Volume 6 Part 8 (1/2)
[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 princ.i.p.ality 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 pa.s.sages in Vincent of Beauvais (l. x.x.xi. c. 144) and the prothonotary Ogerius, (apud Wading, A.D. 1279, No. 4.)]
[Footnote 211: On the revolutions of Trebizond under the later empire down to this period, see Fallmerayer, Geschichte des Kaiserthums von Trapezunt, ch. iii. The wife of Manuel fled with her infant sons and her treasure from the relentless enmity of Isaac Angelus. Fallmerayer conjectures that her arrival enabled the Greeks of that region to make head against the formidable Thamar, the Georgian queen of Teflis, p. 42.
They gradually formed a dominion on the banks of the Phasis, which the distracted government of the Angeli neglected or were unable to suppress. On the capture of Constantinople by the Latins, Alexius was joined by many n.o.ble fugitives from Constantinople. He had always retained the names of Caesar and BasileuV. He now fixed the seat of his empire at Trebizond; but he had never abandoned his pretensions to the Byzantine throne, ch. iii. Fallmerayer appears to make out a triumphant case as to the a.s.sumption of the royal t.i.tle by Alexius the First. Since the publication of M. Fallmerayer's work, (Munchen, 1827,) M. Tafel has published, at the end of the opuscula of Eustathius, a curious chronicle of Trebizond by Michael Panaretas, (Frankfort, 1832.) It gives the succession of the emperors, and some other curious circ.u.mstances of their wars with the several Mahometan powers.--M.]
[Footnote 212: The successor of Alexius was his son-in-law Andronicus I., of the Comnenian family, surnamed Gidon. There were five successions between Alexius and John, according to Fallmerayer, p. 103. The troops of Trebizond fought in the army of Dschelaleddin, the Karismian, against Alaleddin, the Seljukian sultan of Roum, but as allies rather than va.s.sals, p. 107. It was after the defeat of Dschelaleddin that they furnished their contingent to Alai-eddin. Fallmerayer struggles in vain to mitigate this mark of the subjection of the Comneni to the sultan. p.
116.--M.]
[Footnote 22: The portrait of the French Latins is drawn in Nicetas by the hand of prejudice and resentment: ouden tvn allwn eqnvn eiV ''AreoV?rga parasumbeblhsqai sjisin hneiconto all' oude tiV tvn caritwn h tvn?mousvn para toiV barbaroiV toutoiV epexenizeto, kai para touto oimai thn jusin hsan anhmeroi, kai ton xolon eixon tou logou prstreconta. [P. 791 Ed. Bek.]
[Footnote 23: I here begin to use, with freedom and confidence, the eight books of the Histoire de C. P. sous l'Empire des Francois, which Ducange has given as a supplement to Villehardouin; and which, in a barbarous style, deserves the praise of an original and cla.s.sic work.]
The Latin conquerors had been saluted with a solemn and early emba.s.sy 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 t.i.tle 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 a.s.sumed the pomp and pride of the successors of Constantine; and his amba.s.sadors 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 a.s.sociation and secrecy: the Greeks were impatient to sheathe their daggers in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 h.e.l.lespont. 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 ma.s.sacre, the surviving va.s.sals 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 mult.i.tude: 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 G.o.ds. [25]
[Footnote 24: In Calo-John's answer to the pope we may find his claims and complaints, (Gesta Innocent III. c. 108, 109:) he was cherished at Rome as the prodigal son.]
[Footnote 25: The Comans were a Tartar or Turkman horde, which encamped in the xiith and xiiith centuries on the verge of Moldavia. The greater part were pagans, but some were Mahometans, and the whole horde was converted to Christianity (A.D. 1370) by Lewis, king of Hungary.]
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 encompa.s.sed 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]
[Footnote 26: Nicetas, from ignorance or malice, imputes the defeat to the cowardice of Dandolo, (p. 383;) but Villehardouin shares his own glory with his venerable friend, qui viels home ere et gote ne veoit, mais mult ere sages et preus et vigueros, (No. 193.) * Note: Gibbon appears to me to have misapprehended the pa.s.sage of Nicetas. He says, ”that princ.i.p.al and subtlest mischief. that primary cause of all the horrible miseries suffered by the _Romans_,” i. e. the Byzantines. It is an effusion of malicious triumph against the Venetians, to whom he always ascribes the capture of Constantinople.--M.]
Chapter LXI: Part.i.tion Of The Empire By The French And Venetians.--Part II.
Proud of his victory and his royal prize, the Bulgarian advanced to relieve Adrianople and achieve the destruction of the Latins. They must inevitably have been destroyed, if the marshal of Romania had not displayed a cool courage and consummate skill; uncommon in all ages, but most uncommon in those times, when war was a pa.s.sion, 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 a.s.surance 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 sh.o.r.e. They embraced, they wept; but they united their arms and counsels; and in his brother's absence, Count Henry a.s.sumed 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 sh.o.r.es 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 carca.s.ses 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 p.r.o.ne 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]
[Footnote 27: The truth of geography, and the original text of Villehardouin, (No. 194,) place Rodosto three days' journey (trois jornees) from Adrianople: but Vigenere, in his version, has most absurdly subst.i.tuted _trois heures_; and this error, which is not corrected by Ducange has entrapped several moderns, whose names I shall spare.]
[Footnote 28: The reign and end of Baldwin are related by Villehardouin and Nicetas, (p. 386--416;) and their omissions are supplied by Ducange in his Observations, and to the end of his first book.]
[Footnote 29: After brus.h.i.+ng away all doubtful and improbable circ.u.mstances, we may prove the death of Baldwin, 1. By the firm belief of the French barons, (Villehardouin, No. 230.) 2. By the declaration of Calo-John himself, who excuses his not releasing the captive emperor, quia debitum carnis exsolverat c.u.m carcere teneretur, (Gesta Innocent III. c. 109.) * Note: Compare Von Raumer. Geschichte der Hohenstaufen, vol. ii. p. 237. Pet.i.tot, in his preface to Villehardouin in the Collection des Memoires, relatifs a l'Histoire de France, tom. i. p. 85, expresses his belief in the first part of the ”tragic legend.”--M.]
[Footnote 30: See the story of this impostor from the French and Flemish writers in Ducange, Hist. de C. P. iii. 9; and the ridiculous fables that were believed by the monks of St. Alban's, in Matthew Paris, Hist.
Major, p. 271, 272.]
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 a.s.sured of the death of Baldwin, before his brother, the regent Henry, would consent to a.s.sume the t.i.tle 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 antic.i.p.ate 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 a.s.sociate, 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 a.s.sembled to hara.s.s 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 h.e.l.lespont, 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 s.h.i.+pboard 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 demolis.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sembled under his banner; and with this slender force he fought [321] 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 a.s.sa.s.sin, 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 wors.h.i.+p of the Greeks, and sternly imposed the payment of t.i.thes, 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 G.o.d.” 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 grat.i.tude 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 superst.i.tious 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]
[Footnote 31: Villehardouin, No. 257. I quote, with regret, this lamentable conclusion, where we lose at once the original history, and the rich ill.u.s.trations of Ducange. The last pages may derive some light from Henry's two epistles to Innocent III., (Gesta, c. 106, 107.)]
[Footnote 32: The marshal was alive in 1212, but he probably died soon afterwards, without returning to France, (Ducange, Observations sur Villehardouin, p. 238.) His fief of Messinople, the gift of Boniface, was the ancient Maximianopolis, which flourished in the time of Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus, among the cities of Thrace, (No. 141.)]
[Footnote 321: There was no battle. On the advance of the Latins, John suddenly broke up his camp and retreated. The Latins considered this unexpected deliverance almost a miracle. Le Beau suggests the probability that the detection of the Comans, who usually quitted the camp during the heats of summer, may have caused the flight of the Bulgarians. Nicetas, c. 8 Villebardouin, c. 225. Le Beau, vol. xvii. p.
242.--M.]
[Footnote 33: The church of this patron of Thessalonica was served by the canons of the holy sepulchre, and contained a divine ointment which distilled daily and stupendous miracles, (Ducange, Hist. de C. P. ii.
4.)]