together to double their strength; a strong north wind drove them on the shore; the bishops of Troyes and Soissons led the van; and the auspicious names of the Pilgrim and the Paradise resounded along the line. The episcopal banners were displayed on the walls; a hundred marks of silver had been promised to the first adventurers; and if their reward was intercepted by death, their names have been immortalised by fame. Four towers were scaled; three gates were burst open; and the French knights, who might tremble on the waves, felt themselves invincible on horseback on the solid ground. Shall I relate that the thousands who guarded the emperor's person fled on the approach, and before the lance, of a single warrior? Their ignominious flight is attested by their countryman Nicetas: an army of phantoms marched with the French hero, and he was magnified to a giant in the eyes of the Greeks. 82 While the fugitives deserted their posts and cast away their arms, the Latins entered the city under the banners of their leaders: the streets and gates opened for their passage; and either design or accident kindled a third conflagration, which consumed in a few hours the measure of three of the largest cities of France. 83 In the close of evening the barons checked their troops and fortified their stations: they were awed by the extent and populousness of the capital, which might yet require the labour of a month, if the churches and palaces were conscious of their internal strength. But in the morning a suppliant procession, with crosses and images, announced the submission of the Greeks and deprecated the wrath of the conquerors: the usurper escaped through the golden gate the palaces of Blachernæ and Boucoleon were occupied by the count of Flanders and the marquis of Montferrat; and the empire, which still bore the name of Constantine and the title of Roman, was subverted by the arms of the Latin pilgrims."

81 Baldwin and all the writers honour the names of these two galleys, felici auspicio.

82 With an allusion to Homer, Nicetas calls him ivógyvos, nine orgyæ, or eighteen yards, high-a stature which would, indeed, have excused the terror of the Greek. On this occasion the historian seems fonder of the marvellous than of his country, or perhaps of truth. Baldwin exclaims, in the words of the psalmist, persequitur unus ex nobis centum alienos.

83 Villehardouin (No. 130) is again ignorant of the authors of this more legitimate fire, which is ascribed by Gunther to a quidam comes Teutonicus (c. 14 [c. 17, p. xv.]). They seem ashamed, the incendiaries!

For the second siege and conquest of Constantinople, see Villehardouin (No. 113132), Baldwin's iid Epistle to Innocent III. (Gesta, c. 92, p. 534-537), with the whole reign of Mourzoufle, in Nicetas (p. 363-375 (p. 748-770, ed. Boun]), and borrow some nints from Dandolo (Chron. Venet. p. 323-330) and Gunther (Hist. C. P. c. 14-18), who add the decorations of prophecy and vision. The former produces an oracle of the Erythræan sibyl, of a great armament on the Adriatic, under a blind chief, against Byzantium, &c. Čurious enough, were the prediction anterior to the fact.

Pietro Alberti, a Venetian noble, and Andrew D'Urboise, a French knight.--M.

Pillage of

nople.

Constantinople had been taken by storm; and no restraints except those of religion and humanity were imposed on the conquerors by the laws of war. Boniface, marquis of Mont- Constanti ferrat, still acted as their general; and the Greeks, who revered his name as that of their future sovereign, were heard to exclaim in a lamentable tone, "Holy marquis-king, have mercy upon us!" His prudence or compassion opened the gates of the city to the fug tives, and he exhorted the soldiers of the cross to spare the lives o their fellow-Christians. The streams of blood that flow down the pages of Nicetas may be reduced to the slaughter of two thousand of his unresisting countrymen; 85 and the greater part was massacred, not by the strangers, but by the Latins who had been driven from the city, and who exercised the revenge of a triumphant faction. Yet of these exiles, some were less mindful of injuries than of benefits; and Nicetas himself was indebted for his safety to the generosity of a Venetian merchant. Pope Innocent the Third accuses the pilgrims of respecting, in their lust, neither age, nor sex, nor religious profession; and bitterly laments that the deeds of darkness, fornication, adultery, and incest, were perpetrated in open day; and that noble matrons and holy nuns were polluted by the grooms and peasants of the Catholic camp.86 It is indeed probable that the licence of victory prompted and covered a multitude of sins: but it is certain that the capital of the East contained a stock of venal or willing beauty sufficient to satiate the desires of twenty thousand pilgrims, and female prisoners were no longer subject to the right or abuse of domestic slavery. The marquis of Montferrat was the patron of discipline and decency: the count of Flanders was the mirror of chastity: they had forbidden, under pain of death, the rape of married women, or virgins, or nuns, and the proclamation was sometimes invoked by the vanquished 87 and respected by the victors. Their cruelty and lust were moderated by the authority of the chiefs and feelings of the soldiers; for we are nc longer describing an irruption of the northern savages; and however ferocious they might still appear, time, policy, and religion had civilized the manners of the French, and still more of the Italians. a free scope was allowed to their avarice, which was glutted, even in

But

85 Ceciderunt tamen eâ die civium quasi duo millia, &c. (Gunther, c. 18.) Arithmetic is an excellent touchstone to try the amplifications of passion and rhetoric. 66 Quidam (says Innocent III., Gesta, c. 94, p. 538) nec religioni, nec ætati, nec sexui pepercerunt: sed fornicationes, adulteria, et incestus in oculis omnium exercentes, non solùm maritatas et viduas, sed et matronas et virgines Deoque dicatas, exposuerunt spurcitiis garcionum. Villehardouin takes no notice of these common incidents.

87 Nicetas saved, and afterwards married, a noble virgin (p. 380 [p. 781, ed. Bonn]), whom a soldier, ίπι μάρτυσι πολλοῖς ὀνηδὸν ἐπιβρωμώμενος, had almost violated, in spite of the ἴντολαι, εντάλματα εὖ γεγονότων.

the spoil.

the holy week, by the pillage of Constantinople. The right of victory, unshackled by any promise or treaty, had confiscated the public and private wealth of the Greeks; and every hand, according to its size and strength, might lawfully execute the sentence and seize the forfeiture. A portable and universal standard of exchange was found in the coined and uncoined metals of gold and silver, which each captor, at home or abroad, might convert into the possessions most suitable to his temper and situation. Of the treasures which trade and luxury had accumulated, the silks, velvets, furs, the gems, spices, and rich moveables, were the most precious, as they could not be procured for money in the ruder countries of Europe. An order of Division of rapine was instituted; nor was the share of each individual abandoned to industry or chance. Under the tremendous penalties of perjury-excommunication and death-the Latins were bound to deliver their plunder into the common stock: three churches were selected for the deposit and distribution of the spoil: a single share was allotted to a foot soldier, two for a serjeant on horseback, four to a knight, and larger proportions according to the rank and merit of the barons and princes. For violating this sacred engagement, a knight belonging to the count of St. Paul was hanged with his shield and coat of arms round his neck: his example might render similar offenders more artful and discreet, but avarice was more powerful than fear, and it is generally believed that the secret far exceeded the acknowledged plunder. Yet the magnitude of the prize surpassed the largest scale of experience or expectation.88 After the whole had been equally divided between the French and Venetians, fifty thousand marks were deducted to satisfy the debts of the former and the demands of the latter. The residue of the French

a

88 Of the general mass of wealth, Gunther observes, ut de pauperibus et advenis cives ditissimi redderentur (Hist. C. P. c. 18); Villehardouin (No. 132), that since the creation, ne fu tant gaaignié en une ville; Baldwin (Gesta, c. 92), ut tantum tota non videatur possidere Latinitas [p. 535].

According to Finlay (Medieval Greece, p. 106) the whole booty was only 300,000 marks, besides 10,000 horses and mules:"This sum was divided into two equal "parts.

The Venetians then received "50,000 marks out of the share of the "crusaders, in payment of the debt due "to the republic; and the 100,000 marks "which remained as the crusading por❝tion was divided in the following man"ner: each foot-soldier received 5 marks "of silver, each horseman and priest 10, "and each knight 20." Compare Wilken, vol. v. p. 220. Villehardouin's account is

mounted to four hundred thousand marks of silver," about eight hundred thousand pounds sterling; nor can I better appreciate the value of that sum in the public and private transactions of the age than by defining it as seven times the annual revenue of the kingdom of England.90

In this great revolution we enjoy the singular felicity of comparing the narratives of Villehardouin and Nicetas, the opposite Misery of feelings of the marshal of Champagne and the Byzantine the Greeks. senator. 91 At the first view it should seem that the wealth of Constantinople was only transferred from one nation to another, and that the loss and sorrow of the Greeks is exactly balanced by the joy and advantage of the Latins. But in the miserable account of war the gain is never equivalent to the loss, the pleasure to the pain; the smiles of the Latins were transient and fallacious; the Greeks for ever wept over the ruins of their country, and their real calamities were aggravated by sacrilege and mockery. What benefits accrued to the conquerors from the three fires which annihilated so vast a portion of the buildings and riches of the city? What a stock of such things as could neither be used nor transported was maliciously or wantonly destroyed! How much treasure was idly wasted in gaming, debauchery, and riot! And what precious objects were bartered for a vile price by the impatience or ignorance of the soldiers, whose reward was stolen by the base industry of the last of the Greeks! These alone who had nothing to lose might derive some profit from the revolution; but the misery of the upper ranks of society is strongly painted in the personal adventures of Nicetas himself. His stately palace had been reduced to ashes in the second conflagration; and the senator, with his family and friends, found an obscure shelter in another house which he possessed near the church of St. Sophia. It was the door of this mean habitation that his friend the Venetian merchant guarded, in the disguise of a soldier, till Nicetas could save by a precipitate flight the relics of his fortune and the chastity of his daughter. In a cold wintry season these fugitives,

se Villehardouin, No. 133-135. Instead of 400,000, there is a various reading of 500,000. The Venetians had offered to take the whole booty, and to give 400 marks to each knight, 200 to each priest and horseman, and 100 to each foot soldier: they would have been great losers (Le Beau, Hist. du Bas-Empire, tom. xx. p. 506: I know not from whence).

so At the council of Lyons (A.D. 1245) the English ambassadors stated the revenue of the crown as below that of the foreign clergy, which amounted to 60,000 marks a-year (Matthew Paris, p. 451; Hume's History of England, vol. ii. p. 170).

91 The disorders of the sack of Constantinople, and his own adventures, are feelingly described by Nicetas, p. 367-369 [p. 757-761, ed. Bonn], and in the Status Urb. C. P. p. 375-384 [p. 771-790, ed. Bonn]. His complaints, even of sacrilege, are jus tified by Innocent III. (Gesta, c. 92); but Villehardcuin does not betray a symptom of pity or remorse.

mockery.

nursed in the lap of prosperity, departed on foot; his wife was with child; the desertion of their slaves compelled them to carry their baggage on their own shoulders; and their women, whom they placed in the centre, were exhorted to conceal their beauty with dirt, instead of adorning it with paint and jewels. Every step was exposed to insult and danger: the threats of the strangers were less painful than the taunts of the plebeians, with whom they were now levelled; nor did the exiles breathe in safety till their mournful pilgrimage was concluded at Selymbria, above forty miles from the capital. On the way they overtook the patriarch, without attendance and almost without apparel, riding on an ass, and reduced to a state of apostolical poverty, which, had it been voluntary, might perhaps have been meritorious. In the mean while his desolate churches were profaned by the licentiousness and party zeal of the Latins. After stripping the Sacrilege and gems and pearls, they converted the chalices into drinkingtheir tables, on which they gamed and feasted, were covered with the pictures of Christ and the saints; and they trampled under foot the most venerable objects of the Christian worship. In the cathedral of St. Sophia the ample veil of the sanctuary was rent asunder for the sake of the golden fringe; and the altar, a monument of art and riches, was broken in pieces and shared among the captors. Their mules and horses were laden with the wrought silver and gilt carvings which they tore down from the doors and pulpit; and if the beasts stumbled under the burden, they were stabbed by their impatient drivers, and the holy pavement streamed with their impure blood. A prostitute was seated on the throne of the patriarch; and that daughter of Belial, as she is styled, sung and danced in the church to ridicule the hymns and processions of the Orientals. Nor were the repositories of the royal dead secure from violation: in the church of the Apostles the tombs of the emperors were rifled; and it is said that after six centuries the corpse of Justinian was found without any signs of decay or putrefaction. In the streets the French and Flemings clothed themselves and their horses in painted robes and flowing head-dresses of linen; and the coarse intemperance of their feasts 92 insulted the splendid sobriety of the East. To expose the arms of a people of scribes and scholars, they affected to display a pen, an inkhorn, and a sheet of paper, without discerning that the instruments of science and valour were alike feeble and useless in the hands of the modern Greeks.

It I rightly apprehend the Greek of Nicetas's receipts, their favourite dishes were boiled buttocks of beef, salt pork and peas, and soup made of garlic and sharp or sour herba D 382 [p. 786 ed Bonn]).