214

VISIT OF THE EMPEROR MANUEL [CH. LXVI

journey, and expenses; and two thousand of the richest citizens, in arms and on horseback, came forth to meet him as far as Charenton, in the neighbourhood of the capital. At the gates of Paris, he was saluted by the chancellor and the parliament; and Charles the Sixth, attended by his princes and nobles, welcomed his brother with a cordial embrace. The successor of Constantine was clothed in a robe of white silk, and mounted on a milk-white steed; a circumstance, in the French ceremonial, of singular importance; the white colour is considered as the symbol of sovereignty; and, in a late visit, the German emperor, after a haughty demand and peevish refusal, had been reduced to content himself with a black courser. Manuel was lodged in the Louvre; a succession of feasts and balls, the pleasures of the banquet and the chase, were ingeniously varied by the politeness of the French, to display their magnificence and amuse his grief; he was indulged in the liberty of his chapel; and the doctors of the Sorbonne were astonished, and possibly scandalized, by the language, the rites, and the vestments, of his Greek clergy. But the slightest glance on the state of the kingdom must teach him to despair of any effectual assistance. The unfortunate Charles, though he enjoyed some lucid intervals, continually relapsed into furious or stupid insanity; the reins of government were alternately seized by his brother and uncle, the dukes of Orleans and Burgundy, whose factious competition prepared the miseries of civil war. The former was a gay youth, dissolved in luxury and love; the latter was the father of John count of Nevers, who had so lately been ransomed from Turkish captivity; and if the fearless son was ardent to revenge his defeat, the more prudent Burgundy was content with the cost and peril of the first experiment. When Manuel had satiated the curiosity, and perhaps fatigued the patience, of the French, he resolved on a visit to the adjacent island. In his progress from Dover, he was entertained at Canterbury with due reverence by the prior and monks of St. Austin; and, on Blackheath, king Henry the Fourth, with the English court, saluted the Greek hero (I

Eccles. tom. i. p. 676, 677, A.D. 1400, No. 5), who quotes Juvenal des Ursins, and the monk of St. Denys; and Villaret (Hist. de France, tom. xii. p. 331-334), who quotes nobody, according to the last fashion of the French writers.

copy our old historian), who, during many days, was lodged and treated in London as emperor of the East.* But the state of England was still more adverse to the design of the holy war. In the same year, the hereditary sovereign had been deposed and murdered; the reigning prince was a successful usurper, whose ambition was punished by jealousy and remorse; nor could Henry of Lancaster withdraw his person or forces from the defence of a throne incessantly shaken by conspiracy and rebellion. He pitied, he praised, he feasted, the emperor of Constantinople; but if the English monarch assumed the cross, it was only to appease his people, and perhaps his conscience, by the merit or semblance of this pious intention.† Satisfied, however, with gifts and honours, Manuel returned to Paris; and after a residence of two years in the West, shaped his course through Germany and Italy, embarked at Venice, and patiently expected, in the Morea, the moment of his ruin or deliverance. Yet he had escaped the ignominious necessity of offering his religion to public or private sale. The Latin church was distracted by the great schism; the kings, the nations, the universities of Europe, were divided in their obedience between the popes of Rome and Avignon; and the emperor, anxious to conciliate the friendship of both parties, abstained from any correspondence with the indigent and unpopular rivals. His journey coincided with the year of the jubilee; but he passed through Italy without desiring, or deserving, the plenary indulgence which abolished the guilt or penance of the sins of the faithful. Roman pope was offended by this neglect; accused him of irreverence to an image of Christ; and exhorted the princes of Italy to reject and abandon the obstinate schismatic.t

The

* A short note of Manuel, in England, is extracted by Dr. Hody from a MS. at Lambeth (De Græcis illustribus, p. 14) C. P. Imperator, diu variisque et horrendis paganorum insultibus coarctatus, ut pro eisdem resistentiam triumphalem perquireret Anglorum regem visitare decrevit, &c. Rex (says Walsingham, p. 364) nobili apparatû . . suscepit (ut decuit) tantum Heroa, duxitque Londonias, et per multos dies exhibuit gloriose, pro expensis hospitii sui solvens, et eum respi ciens tanto fastigio donativis. He repeats the same in his Upodigma Neustria (p. 556). + Shakspeare begins and ends the play of Henry IV. with that prince's vow of a crusade, and his belief that he should die in Jerusalem.

This fact is

During the period of the crusades, the Greeks beheld with astonishment and terror the perpetual stream of emigration that flowed, and continued to flow, from the unknown climates of the West. The visits of their last emperors removed the veil of separation, and they disclosed to their eyes the powerful nations of Europe, whom they no longer presumed to brand with the name of Barbarians. The observations of Manuel, and his more inquisitive followers, have been preserved by a Byzantine historian of the times:* his scattered ideas I shall collect and abridge; and it may be amusing enough, perhaps instructive, to contemplate the rude pictures of Germany, France, and England, whose ancient and modern state are so familiar to our minds. I. Cermany (says the Greek Chalcocondylas) is of ample latitude, from Vienna to the ocean: and it stretches (a strange geography) from Prague in Bohemia, to the river Tartessus and the Pyrenean mountains.† The soil, except

preserved in the Historia Politica, A.D. 1391-1478, published by Martin Crusius. (Turco Græcia, p. 1-43.) The image of Christ, which the Greek emperor refused to worship, was probably a work of sculpture. The Greek and Turkish history of Laonicus Chalcocondylas ends with the winter of 1463, and the abrupt conclusion seems to mark, that he laid down his pen in the same year. We know that he was an Athenian, and that some contemporaries of the same name contributed to the revival of the Greek language in Italy. But in his numerous digressions, the modest historian has never introduced himself; and his editor, Leunclavius, as well as Fabricius (Bibliot. Græc. tom. vi. p. 474), seems ignorant of his life and character. -For his descriptions of Germany, France, and England, see 1. 2, p. 36, 37. 44-50.) I shall not animadvert on the

geographical errors of Chalcocondylas. In this instance he perhaps followed, and mistook, Herodotus (1. 2, c. 33), whose text may be explained (Herodote de Larcher, tom. ii. p. 219, 220), or whose ignorance may be excused. Had these modern Greeks never read Strabo, or any of their lesser geographers? [The errors of Strabo himself have been repeatedly pointed out. From first to last, the Greeks and Latins were either so superciliously indifferent, or so imperfectly informed, that few of their geographical or ethnical notices, beyond their own limits, can be implicitly relied on. Leibnitz, after giving his Excerpta from Procopius (Script. Bruns. 1. 52), says most emphatically and truly, "Hæc omnia inepta sunt, et miram in Procopio rerum Occidentis ignorantiam ostendunt." After an interval of nine centuries, the same censure is even more applicable to Chalcocondylas, who extended the limits of Germany to the remotest point of Spain. The Tartessus of the ancients is the modern Guadiana. See Reichard's dissertation on Carteja. Orbis Terr. Ant., tab. vii., Hispania.-ED.]

in figs and olives, is sufficiently fruitful; the air is salubrious; the bodies of the natives are robust and healthy; and these cold regions are seldom visited with the calamities of pestilence or earthquakes. After the Scythians or Tartars, the Germans are the most numerous of nations; they are brave and patient, and were they united under a single head, their force would be irresistible. By the gift of the pope, they have acquired the privilege of choosing the Roman emperor; nor is any people more devoutly attached to the faith and obedience of the Latin patriarch. The greatest part of the country is divided among the princes and prelates; but Strasburgh, Cologne, Hamburgh, and more than two hundred free cities, are governed by sage and equal laws, according to the will, and for the advantage, of the whole community. The use of duels, or single combats on foot, prevails among them in peace and war; their industry excels in all the mechanic arts, and the Germans may boast of the invention of gunpowder and cannon, which is now diffused over the greatest part of the world. II. The kingdom of France is spread above fifteen or twenty days' journey from Germany to Spain, and from the Alps to the British ocean; containing many flourishing cities, and among these Paris, the seat of the king, which surpasses the rest in riches and luxury. Many princes and lords alternately wait in his palace, and acknowledge him as their sovereign; the most powerful are the dukes of Bretagne and Burgundy, of whom the latter possesses the wealthy province of Flanders, whose harbours are frequented by the ships and merchants of our own and the more remote seas. The French are an ancient and opulent people; and their language and manners, though somewhat different, are not dissimilar from those of the Italians. Vain of the imperial dignity of Charlemagne, of their victories over the Saraceus, and of the exploits of their heroes, Oliver and Rowland ;t they esteem themselves

A citizen of new Rome, while new Rome survived, would have scorned to dignify the German Ρήξ with the titles of Βασιλεὺς οἱ Αὐτοκράτωρ Ρωμαίων: but all pride was extinct in the borom of Chalcocondylas; and he describes the Byzantine prince, and his subjects, by the proper, though humble names, of "EXλŋveç, and BaridiÙÇ Ελλήνων. + Most of the old romances were translated in the fourteenth century into French prose, and soon became the favourite amusement of the kuights and ladies in the court of Charles VI. If a Greek believed in the exploits of Rowland and

the first of the Western nations; but this foolish arrogance has been recently humbled by the unfortunate events of their wars against the English, the inhabitants of the British island. III. Britain, in the ocean, and opposite to the shores of Flanders, may be considered either as one, or as three islands; but the whole is united by a common interest, by the same manners, and by a similar government. The measure of its circumference is five thousand stadia; the land is overspread with towns and villages; though destitute of wine, and not abounding in fruit-trees, it is fertile in wheat and barley, in honey and wool; and much cloth is manufactured by the inhabitants. In populousness and power, in riches and luxury, London,* the metropolis of the isle, may claim a pre-eminence over all the cities of the West. It is situate on the Thames, a broad and rapid river, which, at the distance of thirty miles, falls into the Gallic sea; and the daily flow and ebb of the tide affords a safe entrance and departure to the vessels of commerce. The king is the head of a powerful and turbulent aristocracy; his principal vassals hold their estates by a free and unalterable tenure; and the laws define the limits of his authority and their obedience. The kingdom has been often afflicted by foreign conquest and domestic sedition; but the natives are bold and hardy, renowned in arins, and victorious in war. form of their shields or targets is derived from the Italians, that of their swords from the Greeks; the use of the long bow is the peculiar and decisive advantage of the English. Their language bears no affinity to the idioms of the continent; in the habits of domestic life, they are not easily distinguished from their neighbours of France; but the

*

The

Oliver, he may surely be excused, since the monks of St. Denys, the national historians, have inserted the fables of archbishop Turpin in their Chronicles of France. Λονδινη . . . . δέ τε πόλις δυνάμει τε προέχουσα τῶν ἐν τῇ νήσῳ ταύτῃ πασῶν πόλεων, ὄλβῳ τε καὶ τῇ ἄλλῃ εὐδαιμονίᾳ οὐδεμιᾶς τῶν πρὸς ἑσπέραν AETOμEvη. Ever since the time of Fitzstephen (the twelfth century), London appears to have maintained this pre eminence of wealth and magnitude; and her gradual increase has, at least, kept pace with the general improvement of Europe. [As from the twelfth century till the eighteenth, so to the present day, London still continues to be the index of national growth. The progress of England, ever leading onward a half-reluctant, half-consenting world, is the visible and most hopeful triumph of the Gothic mind.-ED.]