CHAP. 1. Moslem princes.

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His infidel guards, hated by all around, and looking only to the sultan for wealth and honour, were ready to execute all his orders without distinction of rank or respect for law or religion. At this time the East swarmed with European adventurers, who, having secured indulgences to an unlimited amount by their services as Crusaders, were eager to enjoy the interest of the treasures they had laid up in heaven by committing a few additional sins on earth. Their visit to the tomb of Christ, and their wars against the infidels, had brought them neither wealth nor lands as a reward for their pious exertions. They had, however, obtained indulgences, which in their opinion authorised them to seek riches by hiring their swords to Greek heretics or Turkish infidels without shame or sin. Theodore I. (Laskaris) the Greek emperor of Nicæa, had at one time eight hundred of these soldiers of fortune in his service.1 Azeddin assembled round his person a powerful corps of similar mercenaries.

Alexios of Trebizond was unable to resist a powerful, wealthy, and warlike sovereign like Azeddin. Cut off from all direct collision with the Greek empire of Nicæa, and the Latin empire of Romania, he was almost forgotten in the West. Involved in a political and international circle of alliances and hostilities, that disconnected his interests from those of the Greeks on the Asiatic and European shores of the Egean, his wars and treaties placed him in close relations with the Christian princes of Georgia and Iberia, with the Turkoman chieftains of Cappadocia, and the emirs of Armenia. In this state of comparative isolation, he was unable to offer any effectual resistance to the arms of the grand-sultan of Roum, and he was glad to purchase tranquillity, and save his dominions from devastation, by acknowledging himself a vassal of the Seljouk empire, by paying an annual tribute to the treasury of Azeddin, and sending a contingent of troops Nicephorus Gregoras, 10.

1

A. D.

to serve in the Turkish armies.1 Of the particular circumstances or misfortunes that reduced him to this 1204-1222. extremity, nothing is known: the fact alone is recorded. It is probable, however, that the commercial relations of the Greeks of Trebizond with the rest of Asia, both assisted the emperor in concluding this treaty of peace with the sultan, and rendered it, in spite of its humiliating conditions, not unpopular among his own subjects.

Of the internal history of Trebizond during the reign. of Alexios I. nothing has been preserved. We know, however, that the emperor or his ministers did not neglect to profit by the advantages of his position, and of the commercial relations of his subjects in the Black Sea. Cherson, Gothia, and all the Byzantine possessions in the Tauric Chersonesos, were united to his empire; and so close was the alliance of interest, that these districts remained dependent on the government of Trebizond until the period of its fall.2 It is not very probable that this conquest could have been effected by an imprudent or unpopular sovereign. We know, too, that Trebizond rose rapidly in power and wealth immediately after the establishment of its independence. This was a natural consequence of the increased security afforded to communications, in consequence of the great addition to the size of its territory, which from a province grew suddenly into an empire; and of the improvement in the roads, and the diminished expense of transport, which resulted from its becoming the recipient of funds formerly remitted to Constantinople. Money previously expended to maintain the carriage promenades of the court of Byzantium

1 MS. of Lazaros the Skevophylax, (intendant of the plate,) discovered by Fallmerayer at the monastery of St Dionysios, on Mount Athos, founded by the emperor Alexios III. of Trebizond.-Original-Fragmente, p. 85, 1st Abth., in the Transactions of the Academy of Munich, 1843.

This is another of the facts with which Fallmerayer's researches have enriched history. MS. of Lazaros.- Original-Fragmente, p. 110, 1st Abth. The territory of the city of Cherson, and the province of Gothia, embraced the southern and south-eastern parts of the Crimea.

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was now devoted to the construction of bridges and roads, that increased the riches of the natives of Trebizond. Alexios I. died at Trebizond in the year 1222. Of his character, feelings, passions, and talents, so little is known, that any attempt to embody his personality would be an encroachment on the domain of poetry or romance. He appears in the history of Trebizond as the shadow of a mythic hero, the founder of an empire, whose origin we may perhaps, without sufficient warrant, feel inclined to trace to his individual actions, when he himself was probably nothing more than an ordinary man, moved forward by circumstances operating on the organisation of society in his age, in which he was accidentally selected by fortune to act a prominent part. That he possessed the noble figure, handsome face, and active frame that were hereditary in the house of Grand-Komnenos, and which they probably derived from their Georgian ancestors, may be admitted.

A modern Greek empire, in the thirteenth century, required a new saint just as necessarily as an ancient Greek colony, in the heroic ages, required its demi-god or eponyme hero. This new saint was indispensable, for it was his duty to appear in the celestial tribunals unencumbered with the business of older clients. St Eugenios was chosen by the emperor and people of Trebizond to act as their advocate in heaven and their protector on earth. His name and worship served to separate the citizens of the empire of Trebizond from the Greeks of the Byzantine empire. The votaries of St Eugenios formed a nation apart, united together by their own ecclesiastical ideas and religious prejudices, then the most powerful feelings and motives of action with the Christian population in the East. St Eugenios was a native martyr, who had been condemned to death during the persecution of Diocletian for boldly destroying a statue of Mithras, which had long been an object of adoration to the people

ST EUGENIOS PATRON OF TREBIZOND.

383

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of Trebizond, on the romantic Mount of Mithrios, now CHAP. I. Boz-tépé, that overlooks the city with its wall of rock. On the spot where he was executed-an isolated point between two ravines that separate the upper citadel and the great eastern suburb Alexios erected a splendid church and monastery to the patron of the city and empire. The buildings dedicated to St Eugenios in this place were more than once destroyed amidst the revolutions of Trebizond; but a Christian church, now converted into a mosque by the Osmanlees, and called Yeni Djuma, still exists. Alexios I. appears also to have made it a law of the empire, that the effigy of St Eugenios should be impressed on all the silver coins of Trebizond.' The festivals of St Eugenios became the bond of social communication between the emperor and his subjects: the biography of the saint was the text-book of Trebizontine literature; his praise the subject of every oratorical display; his name the appellation of one member in every family, the object of universal veneration, and the centre of patriotic enthusiasm.2 The religion, the literature, and the politics of the inhabitants of Trebizond, during the whole existence of the empire, identified themselves more with the worship and the legends of St Eugenios, than with the practice of Christianity or the doctrines of the gospel.

No coins of Alexios I. and Andronikos I. have been identified, but all the known silver coins of Trebizond bear the effigy of St Eugenios on their reverse. The earlier, while the emperor and people had some warlike habits, represent the saint on foot, as the spiritual guide and shepherd of his flock; the later, when the emperor and people were cffeminate and luxurious in their way of life, display him on horseback with a cross in his hand, as a mace-at-arms, ready to protect the city, which the sovereign and the people felt themselves too weak to defend without miraculous aid.

2 In a lawsuit of which Fallmerayer discovered the records in the monastery of St Dionysios, on Mount Athos, three citizens of Trebizond appear as witnesses, all named Eugenios.

CHAPTER II.

TREBIZOND TRIBUTARY TO THE SELJOUK SULTANS AND GRAND-KHANS OF THE MONGOLS.

SECT. I.—REIGNS OF ANDRONIKOS I. (GHIDOS,) AND JOANNES 1. (AXOUCHOS,) 1222-1238.

THE succession to the imperial title was never considered hereditary among the Byzantine Greeks; but the new Greek empire at Trebizond forgot many of the old Roman ideas, and soon assumed a far more hereditary form. At the death of Alexios I., however, the hereditary principle had not prevailed over the elective constitution imprinted by imperial Rome on all its offshoots, and the vacant throne was occupied by Andronikos Ghidos, the son-inlaw of Alexios, to the exclusion of Joannes, the eldest son of the deceased emperor.1

Though Andronikos continued to be tributary to the Seljouk empire, he availed himself so skilfully of the embarrassments attendant on the decease of the emperor at Iconium, as to succeed, in the second year of his reign, (1214,) in concluding a treaty with Alaeddin, who had succeeded his brother Azeddin. This treaty, it is true, made no change in the relations of vassalage already established between the two empires, but it provided that

1 The emperor Andronikos I. was perhaps the same Andronikos Ghidos who commanded the army of Theodore Laskaris, when the Latin auxiliaries of David Grand-Komnenos were destroyed.