Part 110

The last of the Comnenian Emperors in the male line—the brutal Andronicus I.—perished horribly in a wild insurrection at Constantinople which his tyranny provoked, A. D. 1185. His successor, Isaac Angelus, collaterally related to the imperial house, had been a contemptible creature before his coronation, and received no tincture of manliness or virtue from that ceremony. In the second year of his reign, the Empire was shorn of its Bulgarian and Wallachian provinces by a successful revolt. In the tenth year (A. D. 1195), Isaac was pushed from his throne, deprived of sight and shut up in a dungeon, by a brother of equal worthlessness, who styled himself Alexius III. The latter neglected, however, to secure the person of Isaac's son, Alexius, who escaped from Constantinople and made his way to his sister, wife of Philip, the German King and claimant of the western imperial crown. Philip thereupon plotted with the Venetians to divert the great crusading expedition, then assembling to take ship at Venice, and to employ it for the restoration of young Alexius and his father Isaac to the Byzantine throne. The cunning and perfidious means by which that diversion was brought about are related in another place (see CRUSADES: A. D. 1201-1203). The great fleet of the crusading filibusters arrived in the Bosphorus near the end of June, 1203. The army which it bore was landed first on the Asiatic side of the strait, opposite the imperial city. After ten days of parley and preparation it was conveyed across the water and began its attack. The towers guarding the entrance to the Golden Horn—the harbor of Constantinople—were captured, the chain removed, the harbor occupied; and the imperial fleet seized or destroyed. On the 17th of July a combined assault by land and water was made on the walls of the city, at their northwest corner, near the Blachern palace, where they presented one face to the Horn and another to the land. The land-attack failed. The Venetians, from their ships, stormed twenty-five towers, gained possession of a long stretch of the wall, and pushed into the city far enough to start a conflagration which spread ruin over an extensive district. They could not hold their ground, and withdrew; but the result was a victory. The cowardly Emperor, Alexius III., fled from the city that night, and blind old Isaac Angelus was restored to the throne. He was ready to associate his son in the sovereignty, and to fulfill, if he could, the contracts which the latter had made with Venetians and Crusaders. These invaders had now no present excuse for making war on Constantinople any further. But the excuse was soon found. Money to pay their heavy claims could not be raised, and their hatefulness to the Greeks was increased by the insolence of their demeanor. A serious collision occurred at length, provoked by the plundering of a Mahometan mosque which the Byzantines had tolerated in their capital. Once more, on this occasion, the splendid city was fired by the ruthless invaders, and an immense district in the richest and most populous part was destroyed, while many of the inhabitants perished. The fire lasted two days and nights, sweeping a wide belt from the harbor to the Marmora. The suburbs of Constantinople were pillaged and ruined by the Latin soldiery, and more and more it became impossible for the two restored emperors to raise money for paying the claims of the Crusaders who had championed them. Their subjects hated them and were desperate. At last, in January, 1204, the public feeling of Constantinople flamed out in a revolution which crowned a new emperor,—one Alexis Ducas, nicknamed Mourtzophlos, on account of his eyebrows, which met. {341} A few days afterwards, with suspicious opportuneness, Isaac and Alexius died. Then both sides entered upon active preparations for serious war; but it was not until April 9th that the Crusaders and Venetians were ready to assail the walls once more. The first assault was repelled, with heavy loss to the besiegers. They rested two days and repeated the attack on the 12th with irresistible resolution and fury. The towers were taken, the gates were broken down, knights and soldiers poured into the fated city, killing without mercy, burning without scruple—starting a third appalling conflagration which laid another wide district in ruins. The new emperor fled, the troops laid down their arms,—Constantinople was conquered and prostrate. "Then began the plunder of the city. The imperial treasury and the arsenal were placed under guard; but with these exceptions the right to plunder was given indiscriminately to the troops and sailors. Never in Europe was a work of pillage more systematically and shamelessly carried out. Never by the army of a Christian state was there a more barbarous sack of a city than that perpetrated by these soldiers of Christ, sworn to chastity, pledged before God not to shed Christian blood, and bearing upon them the emblem of the Prince of Peace. … 'Never since the world was created,' says the Marshal [Villehardouin] 'was there so much booty gained in one city. Each man took the house which pleased him, and there were enough for all. Those who were poor found themselves suddenly rich. There was captured an immense supply of gold and silver, of plate and of precious stones, of satins and of silk, of furs and of every kind of wealth ever found upon the earth.' … The Greek eye-witness [Nicetas] gives the complement of the picture of Villehardouin. The lust of the army spared neither maiden nor the virgin dedicated to God. Violence and debauchery were everywhere present; cries and lamentations and the groans of the victims were heard throughout the city; for everywhere pillage was unrestrained and lust unbridled. … A large part of the booty had been collected in the three churches designated for that purpose. … The distribution was made during the latter end of April. Many works of art in bronze were sent to the melting-pot to be coined. Many statues were broken up in order to obtain the metals with which they were adorned. The conquerors knew nothing and cared nothing for the art which had added value to the metal."

_E. Pears, The Fall of Constantinople, chapters 14-15._

ALSO IN: _G. Finlay, History of the Byzantine and Greek Empires, from 716 to 1453, book 3, chapter 3, section 3._

BYZANTINE EMPIRE: A. D. 1204. Reign of Alexius V.

BYZANTINE EMPIRE: A. D. 1204-1205. The partitioning of the Empire by the Crusaders and the Venetians.

"Before the crusaders made their last successful attack on Constantinople, they concluded a treaty partitioning the Byzantine empire and dividing the plunder of the capital. … This treaty was entered into by the Frank crusaders on the one part, and the citizens of the Venetian republic on the other, for the purpose of preventing disputes and preserving unity in the expedition." The treaty further provided for the creation of an Empire of Romania, to take the place of the Byzantine Empire, and for the election of an Emperor to reign over it. The arrangements of the treaty in this latter respect were carried out, not long after the taking of the city by the election of Baldwin, count of Flanders, the most esteemed and the most popular among the princes of the crusade, and he received the imperial crown of the new Empire of Romania at the hands of the legate of the pope. "Measures were immediately taken after the coronation of Baldwin to carry into execution the act of partition as arranged by the joint consent of the Frank and Venetian commissioners. But their ignorance of geography, and the resistance offered by the Greeks in Asia Minor, and by the Vallachians and Albanians in Europe, threw innumerable difficulties in the way of the proposed distribution of fiefs. The quarter of the Empire that formed the portion of Baldwin consisted of the city of Constantinople, with the country in its immediate vicinity, as far as Bizya and Tzouroulos in Europe and Nicomedia in Asia. Beyond the territory around Constantinople, Baldwin possessed districts extending as far as the Strymon in Europe and the Sangarins in Asia; but his possessions were intermingled with those of the Venetians and the vassals of the Empire. Prokonnesos, Lesbos, Chios, Lemnos, Skyros, and several smaller islands, also fell to his share."

_G. Finlay, History of Greece from its Conquest by the Crusaders, chapter 4, sections 1-2._

"In the division of the Greek provinces the share 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 adventurers of France and Lombardy. The venerable Dandolo was proclaimed Despot of Romania, and was 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.' … They possessed three of the eight quarters of the city. … 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 neighbourhood of Ragnsa to the Hellespont and the Bosphorus. … For the price of 10,000 marks the republic purchased of the marquis of Montferrat the fertile island of Crete or Candia with the ruins of a hundred cities. … In the moiety of the adventurers the Marquis Boniface [of Montferrat] might claim the most liberal reward; and, besides the isle of Crete, his exclusion from the throne [for which he had been a candidate against Baldwin of Flanders] 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 or Macedonia, twelve days' journey from the capital, where he might be supported by the neighbouring powers of his brother-in-law, the king of Hungary. … The lots of the Latin pilgrims were regulated by chance or choice or subsequent exchange. … 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."

_E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 61. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25717_

{342}

BYZANTINE EMPIRE: A. D. 1204-1205. The political shaping of the fragments.

See ROMANIA. THE EMPIRE; GREEK EMPIRE OF NICÆA; TREBIZOND; EPIRUS: NAXOS, THE MEDIÆVAL DUKEDOM ACHAIA: A. D. 1205-1387: ATHENS: A. D. 1205-1456: SALONIKI.

BYZANTINE EMPIRE: A. D. 1261-1453. The Greek restoration. Last struggle with the Turks and final overthrow.

The story of the shadowy restoration of a Greek Empire at Constantinople, its last struggle with the Turks, and its fall is told elsewhere.

See CONSTANTINOPLE, A. D. 1261-1453.

"From the hour of her foundation to that in which her sun finally sank in blood, Christian Constantinople was engaged in constant struggles against successive hordes of barbarians. She did not always triumph in the strife, but, even when she was beaten she did not succumb, but carried on the contest still; and the fact that she was able to do so is alone a sufficing proof of the strength and vitality of her organization. … Of the seventy-six emperors and five empresses who occupied the Byzantine throne, 15 were put to death, 7 were blinded or otherwise mutilated, 4 were deposed and imprisoned in monasteries, and 10 were compelled to abdicate. This list, comprising nearly half of the whole number, is sufficient indication of the horrors by which the history of the empire is only too often marked, and it may be frankly admitted that these dark stains, disfiguring pages which but for them would be bright with the things which were beautiful and glorious, go some way to excuse, if not to justify, the obloquy which Western writers have been so prone to cast upon the East. But it is not by considering the evil only, any more than the good only, that it is possible to form a just judgment upon an historic epoch. To judge the Byzantine Empire only by the crimes which defiled the palace would be as unjust as if the French people were to be estimated by nothing but the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, the Reign of Terror, and the Commune of 1871. The dynastic crimes and revolutions of New Rome were not a constant feature in her history. On the contrary, the times of trouble and anarchy were episodes between long periods of peace. They arose either from quarrels in the imperial family itself, which degraded the dignity of the crown, or from the contentions of pretenders struggling among themselves till one or other had worsted his rivals and was able to become the founder of a long dynasty. … The most deplorable epoch in the history of the Byzantine Empire, the period in which assassination and mutilation most abounded, was that in which it was exposed to the influence of the Crusaders, and thus brought into contact with Western Europe. … The Byzantine people, although in every respect the superiors of their contemporaries, were unable entirely to escape the influence of their neighborhood. As the guardians of classical civilization, they strove to keep above the deluge of barbarism by which the rest of the world was then inundated. But it was a flood whose waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, and sometimes all the high hills were covered, even where might have rested the ark in which the traditions of ancient culture were being preserved. … The Byzantine Empire was predestinated to perform in especial one great work in human history. That work was to preserve civilization during the period of barbarism which we call the Middle Ages. … Constantinople fell, and the whole Hellenic world passed into Turkish slavery. Western Europe looked on with unconcern at the appalling catastrophe. It was in vain that the last of the Palaiologoi cried to them for help. 'Christendom,' says Gibbon, 'beheld with indifference the fall of Constantinople,' … Up to her last hour she had never ceased, for more than a thousand years, to fight. In the fourth century she fought the Goths; in the fifth, the Huns and Vandals; in the sixth, the Slavs; in the seventh, the Persians, the Avars, and the Arabs; in the eighth, ninth, and tenth, the Bulgars, the Magyars, and the Russians; in the eleventh, the Koumanoi, the Petzenegoi, and the Seljoukian Turks; in the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth, the Ottomans, the Normans, the Crusaders, the Venetians, and the Genoese. No wonder that at last she fell exhausted. The wonder is, how she could keep herself alive so long. But it was by this long battle that she succeeded in saving from destruction, amid the universal cataclysm which overwhelmed the classical world, the civilization of the ancients, modified by the Christian religion. The moral and intellectual development of modern Europe are owing to the Byzantine Empire, if it be true that this development is the common offspring of antiquity upon the one hand and of Christianity upon the other."

_Demetrios Bikelas, The Byzantine Empire (Scottish Review, volume 8, 1886)._

BYZANTINE EMPIRE: End----------

BYZANTIUM, Beginnings of.

The ancient Greek city of Byzantium, which occupied part of the site of the modern city of Constantinople, was founded, according to tradition, by Megarians, in the seventh century B. C. Its situation on the Bosphorus enabled the possessors of the city to control the important corn supply which came from the Euxine, while its tunny fisheries were renowned sources of wealth. It was to the latter that the bay called the Golden Horn was said to owe its name. The Persians, the Lacedæmonians, the Athenians and the Macedonians were successive masters of Byzantium, before the Roman day, Athens and Sparta having taken and retaken the city from one another many times during their wars.

BYZANTIUM: B. C. 478. Taken by the Greeks from the Persians.

See GREECE: B. C. 478-477.

BYZANTIUM: B. C. 440. Unsuccessful revolt against Athens.

See ATHENS: B. C. 440-437.

BYZANTIUM: B. C. 408. Revolt and reduction by the Athenians.

See GREECE: B. C. 411-407.

BYZANTIUM: B. C. 340. Unsuccessful siege by Philip of Macedon.

See GREECE: B. C. 340.

BYZANTIUM: B. C. 336. Alliance with Alexander the Great.

See GREECE: B. C. 336-335.

BYZANTIUM: A. D. 194. Siege by Severus.

See ROME: A. D. 192-284.

BYZANTIUM: A. D. 267. Capture by the Goths.

See GOTHS: A. D. 258-267.

BYZANTIUM: A. D. 323. Siege by Constantine.

See ROME: A. D. 305-323.

BYZANTIUM: A. D. 330. Transformed into Constantinople.

See CONSTANTINOPLE.

{343} C.

ÇA IRA: The origin of the cry and the song.

"When the news of the disastrous retreat [of Washington, in 1776] through the Jerseys and the miseries of Valley Forge reached France, many good friends to America began to think that now indeed all was lost. But, the stout heart of Franklin never flinched. 'This is indeed bad news,' said he, 'but ça ira, ça ira [literally, 'this will go, this will go'], it will all come right in the end.' Old diplomats and courtiers, amazed at his confidence, passed about his cheering words. They were taken up by the newspapers; they were remembered by the people, and, in the dark days of the French Revolution, were repeated over and over again on every side, and made the subject of a stirring song which, till the Marseillaise Hymn appeared, had no equal in France."

_J. B. McMaster, History of the People of the United States, volume 2, page 89._

_L. Rosenthal, America and France, page 263._

"The original words (afterward much changed) were by Ladré, a street singer; and the music was a popular dance tune of the time composed by Bécourt, a drummer of the Grand Opera."

_Century Dictionary._

"The original name of the tune to which the words were written is 'Le Carillon National,' and it is a remarkable circumstance that it was a great favourite with the unfortunate Marie Antoinette, who used to play it on the harpsichord."

_J. Oxenford, Book of French Songs (note to "Ça ira")._

CAABA AT MECCA, The.

"An Arab legend asserts that this famous temple was erected by Abraham and his son Ishmael with the aid of the angel Gabriel. Mahomet lent his authority to the legend and devoted to it several chapters in the Koran, and thus it became one of the Mussulman articles of faith. Even before the introduction of Islamism this story was current through a great part of Arabia and spread abroad in proportion as the Ishmaelitish tribes gained ground. … This temple, whose name 'square house' indicates its form, is still preserved. It was very small and of very rude construction. It was not till comparatively recent times that it had a door with a lock. … For a long time the sole sacred object it contained was the celebrated black stone hadjarel-aswad, an aerolite, which is still the object of Mussulman veneration. … We have already mentioned Hobal, the first anthropomorphic idol, placed in the Caaba. This example was soon copied. … The Caaba thus became a sort of Arabian Pantheon, and even the Virgin Mary, with her child on her knees, eventually found a place there."

_F. Lenormant, Manual of Ancient History of the East, book 7, chapter 3._

ALSO IN: _Sir W. Muir, Life of Mahomet, chapter 2._

CABAL, The.

See CABINET, THE ENGLISH; also, ENGLAND: A. D. 1671.

CABALA, The.

"The term Cabala is usually applied to that wild system of Oriental philosophy which was introduced, it is uncertain at what period, into the Jewish schools: in a wider sense it comprehended all the decisions of the Rabbinical courts or schools, whether on religious or civil points."

_H. H. Milman, History of the Jews, volume 2, book 18._

"The philosophic Cabala aspired to be a more sublime and transcendental Rabbinism. It was a mystery not exclusive of, but above their more common mysteries; a secret more profound than their profoundest secrets. It claimed the same guaranty of antiquity, of revelation, of tradition; it was the true, occult, to few intelligible sense of the sacred writings and of the sayings of the most renowned Wise Men; the inward interpretation of the genuine interpretation of the Law and the Prophets. Men went on; they advanced, they rose from the most full and perfect study of the Talmuds to the higher doctrines, to the more divine contemplations of the Cabala. And the Zohar was the Book of the Cabala which soared almost above the comprehension of the wisest. … In its traditional, no doubt unwritten form, the Cabala, at least a Cabala, ascends to a very early date, the Captivity; in its proper and more mature form, it belongs to the first century, and reaches down to the end of the seventh century of our era. The Sepher Yetzira, the Book of Creation, which boasts itself to be derived from Moses, from Abraham, if not from Adam, or even aspires higher, belongs to the earlier period; the Zohar, the Light, to the later. The remote origin of the Cabala belongs to that period when the Jewish mind, during the Captivity, became so deeply impregnated with Oriental notions, those of the Persian or Zoroastrian religion. Some of the first principles of the Cabala, as well as many of the tenets, still more of the superstitions, of the Talmud, coincide so exactly with the Zendavesta … as to leave no doubt of their kindred and affiliation."

_H. H. Milman, History of the Jews, book 30._

CABILDO. The.

See LOUISIANA: A. D. 1769.

CABINET, The American.