X. THE RESTORATION OF THE GREEK EMPIRE…

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.]

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XI. MANUEL II TO THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE

[1391-1453 A.D.]

MANUEL II (1391-1399 A.D.)

The emperor Manuel was at Brusa[89] when he heard of his father’s death. He was generally esteemed, being neither destitute of talent nor personal courage, while his disposition was mild and conciliatory. Before Bajazet was informed of the death of Joannes V the new emperor had made his escape, and reached Constantinople in safety; but the sultan treated him as a rebellious vassal in consequence of his secret departure. Joannes Palæologus, the son of Andronicus, who had succeeded his father in the appanage of Selymbria, was encouraged to claim the empire in virtue of the treaty of 1381, by which the succession had been secured to his father and himself. A body of Turkish troops was instructed to ravage the Greek territory up to the very walls of Constantinople; but other matters calling for Bajazet’s care, he accepted the submission of Manuel, and the Greek emperor again appeared as a vassal at the Sublime Porte.

The ambition of Bajazet was unbounded, and his love of war was inflamed by an inordinate confidence in his own military talents, and in the power of the Ottoman army. He despised the Christians, and considered it his first duty to reduce them to the condition of subjects, if not of slaves. The position of Manuel was therefore as dangerous as it was degrading; for although the spectacle of a Roman emperor standing as a suppliant before his throne soothed the pride of Bajazet, it was apparent that his vanity would readily yield to his ambition, if an opportunity presented of gaining Constantinople.

[Sidenote: [1395-1399 A.D.]]

For several years Bajazet was employed consolidating his dominions both in Europe and Asia, and he was compelled to watch the movements of the western powers, which threatened him with a new crusade. At last, when Sigismund, king of Hungary, was about to invade the Ottoman dominions, the sultan convoked an assembly of the Christian princes who were then his vassals, in order to prevent their combining to assist the invaders. Manuel, the Greek emperor, Joannes, despot of Selymbria, Theodore, despot of the Peloponnesus, Stephen, king of Servia, Constantine Dragazes, the son of Tzarco, prince of the valley of the Vardar, and several Greek, Servian, Bulgarian, and Albanian chiefs of less importance, who were already independent, appeared in the Ottoman camp at Serres. Circumstances induced the emperor Manuel and the despot Theodore to believe that their correspondence with the pope was known to the sultan, and that their lives were in danger. They both fled, and gained their own states in safety. Joannes of Selymbria remained to profit by the flight of his uncles; but Bajazet could only attend to the Hungarian war. His brilliant victory at Nicopolis in 1396 taught all Europe that the discipline of the janizaries was more than a match for the valour of the chivalry of France, and left him at liberty to punish the Greek princes for their desertion. He immediately turned his arms against the despot Theodore, and marched in person into Thessaly. The bishop of Phocis was the first traitor who joined the Mussulmans, and urged them to conquer Greece. The Wallachians of Thessaly and the widow of the count of Galona submitted to the terms imposed on them; and the sultan, seeing that no resistance would be offered to his troops by the Greeks in the Peloponnesus, turned back to Thrace. His generals, Yakub and Evrenus, took Corinth and Argos; while Theodore shut himself up within the walls of Misithra, and contemplated the ruin of his subjects without making an effort to save them. The Ottoman army, after ravaging great part of the peninsula, retired, carrying away immense booty and thirty thousand prisoners, whom they sold as slaves.

As Bajazet was not master of a sufficient naval force to attempt blockading Constantinople, he resolved to undermine the power of Manuel in such a way as would be least likely to awaken the jealousy of the commercial republics of Italy. He fanned the flames of family discord, which shed their lurid light on the records of the house of Palæologus by acknowledging Joannes, despot of Selymbria, as the lawful emperor of Constantinople and supplying him with a Turkish army to blockade Manuel by land.

The emperor Manuel, as soon as he saw that war with Bajazet was inevitable, had sent an ambassador to solicit assistance from Charles VI king of France. The marshal de Boucicault, who had already served with distinction in the East, and had been taken prisoner by Bajazet at Nicopolis, was appointed to command the forces which Charles VI sent to assist the Greek emperor. Boucicault sailed from Aigues-Mortes, and after some delay effected his junction with a fleet composed of eight Genoese, eight Venetian, two Rhodian galleys, and one of Mytilene, and proceeded to Constantinople, where he arrived in 1398. The arrival of Boucicault and his little army, which consisted of six hundred men-at-arms, without horses, six hundred infantry soldiers, and one thousand archers and cross-bowmen, revived the courage of the Greeks. The Genoese and Venetians were well acquainted with the Ottoman coast, and all under the direction of Constantinople carried on a succession of plundering incursions along the Asiatic coast, from the gulfs of Nicomedia and Mudania to the shores of the Black Sea. It was evident that this system of warfare could not long uphold the empire, and Boucicault, finding the Greeks incapable of making any exertions in their own defence, advised Manuel to seek assistance from the western nations. This advice would have in all probability arrived too late, had not the Ottoman power at this moment been threatened by the great Tatar conqueror, Timur. The sultan was therefore as much inclined to conclude a temporary peace as the emperor. The pretensions of Joannes of Selymbria were the only obstacle, and Manuel overcame this difficulty by a generous resolution. He opened communications with his nephew, whom he easily convinced that, if he entered Constantinople with Turkish troops, his reign would prove of short duration. He then offered to receive Joannes as his colleague, and invest him with the government, while he himself visited western Europe. The marshal Boucicault guaranteed these arrangements, and a French force remained in the capital to protect the interests of Manuel during his absence. On the 4th of December, 1399, Joannes entered Constantinople, and was proclaimed emperor, and on the 10th, Manuel quitted his capital with Boucicault to present himself as a suppliant at the European courts.

[Sidenote: [1399-1410 A.D.]]

Manuel II gained very little by his mendicant pilgrimage to Italy, France, and England. Some valuable presents were bestowed upon him by Visconti, the magnificent duke of Milan, and Charles VI of France granted him a pension of thirty thousand crowns; but he was compelled to return to Constantinople at the end of two years, with a little money and a few volunteers collected from people poorer and not more numerous than the Greeks. He learned on his way home that his enemy Bajazet had been defeated by Timur at Angora, and that the Ottoman Empire was utterly ruined. On reaching Constantinople he deprived his nephew Joannes, who had ruled during his absence, of the imperial title, and banished him to Lemnos. Joannes had already placed the Greek Empire in a state of vassalage to the Tatar conqueror; Manuel ratified the treaty, and paid to Timur the tribute which he had formerly paid to Bajazet. Rarely has the world seen a more total defeat than that sustained by the Ottoman army. Bajazet died a captive in the hands of Timur.

Rarely has so great a victory produced so little effect on the fate of the vanquished. For a moment, indeed, the Ottoman power was humbled, and an opening formed for the revival of the Greek Empire; but no energy remained in the political organisation of the Hellenic race beyond the confined sphere of local and individual interests; while the institutions of Orkhan, surviving the defeats and civil wars of the Ottomans, soon restored power to their central government, and rendered the sultan again the arbiter of the fate of Greece.

The civil wars among the sons of Bajazet had no small influence in prolonging the existence of the Greek Empire. The Ottoman historians reckon an interregnum of ten years after the battle of Angora, during which four of the sons of Bajazet contended for the sovereignty. Suleiman, Isa, and Mousa successively perished, and the youngest of the family, Muhammed I, at last reunited all his father’s dominions, and was regarded as his legitimate successor and the fifth sultan of the Ottomans, including Osman, the founder of the dynasty.

After the battle of Angora, Suleiman sought safety in Constantinople, where he concluded a treaty with the emperor Manuel in the year 1403, by which he yielded up Thessalonica, the valley of the Strymon, Thessaly, and the coast of the Black Sea, as far as Varna, to the Greeks. Joannes of Selymbria was recalled from Lemnos, and established at Thessalonica with the title of emperor; but the control of the government was vested by Manuel in the hands of Demetrius Leontaris, a Byzantine noble. In return for the cession of these provinces, the emperor furnished Suleiman with money to collect an army and to establish his authority over the remainder of the Ottoman dominions in Europe.

[Sidenote: [1410-1421 A.D.]]

But the debauchery of Suleiman at last induced the janizaries to join Mousa, and Suleiman was slain in attempting to escape to Constantinople, 1410 A.D. The close alliance which had existed between Suleiman and Manuel induced Mousa to turn his arms against the Greek Empire. He reconquered all the towns in Macedonia and Thessaly which his brother had ceded to Manuel, with the exception of Thessalonica and Zeitounion. Mousa then laid siege to Constantinople; but his operations were paralysed by the destruction of a naval armament he had fitted out. The emperor had strengthened the imperial fleet, the command of which he had entrusted to his natural brother, named also Manuel, a man of courage and military talents. The admiral gained a complete victory over the Ottoman fleet; but his brilliant success excited the jealousy of his imperial brother. On returning to receive the thanks of his country, he was thrown into prison on an accusation of treason, and remained a prisoner during the life of his brother. The siege of Constantinople was merely a succession of skirmishes under its walls, in which several Greek nobles were slain; and the attention of Mousa was soon exclusively occupied by the attacks of his brother Muhammed.

Mousa rendered his government as unpopular by his severity as Suleiman by his debauchery, and many of the Ottoman officers in Europe invited Muhammed to seize the throne. The emperor Manuel agreed to furnish transports to convey the Asiatic troops over the Bosporus; but he refused to admit them into Constantinople, though he allowed them to form their camp under its walls. The first operations of Muhammed were unsuccessful: but at last he forced Mousa to retire to Hadrianopolis, who, in the end, was deserted by all his followers and slain, 1413 A.D. Little more than ten years had elapsed from the day that Muhammed, then a mere youth, fled from the field of Angora with only one faithful companion, until he reunited under his sway nearly all the extensive dominions which had been ruled by his father. Timur had not perceived the fact that, the tribute of Christian children being the keystone on which the whole fabric of the Ottoman power rested, its resources were really much greater in Europe than in Asia.

The Greek Empire enjoyed an uninterrupted peace during the reign of Muhammed I, which lasted until the year 1421; and Manuel devoted his attention during this period to restoring some order in the public administration, and to re-establishing the sway of the central authority in the distant provinces of the empire. After completing his reforms in the civil, financial, military, and ecclesiastical departments of Constantinople, he found it necessary to visit the provinces in person, in order to reduce the local power of the Greek archons within reasonable bounds. He quitted Constantinople in the month of July, 1413, and commenced his operations by reducing the island of Thasos, the citadel of which resisted his little army for two months. The emperor then visited Thessalonica, where it appears that he remained more than a year. His nephew Joannes, who was governor of the city, assumed the monastic habit; but whether he was compelled by the emperor to adopt this step, in order to allow the new reforms to be carried into execution, is uncertain. The despot Andronicus, the emperor’s second son, was appointed governor of Thessalonica. After his father’s death he sold the city to the Venetians for the sum of fifty thousand sequins.

In March, 1415, Manuel visited the Peloponnesus. The Roman Empire of the East had shrunk to such pitiful dimensions that the Byzantine province, which comprised only about three-quarters of that peninsula, was now its most extensive province. The first care of the emperor was to strengthen the means of defending this territory by fortifying the Isthmus of Corinth. He then directed his attention to reforming the abuses which the feudal tyranny of the Franks and the unprincipled fiscal extortions of the Greek archons had introduced into the administration. These abuses were rapidly exterminating the Greek agricultural population, and making way for the immigration of a ruder class of Albanian labourers.

When we compare the reforms of Manuel with the legislation of Orkhan, we are astonished at the great intellectual superiority displayed by the Ottomans at this period. The Greek emperor adopted only a few temporary devices to arrest the progress of social putrefaction in a diseased society. His own talents and the energies of his people were incompetent to make any bold efforts for extirpating the sources of the evil, and for infusing a spirit of honesty and patriotism into Greek society. Yet the fact that Greek society as well as the imperial government was rapidly decaying was generally acknowledged. The despot Theodore, Manuel’s brother, who died about the year 1407, had felt the task of undertaking the regeneration of Greece so hopeless, and had found the difficulty of governing the Peloponnesians so great, that he attempted to sell his province to the knights of Rhodes, after he had introduced numerous colonies of Albanians to fill up the void caused by the decrease of the native population.

From a satirist of the time, we learn that while the emperor Manuel was occupied in diminishing the power and checking the abuses of the archons of the Peloponnesus and of the Constantinopolitan officials, many of the courtiers in his household made a traffic of creating new corruptions in the administration by selling imperial decrees and golden bulls. The character of the native Greeks he declares to be equally bad. He says: “They are formed of three parts: their tongue speaks one thing, their mind meditates another, and their actions accord with neither.” There can be no good administration among an utterly demoralised people. When the emperor returned to Constantinople, he carried with him some of the most turbulent and intriguing of the Peloponnesian chiefs, who had, previous to his arrival, contrived to appropriate the greater part of the taxes levied on the people to their own use. Indeed the most important result of Manuel’s visit was the introduction of such a degree of order in the provincial administration, that a fixed sum could be regularly remitted to the imperial treasury at Constantinople. His son Theodore remained as his viceroy at Misithra.

[Sidenote: [1421-1431 A.D.]]

The death of Sultan Muhammed I in 1421 involved the empire in a contest with his son, Murad II. The self-conceit of the Greeks persuaded them that they could guide the progress of the Ottomans by their superiority in diplomacy. No experience could teach them that rhetoric and scholastic learning are feeble arms against military discipline and national courage. A pretender to the Ottoman throne resided at Constantinople, named Mustapha, who asserted that he was a son of Bajazet. He was now acknowledged as lawful sultan, and Manuel concluded with him a treaty, by which Mustapha promised to restore Gallipoli, the Chalcidice of Macedonia, and the maritime cities on the Black Sea, while the emperor engaged to furnish money and military stores. He was abandoned by his followers, taken prisoner by Murad II, and hanged, in order to convince the world that he was an impostor.

Murad resolved to punish Manuel for his intrigues. The emperor was now weakened by age, and the direction of public affairs was in a great measure entrusted to his son Joannes, who endeavoured to appease the sultan with abject apologies. Murad gave the imperial ambassadors no answer until his preparations were completed. He then marched forward and formed the siege of Constantinople, establishing his own headquarters at the church of the Fountain, and commencing his lines of circumvallation in the month of June, 1422. His lines extended from the Golden Gate to the Wooden Gate; two movable towers were built to assist the storming of the wall, and cannon were employed by the Ottomans for the first time. This early artillery, however, was so ill-constructed and ill-served that it produced little effect. A thousand of the bravest janizaries fell before the walls; while the Greeks, fighting under cover of their battlements, lost only 130 killed and wounded. Murad II did not renew his attack on Constantinople, and the last act of Manuel’s reign was to sign a treaty of peace, by which Murad left the empire in possession of a few cities in Thrace, of Thessalonica, and a few forts near the mouths of the Strymon, Mount Athos, Zeitounion, and some places in Thessaly. Manuel also engaged to pay the sultan an annual tribute of three hundred thousand aspers.

Manuel adopted the monastic habit two years before his death, and took the name of Matthew, but he continued to give his advice on public affairs. He died in July, 1425, at the age of seventy-seven, after a reign of thirty-four years.

REIGN OF JOANNES VII (1423-1448 A.D.)

Joannes VII found the Eastern Roman Empire reduced to the city of Constantinople, a few neighbouring towns, Thessalonica, and a part of the Peloponnesus. His reign of twenty-three years passed in almost uninterrupted peace; yet this long period of tranquillity was productive of no improvement. As far as the revenues both of the government and of the nation were concerned, the emperor and the people alike consumed, before the expiration of each year, all that the year had produced.

The diminution of the Greek population contrasted strangely with the rapid increase of the Ottomans, while their decline in wealth and industry offered a still more unfavourable point of comparison with the Genoese colony of Galata. The trade of the Greeks had passed into the hands of the Italians; the power of the Byzantine emperors was transferred to the Ottoman sultans. The loss of personal dignity and courage followed the loss of national honour and power. Plague and pestilence, as often happens, came as attendants on neglected police, bad government, and social disorder. In the year 1431 a contagious disease of fearful mortality decimated the population of Constantinople; and it was the ninth return of pestilence since the great plague of 1347. Nations, however, are rarely sensible of their own degradation, and at this time the Greeks looked on the Latins with contempt as well as hatred; they despised the western Europeans as heretics, and the Turks as barbarians. Court processions, religious ceremonies, and national vanity amused and consoled them as they hastened along the path of degradation and ruin.

All the fortified posts had been destroyed by Murad II when he besieged Constantinople, and the country, as far as Selymbria, was inhabited only by a few Greeks engaged in agriculture, who dwelt in open villages. The Greek empire ended at Selymbria. The frontier territory of the Ottomans was a similar scene of devastation, the land being tilled by a few Christian peasants for their Turkish masters.

BRIEF UNION OF THE GREEK AND ROMAN CHURCHES

[Sidenote: [1430-1440 A.D.]]

The conquest of Thessalonica by Sultan Murad in 1430, the quarrels of the despots Theodore, Constantine, and Thomas in the Peloponnesus, and the insolence of the Genoese of Galata, who attacked Constantinople on account of some disputes relating to the Black Sea trade, warned the emperor Joannes VII that, unless he could secure some efficient military aid from strangers, the Ottoman power would soon overwhelm the Greek Empire. The pope was the only sovereign who possessed sufficient power and influence to obtain effectual aid for the Eastern Empire: but there was no probability that he would exert that influence, unless the emperor Joannes consented to the union of the Greek and Latin churches, and recognised the papal supremacy. In this critical conjuncture the statesmen and ecclesiastics of rank at Constantinople decided that the political exigencies of their situation authorised their truckling even with the doctrines of their church.

In the year 1438 the emperor Joannes and the Greek patriarch made their appearance at the council of Ferrara. In the following year the council was transferred to Florence, where, after long discussions, the Greek emperor and all the members of the clergy who had attended the council, with the exception of the bishop of Ephesus, adopted the doctrines of the Roman church concerning the procession of the Holy Ghost, the addition to the Nicene Creed, the nature of purgatory, the condition of the soul after its separation from the body until the day of judgment, the use of unleavened bread in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and the papal supremacy. The union of the two churches was solemnly ratified in the magnificent cathedral of Florence on the 6th of July, 1439, when the Greeks abjured their ancient faith in a vaster edifice and under a loftier dome than that of their own much-vaunted temple of St. Sophia.

The emperor Joannes derived none of the advantages he had expected from the simulated union of the churches. Pope Eugenius, it is true, supplied him liberally with money, but his holiness forgot his promise to send a fleet to defend Constantinople.

On his return Joannes found his subjects indignant at the manner in which the honour and doctrines of the Greek church had been sacrificed in an unsuccessful diplomatic speculation. The bishops who had obsequiously signed the articles of union at Florence, now sought popularity by deserting the emperor, and making a parade of their repentance, lamenting their wickedness in falling off for a time from the pure doctrine of the orthodox church. The only permanent result of this abortive attempt at Christian union was to increase the bigotry of the orthodox, and to furnish the Latins with just grounds for condemning the perfidious dealings and bad faith of the Greeks. In both ways it assisted the progress of the Ottoman power.

[Sidenote: [1440-1448 A.D.]]

The emperor Joannes, seeing public affairs in this hopeless state, thought only of keeping on good terms with the sultan. His brother Demetrius, however, who had accompanied him to Florence, shared his apostasy, and partaken of the papal bounty, now basely attempted to take advantage of the popular dissatisfaction with the union. He claimed the throne as being the first child of Manuel who was a Porphyrogenitus, but he trusted to gain his ends by the aid of Turkish troops rather than by the merits of his title or the preference of the Greeks. Collecting a large force composed of the Turkish nomads, who were ready to join any standard that offered them an opportunity of plundering and enslaving the Christians, Demetrius marched to besiege his brother in Constantinople. Sultan Murad took no direct part in the contest, but he allowed Demetrius to enrol Turkish troops without opposition, and viewed with satisfaction a rebellion which tended to weaken the empire. When called upon to choose between the two brothers, the Greek people acknowledged the superiority of the reigning emperor. Demetrius, after plundering the suburbs of Constantinople, saw his army melt away, and was happy to find that his brother’s moderation and love of peace was so great that he was allowed to retain his principality at Mesembria with the title of despot.

The deeds of Joannes (Janos) Hunyady might have awakened the Greeks from their lethargy, had any warlike spirit survived in the nation. The victory of the Hungarian army at the pass of Isladi, and a war with the sultan of Karamania, threatened the Ottoman Empire with serious danger; but the victory of Varna re-established the glory of the sultan’s arms. Neither the successes of the Hungarians nor the presence of a papal force in the Hellespont, which at last made its appearance under the command of Cardinal Gondolmieri, could induce Emperor Joannes to unite his cause with that of the western powers. He had obtained too many proofs of the instability and imprudence of their counsels. The moment he heard of the great victory of Sultan Murad at Varna, he sent an embassy to congratulate his suzerain, and solicit a renewal of their alliance, which the sultan immediately granted. Joannes even contrived to avoid taking part in the war carried on against the sultan by his brother Constantine in Greece, and succeeded in preserving uninterrupted peace until his death in 1448. During his inglorious reign of twenty-three years he never forgot that he was a vassal of the Ottoman Empire. He proved precisely the temporising manager of the state that circumstances required; and his pliancy averted, during his lifetime, the calamities which were ready to overwhelm the Greek Empire.

REIGN OF CONSTANTINE XIII (1448-1453 A.D.)

Constantine XIII, the last of the Greek emperors, was residing in his despotat at Sparta when his brother Joannes VII died. As he had been recently engaged in hostilities with the sultan, it was doubtful whether Murad would acknowledge him as emperor, and Demetrius availed himself of these doubts to make another attempt to occupy the throne. The deficiency of truth, honour, and patriotism among the Greek aristocracy during the last century of the Eastern Empire is almost without a parallel in history; but Demetrius was too well known and too generally despised to find a large party even in that worthless aristocracy disposed to espouse his cause, while Constantine, on the other hand, was known to possess both candour and energy, and was respected by all except the most bigoted among the orthodox Greeks.

[Sidenote: [1451 A.D.]]

Sultan Murad II died in February, 1451, after a prosperous reign of thirty years, and was succeeded by his son Muhammed II, who was only twenty-one years old. Muhammed II was a man of great ambition and great talents; he united with extraordinary activity and courage a degree of judgment rare in his high station, and still rarer at his early age.

The conquest of Constantinople was the first object of his ambition. It was by nature the capital of his dominions, and as long as it remained in the hands of the Greeks the Ottoman Empire lay open to the invasions of the western Christians. Having concluded a truce for three years with John Hunyady, the young sultan crossed over into Asia to suppress the hostile proceedings of Ibrahim, the sultan of Karamania.

Constantine, who appears to have formed a very erroneous idea of the talents and character of Muhammed, took this opportunity of insulting him in the most sensitive manner by sending an embassy to demand an augmentation of the pension of three hundred thousand aspers, which the Ottoman court had accorded to the Greek for the maintenance of Orkhan, the grandson of Suleiman. The ambassadors were instructed to insinuate that, if the demand were not granted, Orkhan might be allowed to lay claim to the Ottoman throne.

Such an insult was not likely to be ever forgotten by a haughty and ambitious prince. The wary young sultan, however, dismissed the ambassadors with courtesy. But as soon as his Asiatic campaign was finished, he ordered the imperial agents to be expelled from the territory in the valley of the Strymon which had been assigned for the maintenance of Orkhan, and stopped all further payments. Shortly after, without informing Constantine of his intention, he constructed a fortress on the Greek territory at the narrowest part of the Bosporus, opposite a fort which had been constructed by Bajazet I on the Asiatic shore. The distance between the two forts is about three-quarters of a mile, and a rapid current flows between. The sultan had made every preparation for completing the work with extraordinary celerity. An ample supply of materials had been collected before his object was known, and as soon as the plan of the fortress was marked out, a thousand masons and two thousand labourers worked incessantly to complete the walls.

Constantine had good reason to consider the construction of this fortress on his territory, within five miles of his capital, and commanding its approach from the Black Sea, as an infraction of the treaty between the two empires, but he was too weak to resent this signal revenge for his own recent threats. He complained of the hostile invasion of the Greek territory, but Muhammed treated his reclamations with contempt, observing that the ground on which the fortress was built, having been purchased and paid for, was Turkish property, and the emperor of Constantinople, being a vassal of the Porte, had no right to dispute the will of the sultan.

The first open resistance was offered by some Greeks, who endeavoured to prevent Muhammed’s engineers from carrying off the marble columns from a church. These pious Christians were cut to pieces by the Ottoman troops. As the work advanced the sultan’s aggressions increased. His soldiers were allowed to plunder; quarrels ensued in which blood was shed, and then the Turks attacked the Greeks who were getting in the harvest, and slew the reapers. Constantine in alarm closed the gates of Constantinople, cut off all communications between the Greeks and the Ottomans, and sent another embassy to the sultan to ask redress. Muhammed replied by a formal declaration of war.

WAR WITH MUHAMMED

[Sidenote: [1451-1452 A.D.]]

Both parties now began to prepare for the mortal contest. The siege of Constantinople was to be the great event of the coming year. The sultan, in order to prevent the emperor’s brothers in the Peloponnesus from sending any succours to the capital, ordered Tourakhan, the pasha of Thessaly, to invade the peninsula. He himself took up his residence at Hadrianopolis, to collect warlike stores and siege artillery. Constantine, on his part, made every preparation in his power for vigorous defence. He formed large magazines of provisions, collected military stores, and enrolled all the soldiers he could muster among the Greek population of Constantinople. But the inhabitants of that city were either unable or unwilling to furnish recruits in proportion to their numbers. Bred up in peaceful occupation, they probably possessed neither the activity nor the habitual exercise which was required to move with ease under the weighty armour then in use.

So few were found disposed to fight for their country, that not more than six thousand Greek troops appeared under arms during the whole siege. The numerical weakness of the Greek army rendered it incapable of defending so large a city as Constantinople, even with all the advantage to be derived from strong fortifications. The emperor was, therefore, anxious to obtain the assistance of the warlike citizens of the Italian republics, where good officers and experienced troops were then numerous. As he had no money to engage mercenaries, he could only hope to succeed by papal influence. An embassy was sent to Pope Nicholas V, begging immediate aid, and declaring the emperor’s readiness to complete the union of the churches in any way the pope should direct. Nicholas despatched Cardinal Isidore, the metropolitan of Kieff, who had joined the Latin church, as his legate. Isidore had represented the Russian church at the council of Florence; but on his return to Russia he was imprisoned as an apostate, and with difficulty escaped to Italy. He was by birth a Greek; and being a man of learning and conciliatory manners, it was expected that he would be favourably received at Constantinople.

The cardinal arrived at Constantinople in November, 1452. He was accompanied by a small body of chosen troops, and brought some pecuniary aid, which he employed in repairing the most dilapidated part of the fortifications. Both the emperor and the cardinal deceived themselves in supposing that the dangers to which the Greek nation and the Christian church were exposed would induce the orthodox to yield something of their ecclesiastical forms and phrases. It was evident that foreign aid could alone save Constantinople, and it was absurd to imagine that the Latins would fight for those that treated them as heretics, and who would not fight for themselves. The crisis, therefore, compelled the Greeks to choose between union with the church of Rome or submission to the Ottoman power. They had to decide whether the preservation of the Greek Empire was worth the ecclesiastical sacrifices they were called upon to make in order to preserve their national independence.

CHURCH DISSENSIONS

[Sidenote: [1452-1453 A.D.]]

In the meantime, the emperor Constantine celebrated his union with the papal church, in the cathedral of St. Sophia, on the 12th of December, 1452. The court and the great body of the dignified clergy ratified the act by their presence; but the monks and the people repudiated the connection. In their opinion, the church of St. Sophia was polluted by the ceremony, and from that day it was deserted by the orthodox. The historian Ducas declares that they looked upon it as a haunt of demons, and no better than a pagan shrine. The monks, the nuns, and the populace publicly proclaimed their detestation of the union; and their opposition was inflamed by the bigotry of an ambitious pedant, who, under the name of Georgius Scholarius, acted as a warm partisan of the union at the council of Florence, and under the ecclesiastical name of Gennadius is known in history as the subservient patriarch of Sultan Muhammed II. On returning from Italy, he made a great parade of his repentance for complying with the unionists at Florence. He shut himself up in the monastery of Pantocrator, where he assumed the monastic habit, and the name of Gennadius, under which he consummated the union between the Greek church and the Ottoman administration.

At the present crisis he stepped forward as the leader of the most bigoted party, and excited his followers to the most furious opposition to measures which he had once advocated as salutary to the church, and indispensable for the preservation of the state. The unionists were now accused of sacrificing true religion to the delusions of human policy, of insulting God to serve the pope, and of preferring the interests of their bodies to the care of their souls. In place of exhorting their countrymen to aid the emperor, who was straining every nerve to defend their country--in place of infusing into their minds the spirit of patriotism and religion, these teachers of the people were incessantly inveighing against the wickedness of the unionists and the apostasy of the emperor.

So completely did their bigotry extinguish every feeling of patriotism that the grand duke Notaras declared he would rather see Constantinople subjected to the turban of the sultan than to the tiara of the pope. His wish was gratified; but, in dying, he must have felt how fearfully he had erred in comparing the effects of papal arrogance with the cruelty of Mohammedan tyranny. The emperor Constantine, who felt the importance of the approaching contest, showed great prudence and moderation in his difficult position. The spirit of Christian charity calmed his temper, and his determination not to survive the empire gave a deliberate coolness to his military conduct. Though his Greek subjects often raised seditions, and reviled him in the streets, the emperor took no notice of their behaviour. To induce the orthodox to fight for their country, by having a leader of their own party, he left the grand duke Notaras in office; yet he well knew that this bigot would never act cordially with the Latin auxiliaries, who were the best troops in the city; and the emperor had some reason to distrust the patriotism of Notaras, seeing that he hoarded his immense wealth, instead of expending a portion of it for his country.

PREPARATIONS FOR DEFENCE

The fortifications were not found to be in a good state of repair. Two monks, who had been entrusted with a large sum for the purpose of repairing them, had executed their duty in an insufficient, and, it was generally said, in a fraudulent manner. The extreme dishonesty that prevailed among the Greek officials explains the selection of monks as treasurers for military objects; and it must lessen our surprise at finding men of their religious professions sharing in the general avarice, or tolerating the habitual peculation of others.

Cannon were beginning to be used in sieges, but stone balls were used in the larger pieces of artillery; and the larger the gun, the greater was the effect it was expected to produce. Even in Constantinople there were some artillery too large to be of much use, as the land wall had not been constructed to admit of their recoil, and the ramparts were so weak as to be shaken by their concussion. Constantine had also only a moderate supply of gunpowder. The machines of a past epoch in military science, but to the use of which the Greeks adhered with their conservative prejudices, were brought from the storehouses, and planted on the walls beside the modern artillery. Johann Grant, a German officer, who arrived with Justiniani, was the most experienced artilleryman and military engineer in the place.

A considerable number of Italians hastened to Constantinople as soon as they heard of its danger, eager to defend so important a depot of eastern commerce. The spirit of enterprise and the love of military renown had become as much a characteristic of the merchant nobles of the commercial republics as they had been, in a preceding age, distinctions of the barons in feudal monarchies. All the nations who then traded with Constantinople furnished contingents to defend its walls.

A short time before the siege commenced, John Justiniani arrived with two Genoese galleys and three hundred chosen troops, and the emperor valued his services so highly that he was appointed general of the guard. The resident bailo of the Venetians furnished three large galleasses and a body of troops for the defence of the port. The consul of the Catalans, with his countrymen and the Aragonese, undertook the defence of the great palace of Bukoleon and the port of Kontoskalion. The cardinal Isidore, with the papal troops, defended the Kynegesion, and the angle of the city at the head of the port down to St. Demetrius. The importance of the aid which was afforded by the Latins is proved by the fact that, of twelve military divisions into which Constantine divided the fortifications, the commands of only two were trusted to the exclusive direction of Greek officers. In the others, Greeks shared the command with foreigners, or else foreigners alone conducted the defence.

When all Constantine’s preparations for defence were completed, he found himself obliged to man a line of wall on the land side of about five miles in length, every point of which was exposed to a direct attack. The remainder of the wall towards the port and the Propontis exceeded nine miles in extent, and his whole garrison hardly amounted to nine thousand men. His fleet consisted of only twenty galleys and three Venetian galleasses, but the entry of the port was closed by a chain, the end of which, on the side of Galata, was secured in a strong fort of which the Greeks kept possession. During the winter the emperor sent out his fleet to ravage the coast of the Propontis as far as Cyzicus, and the spirit of the Greeks was roused by the booty they made in these expeditions.

Muhammed II spent the winter at Hadrianopolis, preparing everything necessary for commencing the siege with vigour. His whole mind was absorbed by the glory of conquering the Roman Empire, and gaining possession of Constantinople, which for more than 1150 years had been the capital of the East. While the fever of ambition inflamed his soul, his cooler judgment also warned him that the Ottoman power rested on a perilous basis as long as Constantinople, the true capital of his empire, remained in the hands of others. Muhammed could easily assemble a sufficient number of troops for his enterprise, but it required all his activity and power to collect the requisite supplies of provisions and stores for the immense military and naval force he had ordered to assemble, and to prepare the artillery and ammunition necessary to insure success. Early and late, in his court and in his cabinet, the young sultan could talk of nothing but the approaching siege. With the writing-reed and a scroll of paper in his hand, he was often seen tracing plans of the fortifications of Constantinople and marking out positions for his own batteries. Every question relating to the extent and locality of the various magazines to be constructed in order to maintain the troops was discussed in his presence; he himself distributed the troops in their respective divisions and regulated the order of their march; he issued the orders relating to the equipment of the fleet, and discussed the various methods proposed for breaching, mining, and scaling the walls. His enthusiasm was the impulse of a hero, but the immense superiority of his force would have secured him the victory with any ordinary degree of perseverance.

The Ottomans were already familiar with the use of cannon. Murad II had employed them when he besieged Constantinople in 1422; but Muhammed now resolved on forming a more powerful battering-train than had previously existed. Neither the Greeks nor the Turks possessed the art of casting large guns. Both were obliged to employ foreigners. An experienced artilleryman and founder, named Urban, by birth a Wallachian, carried into execution the sultan’s wishes. He had passed some time in the Greek service; but even the moderate pay he was allowed by the emperor having fallen in arrear, he resigned his place and transferred his services to the sultan, who knew better how to value warlike knowledge. He now gave Muhammed proof of his skill by casting the largest cannon which had ever been fabricated. He had already placed one of extraordinary size in the new castle of the Bosporus, which carried a ball across the straits. The gun destined for the siege of Constantinople far exceeded in size this monster, and the diameter of its mouth must have been nearly two feet and a half. Other cannon of great size, whose balls of stone weighed 150 pounds, were also cast, as well as many guns of smaller calibre. All these, together with a number of ballists and other ancient engines still employed in sieges, were mounted on carriages in order to transport them to Constantinople. The conveyance of this formidable train of artillery, and of the immense quantity of ammunition required for its service, was by no means a trifling operation.[90]

THE SIEGE BEGINS

[Sidenote: [1453 A.D.]]

The first division of the Ottoman army moved from Hadrianopolis in the month of February, 1453. In the meantime a numerous corps of pioneers worked constantly at the road, in order to prepare it for the passage of the long train of artillery and baggage wagons. Temporary bridges, capable of being taken to pieces, were erected by the engineers over every ravine and watercourse, and the materials for the siege advanced steadily, though slowly, to their destination. The extreme difficulty of moving the monster cannon with its immense balls retarded the sultan’s progress, and it was the beginning of April before the whole battering-train reached Constantinople, though the distance from Hadrianopolis is barely a hundred miles. The division of the army under Karadja Pasha had already reduced Mesembria, Anchialus, Bizya, and the castle of St. Stephanus. Selymbria alone defended itself, and the fortifications were so strong that Muhammed ordered it to be closely blockaded, and left its fate to be determined by that of the capital.

On the 6th of April, Sultan Muhammed II encamped on the slope of the hill facing the quarter of Blachernæ, a little beyond the ground occupied by the crusaders in 1203, and immediately ordered the construction of lines, extending from the head of the port to the shore of the Propontis. These lines were formed of a mound of earth, and they served both to restrain the sorties of the besieged, and to cover the troops from the fire of the enemy’s artillery and missiles. The batteries were then formed; the principal were erected against the gate Charsiasæ, in the quarter of Blachernæ, and against the gate of St. Romanus, near the centre of the city wall. It was toward this last gate that the fire of the monster gun was directed and the chief attack was made.

The land-forces of the Turks probably amounted to about seventy thousand men of all arms and qualities; but the real strength of the army lay in the corps of janizaries, then the best infantry in Europe, and their number did not exceed twelve thousand.[91] At the same time, twenty thousand cavalry, mounted on the finest horses of the Turkoman breed, and hardened by long service, were ready to fight either on horseback or on foot under the eye of their young sultan. The fleet which had been collected along the Asiatic coast, from the ports of the Black Sea to those of the Ægean, brought additional supplies of men, provisions, and military stores. It consisted of 320 vessels of various sizes and forms. The greater part were only half-decked coasters, and even the largest were far inferior in size to the galleys and galleasses of the Greeks and Italians. The fortifications of Constantinople towards the sea afford great facilities for attack. Even though they were partly ruined by time, and weakened by careless reparations, they still offered a formidable resistance to the imperfect science of the engineers in Muhammed’s army.[c]

Of the triangle which composes the figure of Constantinople, the two sides along the sea were made inaccessible to an enemy; the Propontis by nature, and the harbour by art. Between the two waters the basis of the triangle, the land side, was protected by a double wall, and a deep ditch of the depth of one hundred feet. Against this line of fortification, which Phrantzes, an eye-witness, prolongs to the measure of six miles, the Ottomans directed their principal attack; and the emperor, after distributing the service and command of the most perilous stations, undertook the defence of the external wall. In the first days of the siege, the Greek soldiers descended into the ditch or sallied into the field; but they soon discovered that, in the proportion of their numbers, one Christian was of more value than twenty Turks; and, after these bold preludes, they were prudently content to maintain their rampart with their missile weapons. Nor should this prudence be accused of pusillanimity. The nation was indeed pusillanimous and base; but the last Constantine deserves the name of a hero; his noble band of volunteers was inspired with Roman virtue; and the foreign auxiliaries supported the honour of the western chivalry.

Each day added to the science of the Christians; but their inadequate stock of gunpowder was wasted in the operations of each day. Their ordnance was not powerful, either in size or number; and if they possessed some heavy cannon, they feared to plant them on the walls, lest the aged structure should be shaken and overthrown by the explosion.

The great cannon of Muhammed has been separately noticed; an important and visible object in the history of the times; but that enormous engine was flanked by two fellows almost of equal magnitude; the long order of the Turkish artillery was pointed against the walls; fourteen batteries thundered at once on the most accessible places; and of one of these it is ambiguously expressed, that it was mounted with 130 guns, or that it discharged 130 bullets. Yet, in the power and activity of the sultan, we may discern the infancy of the new science. Under a master who counted the moments, the great cannon could be loaded and fired no more than seven times in one day. The heated metal unfortunately burst: several workmen were destroyed; and the skill of an artist was admired who bethought himself of preventing the danger and the accident, by pouring oil, after each explosion, into the mouth of the cannon.

The first random shots were productive of more sound than effect; and it was by the advice of a Christian, that the engineers were taught to level their aim against the two opposite sides of the salient angles of a bastion. However imperfect, the weight and repetition of the fire made some impression on the walls; and the Turks, pushing their approaches to the edge of the ditch, attempted to fill the enormous chasm, and to build a road to the assault. After a long and bloody conflict, the web that had been woven in the day was still unravelled in the night. The next resource of Muhammed was the practice of mines; but the soil was rocky; in every attempt, he was stopped and undermined by the Christian engineers; nor had the art been yet invented of replenishing those subterraneous passages with gunpowder, and blowing whole towers and cities into the air.

A circumstance that distinguishes the siege of Constantinople, is the reunion of the ancient and modern artillery. The cannon were intermingled with the mechanical engines for casting stones and darts; the bullet and the battering-ram were directed against the same walls; nor had the discovery of gunpowder superseded the use of the liquid and unextinguishable fire. A wooden turret of the largest size was advanced on rollers; the tower of St. Romanus was at length overturned; after a severe struggle, the Turks were repulsed from the breach, and interrupted by darkness. Of this pause of action, this interval of hope, each moment was improved by the activity of the emperor and Justiniani, who passed the night on the spot, and urged the labours which involved the safety of the church and city. At the dawn of day, the impatient sultan perceived, with astonishment and grief, that his wooden turret had been reduced to ashes; the ditch was cleared and restored; and the tower of St. Romanus was again strong and entire. He deplored the failure of his design; and uttered a profane exclamation, that the word of the thirty-seven thousand prophets should not have compelled him to believe that such a work, in so short a time, could have been accomplished by the infidels.

In the first apprehension of a siege, Constantine had negotiated, in the isles of the Archipelago, the Morea, and Sicily, the most indispensable supplies. Five great ships, equipped for merchandise and war, sailed from the harbour of Chios. One of these ships bore the imperial flag; the remaining four belonged to the Genoese; and they were laden with wheat and barley, with wine, oil, and vegetables, and above all, with soldiers and mariners, for the service of the capital. The Turkish fleet at the entrance of the Bosporus, was stretched from shore to shore, in the form of a crescent, to intercept these bold auxiliaries. The reader who has present to his mind the geographical picture of Constantinople, will conceive and admire the greatness of the spectacle.

The five Christian ships continued to advance with joyful shouts, and a full press both of sails and oars, against a hostile fleet of three hundred vessels; and the rampart, the camp, the coasts of Europe and Asia, were lined with innumerable spectators, who anxiously awaited the event of this momentous succour. At the first view that event could not appear doubtful; the superiority of the Moslems was beyond all measure or account; and, in a calm, their numbers and valour must inevitably have prevailed. But their hasty and imperfect navy had been created, not by the genius of the people, but by the will of the sultan; in the height of their prosperity, the Turks have acknowledged that if God had given them the earth, he had left the sea to the infidels; and a series of defeats, a rapid progress of decay, has established the truth of their modest confession. In this conflict, the imperial vessel, which had been almost overpowered, was rescued by the Genoese; but the Turks, in a distant and closer attack, were twice repulsed with considerable loss.

Muhammed himself sat on horseback on the beach to encourage their valour by his voice and presence, by the promise of reward, and by fear more potent than the fear of the enemy. The passions of his soul, and even the gestures of his body, seemed to imitate the actions of the combatants; and, as if he had been the lord of nature, he spurred his horse with a fearless and impotent effort into the sea. His loud reproaches, and the clamours of the camp, urged the Ottomans to a third attack, more fatal and bloody than the two former; and we must repeat, though we cannot credit, the evidence of Phrantzes, who affirms from their own mouth that they lost above twelve thousand men in the slaughter of the day. The Christian squadron, triumphant and unhurt, steered along the Bosporus, and securely anchored within the chain of the harbour.

The reduction of the city appeared to be hopeless, unless a double attack could be made from the harbour as well as from the land; but the harbour was inaccessible; an impenetrable chain was now defended by eight large ships, more than twenty of a smaller size, with several galleys and sloops; and instead of forcing this barrier, the Turks might apprehend a naval sally, and a second encounter in the open sea.

In this perplexity, the genius of Muhammed conceived and executed a plan of a bold and marvellous cast, of transporting by land his lighter vessels and military stores from the Bosporus into the higher part of the harbour. The distance is about ten miles; the ground is uneven, and was overspread with thickets; and, as the road must be opened behind the suburb of Galata, their free passage or total destruction must depend on the option of the Genoese. But these selfish merchants were ambitious of the favour of being the last devoured; and the deficiency of art was supplied by the strength of obedient myriads. A level way was covered with a broad platform of strong and solid planks; and to render them more slippery and smooth, they were anointed with the fat of sheep and oxen. Fourscore light galleys and brigantines of fifty and thirty oars were disembarked on the Bosporus shore; arranged successively on rollers; and drawn forward by the power of men and pulleys. Two guides or pilots were stationed at the helm and the prow of each vessel; the sails were unfurled to the winds; and the labour was cheered by song and acclamation. In the course of a single night, this Turkish fleet painfully climbed the hill, steered over the plain, and was launched from the declivity into the shallow waters of the harbour, far above the molestation of the deeper vessels of the Greeks. The real importance of this operation was magnified by the consternation and confidence which it inspired; but the notorious, unquestionable fact was displayed before the eyes, and is recorded by the pens, of the two nations. A similar stratagem had been repeatedly practised by the ancients.

As soon as Muhammed had occupied the upper harbour with a fleet and army, he constructed, in the narrowest part, a bridge or rather mole of fifty cubits in breadth, and one hundred in length; it was formed of casks and hogsheads, joined with rafters linked with iron and covered with a solid floor. On this floating battery he planted one of his largest cannon, while the fourscore galleys, with troops and scaling-ladders, approached the most accessible side, which had formerly been stormed by the Latin conquerors. His vigilance prevented the approach of the Greek ships; their foremost galliots were sunk or taken; forty youths, the bravest of Italy and Greece, were inhumanly massacred at his command; nor could the emperor’s grief be assuaged by the just though cruel retaliation, of exposing from the walls the heads of 260 Mussulman captives.

After a siege of forty days, the fate of Constantinople could no longer be averted. The diminutive garrison was exhausted by a double attack; the fortifications which had stood for ages against hostile violence, were dismantled on all sides by the Ottoman cannon; many breaches were opened; and near the gate of St. Romanus, four towers had been levelled with the ground. For the payment of his feeble and mutinous troops, Constantine was compelled to despoil the churches, with the promise of a fourfold restitution; and his sacrilege offered a new reproach to the enemies of the union. A spirit of discord impaired the remnant of the Christian strength; the Genoese and Venetian auxiliaries asserted the pre-eminence of their respective service; and Justiniani and the grand duke, whose ambition was not extinguished by the common danger, accused each other of treachery and cowardice.

During the siege of Constantinople, the words of peace and capitulation had been sometimes pronounced; and several embassies had passed between the camp and the city. The Greek emperor was humbled by adversity; and would have yielded to any terms compatible with religion and royalty. The Turkish sultan was desirous of sparing the blood of his soldiers; still more desirous of securing for his own use the Byzantine treasures; and he accomplished a sacred duty in presenting to the gabours the choice of circumcision, of tribute, or of death. The avarice of Muhammed might have been satisfied with an annual sum of one hundred thousand ducats; but his ambition grasped the capital of the East; to the prince he offered a rich equivalent, to the people a free toleration, or a safe departure; but after some fruitless treaty, he declared his resolution of finding either a throne, or a grave, under the walls of Constantinople.

A sense of honour, and the fear of universal reproach, forbade Palæologus to resign the city into the hands of the Ottomans; and he determined to abide the last extremities of war. Several days were employed by the sultan in the preparations of the assault; and a respite was granted by his favourite science of astrology, which had fixed on the 29th of May as the fortunate and fatal hour. On the evening of the 27th he issued his final orders. A crowd of dervishes visited the tents, to instil the desire of martyrdom, and the assurance of spending an immortal youth amidst the rivers and gardens of paradise and in the embraces of the black-eyed virgins. Yet Muhammed principally trusted to the efficacy of temporal and visible rewards. A double pay was promised to the victorious troops; “The city and the buildings,” said Muhammed, “are mine; but I resign to your valour the captives and the spoil, the treasures of gold and beauty; be rich and be happy. Many are the provinces of my empire: the intrepid soldier who first ascends the walls of Constantinople, shall be rewarded with the government of the fairest and most wealthy; and my gratitude shall accumulate his honours and fortunes above the measure of his own hopes.” Such various and potent motives diffused among the Turks a general ardour, regardless of life, and impatient for action; the camp re-echoed with the Moslem shouts of “God is God, there is but one God, and Mohammed is the apostle of God;” and the sea and land, from Galata to the Seven Towers, were illuminated by the blaze of their nocturnal fires.

Far different was the state of the Christians; who, with loud and impotent complaints, deplored the guilt, or the punishment, of their sins. The celestial image of the virgin had been exposed in solemn procession; but their divine patroness was deaf to their entreaties; they accused the obstinacy of the emperor for refusing a timely surrender; anticipated the horrors of their fate; and sighed for the repose and security of Turkish servitude. The noblest of the Greeks, and the bravest of the allies, were summoned to the palace, to prepare them, on the evening of the twenty-eighth, for the duties and dangers of the general assault. The last speech of Palæologus was the funeral oration of the Roman Empire: he promised, he conjured, and he vainly attempted to infuse the hope which was extinguished in his own mind. In this world all was comfortless and gloomy; and neither the Gospel nor the church have proposed any conspicuous recompense to the heroes who fall in the service of their country. But the example of their prince, and the confinement of a siege, had armed these warriors with the courage of despair; and the pathetic scene is described by the feelings of the historian Phrantzes,[f] who was himself present at this mournful assembly. They wept, they embraced; regardless of their families and fortunes, they devoted their lives; and each commander, departing to his station, maintained all night a vigilant and anxious watch on the rampart. The emperor, and some faithful companions, entered the dome of St. Sophia, which in a few hours was to be converted into a mosque, and devoutly received, with tears and prayers, the sacrament of the holy communion. He reposed some moments in the palace, which resounded with cries and lamentations; solicited the pardon of all whom he might have injured; and mounted on horseback to visit the guards, and explore the motions of the enemy. The distress and fall of the last Constantine are more glorious than the long prosperity of the Byzantine cæsars.

THE FINAL ASSAULT

In the confusion of darkness, an assault may sometimes succeed; but in this great and general attack, the military judgment and astrological knowledge of Muhammed advised him to expect the morning, the memorable 29th of May, in the fourteen hundred and fifty-third year of the Christian era. The preceding night had been strenuously employed. Under pain of death, silence was enjoined; but the physical laws of motion and sound are not obedient to discipline or fear; each individual might suppress his voice and measure his footsteps; but the march and labour of thousands must inevitably produce a strange confusion of dissonant clamours, which reached the ears of the watchmen of the towers. At daybreak, without the customary signal of the morning gun, the Turks assaulted the city by sea and land; and the similitude of a twined or twisted thread has been applied to the closeness and continuity of their line of attack.

The foremost ranks consisted of the refuse of the host, a voluntary crowd, who fought without order or command; of the feebleness of age or childhood, of peasants and vagrants, and of all who had joined the camp in the blind hope of plunder and martyrdom. The common impulse drove them onwards to the wall: the most audacious to climb were instantly precipitated; and not a dart, not a bullet, of the Christians was idly wasted on the accumulated throng. But their strength and ammunition were exhausted in this laborious defence; the ditch was filled with the bodies of the slain; they supported the footsteps of their companions; and of this devoted vanguard, the death was more serviceable than the life.

Under their respective pashas and sanjaks, the troops of Anatolia and Romania were successively led to the charge; their progress was various and doubtful; but, after a conflict of two hours, the Greeks still maintained and improved their advantage. In that fatal moment, the janizaries arose, fresh, vigorous, and invincible. The sultan himself on horseback, with an iron mace in his hand, was the spectator and judge of their valour; he was surrounded by ten thousand of his domestic troops, whom he reserved for the decisive occasion; and the tide of battle was directed and impelled by his voice and eye. His numerous ministers of justice were posted behind the line, to urge, to restrain, and to punish; and if danger was in the front, shame and inevitable death were in the rear of the fugitives. The cries of fear and of pain were drowned in the martial music of drums, trumpets, and attaballs; and experience has proved that the mechanical operation of sounds, by quickening the circulation of the blood and spirits, will act on the human machine more forcibly than the eloquence of reason and honour. From the lines, the galleys, and the bridge, the Ottoman artillery thundered on all sides; and the camp and city, the Greeks and the Turks, were involved in a cloud of smoke, which could only be dispelled by the final deliverance or destruction of the Roman Empire.

The immediate loss of Constantinople may be ascribed to the bullet, or arrow, which pierced the gauntlet of John Justiniani. The sight of his blood, and the exquisite pain, appalled the courage of the chief, whose arms and counsels were the firmest rampart of the city. As he withdrew from his station in quest of a surgeon, his flight was perceived and stopped by the indefatigable emperor: “Your wound,” explained Palæologus, “is slight; the danger is pressing; your presence is necessary; and whither will you retire?” “I will retire,” said the trembling Genoese, “by the same road which God has opened to the Turks;” and at these words he hastily passed through one of the breaches of the inner wall. By this pusillanimous act, he stained the honours of a military life; and the few days which he survived in Galata, or the isle of Chios, were embittered by his own and the public reproach.[92] His example was imitated by the greatest part of the Latin auxiliaries; and the defence began to slacken when the attack was pressed with redoubled vigour. The number of the Ottomans was fifty, perhaps a hundred, times superior to that of the Christians; the double walls were reduced by the cannon to a heap of ruins; in a circuit of several miles, some places must be found more easy of access, or more feebly guarded; and if the besiegers could penetrate in a single point, the whole city was irrecoverably lost. The first who deserved the sultan’s reward was Hassan the janizary, of gigantic stature and strength. With his scimitar in one hand, and his buckler in the other, he ascended the outward fortification; of the thirty janizaries who were emulous of his valour, eighteen perished in the bold adventure. Hassan and his twelve companions had reached the summit; the giant was precipitated from the rampart; he rose on one knee, and was again oppressed by a shower of darts and stones. But his success had proved that the achievement was possible; the walls and towers were instantly covered with a swarm of Turks; and the Greeks, now driven from the vantage ground, were overwhelmed by increasing multitudes.

Amidst these multitudes, the emperor, who accomplished all the duties of a general and a soldier, was long seen, and finally lost. The nobles, who fought round his person sustained, till their last breath, the honourable names of Palæologus and Cantacuzenus; his mournful exclamation was heard, “Cannot there be found a Christian to cut off my head?” and his last fear was that of falling alive into the hands of the infidels. The prudent despair of Constantine cast away the purple; amidst the tumult he fell by an unknown hand, and his body was buried under a mountain of the slain.

After his death, resistance and order were no more; the Greeks fled towards the city; and many were pressed and stifled in the narrow pass of the gate of St. Romanus. The victorious Turks rushed through the breaches of the inner wall; and as they advanced into the streets they were soon joined by their brethren, who had forced the gate Phenar on the side of the harbour. In the first heat of the pursuit, about two thousand Christians were put to the sword; but avarice soon prevailed over cruelty; and the victors acknowledged that they should immediately have given quarter, if the valour of the emperor and his chosen bands had not prepared them for a similar opposition in every part of the capital.

It was thus, after a siege of fifty-three days, that Constantinople, which had defied the power of Chosroes, the chagan, and the caliphs, was irretrievably subdued by the arms of Muhammed II. Her empire only had been subverted by the Latins; her religion was trampled in the dust by the Moslem conquerors.

THE SACK OF CONSTANTINOPLE

On the assurance of the public calamity, the houses and convents were instantly deserted; and the trembling inhabitants flocked together in the streets, like a herd of timid animals, as if accumulated weakness could be productive of strength, or in the vain hope, that, amid the crowd, each individual might be safe and invisible. From every part of the capital they flowed into the church of St. Sophia; in the space of an hour, the sanctuary, the choir, the nave, the upper and lower galleries, were filled with the multitudes of fathers and husbands, of women and children, of priests, monks, and religious virgins; the doors were barred on the inside, and they sought protection from the sacred dome, which they had so lately abhorred as a profane and polluted edifice. Their confidence was founded on the prophecy of an enthusiast or impostor, that one day the Turks would enter Constantinople, and pursue the Romans as far as the column of Constantine, in the square before St. Sophia; but that this would be the term of their calamities; that an angel would descend from heaven, with a sword in his hand, and would deliver the empire, with that celestial weapon, to a poor man seated at the foot of the column. “Take this sword,” would he say, “and avenge the people of the Lord.” At these animating words the Turks would instantly fly, and the victorious Romans would drive them from the West, and from all Anatolia, as far as the frontiers of Persia. It is on this occasion, that Ducas,[g] with some fancy and much truth, upbraids the discord and obstinacy of the Greeks. “Had that angel appeared,” exclaims the historian, “had he offered to exterminate your foes if you would consent to the union of the church, even then, in that fatal moment, you would have rejected your safety, or have deceived your God.”

While they expected the descent of the tardy angel, the doors were broken with axes; and, as the Turks encountered no resistance, their bloodless hands were employed in selecting and securing the multitude of their prisoners. Youth, beauty, and the appearance of wealth attracted their choice; and the right of property was decided among themselves by a prior seizure, by personal strength, and by the authority of command. In the space of an hour, the male captives were bound with cords, the females with their veils and girdles. The senators were linked with their slaves; the prelates with the porters of the church; and young men of a plebeian class with noble maids, whose faces had been invisible to the sun and their nearest kindred. In this common captivity the ranks of society were confounded; the ties of nature were cut asunder: and the inexorable soldier was careless of the father’s groans, the tears of the mother, and the lamentations of the children. The loudest in their wailings were the nuns, who were torn from the altar with naked bosoms, outstretched hands, and dishevelled hair; and we should piously believe that few could be tempted to prefer the vigils of the harem to those of the monastery.

Of these unfortunate Greeks, of these domestic animals, whole strings were rudely driven through the streets; and as the conquerors were eager to return for more prey, their trembling pace was quickened with menaces and blows. At the same hour, a similar rapine was exercised in all the churches and monasteries, in all the palaces and habitations of the capital; nor could any place, however sacred or sequestered, protect the persons or the property of the Greeks. Above sixty thousand of this devoted people were transported from the city to the camp and fleet; exchanged or sold, according to the caprice or interest of their masters, and dispersed in remote servitude through the provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Among these we may notice some remarkable characters. The historian Phrantzes, first chamberlain and principal secretary, was involved, with his family, in the common lot. After suffering, for months, the hardships of slavery, he recovered his freedom; in the ensuing winter he ventured to Hadrianopolis, and ransomed his wife from the mir bashi, or master of horse; but his two children, in the flower of youth and beauty, had been seized for the use of Muhammed himself. The daughter of Phrantzes died in the seraglio, perhaps a virgin; his son, in the fifteenth year of his age, preferred death to infamy, and was stabbed by the hand of the royal lover.

The pride or cruelty of Muhammed would have been most sensibly gratified by the capture of a Roman legate; but the dexterity of Cardinal Isidore eluded the search, and he escaped from Galata in a plebeian habit. The chain and entrance of the outward harbour was still occupied by the Italian ships of merchandise and war. They had signalised their valour in the siege; they embraced the moment of retreat, while the Turkish mariners were dissipated in the pillage of the city. When they hoisted sail, the beach was covered with a suppliant and lamentable crowd; but the means of transportation were scanty; the Venetians and Genoese selected their countrymen; and, notwithstanding the fairest promises of the sultan, the inhabitants of Galata evacuated their houses, and embarked with their most precious effects.

In the fall and the sack of great cities, an historian is condemned to repeat the tale of uniform calamity; the same effects must be produced by the same passions; and when those passions may be indulged without control, small, alas! is the difference between civilised and savage man. Amidst the vague exclamations of bigotry and hatred, the Turks are not accused of a wanton or immoderate effusion of Christian blood; but according to their maxims (the maxims of antiquity) the lives of the vanquished were forfeited; and the legitimate reward of the conqueror was derived from the service, the sale, or the ransom of his captives of both sexes. The wealth of Constantinople had been granted by the sultan to his victorious troops; and the rapine of an hour is more productive than the industry of years. But as no regular division was attempted of the spoil, the respective shares were not determined by merit; and the rewards of valour were stolen away by the followers of the camp, who had declined the toil and danger of the battle. The narrative of their depredations could not afford either amusement or instruction; the total amount, in the last poverty of the empire, has been valued at four millions of ducats; and of this sum, a small part was the property of the Venetians, the Genoese, the Florentines, and the merchants of Ancona. Of these foreigners, the stock was improved in quick and perpetual circulation; but the riches of the Greeks were displayed in idle ostentation, or deeply buried in treasures of ingots and old coin, lest it should be demanded at their hands for the defence of their country.

The profanation and plunder of the monasteries and churches excited the most tragic complaints. The dome of St. Sophia itself, the earthly heaven, the second firmament, the vehicle of the cherubim, the throne of the glory of God, was despoiled of the oblations of ages; and the gold and silver, the pearls and jewels, the vases and sacerdotal ornaments, were most wickedly converted to the service of mankind. After the divine images had been stripped of all that could be valuable to a profane eye, the canvas, or the wood, was torn, or broken, or burned, or trod under foot, or applied, in the stables or the kitchen, to the vilest uses.

The example of sacrilege was imitated, however, from the Latin conquerors of Constantinople; and the treatment which Christ, the Virgin, and the saints had sustained from the guilty Catholic, might be inflicted by the zealous Mussulman on the monuments of idolatry. Perhaps instead of joining the public clamour, a philosopher will observe that in the decline of the arts the workmanship could not be more valuable than the work, and that a fresh supply of visions and miracles would speedily be renewed by the craft of the priest and the credulity of the people. He will more seriously deplore the loss of the Byzantine libraries, which were destroyed or scattered in the general confusion; 120,000 manuscripts are said to have disappeared; ten volumes might be purchased for a single ducat; and the same ignominious price, too high perhaps for a shelf of theology, included the whole works of Aristotle and Homer, the noblest productions of the science and literature of ancient Greece. We may reflect, with pleasure, that an inestimable portion of our classic treasures was safely deposited in Italy; and that the mechanics of a German town had invented an art which derides the havoc of time and barbarism.

From the first hour of the memorable 29th of May, disorder and rapine prevailed in Constantinople, till the eighth hour of the same day; when the sultan himself passed in triumph through the gate of St. Romanus. He was attended by his vizirs, pashas, and guards, each of whom (says a Byzantine historian) was robust as Hercules, dexterous as Apollo, and equal in battle to any ten of the race of ordinary mortals. The conqueror gazed with satisfaction and wonder on the strange though splendid appearance of the domes and palaces, so dissimilar from the style of oriental architecture. In the Hippodrome, or atmeidan, his eye was attracted by the twisted column of the three serpents; and, as a trial of his strength, he shattered with his iron mace, or battle-axe, the under-jaw of one of these monsters, which in the eyes of the Turks were the idols or talismans of the city.

At the principal door of St. Sophia, he alighted from his horse, and entered the dome; and such was his jealous regard for that monument of his glory, that on observing a zealous Mussulman in the act of breaking the marble pavement, he admonished him, with his scimitar, that if the spoil and captives were granted to the soldiers, the public and private buildings had been reserved for the prince. By his command the metropolis of the Eastern church was transformed into a mosque; the rich and portable instruments of superstition had been removed; the crosses were thrown down; and the walls, which were covered with images and mosaics, were washed and purified, and restored to a state of naked simplicity.

On the same day, or on the ensuing Friday, the muezzin or crier, ascended the most lofty turret, and proclaimed the ezan, or public invitation in the name of God and his prophet; the imam preached; and Muhammed II performed the namaz of prayer and thanksgiving on the great altar, where the Christian mysteries had so lately been celebrated before the last of the cæsars. From St. Sophia he proceeded to the august but desolate mansion of a hundred successors of the great Constantine; but which, in a few hours, had been stripped of the pomp of royalty. A melancholy reflection on the vicissitudes of human greatness forced itself on his mind; and he repeated an elegant distich of Persian poetry: “The spider hath woven his web in the imperial palace; and the owl hath sung her watch-song on the towers of Afrasiab.”

Yet his mind was not satisfied; nor did the victory seem complete, till he was informed of the fate of Constantine--whether he had escaped, or been made prisoner, or had fallen in the battle. Two janizaries claimed the honour and reward of his death; the body, under a heap of slain, was discovered by the golden eagles embroidered on his shoes; the Greeks acknowledged with tears the head of their late emperor; and, after exposing the bloody trophy, Muhammed bestowed on his rival the honours of a decent funeral. Clemency was extended to the principal officers of state, of whom several were ransomed at his expense; and during some days he declared himself the friend and father of the vanquished people. But the scene was soon changed; and before his departure the Hippodrome streamed with the blood of his noblest captives. His perfidious cruelty is execrated by the Christians; they adorn with the colours of heroic martyrdom the execution of the grand duke and his two sons; and his death is ascribed to the generous refusal of delivering his children to the tyrant’s lust. Yet a Byzantine historian has dropped an unguarded word of conspiracy, deliverance, and Italian succour; such treason may be glorious, but the rebel who bravely ventures, has justly forfeited his life; nor should we blame a conqueror for destroying the enemies whom he can no longer trust. On the 18th of June the victorious sultan returned to Hadrianopolis; and smiled at the base and hollow embassies of the Christian princes, who viewed their approaching ruin in the fall of the Eastern Empire.

Constantinople had been left naked and desolate, without a prince or a people. But she could not be despoiled of the incomparable situation which marks her for the metropolis of a great empire; and the genius of the place will ever triumph over the accidents of time and fortune. Brusa and Hadrianopolis, the ancient seats of the Ottomans, sank into provincial towns; and Muhammed established his own residence, and that of his successors, on the same commanding spot which had been chosen by Constantine. The fortifications of Galata, which might afford a shelter to the Latins, were prudently destroyed; but the damage of the Turkish cannon was soon repaired. As the entire property of the soil and buildings, whether public or private, or profane or sacred, was now transferred to the conqueror, he first separated a space of eight furlongs from the point of the triangle for the establishment of his seraglio or palace. In the new character of a mosque, the cathedral of St. Sophia was endowed with an ample revenue, crowned with lofty minarets, and surrounded with groves and fountains, for the devotion and refreshment of the Moslems. The same model was imitated in the jami or royal mosques; and the first of these were built, by Muhammed himself, on the ruins of the church of the holy apostles and the tombs of the Greek emperors.

Constantinople no longer appertains to the Roman historian; nor shall we enumerate the civil and religious edifices that were profaned or erected by its Turkish masters; the population was speedily renewed; and before the end of September, five thousand families of Anatolia and Romania had obeyed the royal mandate, which enjoined them, under pain of death, to occupy their new habitations in the capital. The throne of Muhammed was guarded by the numbers and fidelity of his Moslem subjects; but his rational policy aspired to collect the remnant of the Greeks; and they returned in crowds as soon as they were assured of their lives, their liberties, and the free exercise of their religion. In the election and investiture of a patriarch, the ceremonial of the Byzantine court was revived and imitated. With a mixture of satisfaction and horror, they beheld the sultan on his throne; who delivered into the hands of Gennadius the crosier or pastoral staff, the symbol of his ecclesiastical office; who conducted the patriarch to the gate of the seraglio, presented him with a horse richly caparisoned, and directed the vizirs and pashas to lead him to the palace which had been allotted for his residence. The churches of Constantinople were shared between the two religions, their limits were marked; and, till it was infringed by Selim, the grandson of Muhammed, the Greeks enjoyed above sixty years the benefit of this equal partition.[93]

END OF THE COMNENI AND PALÆOLOGI

[Sidenote: [1453-1481 A.D.]]

The final extinction of the last two dynasties which have reigned in Constantinople terminates the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in the East. The despots of the Morea,[94] Demetrius and Thomas, the two surviving brothers of the name of Palæologus, were astonished by the death of the emperor Constantine, and the ruin of the monarchy. Hopeless of defence, they prepared, with the noble Greeks who adhered to their fortune, to seek a refuge in Italy, beyond the reach of the Ottoman thunder. Their first apprehensions were dispelled by the victorious sultan, who contented himself with a tribute of twelve thousand ducats; and while his ambition explored the continent and the islands in search of prey, he indulged the Morea in a respite of seven years. But this respite was a period of grief, discord, and misery. The hexamilion, the rampart of the isthmus, so often raised and so often subverted, could not long be defended by three hundred Italian archers; the keys of Corinth were seized by the Turks; they returned from their summer excursions with a train of captives and spoil; and the complaints of the injured Greeks were heard with indifference and disdain. The Albanians, a vagrant tribe of shepherds and robbers, filled the peninsula with rapine and murder; the two despots implored the dangerous and humiliating aid of a neighbouring pasha; and when he had quelled the revolt, his lessons inculcated the rule of their future conduct.

Neither the ties of blood, nor the oaths which they repeatedly pledged in the communion and before the altar, nor the stronger pressure of necessity, could reconcile or suspend their domestic quarrels. They ravaged each other’s patrimony with fire and sword; the alms and succours of the West were consumed in civil hostility; and their power was only exerted in savage and arbitrary executions. The distress and revenge of the weaker rival invoked their supreme lord; and, in the season of maturity and revenge, Muhammed declared himself the friend of Demetrius, and marched into the Morea with an irresistible force. When he had taken possession of Sparta, “You are too weak,” said the sultan, “to control this turbulent province; I will take your daughter to my bed; and you shall pass the remainder of your life in security and honour.”

Demetrius sighed and obeyed; surrendered his daughter and his castles; followed to Hadrianopolis his sovereign and son, and received for his own maintenance, and that of his followers, a city in Thrace, and the adjacent isles of Imbros, Lemnos, and Samothrace. He was joined the next year by a companion of misfortune, the last of the Comnenian race, who, after the taking of Constantinople by the Latins, had founded a new empire on the coast of the Black Sea. In the progress of his Anatolian conquests Muhammed invested with a fleet and army the capital of David, who presumed to style himself emperor of Trebizond; and the negotiation was comprised in a short and peremptory question,“Will you secure your life and treasures by resigning your kingdom; or would you rather forfeit your kingdom, your treasures, and your life?” The feeble Comnenus was subdued by his own fears, and the example of a Mussulman neighbour, the prince of Sinope; who, on a similar summons, had yielded a fortified city with four hundred cannon and ten or twelve thousand soldiers. The capitulation of Trebizond was faithfully performed; and the emperor with his family was transported to a castle in Romania; but on a slight suspicion of corresponding with the Persian king, David and the whole Comnenian race were sacrificed to the jealousy or avarice of the conqueror.

Nor could the name of father long protect the unfortunate Demetrius from exile and confiscation; his abject submission moved the pity and contempt of the sultan; his followers were transplanted to Constantinople; and his poverty was alleviated by a pension of fifty thousand aspers, till a monastic habit and a tardy death released Palæologus from an earthly master. It is not easy to pronounce whether the servitude of Demetrius, or the exile of his brother Thomas, be the most inglorious. On the conquest of the Morea, the despot escaped to Corfu, and from thence to Italy, with some naked adherents; his name, his sufferings, and the head of the apostle St. Andrew entitled him to the hospitality of the Vatican; and his misery was prolonged by a pension of six thousand ducats from the pope and cardinals. His two sons, Andrew and Manuel, were educated in Italy; but the eldest, contemptible to his enemies and burdensome to his friends, was degraded by the baseness of his life and marriage. A title was his sole inheritance; and that inheritance he successively sold to the kings of France and Aragon. During his transient prosperity, Charles VIII was ambitious of joining the empire of the East with the kingdom of Naples; in a public festival, he assumed the appellation and the purple of augustus; the Greeks rejoiced, and the Ottoman already trembled at the approach of the French chivalry. Manuel Palæologus, the second son, was tempted to revisit his native country; his return might be grateful, and could not be dangerous, to the Porte; he was maintained at Constantinople in safety and ease; and an honourable train of Christians and Moslems attended him to the grave. If there be some animals of so generous a nature that they refuse to propagate in a domestic state, the last of the imperial race must be ascribed to an inferior kind; he accepted from the sultan’s liberality two beautiful females; and his surviving son was lost in the habit and religion of a Turkish slave.

The importance of Constantinople was felt and magnified in its loss; the pontificate of Nicholas V, however peaceful and prosperous, was dishonoured by the fall of the Eastern Empire; and the grief and terror of the Latins revived, or seemed to revive, the old enthusiasm of the Crusades. Had the union of the Christians corresponded with their bravery; had every country, from Sweden to Naples, supplied a just proportion of cavalry and infantry, of men and money, it is indeed probable that Constantinople would have been delivered, and that the Turks might have been chased beyond the Hellespont or the Euphrates. But the secretary of the emperor, who composed every epistle, and attended every meeting, Æneas Sylvius, a statesman and orator, describes from his own experience the repugnant state and spirit of Christendom. “It is a body,” says he, “without a head; a republic without laws or magistrates. The pope and the emperor may shine as lofty titles, as splendid images; but they are unable to command, and none are willing to obey; every state has a separate prince, and every prince has a separate interest. What eloquence could unite so many discordant and hostile powers under the same standard? Could they be assembled in arms, who would dare to assume the office of general? What order could be maintained what military discipline? Who would undertake to feed such an enormous multitude? Who would understand their various languages, or direct their stranger and incompatible manners? What mortal could reconcile the English with the French, Genoa with Aragon, the Germans with the natives of Hungary and Bohemia? If a small number enlisted in the holy war, they must be overthrown by the infidels; if many, by their own weight and confusion.”

Yet the same Æneas, when he was raised to the papal throne, under the name of Pius II, devoted his life to the prosecution of the Turkish War. In the council of Mantua, he excited some sparks of a false or feeble enthusiasm; but when the pontiff appeared at Ancona, to embark in person with the troops, engagements vanished in excuses; a precise day was adjourned to an indefinite term; and his effective army consisted of some German pilgrims, whom he was obliged to disband with indulgences and alms.

Regardless of futurity, his successors and the powers of Italy were involved in the schemes of present and domestic ambition; and the distance or proximity of each object determined, in their eyes, its apparent magnitude. A more enlarged view of their interest would have taught them to maintain a defensive and naval war against the common enemy; and the support of Scanderbeg (Iskander Bey) and his brave Albanians might have prevented the subsequent invasion of the kingdom of Naples. The siege and sack of Otranto by the Turks diffused a general consternation; and Pope Sixtus was preparing to fly beyond the Alps, when the storm was instantly dispelled by the death of Muhammed II, in the fifty-first year of his age. His lofty genius aspired to the conquest of Italy: he was possessed of a strong city and a capacious harbour; and the same reign might have been decorated with the trophies of the new and the ancient Rome.[d]

FOOTNOTES

[89] [The name given to ancient Prusa after it fell into the hands of the Turks.]

[90] Leonard says the balls of the large gun were eleven of his spans in circumference.

[91] [This is Finlay’s account, but Hertzberg[b] says: “The number of troops (beside the great camp following and a mass of fanatic imams, mullahs and dervishes) totalled at the lowest, and therefore the most trustworthy, estimate 165,000 men, of which, with the 15,000 janissaries, well over 80,000 were regular soldiers. The fleet, according to an apparently reliable account, numbered 145 sail, namely 12 great galleys, about 80 double-deckers, some 25 smaller coasters, and a number of brigs.”]

[92] Justiniani is defended by Finlay[c] on apparently good grounds. He demanded additional guns for the defence of the great breach; these were refused by the grand duke Notaras, who had the official control over the artillery, and Constantine was obliged to exert all his authority to prevent the two generals coming to blows. Justiniani’s wound must have disabled him; he retired to his ship to have it dressed and it was found to be mortal. His dialogue with Constantine, Finlay says, “is evidently a rhetorical invention.”

[93] [With regard to the meaning of the “fall” of Constantinople and the hope of its rise, it may be well to quote the theory of the Russophile historian, Gelzer[e]: “The month of May, 1453, had dragged the Byzantine Empire finally to its grave. The Greek supremacy had long been a thing of the past; the hollow phantom of it was now to vanish away. But Byzantium has found a mighty heir. The czar of Russia took a princess of the house of Palæologus to wife; the crown of Constantine Monomachus was placed on the head of the autocrat of all the Russias in the Kremlin. The Russian Empire is de facto the sequel to the Byzantine. And if ever St. Sophia is to be restored to the true faith, and Asia Minor delivered from the hideous misrule of the Turk, it can only come to pass through the agency of the czar of Russia. None but the czar of Russia, ‘the defender of the orthodox faith,’ and inspired with a sense of the obligations involved in his great office, can become emperor of Constantinople.”]

[94] [The modern name for the Peloponnesus.]

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS

[The letter [a] is reserved for Editorial Matter.]

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

I. THE REIGN OF ARCADIUS

[b] ALBERT GUELDENPENNING, Geschichte des Oströmischen Reichs.

[c] GEORGE FINLAY, Greece under the Romans.

[d] EDWARD GIBBON, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

[e] COUNT ZOSIMUS, The History of Count Zosimus.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

II. THE REIGN OF THEODOSIUS THE YOUNGER TO THE ELEVATION OF JUSTINIAN

[b] EDWARD GIBBON, op. cit.

[c] HENRY H. HOWORTH, “The Westerly Drifting of Nomads” in Journal of Anthropological Institute, Vol. V.

[d] AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS, The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus (translated from the Latin by C. D. Yonge).

[e] J. B. BURY, A History of the Later Roman Empire.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

III. JUSTINIAN AND THEODORA

[b] EDWARD GIBBON, op. cit.

[c] AGATHIAS, Ἀγαθίου Σχολαστικοῦ Μυριναίου Ἱστορίων E.

[d] GEORGE FINLAY, op. cit.

[e] PROCOPIUS, Ἀνέκδοτα (Historia Arcana).

[f] PROCOPIUS, Ἱστορία (Books of the Wars).

[g] PROCOPIUS, Κτίσματα (The Edifices of Justinian).

[h] JOANNES MALALAS, Χρονογραφία.

[i] JORDANES (JORNANDES), De Getarum origine et rebus gestis.

[j] MAGNUS AURELIUS CASSIODORUS, Variorum (Epistolarum) Libri XII.

[k] JOSEPH VON HAMMER-PURGSTALL, Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches.

[l] J. B. BURY op. cit.

[m] L. VON RANKE, Weltgeschichte.

[n] AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS, op. cit.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

IV. THE LATER YEARS OF JUSTINIAN’S REIGN

[b] GEORGE FINLAY, op. cit.

[c] EDWARD GIBBON, op. cit.

[d] PROCOPIUS, Gothic War, op. cit.

[e] J. B. BURY, op. cit.

[f] E. A. FREEMAN, General Sketch of European History.

[g] THOS. HODGKIN, Italy and her Invaders.

[h] ISIDORUS HISPALENSIS, Historia Gothorum.

[i] PAULUS DIACONUS, Historia Langobardorum.

[j] JOHANN KASPAR ZEUSS, Die Deutschen und die Nachbarstämme.

[k] JORDANES, De Regnorum ac temporum successione.

[l] ROBT. ROESLER, Romänischen Studien.

[m] THEOPHYLACTUS SIMOCATTA, Ἱστορία οἰκουμένη.

[n] JOANNES MALALAS, op. cit.

[o] AGATHIAS, op. cit.

[p] PROCOPIUS, op. cit.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

V. JUSTIN II TO HERACLIUS

[b] E. GIBBON, op. cit.

[c] FLAVIUS CRESCONIUS CORIPPUS, Corippi Africani Grammatici fragmentum carminis in laudem … De laudibus Justini Augusti Minoris.

[d] JOHN OF EPHESUS, The Third Book of the Ecclesiastical History (edited by W. Cureton).

[e] THEOPHYLACTUS SIMOCATTA, op. cit.

[f] THEOPHANES OF BYZANTIUM, ἱστορικῶν λόγοι δέκα.

[g] J.B. BURY, op. cit.

[h] H. GELZER, Abriss der byzantinischen Kaisergeschichte (in Karl Krumbacher’s Gesch. der byzantinischen Litteratur).

[i] G. FINLAY, op. cit.

[j] BARONIUS, Annales Ecclesiastici.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

VI. HERACLIUS AND HIS SUCCESSORS

[b] J. B. BURY, op. cit.

[c] G. FINLAY, op. cit.

[d] THEOPHANES, op. cit.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

VII. LEO THE ISAURIAN TO JOANNES ZIMISCES

[b] G. F. HERTZBERG, Geschichte der Byzantiner und des Osmanischen Reichs.

[c] K. SCHENK, in Byzantinische Zeitschrift.

[d] H. GELZER, op. cit.

[e] F. H. CLINTON, Fasti Romani.

[f] F. J. SAULCY, Essai de classification des suites monétaires byzantines.

[g] E. GIBBON, op. cit.

[h] J. B. BURY, op. cit.

[i] G. FINLAY, op. cit.

[j] THEOPHANES, op. cit.

[k] NICEPHORUS PATRIARCHA, Ἱστορία σύντομος.

[l] AUG. FR. GFRÖRER, Byzantinische Geschichte.

[m] KARL JOSEPH VON HEFELE, Konciliengeschichte.

[n] GEORGE FINLAY, History of the Byzantine and the Greek Empires from 716-1453.

[o] LEO DIACONUS, Historia.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

VIII. THE GLORY AND DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE

[b] LEO DIACONUS, op. cit.

[c] GEORGIUS CEDRENUS, Σύνοψις ἱστορίων (Compendium Historiarum ab Orbe Condita ad Isaacum Comnenum).

[d] JOANNES ZONARAS, Χρονίκον (Annales).

[e] G. FINLAY, op. cit.

[f] H. GELZER, op. cit.

[g] GEORGIUS MONACHUS, Χρονίκον Βίου τῶν νεῶν Βασιλεῶν.

[h] EDWARD GIBBON, op. cit.

[i] ANNA COMNENA, Ἀλεξίας.

[j] NICETAS ACOMINATUS, Ἱστορία.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

IX. THE LATIN EMPIRE

[b] GEOFFREY DE VILLEHARDOUIN, Histoire de la conquête de Constantinople.

[c] ERNEST LAVISSE AND ALFRED RAMBAUD, Histoire générale du IVe siècle à nos jours.

[d] J. F. MICHAUD, History of the Crusades (translated from the French by W. Robson).

[e] C. DU F. DUC CANGE, Histoire de l’empire de Constantinople sous les empereurs français.

[f] EDWARD GIBBON, op. cit.

[g] GEORGE FINLAY, The History of Greece from its Conquest by the Crusaders to its Conquest by the Turks, and of the Empire of Trebizond.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

X. THE RESTORATION OF THE GREEK EMPIRE

[b] EDWARD GIBBON, op. cit.

[c] GEORGE FINLAY, History of the Byzantine and the Greek Empires from 716-1453.

[d] GEORGIUS PACHYMERES, Historia Byzantina.

[e] ERNEST LAVISSE AND ALFRED RAMBAUD, op. cit.

[f] H. GELZER, op. cit.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XI. MANUEL II TO THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE

[b] G. F. HERTZBERG, op. cit.

[c] GEORGE FINLAY, op. cit.

[d] EDWARD GIBBON, op. cit.

[e] H. GELZER, op. cit.

[f] GEORGIOS PHRANZES, Χρονίκον.

[g] DUCAS, Historia Byzantina.

[For a further list of works on the Later Roman Empire in the East, see the General Bibliography of Roman History in Volume VI.]

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