BOOK FOURTH. GREEK EMPIRE OF NICEA AND CONSTANTINOPLE. CHAPTER I. EMPIRE OF NICEA, A.D. 1204-1261. SECT. 1.—REIGN OF THEODORE I. (LASCARIS), A.D. 1204–1222. STATE OF SOCIETY AMONG THE GREEK POPULATION AT THE TIME OF THE CONQUEST OF CONSTANTINOPLE BY THE CRUSADERS PRETENDERS TO THE EMPIRE-PROGRESS OF THEODORE I.-WAR WITH THE CRUSADERS-WARS WITH RIVALS - COMMUNICATIONS WITH POPE INNOCENT III.-WAR WITH THE SULTAN OF ICONIUM-WAR WITH THE EMPEROR HENRY-DEATH AND CHARACTER OF THEODORE I. THE taking of Constantinople filled the Greek population in all the provinces of the Byzantine empire with wonder and alarm. The national existence was bound up with the central government, so that a vacancy on the throne seemed to imply the ruin of all the institutions under which they had hitherto lived. The future threatened them with individual ruin as well as political anarchy, even if they escaped foreign conquest. Yet even at this crisis of the national fate the people made no exertions to reform the vices which degraded their character and paralysed their exertions. attempt was made to circumscribe the arbitrary conduct of the court, and restore vigour to the old scheme of systematic administration; nothing was done to correct ecclesiastical abuses in the church, to improve the courts of law, to abolish the monopolies that ruined No BOOK IV. native industry, or to invigorate the municipal instituCH. 1. § 1. tions which could alone give energy to the mass of the population. The news that a Belgian emperor ruled in Constantinople spread from Dyrrachium to Trebizond without rousing a single Greek citizen to step forward as the defender of the rights of the nation. Much political disorder was caused by the avarice and ambition of the Greek nobles, but no anarchy occurred from the populace endeavouring to deprive the official agents of the central government of any of the powers which for several generations these agents had grossly abused. So completely had the court, the administration, the clergy, and the lawyers perverted the judgment and feelings of the whole Greek population, that the fabric of the imperial government continued to stand though its foundations were destroyed, its vitality decayed, and its judicial efficacy corrupted. The civil and military governors of provinces, the judges, intendants, and collectors of taxes in cities, continued to pursue their ordinary course of action, in alliance with the bishops and clergy, until they were driven from their posts by the conquering Latins, or summoned to yield their places to the representatives of a new emperor. Never was the national imbecility which arises from the want of municipal institutions and executive activity in local spheres more apparent. Had the towns, cities, corporations, districts, and provinces, inhabited by a Greek population, possessed magistrates responsible both to the people and the emperor, but accustomed to independent action, there can be no doubt that thousands of Greek citizens would have rushed forward to defend their country against the Crusaders and the Venetians; and that they would have soon reformed the abuses which rendered the empires of Constantinople and Trebizond fearful examples of the degraded condition into which a civilised Christian society may sink. A sense of national independence and a spirit of liberty might have infused themselves into the hearts of the Greek people, and the empire of Constantinople might then have shared with the Western nations the task of advancing the progress of Christian civilisation. But the Greeks at this critical conjuncture proved incapable of making any intellectual exertion; their municipal institutions had been rendered so subservient to the central power that they had long ceased to reason on politics; national feeling and political intelligence were dormant in their souls, and they submitted blindly to any sovereign who seized the reins of government, whether a foreigner or a native. The great catastrophe, which had fallen alike on every class of society, ought certainly to have suggested to the Greek statesmen of the period the importance of identifying the feelings and interests of the whole free population with the cause of the government. We know that these men were in the habit of reading Thucydides and Plato. In the works they have left us, we find them so often aping the style of the ancients that we feel disgusted when we discover they paid little attention to their thoughts. The value of the study of the classics to form or even to improve the mind was then, as it is now, very much overrated. Experience shows that it is almost as likely to produce learned pedants as accomplished scholars; for unless there be a basis of mental education very different from that which is acquired through books, learning cannot produce statesmen. The Greeks are not the only people among whom the study of classical literature has produced no practical improvement in political knowledge. Yet every one must admit that the study of the republican literature of the ancients bears that deep impression of truth which cannot fail to enlarge A. D. 1204-1222. CH. I. § 1. BOOK IV. the intellectual vision and purify the taste of those who examine its records with minds already familiar with the principles of civil liberty and political order. Men who might have distinguished themselves in official life only as useful labourers at the task of the hour, attain to higher views by classical studies. New combinations of free principles of government in various conditions of society, differing from everything around them, are presented to their view, and give them a profounder experience of human nature. England certainly ought never to forget that many of her best patriots and greatest statesmen have been indebted to the study of classic literature for those liberal and philanthropic ideas which enabled them to improve the prospects of the human race while they served their country's cause; and their names, whether they belong to the seventeenth or the nineteenth century, will go down to future ages with as pure and as great a fame as the greatest in the annals of Greece and Rome. But the minds of these men were formed by their domestic education and native institutions; they were only improved and matured by classic studies. Unfortunately for the Greek race, their teachers and their rulers never felt that the people had an inalienable right to the impartial administration of justice. The government of the Byzantine empire considered that the very basis of its existence was the absolute submission of the people; it regarded all popular rights and municipal authority as incompatible with a strong central power. There was also a material obstacle to any general action of the Greek nation at the time of the conquest of Constantinople. Civilisation had already declined to such a degree that communications between distant portions of the nation were becoming rare. Monopolies and privileges had thrown commerce into the hands of strangers. No ties of common interests or feelings bound distant localities together, unless with the fetters of political despotism and ecclesiastical bigotry. Little was to be gained or hoped for by the people beyond the narrow sphere in which they lived, so that local prejudices and individual interests outweighed national patriotism. The emperors were prompt to avail themselves of this state of things, and easily attached the wealthiest members of the aristocracy in each separate district to their service. The profits of imperial oppression were shared with these provincial nobles and archonts, while the clergy gave to every patriotic aspiration the form of orthodox bigotry. Such was the state of society when the foundations of the empire of Nicea were laid; and they explain in some degree how the weakest despotism the world ever saw could succeed in expanding itself into the Greek empire of Constantinople. The rebellion of powerful nobles was a chronic disease of the Byzantine empire. It is not surprising, therefore, that the members of the aristocracy, even amidst the calamities of their country, thought more of their own habitual projects of ambition than of their duties to their country. The provinces were consequently soon filled with pretenders to the empire. The two fugitive emperors, whose fates have been recorded at the close of the preceding book, Alexius III. and Alexius V., attempted to preserve some power in Macedonia. Theodore Lascaris, who had been acknowledged emperor after the flight of Alexius V., escaped to Bithynia, where he assumed the direction of the central government, contenting himself for the moment with the title of Despot, and appearing as the representative or colleague of his worthless father-in-law Alexius III. As the news of the taking of Constantinople spread, fresh pretenders to the throne appeared, VOL. II. Ꮓ A. D. 1204-1222. |