CHAPTER XV

Chapter 166,872 wordsPublic domain

THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY, THE FOURTH CRUSADE, AND THE LATIN EMPIRE IN THE EAST (1095–1261)[27]

The Comnenian dynasty and Alexius I.—Decay of the Empire—The end of the Comneni—The Angeli—The mustering of the Fourth Crusade—The Conquest of Zara—The First and Second Captures of Constantinople—The Partition and Organisation of the Latin Empire—The Greek Revival—Rivalry of Constantinople and Thessalonica—The Latin Emperors—Michael Palæologus and the Fall of the Latin Empire—The Franks in the Peloponnesus.

[Sidenote: The Comnenian dynasty.]

The Comnenian dynasty, finally established by Alexius I. [see chapter vii.], ruled for more than a century over the Roman Empire in the East. We have already noticed the most stirring episodes of its external history, in tracing the dealings of the Comnenian Emperors with the Seljukian Turks, with the passing Crusaders, with the permanent Latin garrison in Syria, and with the Norman rulers of Apulia and Sicily, who strove to make southern Italy the starting-point for a Norman conquest of the Balkan Peninsula. It remains now to describe briefly the internal history of the Eastern Empire during the twelfth century, as a necessary preliminary to the understanding of the collapse of the Greek power in 1204.

[Sidenote: Alexius I., 1081–1118.]

The combination of strength and duplicity, which constituted the practical ability of Alexius Comnenus, had saved the Byzantine state from the ruin with which it had been threatened. But the rescue of the Empire had been accomplished at no small cost. The Crusaders had allowed Alexius to resume possession of a large share of Asia Minor, but the constant presence of Latins in the East was a permanent danger to him, both from their superior military capacity and their fierce Catholicism. The Eastern Empire sank into the condition of stagnation, which it was to retain for the rest of its existence. The low cunning and trickery of Alexius are glorified by his literary daughter Anna as the highest resources of civilisation when face to face with the barbarian Franks. Such methods might save the state, but they could hardly adapt it to meet the new conditions which Western activity in the East had brought about.

[Sidenote: Internal decay of the Eastern Empire.]

The military danger of the Frankish powers was not the worst result of the Crusades on the Byzantine Empire. Even more important was the sapping of its sources of wealth and the decay of its commercial prosperity, as the consequence of the development of the trade of the Italian republics, like Pisa, Genoa, and Venice, who really reaped nearly the whole material advantages of the Crusades. Acre and other Syrian ports began to supersede Constantinople as the great meeting-places of Eastern and Western trade. The skill and energy of the Italian merchants transferred the commerce of the Levant from Greek to Western hands. Since the loss of the rich agricultural districts of Asia Minor, the commerce of Constantinople was the one really solid source of Byzantine prosperity. The revenue of the imperial exchequer now began to fall off, and the disastrous expedients of Alexius to restore it made permanent ruin more certain. In the hope of making the Bosporus and Golden Horn as attractive to the Italian traders as the waters of the Levant, Alexius sought to entice the Venetians back to his ports by giving them exemption from customs dues (1082). The Venetians were established in a special quarter of Constantinople, exempt from the jurisdiction of the Greek authorities, with its Catholic church, its walls, and its magistrates. The Pisans had privileges less extensive but still considerable. Such concessions made the Italians easily able to undersell the native merchants and to establish their factories on an almost independent basis. But it was unlikely that the shrewd Venetians would be content with what they had got. Their settlement within the Empire as traders only paved the way to the time when they aspired to establish themselves as rulers. It was a strange turn to make arbiters of the destiny of the Empire those Venetians who had in former times protected themselves from Western Cæsars by parading their dependence on the Emperor at Constantinople, and whose city bears to this day the abiding impress of Byzantine art. The strong Comnenian Emperors postponed the danger for a time, but when the Empire was again divided between rival claimants, it was as natural to the Venetians as it was to the English and French in India to take advantage of the decay of an ancient but stagnant civilisation to turn from their factories and counting-houses to play the part of conquerors and rulers.

It is one of the innumerable proofs of the vitality of the East Roman system that this result came so slowly and succeeded so imperfectly. The latter part of the reign of Alexius seemed to revive the former glories of the Eastern Empire. The dynasty was firmly settled on the throne; the foreign enemies driven away or reduced to insignificance; the internal decay was too gradual to be readily perceived. On his death in 1118 Alexius handed on to his son an empire enlarged and peaceful. [Sidenote: John II., 1118–1143.] John II. Comnenus (1118–1143), called John the Good, was one of the best of Byzantine rulers. As vigorous a ruler and a better soldier than his father, his private character, stainless in its morals, was marked by qualities, such as frankness, generosity, and mercy, which rarely adorned the throne of the Eastern Cæsars. He reigned undisturbed by revolts or conspiracies, save those of his sister Anna, the historian, and his brother Isaac, and these foes within his household received from him a generous forgiveness that they did nothing to deserve. John was mostly occupied in his constant campaigns on the frontiers, fighting the Patzinaks of the lower Danube, the Hungarians and the Servians in Europe, and the Seljukian Turks and the Armenians in Asia. Master of Cilicia, he forced Raymond of Antioch to acknowledge his supremacy. Only his death in Cilicia, due to an accident in the hunting field, prevented his invasion of the Latin kingdom of Syria. Had he seriously grappled with the reform of administration and the finances, he might have inaugurated a new period of prosperity. But his effort to shake off the commercial supremacy of Venice involved him in a long and unsuccessful war with the rulers of the sea, which he was glad to end by restoring the Venetians to their former privileges, and by recognising them as lords of some of the Greek islands. Even as it was, John the Good did much to arrest decay.

[Sidenote: Manuel I., 1143–1180.]

Manuel I. Comnenus (1143–1180), John’s son and successor, was a worthy heir to the military talents of his father. But his violent passions sullied his private life, and his extravagance, ostentation, and vanity took away from the lustre of his domestic administration. He was one of the most Western in temperament of all the Greek sovereigns. He was proud of his prodigious personal strength, of his handsome person, and of his skill in all chivalrous exercises. He was the only Greek Emperor who could surpass the most famous knights of the West in the mimic war of the tournament. He had the spirit of a knight-errant, suggesting Richard Cœur de Lion rather than the sly and demure Oriental. When he had safely extricated himself from the perils of the Second Crusade [see page 192], he plunged into a series of wars in which he sought personal glory rather than the welfare of his Empire. There were strange tales of his wonderful personal adventures and hairbreadth escapes from Patzinaks and Turks. He introduced Western tournaments into Constantinople, had a truly Frankish ardour for crusading, re-armed his troops after the Western fashion with ponderous shields and heavy lances, and eagerly sought to connect himself by marriage with the great royal houses of the West. His first wife Bertha—called Irene to satisfy Greek susceptibilities—was a sister-in-law of the Emperor Conrad III., and his second wife was a princess of Antioch. His daughter married in succession the brother of the King of Hungary and the son of the Marquis of Montferrat. His son, Alexius, was wedded to the daughter of Louis VII. of France. His influence extended over all the Danubian states as far as the German frontier. His wars, if not always politic, were often successful. He defeated the strenuous attempts of King Roger of Sicily and his son William the Bad [see page 236] to invade his Empire. He waged a long and not inglorious war with Venice, and even when unable to destroy her privileges did something to counterbalance them by calling in rival Italian traders, such as the Genoese. When beaten by the Seljuks, he was able to negotiate an honourable peace. But his wastefulness brought the financial disorders to a crisis, and his utter neglect of routine threw the obsolete administrative system into confusion. Yet with all his faults he was a brilliant personality, and with his death the good fortune of the Comnenian dynasty came to an end.

[Sidenote: Alexius II., 1180–1183.]

Alexius II. (1180–1183), the son of Manuel, was a boy twelve years old, and his mother, Mary of Antioch, strove to carry on the government in his name. Her incapacity gave an opening for intrigues of the members of the royal house, and, two years later, Andronicus Comnenus, cousin of Manuel, displaced the Empress and became the guardian of Alexius with the title of Cæsar. [Sidenote: Usurpation of Andronicus, 1183–1185.] As soon as he was secure of power, Andronicus murdered his ward, married his widow, Agnes of France, and made himself sole Basileus. Andronicus was a strong and brave soldier, but overweeningly ambitious, wantonly cruel, and already infamous by a long career of brutality and treachery. His success in gaining power was greater than his success in retaining it. Rebellions broke out in the provinces. Cyprus shook itself free from his rule under the local Emperor Isaac Comnenus, who finally succumbed to Richard of England [see page 301]. Even the reign of terror which marked his rule did not check the plots of the angry nobles. The Normans again invaded Macedonia, and captured Thessalonica. So hateful did Andronicus become that a very small incident sufficed to bring his power to an end. During his absence from Constantinople, one of his ministers ordered the arrest of an incapable and cowardly noble named Isaac Angelus. Driven to despair at the prospect of the torments meted out for Andronicus’ victims, Isaac plucked up courage to resist, and took refuge in St. Sophia’s. The mob of Constantinople arose in revolt, declaring that it would have ‘no more old men or men with forked beards as Emperors.’ [Sidenote: End of the Comneni.] Andronicus hurried back, but all classes deserted him. He was tortured to death by the mob, and Isaac Angelus was declared his successor. With him the glorious house of Comnenus ingloriously expired (1185).

[Sidenote: Isaac II., 1185–1195.]

The reign of Isaac Angelus ushered in a worse period of degradation. Even the brutality of Andronicus had been in some measure redeemed by its strength, but under his weak and contemptible successor the Empire suffered from the worst results of incompetence. The Emperor lavished his revenues in building churches and palaces, in collecting relics and sacred icons, in ministering to the luxury and vanity of a crowd of parasites and dependants. He put the administrative offices up for sale, and allowed their purchasers to recoup themselves by oppressing the provincials. His ten years’ rule was full of military disasters. The imposition of a new tax was followed by the revolt of the Bulgarians, who had lived as peaceful subjects of the Empire since their conquest, two hundred years previously, by Basil II. [see pages 163–165]. In a short time the whole of Bulgaria had shaken off the yoke of Constantinople, and the mercenary arms of Conrad of Montferrat. The efforts of Isaac, who took the field in person against the rebels, were powerless to win back a warlike and united people. The loss of Bulgaria was not the only humiliation of Isaac’s reign. We have already seen how the Third Crusade dealt roughly with his power, how Frederick Barbarossa, provoked by his treachery, forced him to make an abject submission, and how Richard of England permanently turned Cyprus into a feudal Frankish kingdom, utterly unconnected with the Empire. Isaac had also to buy off the attacks of the Sultan of Roum by the payment of tribute. In the midst of all these disasters his wretched government was abruptly ended by a palace conspiracy, formed against him by his elder brother Alexius, while he was absent engaged in the Bulgarian war. Isaac hurried back to Constantinople, only to be deposed, blinded, and immured in a monastery (1195).

[Sidenote: Alexius III., 1195–1203.]

Alexius III. Angelus (1195–1203), was as wasteful, as profligate, and as incompetent as his brother, pillaging his subjects to reward the conspirators who had helped him to the throne. Rebellions broke out in the provinces, and the Venetians and Pisans fought out their feuds in the streets of the capital. The efforts to reconquer Bulgaria proved abortive, and the Turks of Roum again threatened the heart of the Empire. The utter feebleness of the Byzantine power tempted the Emperor Henry VI. to re-enact the part of Robert Guiscard and Roger. His death postponed, without averting, the danger of Western conquest. Philip of Swabia was the brother-in-law of the deposed Isaac, and welcomed his son Alexius, when he escaped in a Pisan ship from his ill-guarded prison. The Venetians, though loaded with privileges, clamoured for more. It was just at the moment when the anarchy of Constantinople had reached its height that the army of Crusaders, collected from all Europe by the zeal of Innocent III. and the preaching of Fulk of Neuilly, appeared at Venice, waiting to take ship thence in the vessels of the republic for the Holy Land.

The golden age of the Crusades was now over. The difficulties that limited the success of the Third Crusade now prevented even the undertaking of a new one on the same grand lines. The long efforts of Celestine III. to start a new Crusade had borne little fruit. [Sidenote: The mustering of the Fourth Crusade, 1198–1202.] Fulk of Neuilly began his preaching very soon after Innocent III.’s accession to the Papacy, and the new Pope warmly supported him. But none of the great princes of Europe responded to his call. It was not until 1201 that the beginnings of a crusading army was gathered together under leaders more of the status of the heroes of the First Crusade than of those of the Second or Third. Theobald III., Count of Champagne, was not deterred by his brother Henry’s death from striving to redeem his brother’s lost kingdom. Among the lords of Champagne that attended him was his marshal, Geoffrey of Villehardouin, who has left us a famous account of the expedition. Among Theobald’s companions of high rank were his kinsman Louis, Count of Blois, and his sister Mary, who accompanied her husband, Baldwin IX., Count of Flanders, Baldwin’s brothers Eustace and Henry, and Simon of Montfort, soon to become famous as the leader of the Albigensian Crusade. Theobald of Champagne was appointed general-in-chief, and it was resolved to attack Egypt, as the real centre of the Ayoubite power. Early in 1201, ambassadors of the Crusaders, conspicuous among whom was Villehardouin, appeared at Venice to negotiate with the Republic as to their means of transport. After lengthened negotiations a treaty was concluded between them and Henry Dandolo, the blind and aged, but still ardent, subtle, and active Doge. It was agreed that the Venetians should provide the necessary transports, with provisions for a year, and a convoy of fifty galleys. But in return, the Frankish Crusaders agreed to pay Venice the vast sum of 85,000 marks of silver, and to divide all conquests and booty equally between themselves and the Venetians. It was characteristic of the Italian seafaring republics to drive hard bargains with the Crusaders, and Dandolo had little concern for the Holy War, though he had infinite zeal for the interests of Venice. As soon as the Crusaders began to collect by the lagoons to embark for Egypt, he aspired to use them as soldiers of the Republic rather than of the Church. The appearance of the fugitive Alexius in Italy already suggested the idea of diverting the expedition against Constantinople.

There were still long delays. The death of the Count of Champagne left vacant the supreme command, and, after several attempts to fill it up, the Crusaders appointed as their chief the North Italian Boniface of Montferrat, brother of Conrad of Montferrat, and a scheming and unscrupulous adventurer. He was soon approached by King Philip of Swabia, who urged upon him the claims of the young Alexius, his kinsman. The Hohenstaufen monarch and the Doge of Venice now combined to recommend the Crusaders to undertake the restoration of Isaac Comnenus, as a preliminary to their attack on the infidels. Even at this early stage it is more than likely that the Venetians had formed a deliberate design to divert the Crusade, and had perhaps even an understanding with the Saracens to that effect.

[Sidenote: The capture of Zara, 1202.]

When the spring of 1202 came, the passage from Venice was still unaccountably delayed. Many of the Crusaders had spent all their resources during their long stay, and the leaders were quite unable to pay the Venetians the huge sum they had promised. Dandolo now proposed that they should acquit themselves of part of their debt by helping Venice to conquer the maritime town of Zara, an old enemy of the Republic, and the haunt of pirates that preyed on its trade. Zara belonged to the King of Hungary, who had also taken the cross. But the spirit of adventure and love of booty was stronger among the Franks than zeal for the Holy War. Despite the protests of Simon of Montfort against the turning aside of a crusading army to fight a Catholic and crusading prince, it was agreed to accept Dandolo’s suggestion. In October, the Crusaders at last left the Lido. In November Zara fell, after a short siege, into the hands of the united Venetian and Frankish host. The Pope vigorously denounced the forsworn soldiers of the Cross. But the Venetians paid no heed, and the Franks very little, to his fulminations. The season was now too late to make a start, and the army took up winter quarters in Dalmatia. Alexius now appeared in person in the crusading camp, and his glittering offers were greedily accepted. [Sidenote: The Crusade turned against Constantinople, 1203.] Boniface of Montferrat thought more of his own advantage than of the sacred cause. The pious scruples of the Count of Flanders were finally allayed. In the early summer of 1203, the Crusaders made sail for the Ægean. The fatal results of the decay of the Greek marine now made themselves clearly manifest. Alexius III. was the first ruler of Constantinople who had to defend his capital, without having the command of the sea. With next to no resistance, the Venetians and Franks passed through the Dardanelles, and encamped at Scutari. The land-attack on Constantinople was beaten off, but the Venetians, headed by the blind old Doge, stormed the sea-wall, and burnt the adjacent ports of the city. The incapable and cowardly Emperor fled in alarm to Thrace, whereupon the army took the blind Isaac out of prison, and restored him to his throne, but invited his son Alexius to share it with him (July 1203).

[Sidenote: First capture of Constantinople. Restoration of Isaac Angelus and Alexius IV., July 1203.]

The Crusaders had made an easy conquest, but their main feeling was one of disgust that the premature surrender of the city had deprived them of a chance of a richer plunder than their imaginations had ever conceived before they saw the wonders of the New Rome. They settled down for the next winter in the suburbs of the capital, while Isaac and Alexius IV. left no stone unturned to satisfy their clamour for their pay. When the Emperors were reduced, in their efforts to appease the Latins, to plunder the churches of their jewels and reliquaries, and impose odious taxes on their subjects, the mob of Constantinople, taught by the success of recent revolutions to regard itself as all-powerful, rose in revolt against them, and murdered all the Latins within reach. Isaac, unnerved by captivity, died suddenly, it was said, of fright. [Sidenote: Revolution in Constantinople. Alexius V., Feb. 1204.] Alexius IV. was strangled. A strong and daring adventurer, Alexius Ducas, surnamed Murzuphlus from his shaggy eyebrows, was proclaimed the Emperor Alexius V. (February 1204). The house of Angelus thus quitted history even less gloriously than the house of Comnenus.

[Sidenote: Second capture and sack of Constantinople, April 1204.]

It was but a revolution in the capital, and the provinces hardly recognised the usurper. But Alexius V. threw a new energy into the defences of Constantinople, and the Crusaders found that they must either retire discomfited, or capture the city for a second time. After two months of preparations, they advanced in April to the final assault. This time they limited their attack to the sea-wall. The first effort was a failure, but a few days later a second onslaught admitted them into a corner of the city. There was still a chance for the Greeks, if they had had courage to stubbornly defend the city street by street. But the mercenary soldiers would not fight, and Alexius V., despairing of further resistance, fled from the capital, though he soon fell into the hands of the Crusaders, who put him to death. Constantinople now belonged to the Franks, and a hideous three days of plunder, murder, lust, and sacrilege, at last satisfied them for the moderation they had been forced to show upon the occasion of the first conquest. The priceless relics of ancient art were barbarously destroyed: the very churches were ruthlessly pillaged, and the city of Constantine was robbed for ever of that unique splendour that had made it for ages the wonder of the world.

The cry of indignation, that had already broken out when the Crusaders turned aside to besiege Zara, was renewed on their abandoning their campaign against the infidel to conquer a Christian city. But the feebleness of the opposition showed that the crusading spirit was dying, and even Innocent III., who was bitterly grieved at the failure of the Crusade, found consolation in the hoped-for collapse of the Greek schism, and made his peace with the Latin conquerors of Constantinople. [Sidenote: The partition and organisation of the Latin Empire, 1204–1261.] The victorious Westerns now proceeded to the division of the spoil. The Venetians and the Franks still stood apart, jealously watching over their respective interests. There was no longer any talk of appointing a new Greek Emperor. It was agreed to elect from the crusading host a Latin Emperor and Patriarch, and it was further determined that the party that furnished the Emperor should yield to the other the choice of the Patriarch. A college of six French prelates and six Venetian nobles was set up to elect the Emperor. There was keen rivalry for the post. Boniface of Montferrat, as general, seemed to have an obvious claim, but the Venetians were unwilling to support the candidature of an Italian prince, an ally of the Hohenstaufen. Refusing the dangerous honour for their own duke, the Venetians declared for Count Baldwin of Flanders, who was duly elected Emperor in May. The papal legate crowned him in St. Sophia’s, and he was invested with the purple buskins and all the other trappings of the Basileus of the Romans. Thomas Morosini, a Venetian, was chosen Patriarch. But the election of the heads of the Church and State was an easier business than the division of the spoils amidst a whole swarm of greedy claimants.

Like the conquerors of Jerusalem after the First Crusade, the conquerors of Constantinople set up a feudal state on the ruins of the Oriental system that they had destroyed. The Emperor Baldwin was to be overlord of all the Crusading chieftains, and was moreover to have as his domains the capital, saving the Venetian quarter, the greater part of Thrace with Adrianople, and the eastern islands of the Ægean, Samothrace, Cos, Lesbos, Samos and Chios. Boniface of Montferrat was consoled for his disappointment with the title of King of Thessalonica. He was still strong enough to reject the offer of a patrimony in Asia which the Latins had still to conquer, and to profess that he held Thessalonica in his own right, independently of the Emperor of Romania. He established himself in Macedonia and Thessaly. The Venetians had the lion’s share of the plunder. They had henceforth a large slice of Constantinople with the practical monopoly of the trade of the Empire. They also were recognised as lords of most of the islands and coast lands, including the Ionian islands, Eubœa, most of the Cyclades and some of the Sporades, numerous settlements on the coasts of the Peloponnesus, and a large domain north of the Corinthian Gulf, along Acarnania, Ætolia, Epirus and Albania, where, however, they were not strong enough to penetrate far into the interior. Crete they purchased from Boniface of Montferrat. Dandolo, who assumed the title of _Despotes_, now styled himself ‘lord of a quarter and half-a-quarter’ of the Empire. The minor Frankish chiefs also received great fiefs. Louis of Blois became Duke of Nicæa and of Nicomedia: Villehardouin became Prince of Achaia: Odo of La Roche Lord of Athens, and there were counts of Thebes, dukes of Philippopolis, and marquises of Corinth. Each feudatory had still his fief to conquer as best he could, and the lords, to whom lands in Asia were assigned, never obtained effective possession of their territories. The more fortunate European barons could only enjoy their grants by calling in the help of vassal chieftains, whose immunities left them little more than a show of power outside their own domains. No feudal state was ever strong, but no feudal state was ever so weak as the Latin Empire in the East. It had to contend against all the characteristic evils of feudalism, the infinite multiplication of the sovereign power, the constant feuds of rival chieftains, the permanent jealousy of every vassal of the power of his overlord. But it had special difficulties of its own of a kind impossible to be got over. The magnates of the expedition had cleverly manipulated the division of the spoils to their own advantage, and the poorer Crusaders were bitterly discontented. A comparison of the famous history of Villehardouin with the less well known account of the Crusade by the simple Picard knight, Robert of Clari, shows how bitterly the ‘poor knights’ resented the overbearing conduct of the ‘great men,’ whose standpoint is represented by the Marshal of Champagne. Moreover, Germans fought with Champenois and Burgundians, North Italians with Flemings, and all with the Venetians. Even if the Crusaders had been united, they were a mere handful of adventurers. The Venetians, who had got for themselves the richest and most accessible parts of the Empire, thought little of colonisation and much of trade. Yet even the Venetians drew wealth from the richly cultivated islands which now became the appanage, and were soon a chief source of wealth, to the noblest houses of the island city. The Ionian islands and Crete remained Venetian for many centuries; the interior uplands were hardly Latin for two generations. It speaks well for the prowess of the Frankish lords that they held their position so long as this.

There was no attempt at mixing between Latins and Greeks. The quick sympathy that had made the Normans Italians in Sicily, English in England, and Irish in Ireland, no longer remained with the Frankish hosts. Their civilisation was too stereotyped, their ideas too stiff, their contempt for their conquered subjects too profound. It was even less possible for the Greeks to assimilate themselves with their conquerors. The old-world civilisation of the Byzantine realm was infinitely more hide-bound than the feudal system of the Franks. It was impossible to combine French feudalism with Byzantine officialism. The Greek despised the rude and uncultivated ‘barbarians’ who now ruled the heritage of Rome. The Latin scorned the cunning and effeminate Eastern who had succumbed so readily to his sword. It had been hard enough for the Comneni to keep together the decaying fortunes of the Eastern Empire. It was quite impossible for the French and Flemings to succeed where they had failed.

[Sidenote: The Greek revival.]

The barrier of religion would have kept the Latins and Greeks asunder, even if differences of nationality and civilisation had not proved effective causes of separation. Despite the rejoicings of Innocent III., Orthodox and Catholic were more divided than ever, when the Filioque was chanted by azymites in the choir of St. Sophia, and beardless Latins, who regarded the Pope as the source of all ecclesiastical power, took into their hands every Church dignity and possession, and branded their rightful owners as schismatics. Orthodoxy and the pressure of the Latin invaders united Greek national feeling as it had never been united before. In the mountains of Albania and Epirus, the bolder Greeks fled from the yoke of the conqueror, and maintained their independence against any force that the Latins could bring to bear against them. A bastard of the house of Angelus became Despot of Epirus. Even in Thrace and in the Peloponnesus there were independent Greek States. Into Asia the Crusaders hardly penetrated at all. Two brothers of the house of Comnenus established the independence of distant Trebizond, and dignified themselves, like Isaac in Cyprus, with the title of Emperor. [Sidenote: Theodore I. Lascaris, 1204–1222.] Theodore Lascaris, a brave soldier who escaped from the sack of Constantinople, proclaimed himself Emperor at Nicæa, and ruled over the western parts of Asia Minor. It was well for Greeks and Latins alike that the dissension and decay of the Seljukians of Roum, and the pressure of Tartar invasion, deprived Islam of its power of aggression. In Europe the Wallachio-Bulgarian kingdom easily maintained its independence and enlarged its boundaries at the expense of the crusading state. Nothing but the secure possession of the great military position of Constantinople, and the command of the sea, which the Venetian galleys still kept open for them, allowed the Latin Empire to keep up a feeble existence for nearly sixty years.

[Sidenote: Rivalry of Constantinople and Thessalonica.]

From the very beginning the Latin settlers had to contend against dissension within and invasion from without. Boniface of Thessalonica married the widow of Isaac Angelus, Margaret of Hungary (called by the Greeks Irene), and posed as an independent prince and the protector of the Greek population. He refused homage to the Emperor, and war broke out between the Flemings of Constantinople and the Lombards of Thessalonica. No sooner were his pretensions rudely shattered than the Emperor was called away to meet the danger of Bulgarian invasion. Johanitsa, the tsar of the Bulgarians, turned his arms against the Crusaders, and invaded Thrace. In April 1205, a decisive battle was fought at Adrianople, when the simulated flight of the wild Bulgar hordes drew the chivalry of the West to break up their solid ranks. [Sidenote: Baldwin I., 1204–1205.] Thereupon the Bulgarians rallied, and took advantage of the enemy’s disorder to inflict on them a complete defeat. Louis of Blois was among the slain. Baldwin was taken prisoner and murdered. The Marshal of Champagne, and Henry of Flanders, Baldwin’s brother, almost alone survived of the Latin chieftains.

[Sidenote: Henry, 1206–1216.]

Henry of Flanders had already made some progress in the conquest of Greek Asia, when the news of the Bulgarian invasion called him to defend his brother’s throne. He was now recognised as Emperor. He was politic as well as brave, and the Greeks themselves admitted that he ‘treated the Romans as if they were his own people.’ But he could neither conquer Asia, defeat the Bulgarians, nor even permanently conciliate his Greek subjects; though his zeal for shielding them from Catholic persecution drew upon him the thunders of the Vatican. He made a treaty with Theodore Lascaris, which gave him at least a little corner of Asia. He was the strongest of the Latin Emperors. But he profited by the even greater weakness of the kingdom of Thessalonica. In 1207, Boniface of Montferrat perished, like Baldwin, at the hands of the Bulgarians. The Despot of Epirus took advantage of the minority of his infant son, Demetrius, to extend his conquests. The Frankish lords of the kingdom called in the Emperor Henry, who found some consolation for his disappointments in the North, when he gave the law to the Peloponnesus and the islands in a great Diet held in 1210, compelled the regent of the young king to do him homage, and received the submission even of the Venetian lords of the Archipelago, conferring on the great house of Sanudo the Duchy of the Archipelago or the Cyclades. Even the Despot of Epirus formally acknowledged his sovereignty. Henry died in 1216, and with him perished the best hopes of the Latins in Greece.

[Sidenote: Peter of Courtenay, 1216–1219.]

Peter of Courtenay, Count of Auxerre, a grandson of Louis VI. of France, and the husband of Iolande, sister of Baldwin and Henry, was now chosen Emperor. He was in Europe at the time of his election, and hastened to Constantinople to take possession of the Empire. He rashly chose to disembark at Durazzo and follow the ancient Via Egnatia over the hills to Macedonia and Thrace. When amongst the mountains, his little army was overwhelmed by the Despot of Epirus, and he himself was captured, and died in captivity. His wife, who had more prudently proceeded to Constantinople by sea, now acted as regent for her young son Robert, the next Emperor.

[Sidenote: Robert, 1219–1228.]

The reign of Robert of Courtenay marked the rapid decline of the Eastern Empire. It witnessed the complete destruction of the Kingdom of Thessalonica. In 1223, when King Demetrius was abroad, seeking in vain Western help, Theodore Angelus took possession of his capital, and henceforth ruled without a rival from the Adriatic to the Ægean; and, like the lords of Nicæa and Trebizond, assumed the pompous style of Emperor of the Romans. [Sidenote: Fall of Thessalonica, 1223.] John Vatatzes, the successor of Theodore Lascaris at Nicæa, renewed the war with the Latins of Constantinople. It seemed almost a race between the two Theodores, as to which should first drive out the Latins. The domain of Robert was reduced to Constantinople and its suburbs. He went to implore help from the West, and died during his journey in 1228.

[Sidenote: Baldwin II., 1228–1261.]

Baldwin II. (1228–1261), the youngest of Peter of Courtenay’s sons, a boy of eleven, was now proclaimed Emperor. John de Brienne, the ex-king of Jerusalem [see chapter xix], was soon called in to hold the regency. He married his daughter to Baldwin, was crowned joint-Emperor, and saved his ward’s throne from the Greeks and Bulgarians. On John’s death in 1237, new perils beset the young Baldwin. The Latin state had had a few years of breathing time through the rivalry of the Angeli of Thessalonica and the house of Ducas, to which, after the death of Theodore Lascaris, had passed the Empire of Nicæa. [Sidenote: Union of Thessalonica and Nicæa.] John III. Ducas ended the strife in his own favour by the conquest of Thessalonica in 1241. Henceforth, the Angeli had to be contented with the title of Despot of Epirus, and were confined to the uplands of the west. A single strong Greek power now threatened Constantinople, both from the side of Asia and the side of Europe. [Sidenote: John III. Ducas, 1222–1254.] Moreover, John III. was a competent administrator, a good warrior, and an able financier. Nothing but the mighty walls of Constantinople, which the Greeks had vainly attempted to assault, and the Venetian command of the sea, now saved the Latin Empire from immediate extinction. Baldwin II. spent most of his long reign in the vain quest of Frankish assistance. He left his son as a pledge to Western bankers, and sold the most precious relics of Constantinople to St. Louis. He had to sell the lead of his palace-roof to buy food, and warm himself by burning the wood of his outhouses. But the death of John III. in 1254 prolonged the long agony of the Latin Empire. Michael Palæologus, an ambitious and unscrupulous soldier, became regent for the infant grandson of John III., and soon associated himself with his ward as joint ruler. [Sidenote: Michael VIII. Palæologus, 1259–1282.] In 1259 Michael was crowned Emperor at Nicæa, and the rights of his little colleague were soon forgotten. But Michael VIII. showed vigour and military capacity which went some way to justify his usurpation. In 1261, he profited by the absence of the Venetian fleet to make a sudden attack on Constantinople. [Sidenote: Conquest of Constantinople, 1261.] The unlucky Baldwin could offer no effective resistance. On 15th August, Michael entered in triumph the ancient capital, and the Latin Empire perished, unwept and unhonoured.

[Sidenote: The revived Greek Empire, 1261–1453.]

The Venetians, alarmed to find that Michael had transferred their privileges to their Genoese rivals, joined with the Franks of the Peloponnesus in raising a cry for a Crusade against the victorious Greeks, which was further preached by Pope Urban IV. Charles of Anjou, who became King of Naples and Sicily in 1265, was willing, and seemed eminently fitted, to carry out the old aggressive policy of the Guiscards. But, though the proposal that he should lead a new Crusade against the Orthodox frightened Michael into insincere proposals to buy off Western opposition by ending the Greek schism, his submission had no permanent result when the fear of a Crusade was removed. Michael never ruled with the authority of the Macedonians or the Comneni, but his careful measures of reforms, and his warlike capacity, started the Greek Empire on the last stage of its career, which gave it nearly two centuries more of existence before it succumbed to the Ottoman Turks.

[Sidenote: The Latins in Peloponnesus.]

The Latin power still partly continued in the islands and in the Peloponnesus. Not only did the Venetians retain their grip on the Archipelago and the coast, but the proximity of the sea enabled some of the Franks of Southern Greece to continue to rule their principalities, after Baldwin II. had been driven from his throne. They had as their code of law the Assizes of Romania, a free adaptation of the famous Assizes of Jerusalem. They even effected some sort of partial amalgamation with their native subjects. Their churches and fortresses long remained, as in Cyprus and Syria, the strongest witnesses of their power. It was not till 1310 that the Dukes of Athens, of the house of Brienne, succumbed, not to the Greeks, but to their own Catalan mercenaries. The Princes of Achaia reigned even longer. The Venetians saved both the Ionian islands and Crete alike from the Greeks and from the Turks. To the end of the Middle Ages, titular dukes, princes, and emperors of the Eastern world kept up the memory of one of the strangest and most daring of Western conquests, but one which was useless to the West, and only weakened the Christian East, at a time when the rise of the Ottoman Turks required every effort to be made to stem the tide of that barbarian conquest which was soon to prove fatal to Latin and Greek alike.

GENEALOGY OF THE COMNENI AND ANGELI.

GENEALOGY OF THE LATIN EMPERORS OF CONSTANTINOPLE.

Louis VI. of France. | | Peter, Baldwin VIII., Count of Flanders. _m._ heiress of Courtenay. | | +--------------+--+-----------+ | | | | | BALDWIN I. HENRY, Iolande _m._ PETER of Courtenay, (IX. of Flanders), 1206–1216. | 1216–1217, 1204–1205. | ob. 1218. | +-------------+----------+ | | ROBERT, BALDWIN II., 1218–1228. 1228–1261, ob. 1273, _m._ Mary, daughter of JOHN OF BRIENNE, Co-Emperor, 1231–1237.