you will feel an ineffable joy; and no sooner has the soul
discovered the place of the heart, than it is involved in a
mystic and ethereal light." This light, the production of a
distempered fancy, the creature of an empty stomach and an
empty brain, was adored by the Quietists as the pure and
perfect essence of God himself; and as long as the folly was
confined to Mount Athos, the simple solitaries were not
inquisitive how the divine essence could be a material
substance, or how an immaterial substance could be perceived
by the eyes of the body. But in the reign of the younger
Andronicus, these monasteries were visited by Barlaam, (41) a
Calabrian monk, who was equally skilled in philosophy and
theology; who possessed the language of the Greeks and
Latins; and whose versatile genius could maintain their
opposite creeds, according to the interest of the moment.
The indiscretion of an ascetic revealed to the curious
traveller the secrets of mental prayer and Barlaam embraced
the opportunity of ridiculing the Quietists, who placed the
soul in the navel; of accusing the monks of Mount Athos of
heresy and blasphemy. His attack compelled the more learned
to renounce or dissemble the simple devotion of their
brethren; and Gregory Palamas introduced a scholastic
distinction between the essence and operation of God. His
inaccessible essence dwells in the midst of an uncreated and
eternal light; and this beatific vision of the saints had
been manifested to the disciples on Mount Thabor, in the
transfiguration of Christ. Yet this distinction could not
escape the reproach of polytheism; the eternity of the light
of Thabor was fiercely denied; and Barlaam still charged the
Palamites with holding two eternal substances, a visible and
an invisible God. From the rage of the monks of Mount
Athos, who threatened his life, the Calabrian retired to
Constantinople, where his smooth and specious manners
introduced him to the favor of the great domestic and the
emperor. The court and the city were involved in this
theological dispute, which flamed amidst the civil war; but
the doctrine of Barlaam was disgraced by his flight and
apostasy: the Palamites triumphed; and their adversary, the
patriarch John of Apri, was deposed by the consent of the
adverse factions of the state. In the character of emperor
and theologian, Cantacuzene presided in the synod of the
Greek church, which established, as an article of faith, the
uncreated light of Mount Thabor; and, after so many insults,
the reason of mankind was slightly wounded by the addition
of a single absurdity. Many rolls of paper or parchment
have been blotted; and the impenitent sectaries, who refused
to subscribe the orthodox creed, were deprived of the honors
of Christian burial; but in the next age the question was
forgotten; nor can I learn that the axe or the fagot were
employed for the extirpation of the Barlaamite heresy. (42)
For the conclusion of this chapter, I have reserved the
Genoese war, which shook the throne of Cantacuzene, and
betrayed the debility of the Greek empire. The Genoese,
who, after the recovery of Constantinople, were seated in
the suburb of Pera or Galata, received that honorable fief
from the bounty of the emperor. They were indulged in the
use of their laws and magistrates; but they submitted to the
duties of vassals and subjects; the forcible word of
liegemen (43) was borrowed from the Latin jurisprudence; and
their podesta, or chief, before he entered on his office,
saluted the emperor with loyal acclamations and vows of
fidelity. Genoa sealed a firm alliance with the Greeks;
and, in case of a defensive war, a supply of fifty empty
galleys and a succor of fifty galleys, completely armed and
manned, was promised by the republic to the empire. In the
revival of a naval force, it was the aim of Michael
Palaeologus to deliver himself from a foreign aid; and his
vigorous government contained the Genoese of Galata within
those limits which the insolence of wealth and freedom
provoked them to exceed. A sailor threatened that they
should soon be masters of Constantinople, and slew the Greek
who resented this national affront; and an armed vessel,
after refusing to salute the palace, was guilty of some acts
of piracy in the Black Sea. Their countrymen threatened to
support their cause; but the long and open village of Galata
was instantly surrounded by the Imperial troops; till, in
the moment of the assault, the prostrate Genoese implored
the clemency of their sovereign. The defenceless situation
which secured their obedience exposed them to the attack of
their Venetian rivals, who, in the reign of the elder
Andronicus, presumed to violate the majesty of the throne.
On the approach of their fleets, the Genoese, with their
families and effects, retired into the city: their empty
habitations were reduced to ashes; and the feeble prince,
who had viewed the destruction of his suburb, expressed his
resentment, not by arms, but by ambassadors. This
misfortune, however, was advantageous to the Genoese, who
obtained, and imperceptibly abused, the dangerous license of
surrounding Galata with a strong wall; of introducing into
the ditch the waters of the sea; of erecting lofty turrets;
and of mounting a train of military engines on the rampart.
The narrow bounds in which they had been circumscribed were
insufficient for the growing colony; each day they acquired
some addition of landed property; and the adjacent hills
were covered with their villas and castles, which they
joined and protected by new fortifications. (44) The
navigation and trade of the Euxine was the patrimony of the
Greek emperors, who commanded the narrow entrance, the
gates, as it were, of that inland sea. In the reign of
Michael Palaeologus, their prerogative was acknowledged by
the sultan of Egypt, who solicited and obtained the liberty
of sending an annual ship for the purchase of slaves in
Circassia and the Lesser Tartary: a liberty pregnant with
mischief to the Christian cause; since these youths were
transformed by education and discipline into the formidable
Mamalukes. (45) From the colony of Pera, the Genoese engaged
with superior advantage in the lucrative trade of the Black
Sea; and their industry supplied the Greeks with fish and
corn; two articles of food almost equally important to a
superstitious people. The spontaneous bounty of nature
appears to have bestowed the harvests of Ukraine, the
produce of a rude and savage husbandry; and the endless
exportation of salt fish and caviare is annually renewed by
the enormous sturgeons that are caught at the mouth of the
Don or Tanais, in their last station of the rich mud and
shallow water of the Maeotis. (46) The waters of the Oxus,
the Caspian, the Volga, and the Don, opened a rare and
laborious passage for the gems and spices of India; and
after three months' march the caravans of Carizme met the
Italian vessels in the harbors of Crimaea. (47) These various
branches of trade were monopolized by the diligence and
power of the Genoese. Their rivals of Venice and Pisa were
forcibly expelled; the natives were awed by the castles and
cities, which arose on the foundations of their humble
factories; and their principal establishment of Caffa (48)
was besieged without effect by the Tartar powers. Destitute
of a navy, the Greeks were oppressed by these haughty
merchants, who fed, or famished, Constantinople, according
to their interest. They proceeded to usurp the customs, the
fishery, and even the toll, of the Bosphorus; and while they
derived from these objects a revenue of two hundred thousand
pieces of gold, a remnant of thirty thousand was reluctantly
allowed to the emperor. (49) The colony of Pera or Galata
acted, in peace and war, as an independent state; and, as it
will happen in distant settlements, the Genoese podesta too
often forgot that he was the servant of his own masters.
These usurpations were encouraged by the weakness of the
elder Andronicus, and by the civil wars that afflicted his
age and the minority of his grandson. The talents of
Cantacuzene were employed to the ruin, rather than the
restoration, of the empire; and after his domestic victory,
he was condemned to an ignominious trial, whether the Greeks
or the Genoese should reign in Constantinople. The
merchants of Pera were offended by his refusal of some
contiguous land, some commanding heights, which they
proposed to cover with new fortifications; and in the
absence of the emperor, who was detained at Demotica by
sickness, they ventured to brave the debility of a female
reign. A Byzantine vessel, which had presumed to fish at the
mouth of the harbor, was sunk by these audacious strangers;
the fishermen were murdered. Instead of suing for pardon,
the Genoese demanded satisfaction; required, in a haughty
strain, that the Greeks should renounce the exercise of
navigation; and encountered with regular arms the first
sallies of the popular indignation. They instantly occupied
the debatable land; and by the labor of a whole people, of
either sex and of every age, the wall was raised, and the
ditch was sunk, with incredible speed. At the same time,
they attacked and burnt two Byzantine galleys; while the
three others, the remainder of the Imperial navy, escaped
from their hands: the habitations without the gates, or
along the shore, were pillaged and destroyed; and the care
of the regent, of the empress Irene, was confined to the
preservation of the city. The return of Cantacuzene
dispelled the public consternation: the emperor inclined to
peaceful counsels; but he yielded to the obstinacy of his
enemies, who rejected all reasonable terms, and to the ardor
of his subjects, who threatened, in the style of Scripture,
to break them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Yet they
reluctantly paid the taxes, that he imposed for the
construction of ships, and the expenses of the war; and as
the two nations were masters, the one of the land, the other
of the sea, Constantinople and Pera were pressed by the
evils of a mutual siege. The merchants of the colony, who
had believed that a few days would terminate the war,
already murmured at their losses: the succors from their
mother-country were delayed by the factions of Genoa; and
the most cautious embraced the opportunity of a Rhodian
vessel to remove their families and effects from the scene
of hostility. In the spring, the Byzantine fleet, seven
galleys and a train of smaller vessels, issued from the
mouth of the harbor, and steered in a single line along the
shore of Pera; unskilfully presenting their sides to the
beaks of the adverse squadron. The crews were composed of
peasants and mechanics; nor was their ignorance compensated
by the native courage of Barbarians: the wind was strong,
the waves were rough; and no sooner did the Greeks perceive
a distant and inactive enemy, than they leaped headlong into
the sea, from a doubtful, to an inevitable peril. The troops
that marched to the attack of the lines of Pera were struck
at the same moment with a similar panic; and the Genoese
were astonished, and almost ashamed, at their double
victory. Their triumphant vessels, crowned with flowers, and
dragging after them the captive galleys, repeatedly passed
and repassed before the palace: the only virtue of the
emperor was patience; and the hope of revenge his sole
consolation. Yet the distress of both parties interposed a
temporary agreement; and the shame of the empire was
disguised by a thin veil of dignity and power. Summoning the
chiefs of the colony, Cantacuzene affected to despise the
trivial object of the debate; and, after a mild reproof,
most liberally granted the lands, which had been previously
resigned to the seeming custody of his officers. (50)
But the emperor was soon solicited to violate the treaty,
and to join his arms with the Venetians, the perpetual
enemies of Genoa and her colonies. While he compared the
reasons of peace and war, his moderation was provoked by a
wanton insult of the inhabitants of Pera, who discharged
from their rampart a large stone that fell in the midst of
Constantinople. On his just complaint, they coldly blamed
the imprudence of their engineer; but the next day the
insult was repeated; and they exulted in a second proof that
the royal city was not beyond the reach of their artillery.
Cantacuzene instantly signed his treaty with the Venetians;
but the weight of the Roman empire was scarcely felt in the
balance of these opulent and powerful republics. (51) From
the Straits of Gibraltar to the mouth of the Tanais, their
fleets encountered each other with various success; and a
memorable battle was fought in the narrow sea, under the
walls of Constantinople. It would not be an easy task to
reconcile the accounts of the Greeks, the Venetians, and the
Genoese; (52) and while I depend on the narrative of an
impartial historian, (53) I shall borrow from each nation the
facts that redound to their own disgrace, and the honor of
their foes. The Venetians, with their allies the Catalans,
had the advantage of number; and their fleet, with the poor
addition of eight Byzantine galleys, amounted to
seventy-five sail: the Genoese did not exceed sixty-four;
but in those times their ships of war were distinguished by
the superiority of their size and strength. The names and
families of their naval commanders, Pisani and Doria, are
illustrious in the annals of their country; but the personal
merit of the former was eclipsed by the fame and abilities
of his rival. They engaged in tempestuous weather; and the
tumultuary conflict was continued from the dawn to the
extinction of light. The enemies of the Genoese applaud
their prowess; the friends of the Venetians are dissatisfied
with their behavior; but all parties agree in praising the
skill and boldness of the Catalans, (E) who, with many
wounds, sustained the brunt of the action. On the separation
of the fleets, the event might appear doubtful; but the
thirteen Genoese galleys, that had been sunk or taken, were
compensated by a double loss of the allies; of fourteen
Venetians, ten Catalans, and two Greeks; (F) and even the
grief of the conquerors expressed the assurance and habit of
more decisive victories. Pisani confessed his defeat, by
retiring into a fortified harbor, from whence, under the
pretext of the orders of the senate, he steered with a
broken and flying squadron for the Isle of Candia, and
abandoned to his rivals the sovereignty of the sea. In a
public epistle, (54) addressed to the doge and senate,
Petrarch employs his eloquence to reconcile the maritime
powers, the two luminaries of Italy. The orator celebrates
the valor and victory of the Genoese, the first of men in
the exercise of naval war: he drops a tear on the
misfortunes of their Venetian brethren; but he exhorts them
to pursue with fire and sword the base and perfidious
Greeks; to purge the metropolis of the East from the heresy
with which it was infected. Deserted by their friends, the
Greeks were incapable of resistance; and three months after
the battle, the emperor Cantacuzene solicited and subscribed
a treaty, which forever banished the Venetians and Catalans,
and granted to the Genoese a monopoly of trade, and almost a
right of dominion. The Roman empire (I smile in transcribing
the name) might soon have sunk into a province of Genoa, if
the ambition of the republic had not been checked by the
ruin of her freedom and naval power. A long contest of one
hundred and thirty years was determined by the triumph of
Venice; and the factions of the Genoese compelled them to
seek for domestic peace under the protection of a foreign
lord, the duke of Milan, or the French king. Yet the spirit
of commerce survived that of conquest; and the colony of
Pera still awed the capital and navigated the Euxine, till
it was involved by the Turks in the final servitude of
Constantinople itself.