Thus was founded a kingdom which has, perhaps oftener than any other European state, been divided and united and handed over from one dynasty of strangers to another, but whose boundaries, strictly so called, have hardly changed at all. For the only immediate neighbour of the Sicilian king was his ecclesiastical overlord. The question was whether the king of the mainland should be also king of the island. But the successive dynasties which reigned both over the whole kingdom and over its divided parts were for a long time eager to carry out the policy of their first founder, by conquests east of the Hadriatic. ♦Epeirot conquests of William the Good, 1185.♦ Before the fall of the old Empire, William the Good began again to establish an Epeirot and insular dominion by the conquest of Durazzo, Corfu, Kephallênia, and Zakynthos. ♦Kingdom of Margarito, 1186.
1338.♦ But these outlying dominions were granted in fief to the Sicilian Admiral Margarito,[28] who, himself bearing the strange title of King of the Epeirots, founded a dynasty which, with the title of Count Palatine, held Kephallênia, Zakynthos, and Ithakê into the fourteenth century. Thus these lands, like Cyprus and Trebizond, were cut off from the Empire just before its fall, and the revolutions of Sicily cut them off equally from the Sicilian kingdom. ♦Epeirot dominion of Manfred, 1258.♦ A more lasting power in these regions began under Manfred, who received with his Greek wife Corfu, Durazzo, and a strip of the Albanian coast, with the title of Lord of Romania. ♦Of Charles of Anjou, 1266-69.
1272-1276.♦ This dominion passed to his conqueror Charles of Anjou, who further established a feudal superiority over the Epeirot despotat. ♦1282.♦ But his plans were cut short by the revolution of the Vespers. ♦History of Durazzo, 1322.
Duchy of Durazzo, 1333-1360.
1378.♦ Durazzo was lost and won more than once; but it came back to the Angevin house, to become a separate Angevin duchy, till it fell before the growth of the Albanian powers. Another branch held Lepanto—once Naupaktos—which lasted longer. ♦1373-1386.♦ Corfu and Butrinto became immediate possessions of the Neapolitan crown till they found more lasting masters at Venice.
This Eastern dominion of the two Sicilian crowns, besides their influence of which we shall have presently to speak in southern Greece, tends to keep up the connexion of the Sicilian kingdoms with the Empire out of which they sprang. But it can hardly be called a geographical enlargement of the kingdoms themselves. ♦Acre occupied by Charles of Anjou.♦ Still less can that name be given to the short occupation of Acre by Charles of Anjou in his character of one of the many Kings of Jerusalem. ♦Malta granted to the Knights, 1530.♦ The Sicilian kingdoms themselves cannot be said to have gained or lost territory till Charles the Fifth granted Malta to the Knights of Saint John, till Philip the Second added the Stati degli Presidi to the Two Sicilies. The great revolution of all has taken place in our own day. The name of Sicily has for the first time been wiped from the European map. The island of Hierôn and Roger has sunk to form seven provinces of a prince who has not deigned to take the crown or the title of that illustrious realm.
§ 3. The Crusading States.
♦Comparison between Sicily and the crusading states.♦
The Sicilian kingdom has much in common with the states formed by the crusaders in Asia and Eastern Europe. Both grew out of lands won by Western conquerors, partly from the Eastern Empire itself, partly from Mussulman holders of lands which had belonged to the Eastern Empire. But the order of the two processes is different. The Sicilian Normans began by conquering lands of the Empire, and then went on to win the island which the Saracens had torn from the Empire. The successive crusades first founded Christian states in the lands which the Mussulmans had won from the Empire, and then partitioned the Empire itself. The first crusaders undertook to hold their conquest as fiefs of the Eastern Empire. This condition was only very partially carried out; but the mere theory marks a stage in the relations between the Eastern Empire and the Latin powers of Palestine which has nothing answering to it in the case of Sicily.
♦Kingdom of Jerusalem and Frank principalities in Syria.♦
First among these powers come the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the other Frank principalities which arose out of the first crusade. ♦Cyprus.♦ The kingdom of Cyprus, which in some sort continued the Kingdom of Jerusalem, forms a link between the true crusading states and those which arose out of the partition of the Empire in the fourth crusade. ♦Armenia.♦ And closely connected with this was the kingdom of Kilikian Armenia whose foundation we have already mentioned.[29] This last was an Eastern state which became to some extent Latinized. But the Syrian states, Cyprus, and the Latin powers which arose out of the partition of the Empire, all agree in being colonies of Western Europe in Eastern lands, states where the Latin settlers appear as a dominant race over the natives, of whatever blood or creed.
♦The Crusaders cut off the Mussulmans from the sea.♦
The great geographical result of the first crusade was to cut off the Mussulman powers from the seas of Asia and Eastern Europe. In the first years of the twelfth century the Christian powers, Byzantine, Armenian, and Latin, held the whole coast of Asia Minor and Syria. ♦Extent of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.♦ The Kingdom of Jerusalem, at its greatest extent, stretched along the coast from Berytos to Gaza. To the east it reached some way beyond Jordan and the Dead Sea, with a strip of territory reaching southward to the eastern gulf of the Red Sea. To the north lay two Latin states which, in the days of Komnenian revival, acknowledged the superiority of the Eastern Emperor. ♦Tripolis.
Antioch.♦ These were the county of Tripolis, reaching northwards to the Syrian Alexandretta, and the more famous principality of Antioch. ♦640.
968.
1081.
1098.
1268.♦ That great city, lost to Christendom in the first days of Saracen conquest, won back to the Empire in the Macedonian revival, lost to the Turk, won back by the Frank, remained a Christian principality long after the fall of Jerusalem, and did not pass again under Mussulman rule till late in the thirteenth century. ♦Edessa.♦ North-east of Antioch lay the furthest of the Latin possessions, the inland county of Edessa. ♦1128-1173.♦ This was the first to be lost; it fell under the power of the Turkish Attabegs of Syria. ♦Loss of the lands beyond Jordan.♦ They cut short the kingdom of Jerusalem, taking away the territory east of Jordan. On their ruin arose the mightier power of Saladin, lord alike of Egypt and Syria. ♦Jerusalem taken by Saladin, 1187.♦ He took Jerusalem, and the kingdom which still bore that name was cut down to the lands just round Tyre. ♦Jerusalem recovered by Frederick the Second, 1228.♦ The crusades which followed won back Acre and various points, and at last the diplomacy of Frederick the Second won back from the Egyptian Sultan Tyre, Sidon, and the Holy City itself. A strip of coast running inland at two points, so as to take in Tiberias and Nazareth at one end, Jerusalem and Bethlehem at the other, formed the Eastern realm of the lord of Rome and Sicily. ♦1239-1243.
Final loss of Jerusalem, 1244.♦ Lost and won again by the Christians, Jerusalem was finally won for Islam by the invasion of the Chorasmians from the shores of the Caspian. But for nearly fifty years longer the points on the coast were lost and won, as the Mussulman powers or fresh crusaders from Europe had the upper hand. ♦Fall of Acre, 1291.♦ With the fall of Acre, the Latin dominion on the Syrian mainland came to an end. The land won by the Western Christians from the Mussulman went back to the disciples of the Prophet. The land won by the Western Christian from the Eastern, and the land where the Eastern Christian still maintained his independence, held out longer.