CHAPTER VIII.
Constantinople, A.D. 718-1453: its increased prosperity—Manufactures of Greece—System of taxation, and of expenditure—Fleets, and mode of warfare—Struggle for maritime supremacy—Scandinavians—Muscovites, their trade and ships—Russians; their early commerce, and attempts to capture Constantinople—Their ships—The Normans, and their expeditions—Establish themselves in Italy, A.D. 1016—Amalfi—Futile attempts of the Normans to take Constantinople, A.D. 1081-1084—Rise of Venice—The cause of its prosperity—Spread of the Scythians, Huns, or Turks, A.D. 997-1028—The Crusades, A.D. 1095-1099—Siege of Acre, A.D. 1189—Armistice, A.D. 1192—Fourth Crusade, A.D. 1202—The effect of the Crusades on the commerce of Constantinople, and on its fall—Power of Venice, A.D. 1202; her ships join in the Crusade, which was afterwards altered from its original design—They besiege and take Constantinople, A.D. 1204—Commerce declines under the Latins, but revives on the restoration of the Empire, A.D. 1261—Genoa—Genoese settlement at Galata and Pera—Arrogance of the Genoese, who at last rebel, A.D. 1348, and declare war, A.D. 1349—The progress of the Turks, A.D. 1341-47—Their fleet—First use of gunpowder and of large cannon—The Turks finally become masters of the Eastern capital, A.D. 1453.
Constantinople, A.D. 718-1453: its increased prosperity.
Although the Greeks had suffered considerable hardship during the thirteen months they were besieged by the Saracens, the siege was no sooner raised than they returned to their usual occupations with increased energy. The losses they had sustained, by an interruption to their maritime commerce, and the curtailment of their home manufactures, required to be met with renewed vigour. Fresh commercial projects were formed and carried into effect with remarkable energy; circumstances favoured their efforts; trade rapidly increased, manufactures flourished; and, as the cities of the West had fallen with the decline of the ancient empire, Constantinople secured a large portion of their commerce, and became a centre of commercial intercourse, equalled only in wealth and influence by Baghdad, the capital city of the Arabian Khalifs.
Nor was her prosperity transient in its nature. During nearly three centuries Constantinople continued to be the principal seat of commercial exchange, increasing in power and influence as the Christians of Syria, Egypt, and Africa respectively shook off the yoke of the Khalifs, and returned to their allegiance to the emperor of the East. Those who had gone to settle in the capital took with them whatever portion of their movable wealth had eluded the search of their oppressors, and Constantinople thus acquired the fugitive trade of Alexandria and Tyre. The chiefs of Armenia and Scythia, flying from hostile or religious persecution, were alike hospitably entertained, and their followers encouraged to build new cities, and to cultivate waste lands within the limits and under the protection of the empire. Increased facilities were afforded to persons engaged in trade and manufactures, and some symptoms of a liberal policy may be traced in a law exempting from personal taxes the mariners of the Peloponnesus, the workmen in parchment and purple, and the manufacturers of linen, wool, and silk. These arts not merely afforded employment to many persons in Constantinople, but to a still greater number in Corinth, Thebes, and Argos. Moreover, from the reign of Justinian to the twelfth century, Greece was the only country in Christendom possessing silkworms, or workmen familiar with the art of preparing their produce.
Manufactures of Greece.
Gibbon describes the manufactures of Greece, during the period of Constantinople’s greatest prosperity, as unequalled in elegance and fineness by any similar manufactures of either ancient or modern times. “The gifts,” he states, “which a rich and generous matron of Peloponnesus presented to the Emperor Basil, her adopted son, were doubtless fabricated in the Grecian looms. Danielis bestowed a carpet of fine wool, of a pattern which imitated the spots of a peacock’s tail, of a magnitude to overspread the floor of a new church, erected in the triple names of Christ, of Michael the Archangel, and of the prophet Elijah. She gave six hundred pieces of silk and linen of various use and denomination; the silk was painted with the Tyrian die, and adorned by the labours of the needle; and the linen was so exquisitely fine, that an entire piece might be rolled in the hollow of a cane.”[351] The value of these manufactures was estimated according to the weight and quality of the article, the closeness of the texture, and the beauty of the colours; some, too, of the embroidery is said to have been of the most exquisite description.
System of taxation, and of expenditure.
But though the mariners and some of the manufacturers were relieved from personal taxation, we have the authority of Benjamin of Tudela, who visited Constantinople in the twelfth century, for the statement that the taxes fell very heavily on the ordinary shopkeepers, and on the merchants of foreign countries who frequented the capital.[352] Nor, indeed, could this have been otherwise, where a system of pomp and luxury was promoted by the imperial rulers, scarcely less than that which had mainly caused the ruin of Rome.
Fleets, and mode of warfare.
But, besides this, vast sums of money were required to maintain the army and navy, as the command of the Mediterranean, from the mouth of the Tanais (Don) to the Columns of Hercules, was always claimed and often possessed by the successors of Constantine. To secure an adequate fleet, the capital was filled with naval stores and skilled artificers; the native Greeks, from long practice among their own bays and islands, formed excellent sailors; while the trade of Venice and Amalfi also supplied an excellent nursery of seamen for the imperial squadrons.
A.D. 960.
“Some estimate,” remarks Gibbon,[353] “may be formed of the power of the Greek emperors by the curious and minute detail of the armament which was prepared for the reduction of Crete. A fleet of one hundred and twelve galleys, and seventy-five vessels of the Pamphylian style, was equipped in the capital, the islands of the Ægean Sea, and the seaports of Asia, Macedonia, and Greece. It carried thirty-four thousand mariners, seven thousand three hundred and forty soldiers, seven hundred Russians, and five thousand and eighty-seven Mardaites, whose fathers had been transplanted from the mountains of Libanus. Their pay, most probably of a month, was computed at thirty-four centenaries of gold, about one hundred and thirty-six thousand pounds sterling. Our fancy is bewildered by the endless recapitulation of arms and engines, of clothes and linen, of bread for the men and forage for the horses, and of stores and utensils of every description, inadequate to the conquest of a petty island, but amply sufficient for the establishment of a flourishing colony.”
Struggle for maritime supremacy.
For several centuries of that period, often termed, though with some injustice, “The Dark Ages,” the contests for the maritime supremacy of the Black Sea and Mediterranean were incessant. One barbarous nation succeeded another just as their lust for plunder was stimulated by the wealth of peaceful and unwarlike communities. The Goths and Vandals were followed by the Franks, the Bulgarians, and the Hungarians. Then arose the Russians and Normans, each contending for the chief rule at sea, or for the plunder such superiority enabled them to secure. After these came the Turks, the onward wave of the Tatars and of the Mongols of Central Asia, who, under various names and dynasties, overran the eastern empire, at the period of the Crusades to the Holy Land. Neither the Bulgarians nor the Hungarians were, however, a maritime people. The former took possession of a district of country south of the Danube; and the latter directed their attention to the conquest of the territory, a portion of which they still occupy. Both tribes, with the Turks, were descendants from the same races; and all of them originally, while following pastoral pursuits, had been trained to a military life. With tents made from the skins of their cattle, and dressed in furs, the produce of the hunt, they were easily housed and clothed. Possessing within themselves every want, and trained from their infancy to the use of arms and horses, they were most formidable opponents; the immense hordes with which they advanced generally enabling them to carry all before them.
Scandinavians;
Muscovites, their trade and ships.
Previous to the tenth century all the nations, or rather tribes, east of Germany were heterogeneously classed as Scythians. Being almost entirely nomadic, they as a rule disdained commerce, and held peaceful arts, the certain signs of civilization, in contempt. Those of them who were accustomed to the sea made piracy their chief occupation, and gloried in their marauding expeditions. Of these the Scandinavians were among the most daring. Impatient of a bleak climate, and narrow limits, they were ever ready to make the most distant and hazardous voyages, exploring every coast that promised either spoil or settlement. Though the Baltic was the first scene of their naval achievements, they extended their operations far beyond those seas, and were frequently found in the Euxine, where, with others of the northern tribes, they committed considerable havoc, and, from their superiority in arms and discipline, were greatly feared. About the tenth century there, however, arose among these barbarous hordes of the north the Slavonians, a tribe then occupying Lithuania, but soon better known as the Muscovites, who directed their attention to commercial pursuits. Occupying the chief ports of the Baltic, these people traded in leather, wool, flax, hemp, lead, and amber, receiving in exchange wine, manufactured iron, with dry goods, and a limited supply of silk in the web. But, however intrepid and disposed to persevere in commercial pursuits, their vessels were of the rudest description, and their knowledge of maritime affairs, or of the science and art of navigation, was far behind that of the most ignorant of the nations of the South. Nevertheless the Muscovites extended their trading operations farther to the south and east than any of the northern nations had hitherto done; and, not satisfied with the limited markets on the shores of the Baltic, they visited as traders the North or Arctic Ocean, and the Black and Caspian Seas. The internal navigation of the rivers Dwina, Don, and Volga, extending almost from Archangel to Astrakhan, afforded an almost inexhaustible field for inland and maritime commerce. Every year increased the demand from the western countries of Europe for their furs, salt, dried fish, train oil, honey, flax, and caviare; till at length they also started a trade with Persia by the Black Sea, and with India by the Caspian, being thus the first of modern nations to avail themselves of the ancient overland routes to the far East. St. Petersburgh and Moscow still carry on a considerable commercial intercourse with China by the same means.
Russians: their early commerce, and attempts to capture Constantinople.
Although it was not until the ninth century that the Russians are mentioned by name, their monarchy, within one century afterwards, obtained an important place in the map of Constantine, Novgorod and Kief being then considerable entrepôts of commerce. “Between the sea and Novgorod,” remarks Gibbon,[354] “an easy intercourse was discovered; in the summer through a gulf, a lake, and a navigable river; in the winter season, over the hard and level surface of boundless snows. From the neighbourhood of that city, the Russians descended the streams that fall into the Borysthenes; their canoes, of a single tree, were laden with slaves of every age, furs of every species, the spoil of their bee-hives, and the hides of their cattle; and the whole produce of the north was collected and discharged in the magazines of Kiow.” Thence, after many perils, they ultimately reached Constantinople, and exchanged their cargoes for the produce and manufactures of Greece, and often for the spices of India. A few of their countrymen settled in the capital and the provinces, under full protection of their persons and effects; but they soon abused the hospitality of the Greeks, by inciting those whom they had left behind to make no less than four attacks on the capital city during the first two hundred years of their settlement. They had seen, tasted, and envied the wealth of Constantinople; and then, as in more recent times, they hoped to revel in luxuries they were too barbarous to obtain by honest trade.
Their ships.
The vessels used in their first onslaught were in the form of canoes, scraped out of the long stem of a beech or willow tree. “This slight and narrow foundation,” says Gibbon, “was raised and continued on either side with planks, till it attained the length of sixty, and the height of about twelve feet. These boats were built without a deck, but with two rudders and a mast, to move with sails and oars, and to contain from forty to seventy men, with their arms and provisions of fresh water and salt fish.”[355] In their first enterprise, and with an insignificant fleet of two hundred vessels, the Russians, under the princes of Kief, passed the Straits without opposition, and occupied for a short time the port of Constantinople, from which, however, they soon retreated. In the second, they do not appear to have met with any better success; and the third, though chosen when the Greeks were greatly harassed, and when the naval powers of the empire were employed against the Saracens, proved most disastrous to the Russians. “Fifteen broken and decayed galleys were boldly launched against the enemy; but instead of the single tube of Greek fire, usually planted on the prow, the sides and stern of each vessel were abundantly supplied with that liquid combustible. The engineers were dexterous; the weather was propitious; many thousand Russians, who chose rather to be drowned than burnt, leaped into the sea; and those who escaped to the Thracian shore were inhumanly slaughtered by the peasants and soldiers.”[356]
A.D. 865.
A.D. 904.
A.D. 941.
These attempts at naval invasion continued at long intervals, and with varied success; but the fourth and last, ending in the destruction of twenty-four of the Greek galleys, was brought to a close by treaty. The Greeks found that, though victorious, every advantage lay on the side of the Russians; their savage enemy gave no quarter; their poverty promised no spoil; while their impenetrable retreats deprived the conqueror of the hopes of revenge. The Greeks were, therefore, not unwilling to grant liberal terms to their invaders, the terror these attacks caused being increased by a supposed prophecy. “By the vulgar of every rank,” remarks Gibbon, “it was asserted and believed that an equestrian statue in the square of Taurus was secretly inscribed with a prophecy, how the Russians, in the last days, should become masters of Constantinople,”[357]—a belief which, as we know, was still largely shared in, even so recently as the Crimean war of 1854-6.
The Normans and their expeditions.
A.D. 918.
Towards the decline of the Saracen empires, the Greeks had to contend with the Normans or Northmen, a race as daring and adventurous as the Russians, and much more skilled in sea-faring pursuits. This remarkable people had recently left their frozen homes in Norway and adventured upon unknown and distant oceans, penetrating as far as the Mediterranean with numerous fleets, and rendering themselves more dreaded by their maritime genius than the Russians or Saracens had ever been. Ravaging Flanders, France, Spain, and Italy, after an infinite series of piratical exploits, they compelled Charles the Simple to cede and assign to them the large territory now known as Normandy; and, following up this success by various adventures in the south of Europe, obtained for themselves a great name and influence. Thus the Norman kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, during the eleventh century, played an important part in the drama of the history of Italy and of the eastern empire.
Establish themselves in Italy, A.D. 1016.
It is not our intention in this work to follow the Normans in their conquests or defeats, except in so far as these bear on their maritime exploits, and on their connection, limited though this may be, with commerce. At first, a large number of them appear to have earned their daily subsistence by the sword, having constantly mixed themselves up in the domestic quarrels then incessantly raging between the rulers and people of the southern states of Italy; till at length, chiefly through the aid of the Duke of Naples, whose cause they had espoused, they secured their first settlement in Italy. Within eight miles of his residence, he built and fortified for their use the town of Aversa, granting to them, also, a considerable tract of the fertile country in the vicinity, over which they were vested with complete control. Year by year numerous pilgrims from all parts of Europe, but especially from the north, found shelter under the independent standard of Aversa, and were quickly assimilated with the manners and language of the Gallic colony. But the Norman power soon extended far beyond the infant and limited colony of Aversa, and embraced the whole of the territory, which for centuries, and, indeed, until the last few years, was known as the kingdom of Naples. Within that territory, thirty miles from Naples, stood the commercially celebrated republic of Amalfi.
Amalfi.
Although the port of Amalfi, from which the republic derived its name, is now an obscure place, no western harbour then contained a more enterprising maritime population. Its position, not unlike that of Tyre, afforded great facilities for carrying on an extensive sea-borne commerce. Hence it was that Amalfi, in its day, had a very extensive intercourse with all parts of the then known world, and was among the earliest of the Italian republics to hold in its hands the trade of the Mediterranean. Long before the Venetians and Genoese had become famous, this small but indefatigable republic assumed the office of supplying the western world with the manufactures and productions of the East, and that trade proved then, as has been the case in all ages, a source of immense profit. Though the city contained only fifty thousand inhabitants, its wealth was enormous, and its merchants, who had correspondence with all parts of the coasts of the Mediterranean, dealt largely in the commodities of both Arabia and India. Their settlements in Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria, acquired the privileges of independent colonies. No city or seaport of those days contained more mariners who excelled in the theory or practice of navigation and astronomy than Amalfi; indeed, it was long supposed, that to the skill of one of the seamen of this city, the world owed the discovery of the mariner’s compass.[358]
A.D. 1137.
But, after three hundred years of great prosperity, arising entirely from the energetic, and, at the same time, honest pursuit of commerce, Amalfi, oppressed by the arms of the Normans, was at last brought under their rule. Shorn of its independence, and depressed in spirit, the city was soon after attacked by the jealousy of Pisa, one of its commercial rivals; but the ruined palaces of its merchants, and the remains of an arsenal and cathedral, still attest its former splendour and importance.[359]
Not satisfied with the possessions they had already secured in Italy and with their conquest of Sicily, the Normans next resolved on the conquest of Constantinople itself.
Futile attempts of the Normans to take Constantinople, A.D. 1081-1084.
Their first attempt was made from the port of Otranto, where, after a preparation of two years, they had collected a fleet of one hundred and fifty vessels, and thirty thousand men, including one thousand five hundred Norman knights. But this expedition proved a calamitous failure. The Normans were no longer the experienced or adventurous mariners, who had explored unknown oceans, from Greenland to Africa; hence, in a great storm they encountered at the mouth of the Adriatic, many of their ships were shattered, while others were dashed on shore and became hopeless wrecks. Besides, a new, and a naval, enemy had arisen in the Venetians, who, at the solicitations and promises of the Byzantine court, were ready enough to aid in the overthrow of the hated Normans, and, with a view of tempting commercial advantages for themselves, to assist in defending the capital of the East. And so it befell, that what the storm had spared of the Norman fleet, the Venetians and Greek fire destroyed; add to which, the Greek populations, sallying from their towns along the southern shores of Italy, carried slaughter and dismay to the tents of the chiefs of the Norman invaders.
But three years afterwards, their indefatigable duke (Robert Guiscard) resumed the design of his eastern conquests; preferring, on this occasion, as the season was far advanced, the harbour of Brundusium to the open road of Otranto for the assembling of his fleet of one hundred and twenty vessels. However, in the interval Alexius, the emperor, had assiduously laboured to restore the naval forces of the empire, obtaining at the same time, at an exorbitant price, the aid from the republic of Venice of thirty-six transports, fourteen galleys, and nine galiots, or ships of unusual strength and magnitude. The goods and merchandise of the rivals of the Venetians at Amalfi were taxed to raise the required sum; and by granting special privileges, such as the licence or monopoly of trade in the port of Constantinople, with the gift of many shops and houses, Alexius propitiated the good will of the Venetian merchants. But this expedition was so far successful, that the Normans captured and destroyed many of the vessels of the combined fleets; it failed, however, to take Constantinople, against which the Normans relinquished any attempts worthy of notice after the death in the following year of their prince, Guiscard.
Rise of Venice.
A.D. 452.
While the power and name of the Romans was passing away under the imbecile rule of the Greek emperors, and commerce and navigation shared in the general decay, a new maritime power, the State of Venice, destined to become the greatest of the Italian republics, was imperceptibly increasing in strength and renown. From the time when the inhabitants of that portion of Italy, now known as Venetian Lombardy, were driven by Alaric, the barbarian conqueror, to seek refuge in the small islands of the Adriatic, near the mouth of the Brenta, their progress had been one of almost uninterrupted prosperity. Devoting their attention exclusively to the pursuits of commerce, and avoiding, by every means in their power, interference with the affairs of their neighbours, the Venetians drew towards their infant colony all whose habits and tempers induced them to seek industrial pursuits. Among these, many families of Aquileia, Padua, and other towns, fleeing from the sword of the Huns and similar barbarous tribes, found a safe but obscure refuge. A modern writer[360] has eloquently described Venice as “immoveable on the bosom of the waters from which her palaces emerge, contemplating the tides of continental convulsions and invasions, the rise and fall of empires, and the change of dynasties;” and certainly no description could be more true of the splendour and position of Venice, and of the policy of its rulers, when at the height of its prosperity.
The cause of its prosperity.
A.D. 997.
But many centuries elapsed from the time when the infant colony was planted, before “the water fowl, who had fixed their nests on the bosom of the waves,”[361] obtained a prominent and independent position as a great maritime nation. Although in the early career of the Venetians their independence was more especially due to their determination to attend to their own affairs, and not to trouble themselves with those of their neighbours, at a later period the western[362] and eastern empires, in turn, claimed authority over them, and thus they were invaded and at last conquered by Pepin, father of Charlemagne, though ultimately restored to the Greek empire in the tenth century. The Venetians therefore can hardly be considered as a really independent republic till they had acquired the maritime cities of Dalmatia and Istria, including the people of Ragusa, the posterity of the mariners who, in classical times, owned and manned the fast sailing Liburnians. The population of these coasts still retained the piratical habits of their ancestors; and having in some respects identical interests to defend, were not unwilling to place themselves under the strong government of the Venetians. From that period the Venetians carried on, for between four and five centuries, a most important commercial intercourse with other nations, and exercised, as a trading people, more influence than any other country had done before them. The long duration of this enterprising republic, with its maritime greatness and vast commerce, will, with the story of the sister republics of Genoa and Pisa, form a subject to which we shall frequently have occasion hereafter to refer. It is enough now to remark that these cities, all favourably situated for conducting an extensive maritime commerce, were among the first to revive the genuine spirit of trade in the south of Europe after it had been almost annihilated by the repeated inundations of the barbarians.
Spread of the Scythians, Huns, or Turks, A.D. 997-1028. A.D. 1074-1084.
A.D. 1076-1096.
The Crusades, A.D. 1095-1099.
The nomad Tatar, or so-called Scythian populations, have been already slightly noticed; the rapidity with which they spread their arms over Asia having been a matter of surprise to every historian who has written on the subject. About the time of Mahmud of Ghazna, after having overrun the West of India, an important section of them settled in great force in Asia Minor. Opposed to the Greeks and their religion, they became the most powerful enemies the eastern Roman empire had yet encountered; and their occupation of the Holy Land, with their conquest of Jerusalem, led to conflicts with the Greeks only less terrible than had been the earlier wars between the Saracens and the nations of the West. Their ignorance of navigation alone deferred for a time the fall of the eastern empire, though internally weak and decrepid, chiefly owing to the blow it received during the Crusades, and from which it had never recovered.[363] The first Crusade, made about twenty years after the conquest of Jerusalem, had for its object the recovery of the Holy City from the infidel. To replace the Cross in Palestine, where the Crescent had been impiously raised, was a duty the whole of Christendom considered itself bound to accomplish. But the Christians in their enthusiasm undertook a task as wild as it was disastrous, and one, too, so miserably planned, that three hundred thousand of the first Crusaders lost their lives, either by fatigue and hunger or by disease and the weapons of the Saracens, before they rescued a single city from their grasp.
A.D. 1147.
Siege of Acre, A.D. 1189.
Armistice, A.D. 1192.
The second Crusade called into action the whole of the West, from Rome to Britain. At its head were displayed the banners of the dukes of Burgundy, Bavaria, and Aquitaine; and the kings of Poland and Bohemia obeyed the summons of the leader of an army estimated at more than four hundred thousand men. But the numbers appear to have been still greater in the third Crusade, which was made both by sea and land, and included the siege of Acre, graphically described by Gibbon[364] in his “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” After the surrender of Acre, and the departure of Philip, Richard of England, whose name was long an object of terror among the Saracens, led the Crusaders to the recovery of the sea-coast; and the cities of Cæsarea and Jaffa, afterwards added to the fragments of the kingdom of Guy de Lusignan, fell into his hands, as Jerusalem would also have done, had he not been deceived by the envy or the treachery of his companions. But Plantagenet and Saládin became, in time, alike weary of a war so tedious and disastrous in its results, especially as both had suffered in health. An agreement between them was, after much delay, brought about, and was, naturally, disapproved by the zealots of both parties alike—the Roman pontiff and the Khalif of Baghdad. Its leading features were, that Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre should be open, without hindrance or tribute, to the pilgrimages of the Latin Christians; and that during three years and three months all hostilities should cease. In the following year Saládin died; and, immediately after the conclusion of the treaty, Richard returned to Europe “to seek a long captivity and a premature grave.”
Fourth Crusade, A.D. 1202.
But the spirit of religious warfare did not rest. Will it ever do so? A fourth Crusade soon followed. In this case, however, the Crusade was directed from Syria to Constantinople; and as there was an armistice between the Crescent and the Cross, the self-constituted avengers of the latter quarrelled among themselves—the restoration of the western empire by Charlemagne having created differences between the Greek and Latin Churches, which had in course of time become serious feuds, to be settled only by bloodshed. The aversion existing between the Greeks and Latins had been manifested in the three first expeditions. Though alike opposed to the creed of the Muhammedans, the pride of the emperor of the East was wounded by the intrusion of foreign armies, who claimed the right of traversing his dominions, and of passing under the walls of the capital. He urged, not without reason, that his subjects were insulted and plundered by the rude strangers of the West; perhaps, too, he secretly envied the bold enterprises of the Franks.
The effect of the Crusades on the commerce of Constantinople, A.D. 1148.
While, however, the passage of vast armies in their pilgrimage to the Holy Land roused feelings of animosity between the two great sections of professing Christians, they very materially increased their commercial intercourse, and enlarged their knowledge without abating their religious prejudices. Constantinople proved, commercially, of great importance to the West, as the then chief entrepôt of exchange with the distant nations of the East, and as requiring for the wants of her own wealthy and luxurious people the productions of every climate. From her situation she invited the commerce of the world, and the art and labour of her numerous inhabitants, while it balanced the imports, afforded profitable employment to the number of foreign merchants resident at Constantinople, and to their ships in which her over-sea trade was chiefly conducted. After the decline of Amalfi, the Venetians, Pisans, and Genoese, had introduced their factories and settlements into the capital of the empire, had acquired possession of land and houses, and had greatly increased in numbers, intermingling by marriage, and in all the social relations of life, with the natives. Constantinople was therefore largely indebted for her prosperity and wealth to the foreign merchants resident in, or frequenting her port; and, hence when these demanded the right of worshipping in accordance with the Latin forms of Christianity, the emperor, who had tolerated a Muhammedan mosque,[365] was unable to refuse the demand of the Christians of the West.
and on its fall.
But his good intentions, and those of his successor, Alexius, were stopped by a popular tumult, which ended in a terrible massacre of all the Latins whom the vengeance of a mob, headed and applauded by the Greek priesthood, could reach. Many, however, of the foreign merchants had escaped on the first alarm to their vessels, and in these they proceeded to the western ports to seek protection and redress for the wrongs inflicted upon themselves and their countrymen.
Power of Venice, A.D. 1202.
Joined in their appeal by the son[366] of the dethroned monarch, Alexius Angelus, who had escaped in the disguise of a common sailor on board an Italian vessel, their case was at once promised consideration, and was soon after brought under the notice of the leading pilgrims of the West, Baldwin, Count of Flanders, and the Marquis of Montferrat, then assembled at Venice, to negotiate with that republic for shipping to convey them on the Fourth Crusade.[367] For many centuries the inhabitants of Venice had been considered as a portion of the subjects of the Greek empire; but when their power and influence had greatly increased, notably by the acquisition of the cities on the coasts of Istria and Dalmatia, the extent of their maritime commerce entitled them to assume an independent position. “The sea was their patrimony;” and with the chief command of the western shores of the Mediterranean, the Venetian galleys had now secured the still more lucrative commerce of Greece and Egypt.
Nor were they simply traders: Venetian glass and silk manufactures had an early reputation; while their system of banking and of foreign exchange, which they worked on a much more extensive scale than any other nation, gave them a great commercial preponderance in the south of Europe. To assert these rights and to protect the freedom of their subjects, they are said to have been able to equip at very short notice one hundred galleys; but their usual policy was essentially that of merchants, and was almost wholly regulated by their trading interests. In their religious dogmas the Venetians avoided the schism of the Greeks without yielding a servile obedience to the Roman pontiff; while an unrestrained intercourse with the Muhammedans, as well as with other nations, encouraged in her people a spirit of toleration unknown to the Crusaders.
Her ships join in the Crusade, which was afterwards altered from its original design.
Venice was, therefore, in no haste to launch into a holy war, and the appeal of the pilgrim ambassadors, “sent by the greatest and most powerful barons of France, to implore the aid of the masters of the sea for the deliverance of Jerusalem,” though ultimately successful, was granted only with reservation and mainly on selfish conditions. The Crusaders, after considering these (they had, indeed, little option), determined to assemble at Venice, so as to start on their expedition on the feast of St. John of the ensuing year; the Venetians, at the same time, engaging to provide flat-bottomed vessels enough for the conveyance of four thousand five hundred knights and twenty thousand foot, with the necessary provisions for nine months, together with a squadron of fifty galleys. The pilgrims, on the other hand, promised to pay the Venetians, before their departure, eighty-four thousand marks of silver; any conquests by sea and land to be equally divided between the confederates. These exorbitant demands were acceded to, the enthusiasm of the people enabling fifty-two thousand marks to be collected and paid within a short time.
But the expedition was diverted from its original design. Thirty-two thousand of the promised marks being still wanted to complete the stipulated sum, the Doge, Henry Dandolo, offered to waive this claim, provided the combined forces were first employed in the reduction of Zara, a strong city on the opposite shores of the Adriatic, which had recently thrown off its allegiance to Venice. After much discussion and many differences of opinion this proposal was accepted, and proved fully successful; but the sack of Zara scattered wide the seeds of discord and scandal; and many were shocked that the arms of professing Crusaders should have been first stained with the blood, not of the Infidel, but of the Christian.
The presence of this great force revived the hopes of the young Alexius, while the tale of the massacre of the Latins at Constantinople seemed to demand a punishment adequate to its atrocity. The separate interests of many and various parties supported his appeal; the Doge hoped to increase the commercial power of Venice by humbling that of the eastern capital; Alexius was warmly backed by Philip of Germany and the Marquis of Montferrat; while the promises of the young man himself were liberal enough to suggest more than a suspicion of his honesty. In the end it was determined to make a further diversion of the hosts originally consecrated to the deliverance of Jerusalem, and to employ them on what to the miscellaneous multitude must have been the far more congenial office of ravaging and plundering the Greek empire. It can, indeed, hardly be supposed that many of the Crusaders could have believed themselves bound to aid in the restoration of an exiled prince as a step in any way necessary for the recovery of Jerusalem; while the savage treatment the unfortunate Jews met with at their hands in every city they passed through, shows how little their enthusiasm for the Cross was tempered by anything resembling Christianity. The large majority were, doubtless, mainly swayed by the hope or the certainty of public plunder or private gain.
They besiege and take Constantinople, A.D. 1204.
Although the boldest hearts were appalled by the report of the naval power and impregnable strength of Constantinople, the Venetians vigorously urged on the scheme, seeing clearly that for them it was now or never, and that, with the aid of the formidable forces at their disposal, they would be able to avenge themselves for many insults and injuries they had received from the Byzantine court. No such armament had, indeed, for ages, if ever, assembled on the waters of the Adriatic. Consisting of no less than one hundred and twenty flat-bottomed vessels for the horses; of two hundred and forty transports filled with men and arms; of seventy store ships laden with provisions; and of fifty stout galleys prepared to encounter any enemy, the expedition presented a most imposing appearance.
Favoured with fine weather and a fair wind the fleet made rapid progress, and, without interruption or loss, anchored, after an unusually quick passage, at Abydos, on the Asiatic side of the Hellespont. But here a strong gale sprung up, and swept them to the eastward, and so close were they brought to the city, that some volleys of stones and darts were exchanged between them and the ramparts. Most of the invaders then beheld, for the first time, the capital of the East; and few cities can boast of so imposing an appearance; nor could it fail to create a deep impression on the minds of the invaders. Vain, indeed, would have been the attempt of the Crusaders to conquer such a city had its people been united, or its ruler a man of ability and honesty. The sixteen hundred fishing boats of Constantinople could in themselves have manned a fleet, which, with their fire-ships, would have been sufficient to have annihilated the forces of the Crusaders; but the negligence of the prince, and the venality of his ministers rendered the great city under their charge an easy prey. There was of course a show of resistance, but it was so feeble that the tower of Galata, in the suburb of Pera, was quickly stormed, and easily captured by the French; while the Venetians forced the boom or chain that was stretched from the tower to the Byzantine shores, captured or destroyed twenty Grecian ships of war, and made themselves masters of the port of Constantinople.
Commerce declines under the Latins, but revives on the restoration of the empire, A.D. 1261.
During the sixty years that the Latins held in their hands the empire of the East, the Greek emperors kept their court and maintained a feeble dignity at Nicæa (Nice), the most important city in Bithynia. Yet, though at that city a certain show of pomp and power was maintained, the removal of the empire from Constantinople, and the sway there of the Latin princes, produced the most disastrous effects on the trade of the capital: a race alien in religion and language, and anarchy withal, were not, indeed, likely to be favourable to peaceful arts or commerce. When, however, the Greek empire was afterwards restored in the person of Manuel, that wise monarch paid little heed to the factions of the Venetians and of other republicans from Italy, but encouraged their industry by many privileges, and allowed them full use of their own customs. Thus the merchants resident at Constantinople preserved their respective quarters in the city, trading thence whither and how they pleased.
Genoa.
The early history of Genoa was not unlike that of Venice; in so far at least, that, like it, Genoa had been for some centuries under the control, if not the vassal, of the eastern empire: at the period, however, to which we are now referring, the Genoese had a large colony at the seaport town of Heraclea, in Thrace. From this place the gratitude of the Greek emperor, Michael, recalled them, at the same time giving them the exclusive privilege of the suburb of Galata—a settlement whereby, more than by anything else, the commerce of the Byzantine empire was revived.[368]
Genoese settlement at Galata and Pera.
Though indulged in the use of their own laws and magistrates, the Genoese were required to submit to the duties of subjects, and undertook, in case of a defensive war, to supply the Greek emperor with fifty empty galleys and fifty more completely armed and equipped. In consideration of these services, and to afford them protection from the Venetian fleets, the Genoese were allowed the dangerous privilege of surrounding Galata with a strong wall and wet ditch, with lofty towers and engines of war on their ramparts. No wonder that, having secured so much, they should seek to acquire more, and that, within a short space of time, they had covered the adjacent hills with their villas and castles, each fort being connected with the next, and protected by new fortifications. Nor, as was natural, did they stop here; they soon sought to possess themselves of the whole trade of the Black Sea, long the especial patrimony of the emperors of Constantinople, and a prerogative which, in the reign of Michael, had been acknowledged by even Bibars, the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt.
Arrogance of the Genoese, who at last rebel, A.D. 1348,
Nor, having resolved on the end, were they long in hesitating about the means to it; first, in seemingly friendly alliance with the Greeks, they secured for their colonies at Galata and Pera the bulk of the corn trade; while, at the same time, their fishermen supplied the wants of the city, the salt fish largely required by the Catholic nations, and caviare for the Russians. Next, they secured for themselves the produce of the inland caravan trade with the remote East, which still, as formerly, found its way by the waters of the Oxus and the Caspian to the eastern shores of the Euxine. In almost every case, their course of business was a strict monopoly, the Venetians and all other rivals being carefully excluded from any participation in their trade. So powerful, indeed, did they become, that, while they awed the Greeks into a reluctant submission, they resisted effectually, at their chief settlement, Caffa,[369] the inroad of the Tatar hosts. The demands of the Genoese merchants were in proportion to their rapacity, and at last they actually usurped the customs and even the tolls of the Bosphorus, securing for themselves alone a revenue of two hundred thousand pieces of gold, of which they reluctantly doled out to the emperor thirty thousand.
The usurpations of the Genoese, which extended over nearly a century, every year increasing in their arrogance, ended, as might have been anticipated, with a demand for the empire itself. Having been refused some commanding heights at Pera, on which to erect additional fortifications, they embraced the opportunity of the emperor’s temporary absence from his capital to rise in open rebellion. “A Byzantine vessel,” remarks Gibbon,[370] “which had presumed to fish at the mouth of the harbour, was sunk by these audacious strangers; the fishermen were murdered. Instead of suing for pardon, the Genoese demanded satisfaction; required in a haughty strain that the Greeks should renounce the exercise of navigation; and encountered with regular arms the first sallies of the popular indignation. They instantly occupied the debatable land; and by the labour of a whole people, of either sex and of every age, the wall was raised, and the ditch was sunk with incredible speed. At the same time, they attacked and burnt two Byzantine galleys; while the three others, the remainder of the imperial navy, escaped from their hands; the habitations without the gates or along the shore were pillaged and destroyed; and the care of the regent, of the empress Irene, was confined to the preservation of the city. The return of Cantacuzene dispelled the public consternation; the emperor inclined to peaceful counsels, but he yielded to the obstinacy of his enemies, who rejected all reasonable terms, and to the ardour of his subjects, who threatened, in the style of Scripture, ‘to break them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.’... The merchants of the colony, who had believed that a few days would terminate the war, already murmured at their losses; the succours from their mother-country were delayed by the factions of Genoa; and the most cautious embraced the opportunity of a Rhodian vessel to remove their families and effects from the scene of hostility.”
and declare war, A.D. 1349.
The peaceful counsels of the emperor having proved of no avail, the Byzantine fleet in the spring of the following year attacked Pera by sea, while the Greek troops assaulted its walls and ramparts. The attack, however, wholly failed; the Genoese carried all before them, and, crowning their galleys with flowers, they added to this insult the throwing, by means of their engines, of large stones into the very heart of the imperial city. To insults such as these even Cantacuzene could not submit; but, discerning clearly his own weakness, it occurred to him that other and known enemies of Genoa might do for him what he had not strength to do for himself: hence his appeal to Venice, as the great naval rival of Genoa, and a yet more fatal coquetry with the Turkish hosts, who by this time were in full possession of the wide plains of Asia Minor.
Nor were the Venetians slow to accept an offer likely to lead to the humbling of enemies so inveterate. The war assumed proportions nowise foreseen, and fluctuated for more than a century with alternate success, but with ultimate ruin to the Genoese, whose audacity had provoked it. During the whole of this struggle the eastern empire practically counted as nothing, and would, but for the intervention of the Venetians, have sunk into a province of Genoa. The connection, however, with the Turkish tribes led to more deplorable disasters, in that, owing to the weakness of the emperor, an opportunity was now, for the first time, afforded to them of obtaining a footing on the sacred land of Europe itself.
The progress of the Turks, A.D. 1341-1347.
Their fleet.
A.D. 1353.
A.D. 1360-1389.
The time had indeed come when a Greek emperor, more fearful of his own life than of the honour of his people, could seek the advice, if not the direct aid, of the enemies of his faith and country. The Turks, seeing the chance of great ultimate advantages, were not unwilling to grant his requests. Under the pretence of protecting one of their race, who had taken up his residence at the Greek court, they assembled at Smyrna a fleet of three hundred vessels and twenty-nine thousand men, in the depth of winter, and casting anchor at the mouth of the Hebrus, under the further pretext of guarding their fleet, landed nine thousand five hundred of their men; thus for the first time establishing themselves on the continent of Europe. A position, however small, thus obtained, the further spread of the Turkish arms was but a question of time. In a few years they were settled in their new homes; a little later, the whole province of Roumania and of Thrace fell into their hands; and, in less than forty years from their first arrival, all the country round Constantinople, including Adrianople, which they had made their western capital, became subject to them. From this time the fate of Constantinople was sealed, and the overthrow of the Cross by the Crescent but a question of a few years.
First use of gunpowder, and of large cannon.
Various reasons, however, prevented the immediate capture of Constantinople; nor was it till sixty years after the Turks had secured Adrianople, that Muhammed II., who had unceasingly sighed for its possession, resolved, by an attack of sufficient magnitude, and at any cost, to make it the centre of the Muhammedan arms and religion, and to haul down the Christian banner, which for more than a thousand years had waved over its battlements. Nor was he unsupported by many favouring accidents, of which the most valuable was the discovery of gunpowder, as this engine of destruction rendered the Greek fire of comparatively little advantage, and left success to those who had best studied the qualities of the new explosive compound.[371] Muhammed at once devoted himself to its serious study, the result being that the cannon he cast for the siege of Constantinople are generally admitted to have been greatly superior to any weapons of the class hitherto invented.
While Muhammed threatened the capital of the East, the Greek emperor implored in vain the assistance of the Christian powers of the West, who were either too weak or too much engaged with their own contentions, even where favourably disposed, to render him assistance. Even the princes of the Morea and of the Greek islands affected a cold neutrality, while the Sultan indulged the Genoese in the delusive hope that they would still be allowed to retain the advantages they had possessed under the empire as regarded their trade with the city and on the Euxine.
The Turks finally become masters of the Eastern capital, A.D. 1453.
But Constantinople did not fall without a desperate and bloody struggle; and had the zeal and ability of its inhabitants equalled the heroism of the last Constantine, the banner of the Cross might have floated even until now over the great city of the Eastern Empire.