Volume 6 Part 6 (2/2)
276.--M.]
[Footnote 78: Baldwin mentions both attempts to fire the fleet, (Gest.
c. 92, p. 534, 535;) Villehardouin, (No. 113--15) only describes the first. It is remarkable that neither of these warriors observe any peculiar properties in the Greek fire.]
[Footnote 79: Ducange (No. 119) pours forth a torrent of learning on the _Gonfanon Imperial_. This banner of the Virgin is shown at Venice as a trophy and relic: if it be genuine the pious doge must have cheated the monks of Citeaux.]
[Footnote 80: Villehardouin (No. 126) confesses, that mult ere grant peril; and Guntherus (Hist. C. P. c. 13) affirms, that nulla spes victoriae arridere poterat. Yet the knight despises those who thought of flight, and the monk praises his countrymen who were resolved on death.]
[Footnote 81: Baldwin, and all the writers, honor the names of these two galleys, felici auspicio.]
[Footnote 811: Pietro Alberti, a Venetian n.o.ble and Andrew d'Amboise a French knight.--M.]
[Footnote 82: With an allusion to Homer, Nicetas calls him enneorguioV, nine orgyae, or eighteen yards high, a stature which would, indeed, have excused the terror of the Greek. On this occasion, the historian seems fonder of the marvellous than of his country, or perhaps of truth.
Baldwin exclaims in the words of the psalmist, persequitur unus ex n.o.bis centum alienos.]
[Footnote 83: Villehardouin (No. 130) is again ignorant of the authors of _this_ more legitimate fire, which is ascribed by Gunther to a quidam comes Teutonicus, (c. 14.) They seem ashamed, the incendiaries!]
[Footnote 84: For the second siege and conquest of Constantinople, see Villehardouin (No. 113--132,) Baldwin's iid Epistle to Innocent III., (Gesta c. 92, p. 534--537,) with the whole reign of Mourzoufle, in Nicetas, (p 363--375;) and borrowed some hints from Dandolo (Chron.
Venet. p. 323--330) and Gunther, (Hist. C. P. c. 14--18,) who added the decorations of prophecy and vision. The former produces an oracle of the Erythraean sibyl, of a great armament on the Adriatic, under a blind chief, against Byzantium, &c. Curious enough, were the prediction anterior to the fact.]
Constantinople had been taken by storm; and no restraints, except those of religion and humanity, were imposed on the conquerors by the laws of war. Boniface, marquis of Montferrat, still acted as their general; and the Greeks, who revered his name as that of their future sovereign, were heard to exclaim in a lamentable tone, ”Holy marquis-king, have mercy upon us!” His prudence or compa.s.sion opened the gates of the city to the fugitives; and he exhorted the soldiers of the cross to spare the lives of their fellow-Christians. The streams of blood that flowed down the pages of Nicetas may be reduced to the slaughter of two thousand of his unresisting countrymen; [85] and the greater part was ma.s.sacred, not by the strangers, but by the Latins, who had been driven from the city, and who exercised the revenge of a triumphant faction. Yet of these exiles, some were less mindful of injuries than of benefits; and Nicetas himself was indebted for his safety to the generosity of a Venetian merchant.
Pope Innocent the Third accuses the pilgrims for respecting, in their l.u.s.t, neither age nor s.e.x, nor religious profession; and bitterly laments that the deeds of darkness, fornication, adultery, and incest, were perpetrated in open day; and that n.o.ble matrons and holy nuns were polluted by the grooms and peasants of the Catholic camp. [86] It is indeed probable that the license of victory prompted and covered a mult.i.tude of sins: but it is certain, that the capital of the East contained a stock of venal or willing beauty, sufficient to satiate the desires of twenty thousand pilgrims; and female prisoners were no longer subject to the right or abuse of domestic slavery. The marquis of Montferrat was the patron of discipline and decency; the count of Flanders was the mirror of chast.i.ty: they had forbidden, under pain of death, the rape of married women, or virgins, or nuns; and the proclamation was sometimes invoked by the vanquished [87] and respected by the victors. Their cruelty and l.u.s.t were moderated by the authority of the chiefs, and feelings of the soldiers; for we are no longer describing an irruption of the northern savages; and however ferocious they might still appear, time, policy, and religion had civilized the manners of the French, and still more of the Italians. But a free scope was allowed to their avarice, which was glutted, even in the holy week, by the pillage of Constantinople. The right of victory, unshackled by any promise or treaty, had confiscated the public and private wealth of the Greeks; and every hand, according to its size and strength, might lawfully execute the sentence and seize the forfeiture. A portable and universal standard of exchange was found in the coined and uncoined metals of gold and silver, which each captor, at home or abroad, might convert into the possessions most suitable to his temper and situation.
Of the treasures, which trade and luxury had acc.u.mulated, the silks, velvets, furs, the gems, spices, and rich movables, were the most precious, as they could not be procured for money in the ruder countries of Europe. An order of rapine was inst.i.tuted; nor was the share of each individual abandoned to industry or chance. Under the tremendous penalties of perjury, excommunication, and death, the Latins were bound to deliver their plunder into the common stock: three churches were selected for the deposit and distribution of the spoil: a single share was allotted to a foot-soldier; two for a sergeant on horseback; four to a knight; and larger proportions according to the rank and merit of the barons and princes. For violating this sacred engagement, a knight belonging to the count of St. Paul was hanged with his s.h.i.+eld and coat of arms round his neck; his example might render similar offenders more artful and discreet; but avarice was more powerful than fear; and it is generally believed that the secret far exceeded the acknowledged plunder. Yet the magnitude of the prize surpa.s.sed the largest scale of experience or expectation. [88] After the whole had been equally divided between the French and Venetians, fifty thousand marks were deducted to satisfy the debts of the former and the demands of the latter. The residue of the French amounted to four hundred thousand marks of silver, [89] about eight hundred thousand pounds sterling; nor can I better appreciate the value of that sum in the public and private transactions of the age, than by defining it as seven times the annual revenue of the kingdom of England. [90]
[Footnote 85: Ceciderunt tamen ea die civium quasi duo millia, &c., (Gunther, c. 18.) Arithmetic is an excellent touchstone to try the amplifications of pa.s.sion and rhetoric.]
[Footnote 86: Quidam (says Innocent III., Gesta, c. 94, p. 538) nec religioni, nec aetati, nec s.e.xui pepercerunt: sed fornicationes, adulteria, et incestus in oculis omnium exercentes, non solum maritatas et viduas, sed et matronas et virgines Deoque dicatas, exposuerunt spurcitiis garcionum. Villehardouin takes no notice of these common incidents.]
[Footnote 87: Nicetas saved, and afterwards married, a n.o.ble virgin, (p. 380,) whom a soldier, eti martusi polloiV onhdon epibrimwmenoV, had almost violated in spite of the entolai, entalmata eu gegonotwn.]
[Footnote 88: Of the general ma.s.s of wealth, Gunther observes, ut de pauperibus et advenis cives ditissimi redderentur, (Hist. C. P. c. 18; (Villehardouin, (No. 132,) that since the creation, ne fu tant gaaignie dans une ville; Baldwin, (Gesta, c. 92,) ut tantum tota non videatur possidere Latinitas.]
[Footnote 89: Villehardouin, No. 133--135. Instead of 400,000, there is a various reading of 500,000. The Venetians had offered to take the whole booty, and to give 400 marks to each knight, 200 to each priest and horseman, and 100 to each foot-soldier: they would have been great losers, (Le Beau, Hist. du. Bas Empire tom. xx. p. 506. I know not from whence.)]
[Footnote 90: At the council of Lyons (A.D. 1245) the English amba.s.sadors stated the revenue of the crown as below that of the foreign clergy, which amounted to 60,000 marks a year, (Matthew Paris, p. 451 Hume's Hist. of England, vol. ii. p. 170.)]
In this great revolution we enjoy the singular felicity of comparing the narratives of Villehardouin and Nicetas, the opposite feelings of the marshal of Champagne and the Byzantine senator. [91] At the first view it should seem that the wealth of Constantinople was only transferred from one nation to another; and that the loss and sorrow of the Greeks is exactly balanced by the joy and advantage of the Latins. But in the miserable account of war, the gain is never equivalent to the loss, the pleasure to the pain; the smiles of the Latins were transient and fallacious; the Greeks forever wept over the ruins of their country; and their real calamities were aggravated by sacrilege and mockery.
What benefits accrued to the conquerors from the three fires which annihilated so vast a portion of the buildings and riches of the city?
What a stock of such things, as could neither be used nor transported, was maliciously or wantonly destroyed! How much treasure was idly wasted in gaming, debauchery, and riot! And what precious objects were bartered for a vile price by the impatience or ignorance of the soldiers, whose reward was stolen by the base industry of the last of the Greeks!
These alone, who had nothing to lose, might derive some profit from the revolution; but the misery of the upper ranks of society is strongly painted in the personal adventures of Nicetas himself His stately palace had been reduced to ashes in the second conflagration; and the senator, with his family and friends, found an obscure shelter in another house which he possessed near the church of St. Sophia. It was the door of this mean habitation that his friend, the Venetian merchant, guarded in the disguise of a soldier, till Nicetas could save, by a precipitate flight, the relics of his fortune and the chast.i.ty of his daughter. In a cold, wintry season, these fugitives, nursed in the lap of prosperity, departed on foot; his wife was with child; the desertion of their slaves compelled them to carry their baggage on their own shoulders; and their women, whom they placed in the centre, were exhorted to conceal their beauty with dirt, instead of adorning it with paint and jewels Every step was exposed to insult and danger: the threats of the strangers were less painful than the taunts of the plebeians, with whom they were now levelled; nor did the exiles breathe in safety till their mournful pilgrimage was concluded at Selymbria, above forty miles from the capital. On the way they overtook the patriarch, without attendance and almost without apparel, riding on an a.s.s, and reduced to a state of apostolical poverty, which, had it been voluntary, might perhaps have been meritorious. In the mean while, his desolate churches were profaned by the licentiousness and party zeal of the Latins. After stripping the gems and pearls, they converted the chalices into drinking-cups; their tables, on which they gamed and feasted, were covered with the pictures of Christ and the saints; and they trampled under foot the most venerable objects of the Christian wors.h.i.+p. In the cathedral of St.
Sophia, the ample veil of the sanctuary was rent asunder for the sake of the golden fringe; and the altar, a monument of art and riches, was broken in pieces and shared among the captors. Their mules and horses were laden with the wrought silver and gilt carvings, which they tore down from the doors and pulpit; and if the beasts stumbled under the burden, they were stabbed by their impatient drivers, and the holy pavement streamed with their impure blood. A prost.i.tute was seated on the throne of the patriarch; and that daughter of Belial, as she is styled, sung and danced in the church, to ridicule the hymns and processions of the Orientals. Nor were the repositories of the royal dead secure from violation: in the church of the Apostles, the tombs of the emperors were rifled; and it is said, that after six centuries the corpse of Justinian was found without any signs of decay or putrefaction. In the streets, the French and Flemings clothed themselves and their horses in painted robes and flowing head-dresses of linen; and the coa.r.s.e intemperance of their feasts [92] insulted the splendid sobriety of the East. To expose the arms of a people of scribes and scholars, they affected to display a pen, an inkhorn, and a sheet of paper, without discerning that the instruments of science and valor were _alike_ feeble and useless in the hands of the modern Greeks.
[Footnote 91: The disorders of the sack of Constantinople, and his own adventures, are feelingly described by Nicetas, p. 367--369, and in the Status Urb. C. P. p. 375--384. His complaints, even of sacrilege, are justified by Innocent III., (Gesta, c. 92;) but Villehardouin does not betray a symptom of pity or remorse.]
[Footnote 92: If I rightly apprehend the Greek of Nicetas's receipts, their favorite dishes were boiled b.u.t.tocks of beef, salt pork and peas, and soup made of garlic and sharp or sour herbs, (p. 382.)]
Their reputation and their language encouraged them, however, to despise the ignorance and to overlook the progress of the Latins. [93] In the love of the arts, the national difference was still more obvious and real; the Greeks preserved with reverence the works of their ancestors, which they could not imitate; and, in the destruction of the statues of Constantinople, we are provoked to join in the complaints and invectives of the Byzantine historian. [94] We have seen how the rising city was adorned by the vanity and despotism of the Imperial founder: in the ruins of paganism, some G.o.ds and heroes were saved from the axe of superst.i.tion; and the forum and hippodrome were dignified with the relics of a better age. Several of these are described by Nicetas, [95]
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