CHAPTER X

THE RESTORATION OF THE GREEK EMPIRE

[1204-1391 A.D.]

THEODORE (I) LASCARIS AND JOANNES VATATZES (1204-1254 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1222-1259 A.D.]]

The loss of Constantinople in 1204 had restored a momentary vigour to the Greeks. From their palaces, the princes and nobles were driven into the field; and the fragments of the falling monarchy were grasped by the hands of the most vigorous or the most skilful candidates. In the long and barren pages of the Byzantine annals, it would not be an easy task to equal the two characters of Theodore Lascaris and Joannes Ducas Vatatzes, who had replanted and upheld the Roman standard in Nicæa in Bithynia. The difference of their virtues was happily suited to the diversity of their situation. In his first efforts, the fugitive Lascaris commanded only three cities and two thousand soldiers; his reign was the season of generous and active despair; in every military operation he staked his life and crown; and his enemies, of the Hellespont and the Mæander, were surprised by his celerity and subdued by his boldness.

A victorious reign of eighteen years expanded the principality of Nicæa to the magnitude of an empire. The throne of his successor and son-in-law Vatatzes was founded on a more solid basis, a larger scope, and more plentiful resources; and it was the temper, as well as the interest, of Vatatzes to calculate the risk, to expect the moment, and to insure the success of his ambitious designs. In the decline of the Latins we have briefly exposed the progress of the Greeks, the prudent and gradual advances of a conqueror who, in a reign of thirty-three years, rescued the provinces from national and foreign usurpers, till he pressed on all sides the imperial city--a leafless and sapless trunk, which must fall at the first stroke of the axe.

But his interior and peaceful administration is still more deserving of notice and praise. The calamities of the times had wasted the numbers and the substance of the Greeks; the motives and the means of agriculture were extirpated; and the most fertile lands were left without cultivation or inhabitants. A portion of this vacant property was occupied and improved by the command and for the benefit of the emperor; a powerful hand and a vigilant eye supplied and surpassed, by a skilful management, the minute diligence of a private farmer. The royal domain became the garden and granary of Asia; and, without impoverishing the people, the sovereign acquired a fund of innocent and productive wealth. His first wife was Irene, the daughter of Theodore Lascaris, a woman more illustrious by her personal merit, the milder virtues of her sex, than by the blood of the Angeli and Comneni that flowed in her veins and transmitted the inheritance of the empire. After her death he was contracted to Anne, or Constance, a natural daughter of the emperor Frederick II; but as the bride had not attained the years of puberty, Vatatzes placed in his solitary bed an Italian damsel of her train, and his amorous weakness bestowed on the concubine the honours, though not the title, of lawful empress. The slaves of the Latins, without law or peace, applauded the happiness of their brethren who had resumed their national freedom; and Vatatzes employed the laudable policy of convincing the Greeks of every dominion that it was their interest to be enrolled in the number of his subjects.

THEODORE (II) LASCARIS AND JOANNES (IV) LASCARIS (1254-1259 A.D.)

A strong shade of degeneracy is visible between Joannes Vatatzes and his son Theodore. Yet the character of Theodore was not devoid of energy; he had been educated in the school of his father, in the exercise of war and hunting. Constantinople was yet spared; but in the three years of a short reign he thrice led his armies into the heart of Bulgaria. His virtues were sullied by a choleric and suspicious temper. The cruelty of the emperor was exasperated by the pangs of sickness, the approach of a premature end, and the suspicion of poison and magic. The lives and fortunes, the eyes and limbs, of his kinsmen and nobles were sacrificed to each sally of passion. In his last hours the emperor testified a wish to forgive and be forgiven, a just anxiety for the fate of Joannes, his son and successor, who, at the age of eight years, was condemned to the dangers of a long minority. His last choice entrusted the office of guardian to the sanctity of the patriarch Arsenius, and to the courage of George Muzalon, the great domestic, who was equally distinguished by the royal favour and the public hatred. The holy rites were interrupted by a sedition of the guards. Muzalon, his brothers, and his adherents were massacred at the foot of the altar; and the absent patriarch was associated with a new colleague, with Michael Palæologus, the most illustrious in birth and merit of the Greek nobles.

MICHAEL (VIII) PALÆOLOGUS (1259-1282 A.D.)

As early as the middle of the eleventh century, the noble race of the Palæologi stands high and conspicuous in the Byzantine history. It was the valiant George Palæologus who placed the father of the Comneni on the throne; and his kinsmen, or descendants, continue in each generation to lead the armies and councils of the state. In his early youth Michael was promoted to the office of constable, or commander of the French mercenaries; the private expense of a day never exceeded three pieces of gold; but his ambition was rapacious and profuse, and his gifts were doubled by the graces of his conversation and manners. The love of the soldiers and people excited the jealousy of the court; and Michael thrice escaped from the dangers in which he was involved by his own imprudence or that of his friends.

[Sidenote: [1251-1258 A.D.]]

Under the reign of Justice and Vatatzes, a dispute arose between two officers, one of whom accused the other of maintaining the hereditary right of the Palæologi. The cause was decided, according to the new jurisprudence of the Latins, by single combat: the defendant was overthrown; but he persisted in declaring that himself alone was guilty, and that he had uttered these rash or treasonable speeches without the approbation or knowledge of his patron.

Yet a cloud of suspicion hung over the innocence of the constable; he was still pursued by the whispers of malevolence; and a subtle courtier, the archbishop of Philadelphia, urged him to accept the judgment of God in the fiery proof of the ordeal. Three days before the trial, the patient’s arm was enclosed in a bag and secured by the royal signet; and it was incumbent on him to bear a red-hot ball of iron three times from the altar to the rails of the sanctuary, without artifice and without injury.

Palæologus eluded the dangerous experiment with sense and pleasantry. “I am a soldier,” said he, “and will boldly enter the lists with my accusers; but a layman, a sinner like myself, is not endowed with the gift of miracles. Your piety, most holy prelate, may deserve the interposition of heaven, and from your hands I will receive the fiery globe, the pledge of my innocence.” The archbishop started; the emperor smiled; and the absolution or pardon of Michael was approved by new rewards and new services.

In the succeeding reign, as he held the government of Nicæa, he was secretly informed that the mind of the absent prince was poisoned with jealousy, and that death or blindness would be his final reward. Instead of awaiting the return and sentence of Theodore, the constable with some followers escaped from the city and the empire; and though he was plundered by the Turkomans of the desert, he found a hospitable refuge in the court of the sultan. In the ambiguous state of an exile, Michael reconciled the duties of gratitude and loyalty; drawing his sword against the Tatars, admonishing the garrisons of the Roman limit, and promoting by his influence the restoration of peace, in which his pardon and recall were honourably included.

While he guarded the West against the despot of Epirus, Michael was again suspected and condemned to the palace; and such were his loyalty and weakness that he submitted to be led in chains above six hundred miles from Durazzo to Nicæa. The civility of the messenger alleviated his disgrace; the emperor’s sickness dispelled his danger; and the last breath of Theodore which recommended his infant son, at once acknowledged the innocence and the power of Palæologus.

[Sidenote: [1258-1261 A.D.]]

But his innocence had been too unworthily treated, and his power was too strongly felt, to curb an aspiring subject in the fair field that was opened to his ambition. In the council after the death of Theodore, he was the first to pronounce and the last to violate the oath of allegiance to Muzalon; and so dexterous was his conduct that he reaped the benefit without incurring the guilt, or at least the reproach, of the subsequent massacre. In the choice of a regent, he balanced the interests and passions of the candidates, turning their envy and hatred from himself against each other; and forced every competitor to own that, after his own claims, those of Palæologus were best entitled to the preference.

Under the title of grand duke, he accepted or assumed during a long minority the active powers of government; the patriarch was a venerable name; and the factious nobles were seduced or oppressed by the ascendant of his genius. The fruits of the economy of Vatatzes were deposited in a strong castle on the banks of the Hermus, in the custody of the faithful Varangians; the constable retained his command or influence over the foreign troops. He employed the guards to possess the treasure, and the treasure to corrupt the guards; and whatsoever might be the abuse of the public money, his character was above suspicion of private avarice. By himself, or by his emissaries, he strove to persuade every rank of subjects that their own prosperity would rise in just proportion to the establishment of his authority. The weight of taxes was suspended, the perpetual theme of popular complaint; and he prohibited the trials by the ordeal and judicial combat. For the interest of the prince and people, without any selfish views for himself or his family, the great duke consented to guard and instruct the son of Theodore. It was afterwards agreed that Joannes and Michael should be proclaimed as joint emperors, and raised on the buckler; but that the pre-eminence should be reserved for the birthright of the former.

MICHAEL PALÆOLOGUS CROWNED EMPEROR (1259 A.D.)

Palæologus was content; but on the day of the coronation, and in the cathedral of Nicæa, his zealous adherents most vehemently urged the just priority of his age and merit. The unseasonable dispute was eluded by postponing to a more convenient opportunity the coronation of Joannes Lascaris; and he walked with a slight diadem in the train of his guardian, who alone received the imperial crown from the hands of the patriarch. A full harvest of honours and employments was distributed among his friends by the grateful Palæologus. In his own family he created a despot and two sebastocrators; Alexius Strategopulus was decorated with the title of cæsar, and that veteran commander soon repaid the obligation by restoring Constantinople, as we have seen, to the Greek emperor.

[Sidenote: [1261-1282 A.D.]]

It was in the second year of his reign, while he resided in the palace and gardens of Nymphæum, near Smyrna, that the first messenger arrived at the dead of night; and the stupendous intelligence was imparted to Michael, after he had been gently waked by the tender precaution of his sister Eulogia. The man was unknown or obscure: he produced no letters from the victorious cæsar; nor could it easily be credited, after the defeat of Vatatzes and the recent failure of Palæologus himself, that the capital had been surprised by a detachment of eight hundred soldiers. As an hostage, the doubtful author was confined with the assurance of death or an ample recompense; and the court was left some hours in the anxiety of hope and fear, till the messengers of Alexius arrived with the authentic intelligence, and displayed the trophies of the conquest--the sword and sceptre, the buskins and bonnet, of the usurper Baldwin, which he had dropped in his precipitate flight.[85]

RETURN AND RULE OF THE GREEK EMPEROR

So eager was the impatience of the prince and people, that Michael made his triumphal entry into Constantinople only twenty days after the expulsion of the Latins. The Golden Gate was thrown open at his approach; the devout conqueror dismounted from his horse, and a miraculous image of Mary the Conductress was borne before him, that the divine Virgin in person might appear to conduct him to the temple of her Son, the cathedral of St. Sophia. But after the first transport of devotion and pride, he sighed at the dreary prospect of solitude and ruin. The palace was defiled with smoke and dirt and the gross intemperance of the Franks; whole streets had been consumed by fire, or were decayed by the injuries of time; the sacred and profane edifices were stripped of their ornaments; and, as if they were conscious of their approaching exile, the industry of the Latins had been confined to the work of pillage and destruction. Trade had expired under the pressure of anarchy and distress, and the numbers of inhabitants had decreased with the opulence of the city.[b]

Michael VIII was eager to efface the mark of foreign domination from the capital of the empire, and to repair the injuries of time; but his plans were injudicious, and his success extremely limited. He aspired to be the second founder of the city of Constantinople, as well as of the Eastern Roman Empire. The nobility of his dominions were invited to inhabit the capital by the gift of places and pensions; traders were attracted by monopolies and privileges. The wealth that ought to have been expended in restoring communications between the dispersed and dissevered portions of the Greek nation, in repairing roads and bridges, was wasted in building palaces and adorning churches in the capital, where they were no longer required for a diminished and impoverished population. Crowds of imperial princes and princesses, despots and cæsars, officers of state and courtiers, consumed the revenues which ought to have covered the frontier with impregnable fortresses, and maintained a disciplined standing army and a well-exercised fleet. Yet, while lavishing the public revenues to gratify his pride and acquire popularity, he sacrificed the general interests of the middle classes to a selfish and rapacious fiscal policy.

All the property within the walls of Constantinople, whether it belonged to Greeks or Latins, was adjudged to the imperial government by the right of conquest; but their ancient possessions were restored to the great families whose power he feared, and to those individuals whose services he wished to secure. Sites for building were then leased to the citizens for a fixed rent; yet the Greek government was so despotic, and Michael was so arbitrary in his administration, that twelve years later he pretended that the concessions he had granted to private individuals were merely acts of personal favour, and he demanded the payment of the rent for the past twelve years, the collection of which he enforced with much severity. Michael used other frauds to bring the property of his subjects into the public treasury, or to deprive them of a portion of the money justly due to them by the state. Under the pretext of changing the type of the gold coinage, and commemorating the recovery of Constantinople by impressing an image of its walls on the bezants, he debased the standard of the mint, and issued coins containing only fifteen parts of gold and nine of alloy.

While on one hand he rendered property insecure and impoverished his subjects, he was striving by other arrangements to increase the Greek population of the capital, in order to counterbalance the wealth and influence of foreign traders. Numbers were drawn from the islands of the Archipelago, and a colony of Tzaconians or Laconians from Monemvasia and the neighbouring districts were settled in the capital, which supplied the imperial fleet with its best sailors. But war, not commerce, was the object of Michael’s care; and while he was endeavouring to increase the means of recruiting his army and navy, he allowed the Genoese to profit by his political errors, and render themselves masters of the commerce of the Black Sea, and of great part of the carrying trade of the Greek Empire. In the meantime, the fortifications of Constantinople were repaired; and when Charles of Anjou threatened to invade the East, a second line of wall was added to the fortifications on the land side, and the defences already existing towards the sea were strengthened.

Michael VIII fulfilled all the stipulations of the treaty he had concluded with the Genoese. The public property of the republic of Venice was confiscated, and the Genoese were put in possession of the palace previously occupied by the bailly of the Venetians. The turbulent conduct of his allies had already created dissatisfaction in the mind of Michael, when their defeat by the Venetians before Monemvasia, and the fall of Baccanegra, who had concluded the treaty of Nymphæum in 1261 by placing a party adverse to the Greek alliance in power, induced him to doubt the fidelity of their services, and he dismissed sixty Genoese galleys which he had taken into his pay. Charles of Anjou soon after effected the conquest of the kingdom of Naples, and the Genoese government became more anxious to cultivate his friendship than that of the Greek emperor.

The character and conduct of Michael VIII typifies the spirit of Greek society from the recovery of Constantinople to the fall of the empire. It displays a strange ignorance of the value of frankness and honesty in public business, a constant suspicion of every friend, restless intrigues to deceive every ally, and a wavering policy to conciliate every powerful enemy. The consequence of this suspicion, plotting, and weakness, was that very soon no one trusted either the emperor or the Greeks. The invasion of Italy by Charles of Anjou, and the pretensions of the pope to dispose of crowns, alarmed both Venice and Michael, and induced them to forget all former grounds of hostility, and conclude a closer alliance than the Greek emperor had concluded with Genoa, with which he now declared war. This treaty is dated in June, 1265, about a month before Charles of Anjou received the crown of the Two Sicilies from the pope in the Lateran. The stipulations are remarkable both in a political and commercial light. The emperor engaged to expel the Genoese from Constantinople, and not to conclude peace with them except in concert with the republic. The Venetians engaged to hire their galleys to the emperor to serve even against the pope, the king of France, and Charles of Anjou, as well as against the republics of Genoa, Pisa, and Ancona, and any prince or community that might attack the Greek Empire.

At length, in the year 1275, the emperor Michael formed a new alliance with the Genoese; but, in order to prevent their making the streets of Constantinople again the scene of their disorders, he obliged them to establish their factory at Heraclea, on the Propontis. Some years later they were allowed to transfer their settlement to Galata, forming a colony which soon deprived the Greeks of part of their trade in the Black Sea.

The morbid ambition of Michael Palæologus was not satisfied until he was sole emperor. In defiance, therefore, of the repeated oaths by which he had sworn to respect the rights of his ward, his colleague, and his sovereign he availed himself of the first favourable moment to dethrone the unfortunate boy who had been left neglected at Nicæa. On Christmas Day, 1261, the agents of Michael deprived Joannes IV of his sight, though he had not attained the age of ten, and he was declared to have forfeited the throne. The cruel and perjured emperor then ordered him to be immured in the fort of Dacybiza, where he remained neglected, and almost forgotten, for eight-and-twenty years, when his solitude was broken in upon by Andronicus, the bigoted son of the hypocritical Michael. The conscience of the bigot was uneasy on account of his father’s crimes, of which he was enjoying the fruit; so by a few kind words he easily induced his imprisoned victim to make what was falsely termed a voluntary cession of all his rights to the imperial crown. The evil consequences of this crime were deeply felt in the empire; for the clergy, the nobility, and the people, had all participated in the system of corruption and peculation by which Michael VIII had smoothed the way for his usurpation. The violation of every sentiment of honour, patriotism, and virtue was so iniquitous that the public character of the Greek nation was degraded by its obsequiousness on this occasion; and the feelings of the people in the provinces of the east, as well as in western Europe, avenged the misfortunes of Joannes. Michael Palæologus had hitherto been regarded as a bold, frank, and generous prince; he henceforward showed himself a timid, hypocritical, and cruel tyrant.

The patriarch Arsenius, who was one of the guardians of the dethroned emperor, considered himself bound to protest against the injustice and perjury of Michael. He convoked an assembly of the prelates resident in Constantinople, and proposed that the reigning emperor should be excommunicated by the synod; but too many of the clergy had been participators in the intrigues of Michael, and were enjoying the rewards of their subserviency, for such a measure to meet with any support. Arsenius, therefore, on his own authority as patriarch, interdicted Michael from all religious rites; but he did not venture to pronounce the usual form of words, which deprived him of the prayers of the orthodox. The Greek church, under the Palæologi, was tainted with the same spirit of half measures and base tergiversation which marks the imperial administration. The emperor accepted the modified censure of the church as just, and hypocritically requested that his penance might be assigned. By obtaining his dispensation in this manner, he expected that public opinion would render the church an accessary after the fact, while he secured to himself an additional guarantee for the enjoyment of the fruits of his crime. Confident in his power, he punished with cruelty all who ventured to express publicly their compassion for their dethroned emperor.

Though the family of Vatatzes had been unpopular among the nobility, it was beloved by the Asiatic Greeks, and especially by the mountaineers of Bithynia. The people in the vicinity of Nicæa took up arms to avenge Joannes IV, and their insurrection was suppressed with great difficulty. A blind boy, who was found wandering in the neighbourhood, was supposed to be their legitimate sovereign, the victim of Michael’s treachery. The warlike peasantry flew to arms, and rendered themselves masters of the forts and mountain passes. The advance of the imperial troops sent to suppress the revolt was impeded by those famous archers who had previously formed one of the most effective bodies in the emperor’s army. Every ravine was contested, and every advantage dearly purchased. The imperial troops at last subdued the country by adopting the policy by which the Turks extended their conquests. The habitations were destroyed, and the forests were burned down, so that the native population had no means of obtaining subsistence, while the soldiers of Michael became masters of the country, under the cover of their widespread conflagrations. The resources of this flourishing province were ruined, and its population was so diminished that, when the Ottoman Turks attacked the empire, the renowned archers of Bithynia and the mountain militia had ceased to exist.

THE PROVINCES OF THE EMPIRE

The change which is visible in the condition of the Asiatic provinces of the empire towards the end of the reign of Michael VIII must be attentively observed. When he mounted the throne, the power of the Seljuk empire was so broken by the conquests of the Moguls, and the energy of the Greek population was so great, in consequence of the wise government of Joannes III and Theodore II, that the Greeks under the Turkish dominion seemed on the eve of regaining their independence. Azeddin Kaikus II, sultan of Iconium, was an exile; his brother Rokneddin ruled only a small part of the Seljuk empire of Rum; for Hulaku, the brother of the great khans Mangku and Kublai, possessed the greater part of Asia Minor, and many Turkish tribes lived in a state of independence. The cruelty and rapacity of Michael’s government, and the venality and extortion which he tolerated among the imperial officers and administrators, arrested the progress of the Greek nation, and prepared the way for its rapid decline. The jealousy which Michael showed of all marks of national independence, and the fear he entertained of opposition, are strong characteristics of his policy. So rapacious was the imperial treasury that the historian Pachymeres, though a courtier, believed that the emperor Michael systematically weakened the power of the Greek population from his fear of rebellion. The consequence was that the whole country beyond the Sangarius, and the mountains which give rise to the Rhyndacus and Macestus, were occupied by the Turks, who were often invited by the inhabitants to take possession of the small towns.

As the reign of Michael VIII advanced, the encroachments of the nomad Turks became more daring. Joannes Palæologus, who had for some time restrained their incursions, was by his brother’s jealousy deprived of all military command; and Andronicus, the emperor’s eldest son, was sent to the frontier as commander-in-chief. In the year 1280 the incapacity of the young prince threw all the imperial provinces open to invasion. Nestongus, who commanded in the city of Nyssa, was defeated and taken prisoner. Nyssa was taken, and the Turks then laid siege to Tralles, which had been recently rebuilt and repeopled. The Turks at last formed a breach in the walls by sapping, and then carried the city by storm. The inhabitants who escaped the massacre were reduced to slavery.

About the same time Michael VIII usurped his place on the throne of the Greek Empire, a small Turkish tribe made its first appearance in the Seljuk empire. Othman, who gave his name to this new band of immigrants, is said to have been born in the year 1258, and his father, Ertogrul, entered the Seljuk empire as the chief of only four hundred families; yet Orkhan, the son of Othman, laid the foundations of the institutions and power of the Ottoman empire. No nation ever increased so rapidly from such small beginnings, and no government ever constituted itself with greater sagacity than the Ottoman; but no force or prudence could have enabled this small tribe of nomads to rise with such rapidity to power, had it not been that the emperor Michael and the Greek nation were paralysed by political and moral corruption, and both left behind them descendants equally weak and worthless. When history records that Michael Palæologus recovered possession of Constantinople by accident, it ought also to proclaim that, by his deliberate policy, he prepared the way for the ruin of the Greek race and the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks. There is no other instance in history of a nation so numerous, so wealthy, and so civilised, as the Greeks were in the fourteenth century, having been permanently subdued by an enemy so inferior in political and military resources. The circumstance becomes the more disgraceful, as its explanation must be sought in social and moral causes.

[Sidenote: [1261-1271 A.D.]]

The rebellion of his subjects in Asia made Michael anxious to secure peace in Europe. In order to counterbalance the successes of the despot of Epirus, and dispose him to conclude a treaty, Michael resolved to release the Prince of Achaia, who had been taken prisoner at the battle of Pelagonia in 1259. William Villehardouin, prince of Achaia, was freed, by the destruction of the Latin Empire of Romania, from those feudal ties which connected him with the throne of Baldwin II. To obtain his liberty, he consented to become a vassal of the Greek Empire, and he re-established the imperial power in the Peloponnesus, by delivering up to Michael the fortresses of Monemvasia, Misithra, and Maina. On swearing fidelity to Michael VIII he was released from captivity, after having remained a prisoner for three years. The pope, however, was so much alarmed at this example of a Catholic prince becoming a vassal of the Greek emperor, that as soon as the Prince of Achaia was firmly settled in his principality, his holiness absolved him from all his oaths and obligations to the Greek emperor. Pope Urban IV even went so far as to proclaim a crusade against Michael, and to invite St. Louis to take the command; but the king of France, who was much more deeply imbued with the Christian spirit than the pope, declined the office. The crusade ended in a partisan warfare between the prince of Achaia and the governors Michael had placed in the fortresses of which he had gained possession in the Peloponnesus.

The conquest of Naples by Charles of Anjou threatened the Greek Empire with a new invasion. Under the auspices of Clement IV a treaty was concluded between the dethroned emperor Baldwin, Charles of Anjou, and William, prince of Achaia, by which Baldwin ceded to Charles the suzerainty of Achaia, and the prince agreed to transfer his allegiance from the titular emperor to the king of Naples, who had already obtained the absolute sovereignty of Corfu, and of the cities of Epirus, given by the despot Michael II as dowry to his daughter, who married Manfred, king of Sicily. In return, Charles of Anjou engaged to furnish Baldwin with a force of two thousand knights and their followers, to enable him to invade the Greek Empire. This treaty was concluded at Viterbo on the 27th of May, 1267. Its stipulations alarmed Michael Palæologus, who had already involved himself in ecclesiastical quarrels with his subjects; and in order to delay an attack on Constantinople, he sent an embassy to Pope Clement IV, proposing measures for effecting a union of the Greek and Latin churches. On this occasion Michael was relieved from fear by Conradin’s invasion of the kingdom of Naples, which enabled him to conclude a truce with the prince of Achaia. He then neglected his overtures to the pope, and turned all his attention to fitting out a fleet, which he manned with _gasmuli_, Tzaconians, and Greeks of the Archipelago. The insincere negotiations of Michael for a union with the Roman church were often renewed under the pressure of fear of invasion from abroad, and dread of insurrection at home. The weakness caused by the opposition of the Greek clergy and people to his authority, encouraged the enterprises of his foreign enemies, while the entangled web of his diplomacy, taking a new form at every change of his personal interests, at last involved him so inextricably in its meshes that he had no means of concealing his bad faith, cruelty, and hypocrisy.

[Sidenote: [1271-1282 A.D.]]

In the year 1271 the treachery of Andronicus Tarchaniotes, the emperor’s nephew, reanimated the war in Thessaly. Having invited the Tatars to invade the empire from the north, he abandoned Mount Hæmus, of which he was governor, to their ravages, and fled to Joannes Ducas, prince of the Vlakhs, his father-in-law, whom he persuaded to invade Thessaly. The emperor sent his brother, Joannes Palæologus, with an army of forty thousand men and a fleet of sixty-three galleys, to re-establish the imperial supremacy. Joannes Ducas was besieged in his capital, Neopatras, and the place was reduced to the last extremity, when the prince passed through the hostile camp in the disguise of a groom, to seek assistance from his Latin allies. Leading a horse by the bridle he walked along, crying out that his master had lost another horse, and would reward the finder. When he reached the plain of the Sperchius he mounted his horse, and gained the territory of the Frankish marquis of Boudonitza. The duke of Athens furnished him with a band of three hundred knights, and he returned to Neopatras with such celerity that he surprised the imperial camp, and completely dispersed the army. Joannes Palæologus escaped to Demetriades (Volo), where his fleet was stationed. A squadron composed of Venetian ships, and galleys of the duke of Naxos and of the barons of Negropont, was watching the imperial fleet. On hearing of the total defeat of the army they attacked the admiral Alexius Philanthropenus in the port, and were on the point of carrying the whole Greek fleet by boarding, when Joannes Palæologus reached the scene of action with a part of the fugitive troops. He immediately conveyed a large body of soldiers to the ships, and reanimated the sailors. The Latins were compelled to retire with the loss of some of their own ships, but they succeeded in carrying off several of the Greek galleys.

In the following year the imperial fleet, under the command of Zacharia, the Genoese seigneur of Thasos, defeated the Franks near Oreus in Eubœa and took Jean de la Roche, duke of Athens, prisoner. But, on the other hand, Joannes Ducas again routed the army in Thessaly, and by his activity and military skill rendered himself the most redoubted enemy of Michael; so that, when the majority of the Greek population declared openly against the emperor’s project for a union with the Latin church, the prince of Wallachian Thessaly became the champion of the orthodox church, and assembled a synod which excommunicated Michael VIII (1277).

In the year 1278 Charles of Anjou would in all probability have besieged Constantinople, had he not been prevented by the express commands of his suzerain, Pope Nicholas III, who was gained over by Michael’s submission to expect the immediate union of the Greek with the papal church. But the elevation of Martin IV to the see of Rome changed its policy. The emperor Michael was excommunicated, and, to render the excommunication more insulting, he was reproached with persecuting the Greeks who consistently abstained from his own delusive compliances. Michael revenged himself by ceasing to pray for the pope in the Eastern churches.

A league was now formed between the pope, the king of Naples, and the republic of Venice, for the conquest of the Greek Empire, and a treaty was signed at Orvieto on the 3rd of July, 1281. The danger was serious. Charles of Anjou promised to furnish eight thousand cavalry, and the Venetians engaged to arm forty galleys, in order to commence operations in the spring of 1283. In the meantime a body of troops, under the command of Solimon Rossi, was despatched to occupy Dyrrhachium and assist the Albanians, who had recently revolted against Michael. This expedition proved unsuccessful; Rossi was taken prisoner while besieging Belgrade (Berat), and the Neapolitans and Albanians were completely defeated. But the Greek emperor could only intrigue to avert the great storm with which he was threatened by the treaty of Orvieto, and in the end he was saved by the deeds of others. The Sicilian Vespers delivered the Greeks from all further fear of Charles of Anjou and of a French invasion, and Michael was able to smile at the impotent rage of Martin IV, and despise his excommunications.

The vicinity of the Bulgarians, joined to their national power and influence over the numbers of their countrymen settled in the Greek Empire, gave Michael some uneasiness at the commencement of his reign. Constantine, king of Bulgaria, had married a sister of the dethroned emperor Joannes IV, and he was induced, by the feelings of his wife, by the intrigues of the fugitive sultan of Iconium, and by the hopes of assistance from the Mogul emperor, Hulaku, to attack the Greek Empire. Michael took the field against the Bulgarians, and in the year 1265 drove them beyond Mount Hæmus. A treaty which the emperor concluded with a powerful Tatar chief named Nogay, and civil dissension among the Bulgarians, relieved Michael from all serious danger on his northern frontier during the remainder of his reign. The affairs of Servia, also, gave the emperor very little trouble.

The period of Greek history embraced in the present chapter of this work, extending through the century and a half during which the empire of Constantinople was ruled with despotic sway by the dynasty of Palæologus, is the most degrading portion of the national annals. Literary taste, political honesty, patriotic feeling, military honour, civil liberty, and judicial purity, seem all to have abandoned the Greek race, and public opinion would in all probability have had no existence--it would certainly have found no mode of expression--had not the Greek church placed itself in opposition to the imperial government, and awakened in the breasts of the Greek people a spirit of partisanship on ecclesiastical questions which prepared the way for the open expression of the popular will, if not for the actual formation of public opinion. The church was converted into an arena where political and social discontent of every kind arrayed their forces under the banners of orthodoxy, heresy, or schism, as accident or passion might determine.

The anxiety of the emperor Michael VIII to be relieved from the ecclesiastical censures pronounced by the patriarch Arsenius against him, for his treachery to his pupil and sovereign Joannes IV, was the commencement of his disputes with the Greek church, and of his negotiations with the popes. Michael solicited the patriarch to impose some penance on him which might expiate his crime, but Arsenius could suggest nothing but reparation. The emperor considered this tantamount to a sentence of dethronement, and he determined to depose Arsenius. Arsenius was deposed, and exiled to Proconnesus. Germanus, the bishop of Hadrianopolis, a mild and learned prelate, was named his successor.

Even in his banishment Arsenius was considered to be the lawful patriarch by the majority of the orthodox, and he was visited by thousands who were anxious to hear his words and receive his blessing. The emperor was eager to punish him, but his popularity rendered it dangerous to attempt doing so in an arbitrary way. A conspiracy was discovered against the emperor’s life, and some of the accused, when put to the torture, declared that Arsenius was implicated in the plot. The examination of the affair was remitted to a synod, which gratified the emperor by excommunicating Arsenius without waiting for his conviction. Germanus interceded for his predecessor. Arsenius was absolved from the accusation, and a pension of three hundred bezants was allowed him for his subsistence, granted from the privy purse of the empress; for it was believed that Arsenius would accept nothing from the excommunicated emperor.

The courtiers of Michael were as active in their intrigues as the emperor. A party in the church declared that the election of Germanus was invalid, for he had been removed from the see of Hadrianopolis in violation of the canon which prohibits the translation of a bishop from one see to another. The emperor’s confessor, Joseph, pronounced that the new patriarch could not grant a legal absolution to the emperor in consequence of this defect in his title to the patriarchal throne. Germanus soon perceived that both Michael and Joseph were encouraging opposition to his authority. He immediately resigned, and Joseph was named his successor. The emperor received his absolution as a matter of course. The ceremony was performed at the gates of St. Sophia’s. Michael, nearly at the patriarch’s feet, made his confession, and implored pardon. The patriarch read the form of absolution. This form was repeated by every bishop in succession, and the emperor knelt before each in turn and received his pardon. He was then admitted into the church, and partook of the Holy Communion. By this idle and pompous ceremony the Greeks believed that their church could pardon perjury and legitimatise usurpation.

About this time the treaty of Viterbo drew the attention of Michael from the schism of the Arsenites to foreign policy, and his grand object being to detach the pope from the alliance with Charles of Anjou, he began to form intrigues, by means of which he hoped to delude the pope into the persuasion that he was anxious and able to establish papal supremacy in the Greek church; while, on the other hand, he expected to cheat the Eastern clergy into making those concessions which he considered necessary for the success of his plans, on the ground that their compliance was a mere matter of diplomacy. Gregory X knew that it would be easier to effect the union of the Greek and Latin churches by the instrumentality of a Greek emperor than of a foreign conqueror. He therefore prohibited Charles of Anjou, who held the crown of Naples as his vassal, from invading the empire; but he forced Michael, by fear of invasion, to assemble a synod at Constantinople, in which, by cruelty and violence, the emperor succeeded in obtaining an acknowledgment of the papal supremacy. The severest persecution was necessary to compel the Greeks to sign the articles of union, and many families emigrated to Wallachian Thessaly and to the empire of Trebizond. The union of the Greek and Latin churches was completed in the year 1274 at the Council of Lyons.[86]

[Sidenote: [1274-1280 A.D.]]

When the news of this submission reached Constantinople there was a general expression of indignation. The patriarch Joseph, who opposed the union, was deposed, and Veccus, an ecclesiastic of eminence, who had recently become a convert to the Latin creed, was named in his place. The schisms in the Greek church were now multiplied, for Joseph became the head of a new party. Veccus, however, assembled a synod, and excommunicated those members of the Greek clergy who refused to recognise the pope as the head of the church of Christ. Nicephorus, despot of Epirus, and his brother, Joannes Ducas, prince of Wallachia, protected the orthodox. Both were excommunicated; and the emperor sent an army against Joannes Ducas, whose position in Thessaly threatened the tranquillity of Macedonia; but the imperial officers and troops showed no activity in a cause which they considered treason to their religion, and many of the emperor’s own relations deserted.

By a series of intrigues, tergiversation, meanness, and cruelty, Michael succeeded in gaining his immediate object. Nicholas III, who ascended the papal throne in 1277, formally refused Charles of Anjou permission to invade the Greek Empire, and sent four nuncios to Constantinople to complete the union of the churches. The papal instructions are curious as an exposition of the political views of the court of Rome, and display astute diplomacy, acting at the suggestions of grasping ambition, but blinded by ecclesiastical bigotry. The first object was to induce all the dignitaries of the Greek church to sign the Roman formulary of doctrine, and to persuade them to accept absolution for having lived separate from the Roman communion; the second, to prevail on the emperor to receive a cardinal legate at Constantinople.

Before the arrival of the pope’s ambassadors, the arbitrary conduct of Michael had involved him in a quarrel with his new patriarch, Veccus, whom he was on the point of deposing. All Michael’s talents for intrigue were called into requisition, to prevent the Greek clergy from breaking out into open rebellion during the stay of the pope’s ambassadors, and conceal the state of his relations with Veccus, who stood high at the court of Rome. Bribes, cajolery, and meanness on his part, and selfishness and subserviency on the part of the Eastern clergy, enabled him to succeed. But the death of Nicholas III in 1280 rendered his intrigues unavailable. Martin IV, a Frenchman, devoted to the interests of Charles of Anjou, became pope. He openly displayed his hatred of the Greeks, and excommunicated Michael as a hypocrite, who concealed his heresy. While Martin IV openly negotiated the treaty of Orvieto, Michael secretly aided the conspiracy of Procida.

[Sidenote: [1281-1282 A.D.]]

The condition of the Greek emperor was almost desperate. He was universally detested for his exactions and persecutions, and a numerous and bigoted party was ready to make any foreign attack the signal for a domestic revolution. The storm was about to burst on Michael’s head, when the fearful tragedy of the Sicilian Vespers broke the power of Charles of Anjou.

Michael then quitted his capital to punish Joannes Ducas, whom he considered almost as a rival; but death arrested his progress at Pachomion, near Lysimachia in Thrace, on the 11th of December, 1282, after a reign of twenty-four years. He was a type of the Constantinopolitan Greek nobles and officials in the empire he re-established and transmitted to his descendants. He was selfish, hypocritical, able, and accomplished; an inborn liar, vain, meddling, ambitious, cruel, and rapacious. He is renowned in history as the restorer of the Eastern Empire; he ought to be execrated as the corrupter of the Greek race, for his reign affords a signal example of the extent to which a nation may be degraded by the misconduct of its sovereign, when it entrusts him with despotic power.

ANDRONICUS II (1282-1325 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1282-1301 A.D.]]

Andronicus II ascended the throne at the age of twenty-four, having been born about the time his father received the imperial crown at Nicæa. He had most of the defects of his father’s character, without his personal dignity and military talents. In youth he was destitute of vigour, in old age of prudence. His administration was marked by the same habits of cunning and falsehood which had distinguished his father’s conduct; and the consequence was that, towards the end of his long reign, he was as generally despised as his father had been hated. In his private character he was arbitrary, peevish, and religious; in his public administration despotic, fond of meddling, industrious, and inconsequent.

Andronicus, eager to efface the stain of his own sinful compliance with the union of the churches, allowed the body of his father to be deprived of the usual funeral honours and public prayers. The empress, Michael’s widow, was compelled to abjure the union, and to approve of the indignities to his memory, before her own name was inserted in the public prayers for the imperial family. The patriarch Veccus was forced to resign, and his predecessor Joseph was reinstated on the patriarchal throne.

The bigotry of Andronicus induced him to sanction the establishment of a tribunal consisting chiefly of monks, which was empowered to fix the penance to be performed by those who desired to obtain absolution from a general sentence of excommunication, launched against all who had communicated with the Latin church. As nearly the whole population of the empire had fallen under this sentence of excommunication, the power of the tribunal was unlimited. The rich were mulcted according to the sensibility of their conscience and the malice of their enemies, while ecclesiastics obnoxious to the bigots were suspended from the exercise of their functions.[87]

During the earlier years of the reign of Andronicus the power of the Turks excited no alarm. The garrisons in the frontier fortresses were reduced, the number of the legions was diminished, and many of the ships kept ready for service by Michael VIII were laid up in the arsenal. Andronicus required all the money he could divert from the military and naval services for the court and the church. The officers could only gain advancement by becoming courtiers; the soldiers could only avoid neglect by becoming monks. The army of Andronicus consisted principally of Alans, Gasmuls, Turks, Turkopuls, and refugee Cretans. The Alans received double the pay of the best native troops. The armies with which the emperors of Nicæa had defeated the Turkish Sultans, the Latin emperors, the kings of Bulgaria, and the French knights of Achaia and Athens were now disbanded and neglected. The state maxim of imperial Rome that no man who paid the land tax should be allowed to bear arms, was again revived, and mercenaries and Turks plundered the Greek Empire, as the Goths and Huns had plundered the Roman.

The Greek Empire of Constantinople, at the accession of Andronicus II, embraced the whole coast of Asia Minor, from the mouth of the Sangarius to the Rhodian Peræa; but the nomad tribes who lived under the Seljuk dominion were daily pushing their incursions further and further into the Greek territories. In the year 1296, the regular army of the empire continued to maintain a decided superiority in the field over any force the Turks could bring into action; but the carelessness of the emperor, who left the troops in Asia without pay, caused this neglected army to break out into rebellion. The Turkish mercenaries in its ranks plundered the Greek landlords; the Cretans sold their services to the highest bidder. Alexius Philanthropenus, who had successfully resisted the Seljuk tribes, was proclaimed emperor by his rebellious troops, but allowed himself to be taken prisoner, and was deprived of sight. His successor, Joannes Tarchaniotes vainly attempted to reform the abuses, which rendered the army more oppressive to the emperor’s subjects than dangerous to his enemies. The anarchy that prevailed in the civil, military, and ecclesiastical administration, rendered him powerless, and he was compelled to abandon the undertaking.

In the year 1301, Michael, the eldest son of Andronicus, who had received the imperial title from his father in 1295, took the command of the army in Asia; and about the same time a body of veteran warriors entered the imperial service, who, under an able general, would have secured victory to the Greeks. Andronicus allowed a colony of Alans to settle in his dominion, and about eight thousand, who had served in the Tatar wars beyond the Danube, were enrolled in the Byzantine service. After a short term of service, they mutinied, deserted the camp and marched to the Hellespont, plundering the Greek inhabitants of the country they passed through. The young emperor then broke up his own camp, and, abandoning his headquarters at Magnesia on the Hermus, retired to Pergamus, leaving the Turkish tribes to extend their plundering expeditions as far as Adramyttium, Lampsacus, and Cyzicus.

[Sidenote: [1301-1303 A.D.]]

About the same time the Venetians and Genoese, who were carrying on war, were so emboldened by the weakness of the Greek Empire and the neglected state of its marine that they pursued their hostilities in the port of Constantinople, while private vessels plundered the islands of the Propontis within sight of the palace of Andronicus, and compelled him to ransom the captive inhabitants by parading them before the walls of the capital, suspended from the rigging of their ships.

Rapid conquests were now made by the Seljuk emirs and a destructive warfare against the Greek race was carried on by the nomad tribes, who were more anxious to exterminate the agricultural population than to subdue them. The Greeks were everywhere in despair. In the empire of Trebizond, matters were not much better than in the empire of Constantinople. But it was in the provinces between Nicomedia and Smyrna, along the Propontis and the Ægean, that the greatest confusion reigned. The roads to the coast were covered with fugitives from the interior, endeavouring to save their property and families. Thousands were left to perish from want, and thousands died from suffering. Whole provinces were deserted by their inhabitants, and became pasture lands for hordes of Turkomans. In the course of a single generation, the Greek race and language disappeared from countries in which it had been spoken for two thousand years, and Turkish colonies took possession of Æolis and Ionia. Andronicus II witnessed these dreadful calamities with feelings benumbed by piety; even the extermination of the orthodox failed to animate his energy.

After twelve years of preparation, Othman ventured to attack the regular army of the Greek Empire, in the year 1301. The action took place at Baphæon, near Nicomedia. Pachymeres estimates the number of the imperial troops commanded by Muzalon at only two thousand, while the forces of Othman consisted of five thousand. The Greek infantry fled, and their misconduct was attributed to the dissatisfaction caused by the manner in which they had been deprived of their horses. The Alans fought bravely and covered the retreat to Nicomedia. Othman now laid waste the whole of Bithynia, from Nicomedia to Lopadion. The suburbs of the town on the Asiatic shores of the Bosporus were burned by the Ottomans, whose foraging parties were sometimes visible from the towers of the imperial palace in Constantinople.

The disgraceful retreat of his son Michael to Peges, induced Andronicus to change the military governors in Asia, instead of teaching him the necessity of reforming the military system. The command of Nicomedia was entrusted to a Tatar chief who had recently embraced Christianity; and by the marriage of this Tatar’s daughter with Suleiman, a Turkish emir, peace was restored to a small district and a barrier was formed against the incursions of Othman. But the unemployed Turkish troops transferred their services to other leaders, and carried on their incursions in more distant provinces. This preference of a Tatar general indicates a deep-rooted distrust of the courage and fidelity of the Greek nobles, as well as contempt for their military skill; and, indeed, a factious spirit, directed to personal interest, could alone have caused the insensibility to national honour which made the nobles and the troops submit tamely to the insults they received from their emperor. Well might the brave old Spaniard Muntaner declare that God had stricken the Greek race with his curse, for every one could trample them down.

A new crisis in the fate of the Byzantine Empire suddenly presented itself by the arrival of an army of Spaniards, composed chiefly of Catalans and men of Aragon; but this race of strangers, hitherto unknown in the East, soon disappeared from the scene. They came and departed as if they were under the guidance of the destroying angel. In daring courage, steady discipline, and military skill, they were not surpassed by any Greek or Roman army. Their warlike deeds entitled them to rank as a host of heroes; their individual acts made them appear a band of demons. They had proved invincible on every field of battle. They had broken the lances of the chivalry of France in many a well-fought action; and they were firmly convinced that no troops on earth could encounter their shock. Guided by a sovereign like Leo III, or like Basil II, they might have conquered the Seljuk Turks, strangled the Ottoman power in its cradle, and carried the double-headed eagle of Byzantium victorious to the foot of Mount Taurus, and to the banks of the Danube, but Andronicus could neither make use of their valour, nor secure their obedience. His own senseless intrigues roused their hostile feelings; and after they had made every tribe in the Seljuk empire tremble for a moment, they turned on the Greek Empire, where they carried on their inhuman ravages with a degree of cruelty and rapacity which history cannot attempt to portray. They laid both the empire and the Greek nation prostrate in the dust, bleeding with wounds from which they never recovered.

The Catalan Grand Company--for that is the name by which this Spanish army is known in the Eastern history--consisted of troops formed in the twenty years’ war that followed the Sicilian Vespers.[c]

THE CATALAN GRAND COMPANY

[Sidenote: [1303-1307 A.D.]]

After the peace of Sicily many thousands of Genoese, Catalans, etc., who had fought by sea and land under the standard of Anjou or Aragon, were blended into one nation by the resemblance of their manners and interest. They heard that the Greek provinces of Asia were invaded by the Turks; they resolved to share the harvest of pay and plunder, and Frederick king of Sicily most liberally contributed the means of their departure. In a warfare of twenty years, a ship or a camp was become their country; arms were their sole profession and property; valour was the only virtue which they knew; their women had imbibed the fearless temper of their lovers and husbands; it was reported that, with a stroke of their broad-swords, the Catalans could cleave a horseman and a horse; and the report itself was a powerful weapon.

Roger de Flor was the most popular of their chiefs; and his personal merit overshadowed the dignity of his prouder rivals of Aragon. The offspring of a marriage between a German gentleman of the court of Frederick the Second and a damsel of Brindisi, Roger was successively a templar, an apostate, a pirate, and at length the richest and most powerful admiral of the Mediterranean. He sailed from Messina (Messana) to Constantinople, with eighteen galleys, four great ships, and eight thousand adventurers; and his previous treaty was faithfully accomplished by Andronicus the elder, who accepted with joy and terror this formidable succour. A palace was allotted for his reception, and a niece of the emperor was given in marriage to the valiant stranger, who was immediately created great duke or admiral of Romania. After a decent repose, he transported his troops over the Propontis, and boldly led them against the Turks; in two bloody battles thirty thousand of the Moslems were slain; he raised the siege of Philadelphia, and deserved the name of the deliverer of Asia.

But after a short season of prosperity, the cloud of slavery and ruin again burst on that unhappy province. The inhabitants escaped (says a Greek historian) from the smoke into the flames; and the hostility of the Turks was less pernicious than the friendship of the Catalans. The lives and fortunes which they had rescued, they considered as their own; the willing or reluctant maid was saved from the race of circumcision for the embraces of a Christian soldier; the exaction of fines and supplies was enforced by licentious rapine and arbitrary executions; and, on the resistance of Magnesia, the great duke besieged a city of the Roman Empire. These disorders he excused by the wrongs and passions of a victorious army; nor would his own authority or person have been safe had he dared to punish his faithful followers, who were defrauded of the just and covenanted price of their services.

The threats and complaints of Andronicus disclosed the nakedness of the empire. His golden bull had invited no more than five hundred horse and a thousand foot soldiers; yet the crowds of volunteers, who migrated to the East, had been enlisted and fed by his spontaneous bounty. While his bravest allies were content with three byzants, or pieces of gold, for their monthly pay, an ounce or even two ounces of gold were assigned to the Catalans, whose annual pension would thus amount to near £100 [$500]; one of their chiefs had modestly rated at three hundred thousand crowns the value of his future merits; and above a million had been issued from the treasury for the maintenance of these costly mercenaries. A cruel tax had been imposed on the corn of the husbandman; one-third was retrenched from the salaries of the public officers; and the standard of the coin was so shamefully debased that of the four-and-twenty parts only five were of pure gold.

At the summons of the emperor, Roger evacuated a province which no longer supplied the materials of rapine; but he refused to disperse his troops; and while his style was respectful, his conduct was independent and hostile. The grand duke of Romania condescended to accept the title and ornaments of cæsar; but he rejected the new proposal of the government of Asia with a subsidy of corn and money, on condition that he should reduce his troops to the harmless number of three thousand men. Assassination is the last resource of cowards. The cæsar was tempted to visit the royal residence of Hadrianopolis; in the apartment, and before the eyes of the empress, he was stabbed by the Alan guards (1307).

The loss of their leader intimidated the crowd of adventurers, who hoisted the sails of flight and were soon scattered round the coasts of the Mediterranean. But a veteran band of fifteen hundred Catalans, or French, stood firm in the strong fortress of Gallipoli on the Hellespont, displayed the banners of Aragon, and offered to revenge and justify their chief by an equal combat of ten or a hundred warriors. Instead of accepting this bold defiance, the emperor Michael, the son and colleague of Andronicus, resolved to oppress them with the weight of multitudes; every nerve was strained to form an army of thirteen thousand horse and thirty thousand foot, and the Propontis was covered with the ships of the Greeks and Genoese. In two battles by sea and land, these mighty forces were encountered and overthrown by the despair and discipline of the Catalans; the young emperor fled to the palace; and an insufficient guard of light horse was left for the protection of the open country.

Victory renewed the hopes and numbers of the adventurers; every nation was blended under the name and standard of the Grand Company; and three thousand Turkish proselytes deserted from the imperial service to join this military association. In the possession of Gallipoli the Catalans intercepted the trade of Constantinople and the Black Sea, while they spread their devastations on either side of the Hellespont over the confines of Europe and Asia. To prevent their approach, the greatest part of the Byzantine territory was laid waste by the Greeks themselves; the peasants and their cattle retired into the city: and myriads of sheep and oxen, for which neither place nor food could be procured, were unprofitably slaughtered on the same day. Four times the emperor Andronicus sued for peace, and four times he was inflexibly repulsed, till the want of provisions and the discord of the chiefs compelled the Catalans to evacuate the banks of the Hellespont and the neighbourhood of the capital. After their separation from the Turks, the remains of the great company pursued their march through Macedonia and Thessaly, to seek a new establishment in the heart of Greece.[b]

At this point we may take a glance briefly at the history of Athens, which fell into the hands of the Catalans.[a]

THE DUCHY OF ATHENS

[Sidenote: [1204-1311 A.D.]]

In the partition of the empire in 1204 the principality of Athens and Thebes had been assigned to Otto de la Roche, a noble warrior of Burgundy, with the title of “great duke,” which the Latins understood in their own sense, and the Greeks more foolishly derived from the age of Constantine. Otto followed the standard of the marquis of Montferrat; the ample state which he acquired by a miracle of conduct or fortune was peaceably inherited by his son and two grandsons, till the family, though not the nation, was changed, by the marriage of an heiress into the elder branch of the house of Brienne.

WALTER DE BRIENNE AND CEPHISUS

[Sidenote: [1311-1456 A.D.]]

The son of that marriage, Walter de Brienne, succeeded to the duchy of Athens; and with the aid of some Catalan mercenaries, whom he invested with fiefs, he successively reduced above thirty castles of the vassal or neighbouring lords.

But when informed of the approach and ambition of the great company, he collected a force of seven hundred knights, sixty-four hundred horse, and eight thousand foot, and boldly met them on the banks of the river Cephisus in Bœotia, March 15, 1311. The Catalans amounted to no more than thirty-five hundred horse, and four thousand foot; but the deficiency of numbers was compensated by stratagem and order. They formed round their camp an artificial inundation; the duke and his knights advanced without fear or precaution on the verdant meadow; their horses plunged into the bog; and he was cut in pieces, with the greatest part of the French cavalry. His family and nation were expelled; and his son Walter de Brienne, the titular duke of Athens, the tyrant of Florence, and the constable of France, lost his life in the field of Poitiers.

Attica and Bœotia were the rewards of the victorious Catalans; they married the widows and daughters of the slain; and during fourteen years the great company was the terror of the Grecian states. Their factions drove them to acknowledge the sovereignty of the house of Aragon; and, during the remainder of the fourteenth century, Athens, as a government or an appanage, was successively bestowed by the kings of Sicily. After the French and Catalans, the third dynasty was that of the Acciajuoli, a family plebeian at Florence, potent at Naples, and sovereign in Greece. Athens, which they embellished with new buildings, became the capital of a state that extended over Thebes, Argos, Corinth, Delphi, and a part of Thessaly; and their reign was finally determined by Muhammed II, who strangled the last duke and educated his sons in the discipline and religion of the seraglio.[b]

To return now to the affairs of the Byzantine emperors.

ANDRONICUS II TO THE RESTORATION OF THE PALÆOLOGI (1311-1355 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1311-1320 A.D.]]

The Turkish auxiliaries returned home after the battle of Cephisus, 1311, in order to enjoy the wealth they had amassed in the expedition. The emperor Andronicus allowed them to pass through the empire unmolested, on condition that they refrain from every act of pillage, and they reached the shore of the Hellespont, escorted by a corps of three thousand Greek cavalry. The imperial government could never act either with honesty or boldness. A plot was framed to disarm the Turks as they were waiting for vessels to transport them over to Asia; but the Greeks were now so universally distrusted that their plots had little chance of succeeding, for everybody suspected their treachery and watched their proceedings. The Turks learned their danger, surprised a neighbouring fort, and commenced plundering the country. The emperor Michael attacked them with the Greek army, but defeat was his invariable companion. Khalil, the Turkish general, was a soldier formed in the severe discipline of the Catalan camp; his superior generalship and the perfect tactics of his troops gained a complete victory. The camp, baggage, and imperial crown of Michael became the spoil of the conquerors. Khalil gleaned the remains of the Catalan ravages.

Philes Palæologus, a man remarkable for his virtue, afflicted by the sufferings of his fellow-countrymen, solicited the emperor for permission to serve against the Turks. Andronicus, though he placed more confidence in his piety than in the military operations he proposed, conferred on him the office of protostrator and authorised him to levy an army. The success of Philes proves that the ruin of the empire was caused by the folly of Andronicus and the corruption of the government. Philes enrolled only veteran Greek soldiers, and selected officers of experience, without reference to birth and court favour. Constant exercise and strict discipline soon restored the spirit of the Byzantine army, and Philes led his men to encounter a plundering expedition of the Turks in the vicinity of Bizya, commanded by Khalil in person. A bloody battle ensued, for the Turks were too much accustomed to vanquish the Greeks to yield without a desperate contest. Philes, however, remained master of the field, and followed up his success with such vigour that he soon besieged the Turks in their fortified camp, while the Byzantine fleet, aided by eight Genoese galleys, blockaded them by sea. After a fierce struggle, the camp was taken; the greater part of the Turks were slain by the Greeks: the remainder were sold as slaves by the Genoese. The affair occurred in the year 1315. It may be considered as the last scene of the Catalan expedition, so that for twelve years the greater part of the Greek Empire of Constantinople had been plundered and devastated by the Catalan Grand Company and its Turkish auxiliaries.

Other enemies had taken advantage of the weakness of the empire during this calamitous period. The Seljuk Turks had almost completed the conquest of Asia Minor; the Ottomans had extended their possessions on the southern shores of the Propontis; the Genoese arrogated to themselves the possession of several cities and islands, and various chiefs seized different towns that were left without garrisons to defend them, and lived in a state of piratical independence. Every bond of society appeared to be dissolved in the countries inhabited by the Greek race, and every stranger, whether Mussulman or Christian, thought himself strong enough to subdue the Greeks.

The most important conquest of the time, however, was that of Rhodes, by the Knights Hospitaller of St. John of Jerusalem, both from its durability and from the renown of the conquerors. Andronicus sent an army to raise the siege; but his troops were defeated, and the knights took the city of Rhodes on the 15th of August, 1310. As sovereigns of this beautiful island they were long the bulwark of Christian Europe against the Turkish power; and the memory of the chivalrous youth who, for successive ages, found an early tomb at this verge of the Christian world, will long shed a romantic colouring on the history of Rhodes. They sustained the declining glory of a state of society that was hastening to become a vision of the past; they were the heroes of a class of which the Norse sea-kings had been the demigods. The little realm they governed as an independent state consisted of Rhodes, with the neighbouring islands of Cos, Calymnos, Syme, Leros, Nisyros, Telos, and Chalce; on the opposite continent they possessed the classic city of Halicarnassus, and several strong forts, of which the picturesque ruins still overhang the sea.

The emperor Andronicus II displayed the same want of sound judgment and right feeling in his private that he did in his public conduct, and his latter days were embittered by family disputes caused by his own folly and injustice. His second wife, Irene of Montferrat, persecuted him with demands to dismember the empire, in order to form appanages for her children. Andronicus resisted her solicitations at the expense of a quarrel, and Irene long lived separated from him at Thessalonica. The emperor Michael allowed his father to control the arrangements of his family and regulate his private actions. Michael’s eldest son was named Andronicus. He was the third emperor of the name who occupied the Byzantine throne, but he is known in history generally as Andronicus the Younger. When a child, he was an especial favourite with his grandfather, who directed his education. That education was undoubtedly a mixture of unwise indulgence and capricious restraint. The young Andronicus grew up a dissipated youth, and his debauched habits produced a terrible tragedy in his family. He was informed that his favourite mistress admitted another lover, and he employed bravos to waylay his rival. It happened that on that very night his own brother Manuel hastened quickly to the lady’s house, where he expected to find Andronicus. The assassins mistook the despot for the lover, and Manuel was murdered on the spot. The dreadful news reached their father Michael at Thessalonica, where he was residing in a declining state of health. Anguish soon terminated his life (1320).

[Sidenote: [1320-1321 A.D.]]

The young Andronicus was now heir-apparent to the empire, if the expression be admissible in a state without a fixed order of hereditary succession. But the murder of Manuel changed the affection of the old emperor into implacable hatred, and it was generally thought that the reigning sovereign had the power of naming his successor. The emperor Michael VIII had introduced the custom that a new oath of allegiance should be taken, whenever a change occurred in the order of succession. When Michael, the son of Andronicus II, died, the new oath was administered in the name of Andronicus II alone, and did not contain that of Andronicus III, who was the direct heir. It also contained a clause promising implicit obedience to whomsoever he might declare emperor. These circumstances indicated that he intended to exclude his grandson from the throne; nor was he long in selecting a favourite on whom it was supposed he intended to confer the imperial title. The choice was marked by the singular perverseness which characterised many of his most important acts. He had compelled his second son Constantine to marry the daughter of his favourite minister, Muzalon. The incidents of this union were both ridiculous and disgraceful. The lady had been destined to be the bride of Theodore, the emperor’s brother, when it was discovered that she had already indulged in illicit intercourse with one of her relatives, and would have presented the imperial family very prematurely with an intruder. Theodore broke off the match; but the emperor, moved by his attachment to the father, and by the penitence of the fair sinner, subsequently compelled his own son Constantine to marry her. The young prince thought himself entitled to have a bastard as well as his wife. The youth was named Michael Catharus, and became so great a favourite with his grandfather, the emperor Andronicus, that he showed a disposition to adopt him as the heir to the empire, but the representations of his ministers prevented this act of folly.

[Sidenote: [1321-1332 A.D.]]

The government of the old emperor was now generally unpopular; and as he was suspected of being anxious to prevent his grandson Andronicus from succeeding to the throne, the cause of the prince was made the rallying-point of the discontented. The most distinguished partisans of Andronicus the Younger were Cantacuzenus the historian, a man of the highest rank, of extensive connections among the Byzantine aristocracy, of great wealth, ability, and military as well as literary accomplishments, but devoured by ambition, and overflowing with cunning and self-conceit; Synadenus, a man of equal rank and talent; and Sir Janni, a man of superior boldness and ability, but with a want of fixed principles and steady conduct that gave him the character of a political adventurer. With these it is necessary to mention Apocaucus, who was the ablest administrator and financier of the party. The intrigues of the partisans of the young prince did not escape the attention of the emperor’s ministers, who would, doubtless, have maintained order by arresting the most dangerous, had not Andronicus been more anxious to punish his grandson, by depriving him of all chance of succeeding to the empire, than to prevent a rebellion. He now resolved to bring the prince to a public trial; and on Palm Sunday, 1321, the young Andronicus was unexpectedly summoned to the palace of Blachernæ. His partisans comprehended that the crisis of their own fate, as well as that of the prince, must be decided before sunset. Cantacuzenus and Synadenus accordingly assembled their followers, and filled the palace with a force that so completely intimidated both the judges and the emperor that the prince was pardoned, and a feigned reconciliation took place between the grandfather and the grandson.

Andronicus II resolved to remove Cantacuzenus and Synadenus from his grandson’s society, for he justly considered them as the authors of the plots against his government. Cantacuzenus was named governor of Thessaly, and Synadenus was sent to Prilapos. These officers collected as many troops as they were able under the pretence of repairing to their posts; and when their levies were completed they marched to Hadrianopolis, where the young Andronicus joined them and raised the standard of rebellion.

The prince was popular; he gained the people by proclaiming that the province of Thrace was exempt from some of the most onerous taxes, and his mercenaries enabled him to advance against Constantinople. But his soldiers, who cared little for political questions, pillaged the inhabitants wherever they passed; bands of robbers began to lay waste the villages which had escaped destruction from the Catalans and the Turks, and the collectors of the public revenue, availing themselves of these disorders, embezzled the money in their hands. Cantacuzenus says that the young Andronicus was averse to march against his grandfather, fearing lest his army should storm Constantinople. In order, therefore, to prevent his grandfather from being dethroned, he wrote secretly to the old emperor to advise that measures might be concerted to turn aside the first ardour of his own troops. A treaty was concluded at Rhegium, where the prince had established his headquarters, by which the rights of Andronicus the Younger to the succession of the empire were recognised, and he was invested with the government of Thrace from Selymbria to Christopolis as his appanage.

This peace was of very short duration. The exactions of the prince’s troops, and the intrigues of Sir Janni and the emperor induced several cities of Thrace to desert the party of the young Andronicus. Heraclea received an imperial garrison, and the prince, finding that his cause was losing ground, assembled his army and laid siege to the city in November, 1321. His troops had clamoured for the renewal of the war during the summer; they were averse to keep the field in winter, so that, when the attack on Heraclea was defeated, the prince marched up to the walls of Constantinople. He had now few partisans in the capital, and he was soon compelled to retire into winter quarters at Didymoteichos. A new treaty of peace was concluded at Epibates in July, 1322, which removed some of the causes of dissatisfaction to both parties.

On the 2nd of February, 1325, Andronicus the Younger received the imperial crown. This may be considered a proof that the ministers of the emperor had persuaded him to stifle all his resentment, and lay aside his schemes for excluding his grandson from the throne. But in the following year the two emperors allowed the city of Prusa to be taken by the Ottoman Turks, without either making an effort to relieve it. This fact seemed to prove that neither could allow his best officers and troops to succour this important city, lest his colleague should take advantage of their absence. Intrigues followed intrigues.

The civil war was renewed under circumstances extremely unfavourable to the old emperor, whose conduct rendered it inevitable. The people were universally disgusted with his despotism and injustice, and the young Andronicus seems to have expected that they would have immediately admitted him into Constantinople. Finding that this could not be effected, he hastened into Macedonia in the midst of winter, leaving the protostrator Synadenus to blockade the capital. Liberal promises of reduced taxation, and the assurance that all arrears due to the imperial treasury should be cancelled, insured his entry into most of the towns, and rendered his march a triumph. Thessalonica, Edessa, Castoria, Berœa, Pelagonia, Achrida, and Deabolis, opened their gates. The krall [king] of Servia, who consulted his own interest, refused to assist the officers of the reigning emperor, and took advantage of the confusion to gain possession of the frontier fortress of Prosacon. Strumbitza and Melenicon were the only strong places that remained in the possession of the partisans of Andronicus II.

While these events happened, Synadenus gained a complete victory over the garrison of Constantinople, on its making an attempt to raise the blockade. When the news of this victory reached Andronicus, he hastened to the army before the walls of the capital. Treasonable assistance was soon secured, and on the night of Monday, May 23rd, 1328, a party of soldiers scaled the walls; the garrison joined in proclaiming Andronicus III; the gates were thrown open, and the young emperor marched directly to the imperial palace to assure his grandfather that, though he had ceased to govern, he would be treated with all the honour due to a sovereign prince.

Two years after the taking of Constantinople, Andronicus III was attacked by a serious illness, and his ministers feared lest his grandfather might again recover the throne. To prevent the possibility of this event, Synadenus compelled the old man to become a monk, and to sign a declaration that he would never again mount the throne, nor pretend to dispose of the empire in case of his grandson’s death. Andronicus II had already lost the use of his eyes, and this, his last public act, was signed with two crosses, one in red ink as emperor and another in black as a humble monk. The patriarch Isaiah sent to congratulate him on his change of life: the petulant old man regarded this message as an insult, and sent back some violent and probably not unjust reproaches to the head of the church. His name continued to be mentioned in the public prayers as the most religious and most Christian basileus, the monk Antony. One evening, after a literary party at which his daughter Simonida was present, he was suddenly seized with an illness which soon terminated his life. He expired on the 13th day of February, 1332, in the seventy-fourth year of his age.

[Sidenote: [1332-1352 A.D.]]

Andronicus II was a man who, with few personal vices, possessed many of the worst qualities of a sovereign. He had capacity enough to direct the whole civil and ecclesiastical business of the empire, but was destitute of the judgment necessary to direct it well. He rarely took a right step, and never at the proper time; so that his petulant pride and pedantic despotism proved more ruinous to the empire than the worst vices of many of his predecessors. His ecclesiastical bigotry especially served as an instrument of providence for effecting the ruin and degradation of the orthodox Eastern church, and of the Greek race. That the Greeks allowed themselves to be so long misled and oppressed by so worthless and weak a sovereign, may perhaps be accepted as a proof that the nation was sunk in selfishness and bigotry like the emperor.[c]

Andronicus III, now absolute monarch, showed great bravery against the Turks, but he could not stay their progress in Anatolia, nor prevent their descents on Europe. Neither could he complete the conquest of Epirus nor live at peace with his neighbours on the peninsula.

He died in 1341, leaving his son, Joannes V (Palæologus), a minor, under the regency of his wife, Anne of Savoy. The lord chamberlain, Cantacuzenus, affected at first to protect them, but his protégés soon found him too powerful. They got up scandals about him, imprisoned his relatives, allowed the houses of his partisans to be destroyed. These latter forced him to take the crown under the title of Joannes VI. Civil war again broke out in the empire. Cantacuzenus allied himself with Stephen, krall of Servia, and with Omur Beg, the Seljuk emir of Ionia. Anne of Savoy asked help from the latter’s rival, Orkhan, sultan of the Ottomans.

Intrigue alternated with massacre. Cantacuzenus contrived to gain over this same Orkhan by giving him his daughter Theodora. On both sides the infidels were authorised to carry off Byzantine subjects, and the ports and vessels of the empire were placed at their disposal to enable them to transport their captives into Asia. The foreigners took advantage of the general anarchy to oppress the provinces and towns. The krall of Servia conquered Macedonia as far as Pheræ, and called himself czar of the Greeks and Servians. The Genoese retook Chios, which Andronicus III had seized from them, and blockaded Constantinople, defended by other Italians, under Facciolati.

The latter, whilst the empress was giving a banquet to her partisans, opened the Golden Gate to Cantacuzenus. Anne was obliged to come to an agreement. It was arranged that Cantacuzenus should be emperor first, but only for ten years; that is, until Joannes V attained his twenty-first year. The partisans of neither side were satisfied with this transaction.

So feeble was the empire that the Genoese ventured to impose their own will in the very capital. Cantacuzenus had tried to reconstruct an Hellenic navy, and attempted to bring a little life into the port of Byzantium by lowering the port dues. The Genoese considered this injurious to their Galatian colony. They massacred the crew of a Grecian ship, and exacted that a large territory adjoining Galata should be ceded to them. A war followed, which lasted four years (1348-1352). To fight the Genoese the Greeks had called in Venetian and Catalan fleets. A bloody naval battle was fought under the very walls of the town, and the Greeks were victorious. Cantacuzenus had to capitulate (May 6, 1352) and give them all they demanded.

Civil war also soon recommenced. The whole country was horribly ravaged. An Ottoman army under Suleiman (Solyman), son of Orkhan and in Cantacuzenus’ pay, carried off the inhabitants by thousands. Joannes V was despoiled of his authority and private domains; in the room of the fallen prince, Matthias, son of Joannes VI, was associated with his father and crowned emperor at St. Sophia (1354). Then, in 1355, with the concurrence of Francesco Gattilusio and other Genoese, Palæologus surprised and entered Constantinople. He had to negotiate.

Joannes V and Joannes VI continued to live in the palace with equal authority. Matthias was to keep the crown for life, as well as Hadrianopolis. Lesbos had ceded its full sovereignty to Gattilusio (1355).

Joannes VI did not feel at all secure. Perhaps he felt remorse for having brought so many evils on the empire; perhaps he had a fit of religious fervour and contempt for worldly things, but at any rate he donned the monkish garb and retired into the convent of Mangana (1355). He only came out to join his prayers to the threats of Joannes V in order to make Matthias lay aside the purple (1357).

By the abdication to which he had forced his son, the legitimate order of succession resumed its course in the house of Palæologus. Unhappily, the Greek Empire of the fourteenth century was not strong enough to stand the shocks of civil war. Irreparable losses in men, money, and territory were inflicted on her. Genoa and Venice were driving their talons deeper and deeper into her enfeebled body. The Greek Morea, and even Thessalonica, had grown used to doing as they would. Finally, the different parties had shown the Ottomans methods which they were not likely to forget.[88]

THE CRUSADE OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY

[Sidenote: [1343-1391 A.D.]]

Latin Europe alone could have saved the Greek Empire, but in the fourteenth century she was worn out by wars with nation after nation, by the antagonism between the Roman pope and the Avignon pope, and even between council and council. When a sovereign pontiff appeared authorised to speak in the name of Europe, he imposed, as the first condition to an uncertain union, the recognition of his supremacy by the Eastern church.

It would take too long to recall all the crusading projects which were raised in the papal court of Avignon, and in that of the French kings from Philippe le Bel to Philippe VI of Valois. Under Benedict XII, a fleet was placed under the orders of the legate Henry, patriarch _in partibus_ of Constantinople. Smyrna was taken from the Ionian emir, Omur Beg (1343). Fifty-two pirate ships were destroyed by the Christian fleet in sight of Athos (1344).

In 1366 Amadeus VI of Savoy, uncle of Joannes V, appeared in Byzantine waters. He took Gallipoli and Sozopolis from the Turks, repulsed an invasion of the Bulgarians, took from them Mesembria and Varna, and dictated a peace. In 1390, Louis II of Clermont, duke of Bourbon, landed at Tunis, Africa (Mehadia), but failed in the assault.

Thus in the West the crusading spirit was not yet extinct. Many of these crusades inspired little love for the Grecian Empire. Among the numerous projects presented to the popes and western sovereigns, there was one urging that the conquest of Byzantium was an indispensable preliminary to delivering the Holy Land.

Joannes V Palæologus hoped, although this formidable Western sword was in so many hands, to turn it against the enemies of the empire. So pressing was the danger, that the head of the orthodox church had to consent to go and kneel at Rome before Pope Urban V (1369). Unfortunately the resources of the pope had been exhausted by the last enterprise. At Venice Joannes V had to borrow, at high interest, enough money to continue his journey. After a fruitless tour in the south of France, as Joannes V was passing through Venice, quite unable to repay the loan, he was imprisoned at the request of his creditors. Thus the sacred person of the heir of Constantine the Great was kept in pledge by Venetian usurers.

THE EMPIRE TRIBUTARY TO THE TURKS

[Sidenote: [1369-1391 A.D.]]

Joannes V had two sons, between whom he had divided his dominions beforehand. The elder, Andronicus, had been associated with the emperor; the second, Manuel, was governor of Thessaly. The emperor first addressed himself to the elder, begging him to collect funds for his ransom. Andronicus coldly replied that the treasury was empty. In truth, he was in no hurry to hasten the return of his father and colleague. Manuel had more pity. He mortgaged his lands and sent the money.

When Joannes returned to Constantinople he rewarded the two sons according to their deserts. Andronicus he disgraced, and associated Manuel with him in the empire. Abandoned by all his supporters, he consented to pay tribute to Murad I in 1381. Then, under the weight of crushing necessities, he had to sustain a further humiliation. Besides the tribute, he promised Murad to furnish a military contingent, and to give him one of his sons as hostage.

The Greek Empire now found itself in exactly the same position with regard to the Turks as the Russian princes were in relation to the khans of the Golden Horde. Like the princes of Moscow, Tver, and Ryazan, the basileus only existed by submitting to humiliations; like them, he had to cringe to the horde. His situation was worse than theirs; the khan only asked from the Russian _kniazes_ tribute, obedience, and a military contingent. What more could he find to tempt his avarice in poverty-stricken Russia? The relations of the sultan and the basileus were not the same. The one could not pardon the other for perpetuating his memory in a city that was to be the capital of the new empire. The exactions were therefore more severe, the humiliations more cruelly calculated, the desire for spoliation was inextinguishable. Joannes V ended his miserable life in 1391, and his son Manuel succeeded him.

Of all the Palæologi, Manuel was the most cultivated and the most generous. He only felt the more shame at the degradation of the times. Perhaps he may best be compared with the Russian prince, Alexander Nevski.[e]

FOOTNOTES

[85] [Well may Gelzer[f] comment on this event, “The very worst friend of the Greeks did not see that the regaining of Constantinople was the true beginning of the national misfortune.”]

[86] The ceremony took place on the 2nd February, 1267.--PACHYMERES,[d] I, 207. The power of Michael was despotic, and his conduct arbitrary in the extreme. To render Veccus and Xiphilinus amenable to his ecclesiastical reasoning, he ordered their houses to be destroyed and their vineyards to be rooted out.--PACHYMERES,[d] I, 151, 165.

[87] [We may here omit, as more properly belonging to religious history, the procession of patriarchs whom Andronicus raised to power and who fairly cudgelled one another with excommunications. Veccus was deposed for Joseph, who yielded to Gregorius, against whom the Arsenites conspired; he fell, and Athanasius lasted four years, leaving wholesale excommunication in a jar, which was not found for four years, and caused immense confusion and terror until Athanasius said he had revoked it some years before as secretly as he had invoked it. He was then restored for a time, till he was forced out for Nephon, who set a better table than the emperor. Glycys followed, and then Gerasimus, who was chosen because he was old and deaf, but he died in a year. His successor was Isaiah, whose failure to be compliant brought on many of the troubles of the later civil wars.]

[88] [The fate of the empire was sealed when Murad took Hadrianopolis in 1361, following this the next year with the capture of Philippopolis and Serres.]