LX. the capital of the empire: their services were rewarded CHAP. with honours and immunities; they acquired the possession of lands and houses; their families were multiplied by marriages with the natives; and, after the toleration of a Mahometan mosch, it was impossible to interdict the churches of the Roman rite.13 The two wives of Manuel Comnenus 14 were of the race of the Franks; the first, a sister-in-law of the emperor Conrad; the second, a daughter of the prince of Antioch: he obtained for his son Alexius a daughter of Philip Augustus king of France; and he bestowed his own daughter on a marquis of Montferrat, who was educated and dignified in the palace of Constantinople. The Greek encountered the arms, and aspired to the empire, of the West; he esteemed the valour, and trusted the fidelity, of the Franks; 15 their military talents were unfitly recompensed by the lucrative offices of judges and treasurers; the policy of Manuel had solicited the alliance of the pope; and the popular voice accused him of a partial bias to the nation and religion of the Latins. During his reign, and that of his successor Alexius, they were exposed at Constantinople to the reproach of foreigners, heretics, and favourites; and this triple guilt was severely expiated in the tumult, which announced the return and elevation of Andronicus. The people rose in arms; from the Asiatic shore their mas the tyrant dispatched his troops and gallies to assist the na- A.D.1183. tional revenge; and the hopeless resistance of the strangers served only to justify the rage, and sharpen the daggers, of 13 See Anna Comnena (Alexiad, l. vi. p. 161, 162), and a remarkable passage of Nicetas (in Manuel. 1. v. c. 9), who observes of the Venetians, κατα σμήνη και φρατρίας την Κωνσαντινόπολιν της οικείας ηλλαξε avto, &c. 14 Ducange, Fam. Byzant. p. 186, 187. 15 Nicetas in Manuel. I vii. c. 2. Regnante enim (Manuele) . . . apud eum tantam Latinus populus repererat gratiam ut neglectis Græculis suis tanquam viris mollibus et effeminatis, . . . solis Latinis grandia committeret negotia... erga eos profusâ liberalitate abundabat . . . ex omni orbe ad eum tanquam ad benefactorem nobiles et ignobiles concurrebant. Willerm. Tyr. xxii. c. 10. 16 The suspicions of the Greeks would have been confirmed, if they had seen the political epistles of Manuel to pope Alexander III. the enemy of his enemy Frederic I. in which the emperor declares his wish of uniting the Greeks and Latins as one flock under one shepherd, &c. (See Fleury, Hist. Eccles. tom. xv. p. 187.213.243). 17 See the Greek and Latin narratives in Nicetas (in Alexio Comneno, c. 10), and William of Tyre (1. xxii. c. 10, 11, 12, 13); the first soft and concise, the second loud, copious, and tragical. sacre, CHAP. the assassins. Neither age, nor sex, nor the ties of friendLX. ship or kindred, could save the victims of national hatred, and avarice, and religious zeal: the Latins were slaughtered in their houses and in the streets; their quarter was reduced to ashes; the clergy were burnt in their churches, and the sick in their hospitals; and some estimate may be formed of the slain from the clemency which sold above four thousand Christians in perpetual slavery to the Turks. The priests and monks were the loudest and most active in the destruction of the schismatics; and they chaunted a thanksgiving to the Lord, when the head of a Roman cardinal, the pope's legate, was severed from his body, fastened to the tail of a dog, and dragged, with savage mockery, through the city. The more diligent of the strangers had retreated on the first alarm, to their vessels, and escaped through the Hellespont from the scene of blood. In their flight, they burnt and ravaged two hundred miles of the seacoast; inflicted a severe revenge on the guiltless subjects of the empire; marked the priests and monks as their peculiar enemies; and compensated, by the accumulation of plunder, the loss of their property and friends. On their re turn, they exposed to Italy and Europe the wealth and weakness, the perfidy and malice, of the Greeks, whose vices were painted as the genuine characters of heresy and schism. The scruples of the first crusaders had neglected the fairest opportunities of securing, by the possession of Constantinople, the way to the Holy Land: a domestic revolution invited, and almost compelled, the French and Venetians to achieve the conquest of the Roman empire of the East. Reign and character of 1185...1195, In the series of the Byzantine princes, I have exhibited Isaac An the hypocrisy and ambition, the tyranny and fall, of Androgelus, A D nicus, the last male of the Comnenian family who reigned Sept. 12. at Constantinople. The revolution, which cast him headlong from the throne, saved and exalted Isaac Angelus,18 who descended by the females from the same Imperial dynasty. 18 The history of the reign of Isaac Angelus is composed, in three books, by the senator Nicetas (p. 228......290); and his offices of logothete, or principal secretary, and judge of the veil or palace, could not bribe the impartiality of the historian. He wrote, it is true, after the fall and death of his benefactor. LX. The successor of a second Nero might have found it an CHAP. easy task to deserve the esteem and affection of his subjects: they sometimes had reason to regret the administration of atio Andronicus. The sound and vigorous mind of the tyrant was capable of discerning the connection between his own and the public interest; and while he was feared by all who could inspire him with fear, the unsuspected people, and the remote provinces, might bless the inexorable justice of their master. But his successor was vain and jealous of the supreme power, which he wanted courage and abilities to exercise; his vices were pernicious, his virtues (if he possessed any virtues) were useless, to mankind; and the Greeks, who imputed their calamities to his negligence, denied him the merit of any transient or accidental benefits of the times. Isaac slept on the throne, and was awakened only by the sound of pleasure: his vacant hours were amused by commedians and buffoons, and even to these buffoons: the emperor was an object of contempt; his feasts and buildings exceeded the examples of royal luxury; the number. of his eunuchs and domestics amounted to twenty thousand; and a daily sum of four thousand pounds of silver would swell to four millions sterling the annual expense of his household and table. His poverty was relieved by oppression; and the public discontent was inflamed by equal abuses in the collection, and the application, of the revenue. While the Greeks numbered the days of their servitude, a flattering prophet, whom he rewarded with the dignity of patriarch, assured him of a long and victorious reign of thirty-two years; during which he should extend his sway to mount Libanus, and his conquests beyond the Euphrates. But his only step towards the accomplishment of the prediction, was a splendid and scandalous embassy to Saladin,19 to demand the restitution of the holy sepulchre, and to propose an offensive and defensive league with the enemy of the Christian name. In these unworthy hands, of Isaac and his brother, the remains of the Greek empire crumbled into dust. The island of Cyprus, whose name excites the ideas 19 See Bohadin, Vit. Saladin. p. 129... 131. 226. vers. Schultens. The ambassador of Isaac was equally versed in the Greek, French, and Arabic languages; a rare instance in those times. His embassies were received with hodismissed without effect, and reported with scandal in the West. nour, LX. CHAP. of elegance and pleasure, was usurped by his namesake, a Comnenian prince: and by a strange concatenation of events, the sword of our English Richard bestowed that kingdom on the house of Lusignan, a rich compensation for the loss of Jerusalem. Revolt of The honour of the monarchy, and the safety of the capithe Bultal, were deeply wounded by the revolt of the Bulgarians garians, A.D.1186. and Walachians. Since the victory of the second Basil, they had supported, above an hundred and seventy years, the loose dominion of the Byzantine princes; but no effectual measures had been adopted to impose the yoke of laws and manners on these savage tribes. By the command of Isaac, their sole means of subsistence, their flocks and herds, were driven away, to contribute towards the pomp of the royal nuptials; and their fierce warriors were exasperated by the denial of equal rank and pay in the military service. Peter and Asan, two powerful chiefs, of the race of the ancient kings,20 asserted their own rights and the national freedom: their demoniac impostors proclaimed to the crowd, that their glorious patron St. Demetrius had for ever deserted the cause of the Greeks; and the conflagration spread from the banks of the Danube to the hills of Macedonia and Thrace. After some faint efforts, Isaac Angelus and his brother acquiesced in their independence; and the Imperial troops were soon discouraged by the bones of their fellow-soldiers, that were scattered along the passes of mount Hæmus. By the arms and policy of John or Joanices, the second kingdom of Bulgaria was firmly established. The subtle Barbarian sent an embassy to Innocent the third, to acknowledge himself a genuine son of Rome in descent and religion:" and humbly received from the pope, the licence of coining money, the royal title, and a Latin archbishop or patriarch. The Vatican exulted in the spiritual conquest Bulgaria, the first object of the schism; and if the Greeks of 20 Ducange, Familie Dalmaticæ, p. 318, 319, 320. The original corres pondence of the Bulgarian king and the Roman pontiff, is inscribed in the Gesta Innocent III. c. 66...82. p. 513...525. 21 The pope acknowledges his pedigrec, a nobili urbis Romæ prosapiâ genitores tui originem traxerunt. This tradition, and the strong resemblance of the Latin and Wallachian idioms, is explained by M. d'Anville (Etats de l'Europe, p. 258...262). The Italian colonies of the Dacia of Trajan were swept away by the tide of emigration from the Danube to the Volga, and brought back by another wave from the Volga to the Danube. Possible, but strange! could have preserved the prerogatives of the church, they CHAP. would gladly have resigned the rights of the monarchy. LX. racter of A. D.1195 The Bulgarians were malicious enough to pray for the Usurpation long life of Issac Angelus, the surest pledge of their free- and chadom and prosperity. Yet their chiefs could involve in the Alexius same indiscriminate contempt, the family and nation of the Angelus, emperor. "In all the Greeks," said Asan to his troops, 1203, "the same climate, and character, and education, will be April 8. "productive of the same fruits. Behold my lance," continued the warrior, "and the long streamers that float in the "wind. They differ only in colour; they are formed of the "same silk and fashioned by the same workman: nor has "the stripe that is stained in purple, any superior price or "value above its fellows."22 Several of these candidates for the purple successively rose and fell under the empire of Isaac: a general who had repelled the fleets of Sicily, was driven to revolt and ruin by the ingratitude of the prince; and his luxurious repose was disturbed by secret conspiracies and popular insurrections. The emperor was saved by accident, or the merit of his servants: he was at length oppressed by an ambitious brother, who, for the hope of a precarious diadem, forgot the obligations of nature, of loyalty, and of friendship.23 While Isaac in the Thracian vallies pursued the idle and solitary pleasures of the chace, his brother, Alexius Angelus, was invested with the purple, by the unanimous suffrage of the camp: the capital and the clergy subscribed to their choice; and the vanity of the new sovereign rejected the name of his fathers, for the lofty and royal appellation of the Comuenian race. On the despicable character of Isaac, I have exhausted the language of contempt; and can only add, that in a reign of eight years, the baser Alexius 24 was supported by the masculine vices of his wife Euphrosync. The first intelligence of his fall was conveyed 22 This parable is in the best savage style; but I wish the Walach had not introduced the classic name of Mysians, the experiment of the magnet or loadstone, and the passage of an old comic poet (Nicetas, in Alex. Comneno, l. i. p. 299, 300). 23 The Latins aggravate the ingratitude of Alexius, by supposing that he had been released by his brother Isaac from Turkish captivity. This pathetic tale had doubtless been repeated at Venice and Zara, but I do not readily discover its grounds in the Greek historians. 24 See the reign of Alexius Angelus, or Comnenus, in the three books of Nicetas, p. 291...352. |