LXI.

the drooping Latins were often roused by his example to CHA P. fave and to fecond their fearless emperor. But fuch efforts, and fome fupplies of men and money from France, were of lefs avail than the errors, the cruelty, and death, of their most formidable adverfary. When the defpair of the Greek fubjects invited Calo-John as their deliverer, they hoped that he would protect their liberty and adopt their laws: they were foon taught to compare the degrees of national ferocity, and to execrate the favage conqueror, who no longer diffembled his intention of difpeopling Thrace, of demolishing the cities, and of transplanting the inhabitants beyond the Danube. Many towns and villages of Thrace were already evacuated: an heap of ruins marked the place of Philippopolis, and a fimilar calamity was expected at Demotica and Adrianople, by the first authors of the revolt. They raised a cry of grief and repentance to the throne of Henry; the emperor alone had the magnanimity to forgive and truft them. No more than four hundred knights, with their ferjeants and archers, could be affembled under his banner; and with this flender force he fought and repulfed the Bulgarian, who, befides his infantry, was at the head of forty thousand horfe. In this expedition, Henry felt the difference between an hoftile and a friendly country; the remaining cities were preserved by his arms; and the favage, with fhame and lofs, was compelled to relinquifh his prey. The fiege of Theffalonica was the laft of the evils which CaloJohn inflicted or fuffered he was stabbed in the night in his tent; and the general, perhaps the affaffin, who found him weltering in his blood, afcribed the blow with general applaufe to the lance of St. Demetrius (33). After feveral victories, the prudence of Henry concluded an honourable peace with the fucceffor of the tyrant, and with the Greek princes of Nice and Epirus. If he ceded fome doubtful limits, an ample kingdom was reserved for himfelf and his feudatories; and his reign, which lafted only ten years, afforded a short interval of profperity and peace. Far above the narrow policy of Baldwin and Boniface, he freely entrusted to the Greeks the most important offices VOL. VI.

N

of

(33) The church of this patron of Theffalonica was served by the canons of the holy fepulchre, and contained a divine ointment which distilled daily and ftupendous miracles (Ducange, Hift. de C. P. ii. 4.),

LXI.

CHAP. of the state and army: and this liberality of fentiment and practice, was the more feasonable, as the princes of Nice and Epirus had already learned to feduce and employ the mercenary valour of the Latins. It was the aim of Henry to unite and reward his deferving fubjects of every nation and language; but he appeared lefs folicitous to accomplish the impracticable union of the two churches. Pelagius, the pope's legate, who acted as the fovereign of Conftantinople, had interdicted the worship of the Greeks, and sternly opposed the payment of tithes, the double proceffion of the Holy Ghoft, and a blind obedience to the Roman pontiff. As the weaker party, they pleaded the duties of confcience, and implored the rights of toleration: "Our bodies," they faid, "are Cæfar's, but our fouls be"long only to God." The perfecution was checked by the firmnefs of the emperor (34); and if we can believe that the fame prince was poifoned by the Greeks themselves, we must entertain a contemptible idea of the fenfe and gratitude of mankind. His valour was a vulgar attribute, which he fhared with ten thoufand knights; but Henry poffeffed the fuperior courage to oppose, in a fuperftitious age, the pride and avarice of the clergy. In the cathedral of St. Sophia he prefumed to place his throne on the righthand of the patriarch; and this prefumption excited the fharpeft cenfure of pope Innocent the third. By a falutary edict, one of the firft examples of the laws of mortmain, he prohibited the alienation of fiefs; many of the Latins, defirous of returning to Europe, refigned their eftates to the church for a fpiritual or temporal reward; thefe holy lands were immediately difcharged from military fervice; and a colony of foldiers would have been gradually transformed into a college of priests (35).

Peter of

The virtuous Henry died at Theffalonica, in the deCourtenay, fence of that kingdom, and of an infant, the son of his friend Boniface. In the two first emperors of Conftantinople, nople the male line of the counts of Flanders was extinct.

emperor of Conftanti

AD 1217.
April 9.

But

(34) Acropolita (c. 17.) obferves the perfecution of the legate, and the toleration of Henry (Ep as he calls him), xλudova zarisanos.

(35) See the reign of HENRY, in Ducange (Hift. de C. P. L. i. c. 3541. I. ii. c. 1-22.), who is much indebted to the Epiftles of the Fopes. ie Beau (Hift. du Bas-Empire, tom. xxi. p. 120-122.) has found, perhaps in Doutreman, fome laws of Henry, which determined the service of fiefs, and the prerogatives of the emperor.

LXI.

But their fifter Yolande was the wife of a French prince, CHA P. the mother of a numerous progeny; and one of her daughters had married Andrew king of Hungary, a brave and pious champion of the crofs. By feating him on the Byzantine throne, the barons of Romania would have acquired the forces of a neighbouring and warlike kingdom; but the prudent Andrew revered the laws of fucceffion; and the princefs Yolande, with her husband Peter of Courtenay, count of Auxerre, was invited by the Latins to affume the empire of the Eaft. The royal birth of his father, the noble origin of his mother, recommended to the barons of France the first cousin of their king. His reputation was fair, his poffeffions were ample, and, in the bloody crufade against the Albigeois, the foldiers and the priests had been abundantly fatisfied of his zeal and valour. Vanity might applaud the elevation of a French emperor of Conftantinople; but prudence muft pity, rather than envy, his treacherous and imaginary greatnefs. To affert and adorn his title, he was reduced to fell or mortgage the best of his patrimony. By thefe expedients, the liberality of his royal kinfman Philip Auguftus, and the national spirit of chivalry, he was enabled to pass the Alps at the head of one hundred and forty knights, and five thousand five hundred ferjeants and archers. After fome hesitation, pope Honorius the third was perfuaded to crown the fucceffor of Conftantine; but he performed the ceremony in a church without the walls, left he fhould feem to imply or to bestow any right of fovereignty over the ancient capital of the empire. The Venetians had engaged to tranfport Peter and his forces beyond the Adriatic, and the emprefs, with her four children, to the Byzantine palace; but they required, as the price of their service, that he should recover Durazzo from the Defpot of Epirus. Michael Angelus, or Comnenus, the first of his dynafty, had bequeathed the fucceffion of his power and ambition to Theodore, his legitimate brother, who already threatened and invaded the establishments of the Latins. After discharging his debt by a fruitless affault, the emperor raifed the fiege to profecute a long and perilous journey over land from Durazzo to Theffalonica. He was foon loft in the mountains of Epirus: the paffes were fortified; his provifions exhaufted: he was delayed and de

N 2

ceived

His captivity and death,

A. D.

1217-1219.

CHA P. ceived by a treacherous negociation; and, after Peter of LXI. Courtenay and the Roman legate had been arrefted in a banquet, the French troops, without leaders or hopes, were eager to exchange their arms for the delufive promife of mercy and bread. The Vatican thundered; and the impious Theodore was threatened with the vengeance of earth and heaven; but the captive emperor and his foldiers were forgotten, and the reproaches of the pope were confined to the imprisonment of his legate. No fooner was he fatisfied by the deliverance of the priest and a promife of fpiritual obedience, than he pardoned and protected the defpot of Epirus. His peremptory commands fufpended the ardour of the Venetians and the king of Hungary; and it was only by a natural and untimely death (36) that Peter of Courtenay was releafed from his hopeless captivity (37).

Robert em- The long ignorance of his fate, and the prefence of the peror of lawful fovereign, of Yolande, his wife or widow, delayed Conftantinople, the proclamation of a new emperor. Before her death, A. D. and in the midft of her grief, fhe was delivered of a son, 1221-1228. who was named Baldwin, the last and most unfortunate of

the Latin princes of Conftantinople. His birth endeared him to the barons of Romania; but his childhood would have prolonged the troubles of a minority, and his claims were fuperfeded by the elder claims of his brethren. The firft of thefe, Philip of Courtenay, who derived from his mother the inheritance of Namur, had the wifdom to prefer the substance of a marquifate to the fhadow of an empire; and on his refufal, Robert, the fecond of the fons of Peter and Yolande, was called to the throne of Conftantinople. Warned by his father's mifchance, he purfued his flow and fecure journey through Germany and along the Danube: a paffage was opened by his fifter's marriage with the king of Hungary; and the emperor Robert was crowned by the patriarch in the Cathedral' of St. Sophia.

πασι σκεύεσι.

(36) Acropolita (c. 14.) affirms, that Peter of Courtenay died by the fword (spyou payalpas yevoda): but from his dark expreffions, 1 fhould conclude a previous captivity, ως παντας αρδην δεσμωτας ποιησαι συν The chronicle of Auxerre delays the emperor's death till the year 1219: and Auxerre is in the neighbourhood of Courtenay. (37) See the reign and death of Peter of Courtenay, in Ducange (Hift. de C. P. 1. ii. c. 22-28.), who feebly strives to excufe the neglect of the emperor by Honorius III.

LXI.

St. Sophia. But his reign was an æra of calamity and CHA P. difgrace; and the colony, as it was ftyled, of NEW FRANCE, yielded on all fides to the Greeks of Nice and Epirus. After a victory, which he owed to his perfidy rather than his courage, Theodore Angelus entered the kingdom of Theffalonica, expelled the feeble Demetrius, the son of the marquis Boniface, erected his ftandard on the walls of Adrianople; and added, by his vanity, a third or a fourth name to the lift of rival emperors. The relics of the Afiatic province were swept away by John Vataces the fonin-law and fucceffor of Theodore Lafcaris, and who, in triumphant reign of thirty-three years, difplayed the virtues both of peace and war. Under his difcipline the fwords of the French mercenaries were the most effectual inftrument of his conquefts, and their defertion from the fervice of their country was at once a fymptom and a cause of the rifing afcendant of the Greeks. By the conftruction of a fleet, he obtained the command of the Hellef pont, reduced the islands of Lefbos and Rhodes, attacked the Venetians of Candia, and intercepted the rare and parfimonious fuccours of the Weft. Once, and once only, the Latin emperor fent an army against Vataces; and in the defeat of that army, the veteran knights, the last of the original conquerors, were left on the field of battle. But the fuccefs of a foreign enemy was lefs painful to the pufillanimous Robert than the infolence of his Latin fubjects, who confounded the weaknefs of the emperor and of the empire. His perfonal misfortunes will prove the anarchy of the government and the ferocioufnefs of the times. The amorous youth had neglected his Greek bride, the daughter of Vataces, to introduce into the palace a beautiful maid, of a private, though noble, family of Artois; and her mother had been tempted by the luftre of the purple to forfeit her engagements with a gentleman of Burgundy. His love was converted into rage; he affembled his friends, forced the palace gates, threw the mother into the fea, and inhumanly cut off the nofe and lips of the wife or concubine of the emperor. Inftead of punishing the offender, the baron's avowed and applauded the favage deed (38), which, as a prince and as a man, it was impoffible

(38) Marinus Sanutus (Secreta Fidelium Crucis, l. ii. p.iv. c. 18. p. 73.) is so much delighted with this bloody deed, that he has tranfcribed it in his margin as a bonum exemplum. Yet he acknowledges the damfel for the lawful wife of Robert.