CHA P. were polluted by the grooms and peasants of the

LX.

86

Catholic camp 6. It is indeed probable that the licence of victory prompted and covered a multitude of fins but it is certain, that the capital of the Eaft contained a ftock of venal or willing beauty, fufficient to fatiate the defires of twenty: thousand pilgrims; and female prifoners were no longer fubject to the right or abuse of domestic flavery. The marquis of Montferrat was the patron of difcipline 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 fometimes invoked by the vanquifhed and refpected by the victors. Their cruelty and luft were moderated by the authority of the chiefs, and feelings of the foldiers; for we are no longer defcribing an irruption of the northern favages; and however ferocious they might still appear, time, policy, and religion, had civilized the manners of the French, and ftill more of the Italians. But a free fcope wast allowed to their avarice, which was glutted, even in the holy week, by the pillage of Conftantinople. The right of 'victory, unshackled by any

86 Quidam (fays Innocent III. Gefta, c. 94. p. 538.) nec res ligioni, nec ætati, nec fexui pepercerunt: fed fornicationes, adulteria, et inceftus in occulis omnium exercentes, non folùm maritatatas et viduas, fed et matronas et virgines Deoque dicatas, expofuerunt fpurcitiis garcionum. Villehardouin takes no notice of thefe common incidents.

87 Nicetas faved, and afterwards married, a noble virgin (p. 38ο.), whom a foldier επι μαρτυσι πολλοίς ονηδόν επιβρωμώμενος, had almont violated in fpite of the εντολαι, εντάλματα ευ γεγονότων.

promife

promife or treaty, had confifcated the public and private wealth of the Greeks; and every hand, according to its fize and ftrength, might lawfully execute the fentence and feize the forfeiture. A portable and universal standard of exchange was found in the coined and uncoined metals of gold and filver, which each captor at home or abroad might convert into the poffeffions most suitable to his temper and fituation. Of the treasures, which trade and luxury had accumulated, the filks, velvets, furs, the gems, fpices, and rich moveables, were the most precious, as they could not be procured for money in the ruder countries of Europe. An order of rapine was inftituted; nor was the fhare of each individual abandoned industry or chance. Under the tremendous penalties of perjury, excommunication and death, the Latins were bound to deliver their plunder into the common ftock: three churches were felected for the depofit and diftribution of the spoil: a fingle fhare was allotted to a foot foldier; two for a ferjeant on horfeback; four to a knight; and larger proportions according to the rank and merit of the barons and princes. For violating this facred engagement, a knight belonging to the count of St. Paul was hanged with his fhield and coat of arms round his neck: his example might render fimilar offenders more artful and difcreet; but avarice was more powerful than fear; and it is generally believed, that the fecret far exceeded the acknowledged plunder. Yet the magnitude of the prize furpaffed the

largest

83

CHAP. largeft fcale of experience or expectation "*. LX. After the whole had been equally divided between

the French and Venetians, fifty thousand marks were deducted to fatisfy the debts of the former and the demands of the latter. The refidue of the French amounted to four hundred thousand marks of filver 89, about eight hundred thousand pounds fterling; nor can I better appreciate the value of that fum in the public and private tranfactions of the age, than by defining it as seven times the annual revenue of the kingdom of England".

In this great revolution we enjoy the fingular felicity of comparing the narratives of Villehardouin and Nicetas, the oppofite feelings of the marihal of Champagne and the Byzantine fenator 91. At the first view it fhould feem that the

88 Of the general mafs of wealth, Gunther obferves, ut de pauperibus et advenis cives ditiffimi redderentur (Hift.,C. P. c. 18.); Villehardouin (N° 132.), that fince the creation, ne fu tant gaaignié dans une ville; Baldwin (Gesta, c. 92.), ut tantum tota non videatur poffidere Latinitas.

89. Villehardouin, N° 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 prieft and horfeman, and roo to each foot foldier: they would have been great lofers (Le Beau, Hift. du Bas-Empire, tom. xx. p. 506. I know not from whence.)

9° At the council of Lyons (A. D. 1245), the English ambassadors ftated 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 Hiftory of England, vol. ii. p. 170.).

91 The diforders of the fack of Conftantinople, and his own adventures, are feelingly described by Nicetas, p. 367–369. and in the Status Urb. C. P. p. 375-384. His complaints even of facrilege are juftified by Innocent III. (Gesta, c. 92.); but Villehardouin does not betray a symptom of pity or remorte.

wealth

LX.

wealth of Conftantinople was only transferred CHAP. from one nation to another; and that the lofs and forrow of the Greeks is exactly balanced by the joy and advantage of the Latins. But in the miferable account of war, the gain is never equivalent to the lofs, the pleasure to the pain: the fmiles 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 facrilege and mockery. What benefits accrued to the conquerors from the three fires which annihilated fo vaft a portion of the buildings and riches of the city? What a stock of fuch things, as could neither be used nor tranfported, was maliciously or wantonly destroyed? How much treasure was idly wafted in gaming, debauchery, and riot? And what precious objects were bartered for a vile price by the impatience or ignorance of the foldiers, whofe reward was ftolen by the base industry of the last of the Greeks? Thefe alone, who had nothing to lofe, might derive fome profit from the revolution; but the mifery of the upper ranks of fociety is strongly painted in the perfonal adventures of Nicetas himself. His ftately palace had been reduced to afhes in the fecond conflagration; and the fenator, with his family and friends, found an obfcure shelter in another house which he poffeffed 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 foldier, till Nicetas could fave, by a precipitate flight, the relics of his fortune and the chastity of

his

LX.

CHAP. his daughter. In a cold wintry feason, thefe fugitives, nurfed in the lap of profperity, departed on foot; his wife was with child; the defertion of their flaves compelled them to carry their baggage on their own fhoulders; 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 ftep was expofed to infult and danger: the threats of the ftrangers were lefs painful than the taunts of the plebeians, with whom they were now levelled; nor did the exiles breathe in fafety till their mournful pilgrimage was concluded at Selymbria, above forty miles from the capital. On their way they overtook the patriarch, without attendance and almoft without apparel, riding on an afs, and reduced to a state of apoftolical poverty, which, had it been voluntary, might perhaps have been meritorious. In the mean while, his

and

defolate churches were profaned by the licenSacrilege tioufnefs and party zeal of the Latins. After mockery. ftripping the gems and pearls, they converted the chalices into drinking-cups; their tables, on which they gamed and feasted, were covered with the pictures of Chrift and the faints; and they trampled under foot the moft venerable objects of the Chriftian worship. In the cathedral of St. Sophia, the ample veil of the fanctuary was rent asunder for the fake of the golden fringe; and the altar, a monument of art and riches, was broken in pieces and fhared among the captors. Their mules and horfes were laden with the wrought filver and gilt carvings, which

they