The Historical Geography of Europe, Vol. I, Text

by Edward A. Freeman

Meanwhile the Empire was again cut short to the north by a new Bulgarian revolt, which established a third Bulgarian kingdom, but a kingdom which seems to have been as much Vlach or Rouman as strictly Bulgarian. The new kingdom took in the old Bulgarian land between Danube and Hæmus, and it presently spread both to the west and to the south. ♦Other Slavonic revolts.♦ The Bulgarian revolt was followed by other movements among the Thracian and Macedonian Slaves, which did not lead to the foundation of any new states, but which had their share in the general break-up of the Imperial power. ♦Increased Greek character of the Empire.♦ The work of Basil and Manuel was now undone, but its undoing had the effect of making the Empire more nearly a Greek state than ever. It did not wholly coincide with the Greek-speaking lands: the Empire had subjects who were not Greeks, and there were Greeks who were not subjects of the Empire. But the Greek speech and the new Greek nationality were dominant within the lands which were still left to the Empire. The Roman name was now merely a name: Roman and Greek meant the same thing. Whatever was not Greek in European Romania was mainly Albanian and Vlach. The dominion of the Empire in the peninsula was mainly confined to the primitive races of the peninsula. ♦The Slavonic states.♦ The great element of later times, the Slavonic settlers, had almost wholly separated themselves from the Empire, establishing their independence, but not their unity. They formed a group of independent powers which had simply fallen away from the Empire; it was by the powers of the West that the Empire itself was to be broken in pieces.

♦Latin conquest of Constantinople, 1204.♦

The taking of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade was the work of an alliance between the now independent commonwealth of Venice and a body of Western crusaders who, along with the states which they founded, may be indifferently called Latins or Franks. ♦Act of Partition.♦ A regular act of partition was drawn out, by which the Empire was to be divided into three parts. One was to be assigned to a Latin Emperor of Romania, another of the pilgrims as his feudatories, a third to the commonwealth of Venice. But the partition was never carried out. A large part of the Empire was never conquered; another large part was not assigned by the act of partition. In fact the scheme of partition is hardly a geographical fact at all. The real partition to which the Latin conquest led was one of quite another kind, a partition of the Empire among a crowd of powers, Greek, Frank, and Venetian, more than one of which had some claim to represent the Empire itself.

♦Latin Empire of Romania.♦

These were the Latin Empire of Romania, and the Greek Empire which maintained itself at Nikaia, and which, after nearly sixty years of banishment, won back the Imperial city. In the crusading scheme the Latin Emperor was to be the feudal superior of the lesser princes who were to establish themselves within the Empire. For his own Imperial domain he was to have the whole of the Imperial possessions in Asia, with a Thracian dominion stretching as far north as Agathopolis. Hadrianople, with a narrow strip of territory stretching down to the Propontis, was to be Venetian. The actual result was very different. ♦Its extent.♦ The Latin Emperors never got any footing in Asia beyond parts of the themes bordering on the Propontis, reaching from Adramyttion to the mouth of the Sangarios. In Europe they held the eastern part of Thrace, with a fluctuating border towards Bulgaria on the north, and to the new Latin and Greek states which arose to the west. Their dominion also took in Lêmnos, Lesbos, Chios, and some others of the Ægæan islands.

But the Latin Empire of Romania was not the only Empire which arose out of the break-up of the old East-Roman power. Two, for a time three, Greek princes bore the Imperial title; there was also a Latin king. It will be convenient for a while to leave out of sight both Asia and southern Greece, and to look to the revolutions of Thrace, Macedonia, northern Greece, and what we may now begin to call Albania. The immediate result of the Latin conquest was to divide these lands between three powers, two Latin and one Greek. ♦Kingdom of Thessalonikê. 1204-1222. Despotat of Epeiros.♦ Besides the Empire of Romania, there was the Latin kingdom of Thessalonikê, and the Greek despotat[27] of Epeiros held by the house of Angelos. Of these the Thessalonian kingdom was the most short-lived, and there can be little doubt that its creation was the ruin of the Latin Empire. It cut off the Emperor from his distant vassals in Greece, whose vassalage soon became nominal. It gave him, in successive reigns, a powerful neighbour who knew his own power, and a weak neighbour, who fell before the Greek advance sooner than himself. But the beginnings of the kingdom, under its first king Boniface, were promising. His power stretched over Thessaly, now known as Great Vlachia, and he received the homage of the Frank princes further to the south. But within twenty years from its foundation, Frank rule had ceased in Macedonia. ♦Thessalonikê again Greek.♦ Thessalonikê was again a Greek and an Imperial city, and its recovery by the Greeks split the Latin Empire asunder.

♦The Epeirot despotat.♦

This blow came from the west. It was the Nicene Empire which did in the end win back the Imperial city; but, for some years after the Latin conquest, things looked as if the restoration of the Greek power in Europe was designed for Epeiros. The first despot Michael paid a nominal homage to all the neighbouring powers, Greek and Frank, in turn; but in truth he was the lord of an independent and growing state. His power began in the Epeirot land west of Pindos. ♦1208-1210.♦ For a moment he held in Peloponnêsos Corinth, Nauplia, and Argos. Durazzo and Corfu were won from Venice. ♦1215.♦ The Epeirot power advanced also to the east. ♦1222.
1225.♦ Thessalonikê was taken; its ruler took the Imperial title; Hadrianople followed, and the new Empire stretched across the peninsula from sea to sea, and took in Thessaly to the south. But the Thessalonian Empire was hardly more long-lived than the Thessalonian kingdom. It was first dismembered among the princes of the ruling house. ♦Separation of Epeiros and Thessalonia. 1237.♦ The original Epeirot despotat, along with Corfu, parted away from the new Macedonian power, to survive it by many years. But by this time the championship of the Greek speech and faith against the Latin lords of Constantinople had passed to the foremost of the Greek powers which had grown up in Asia, to the Empire of Nikaia.

These Greek powers were two, which arose at the same time, but by different processes and with different destinies. ♦The Empire of Trebizond, 1204-1461.♦ The Empire of Nikaia was the truer continuation of the old East-Roman power; the Empire of Trapezous or Trebizond was the last independent fragment of Roman dominion and Greek culture. The Trapezuntine Empire was not in strictness one of the states which arose out of the Latin partition. One of the parts of the Empire which showed most disposition to fall away was independently seized by a rival Emperor, at the very moment of the Latin conquest. Alexios Komnênos occupied Trebizond, an occupation largely wrought by Iberian help, as if the Empire, already dismembered by the Christians of the West, was to be further dismembered by the Christians of the further East. ♦Extent of the Komnenian dominion.♦ The dominions of Alexios, enlarged by his brother David to the west, at first took in the whole south coast of the Euxine from the Sangarios eastward, broken by the city of Amisos, which contrived to make itself virtually independent, and by the neighbouring Turkish settlement at Samsoun. But this dominion was only momentary. The eastern part alone survived to form the later Empire of Trebizond; the western part, the government of David, soon passed to the rising power of Nikaia.

♦Empire of Nikaia. 1206-1261.♦