The History of the Crusades (vol. 2 of 3)

by J. Fr. Michaud

The marquis of Montferrat took with him his wife, Mary of Hungary, the widow of Isaac; and the presence of this princess, with the hopes of keeping up the division among the Latins, drew many Greeks to the banner of Boniface. He declared to them that he fought for their cause, and clothed in the imperial purple a young prince, the son of Isaac and Mary of Hungary. Dragging in his train this phantom of an emperor, around whom the principal inhabitants from all parts of Romania rallied, he resumed the road to Adrianople, and made preparations for besieging that city. Boniface, daily becoming more irritated, would listen to neither the counsels nor the prayers of his companions in arms; and discord was about to cause the blood of the Latins to flow, if the doge of Venice, the count of Blois, and the barons that remained at Constantinople, had not earnestly employed their authority and credit to prevent the misfortunes with which the new empire was threatened. Deeply afflicted by what they learnt, they sent deputies to the emperor and the marquis of Montferrat. The marshal of Champagne, the envoy to Boniface, reproached him, in plain terms, with having forgotten the glory and honour of the Crusaders, of whom he had been the leader; with compromising, to gratify a vain pride, the cause of Christ and the safety of the empire, and preparing days of triumph and joy for the Greeks, the Bulgarians, and the Saracens. The marquis of Montferrat was touched by the reproaches of Villehardouin, who was his friend, and who spoke in the name of all the Crusaders. He promised to put an end to the war, and to submit his quarrel with Baldwin to the judgment of the counts and barons.

In the meanwhile Baldwin had taken possession of Thessalonica. As soon as he heard of the hostilities of the marquis of Montferrat, he hastily marched back to Adrianople. He was brooding over projects of vengeance, and threatening to repel force by force, and oppose war to war, when he met the deputies, who came in the name of the leaders of the crusade, to speak to him of peace, and recall to his heart the sentiments of justice and humanity. A knight of the train of the count of Blois addressed a speech to the emperor, that Villehardouin has preserved, in which our readers will be pleased, without doubt, to meet with a picture of the noble frankness of the conquerors of Byzantium. “Sire,” said he, “the doge of Venice, the Count Louis of Blois, my very honoured lord, and all the barons who are at Constantinople, salute you as their sovereign, and make complaint to God and you against those who, by their evil counsels, have created fatal discords. You did, certes, very wrong to lend an ear to these perfidious counsellors, for they are our enemies and yours. You know that the Marquis Boniface has submitted his quarrel to the judgment of the barons; the lords and princes hope that you will do as he has done, and that you will not hold out against justice. They have sworn, and we are charged to declare so in their name, not to suffer any longer the scandal of a war kindled between Crusaders.”

Baldwin did not at first answer this speech, and appeared surprised at such language; but they spoke to him thus in the name of the doge of Venice, whose old age he respected, and whom he loved tenderly; in the name of the counts and barons, without whose help he could not hope to preserve his empire, and, at length, he listened to the united voices of reason and friendship. He promised to lay down his arms, and repair to Constantinople, to adjust the quarrel between him and the marquis of Montferrat. On his arrival, the counts and barons spared neither complaints nor prayers, and they found him docile to all their counsels. The marquis of Montferrat, who very shortly followed him, entered the capital with a degree of mistrust; he was accompanied by a hundred knights, with their men-at-arms; but the welcome he received from Baldwin and the other leaders completely appeased all his resentments, and dissipated all his misgivings. From that time the re-establishment of harmony and peace became the sincere object of the Crusaders. The doge of Venice, the counts and barons, with the most respected of the knights, who reminded the masters of the new empire of the redoubtable institution of the PEERS of the West, gave judgment in the quarrel that was submitted to them, and pronounced, without appeal, between the king of Thessalonica and the emperor of Constantinople. The two princes swore never to listen again to perfidious counsels, and embraced in presence of the army, who rejoiced at the return of concord, as they would have done at a great victory obtained over the enemies of the empire. “Great evil might they have done,” says Villehardouin, “who excited this discord; for if God had not taken pity on the Crusaders, they were in danger of losing their conquests, and Christianity might have perished.”

As soon as peace was re-established, the knights and barons again quitted the capital to pass through the provinces, and subdue such as were refractory. The count of Blois, who had obtained Bithynia, sent his knights across the Bosphorus; the troops of the Crusaders gained several advantages over those of Lascaris. Penamenia, Lopada, Nicomedia, and some other cities, opened their gates to the conquerors, after a feeble resistance. The Latins brought under their dominion all the coasts of the Propontis and the Bosphorus, as far as the ancient Eolis. Henry of Hainault was not idle in this new war; whilst the warriors of the count of Blois were pushing their conquests towards Nice, he led his men-at-arms into Phrygia, unfurled his triumphant banners in the plains where Troy once stood, fought at the same time both Greeks and Turks, in the fields which had been trod by the armies of Xerxes and Alexander, and took possession of all the country that extends from the Hellespont to Mount Ida.

At the same time the marquis of Montferrat, now the peaceable master of Thessalonica, undertook the conquest of Greece.[151] He advanced into Thessaly, passed the chain of mountains of Olympus and Ossa, and took possession of Larissa. Boniface and his knights, without fear and without danger, passed through the narrow straits of Thermopylæ, and penetrated into Bœotia and Attica. They put to flight Leo Sgurre, who was the scourge of a vast province; and their exploits might have reminded the Greeks of those heroes of the early ages who travelled about the world fighting monsters and subduing tyrants. As all the Greeks, for so long a time oppressed, sighed for a change, the heroes of the crusades were everywhere received as liberators. Whilst Boniface was becoming possessed of the beautiful countries of Greece, Geoffrey de Villehardouin, nephew of the marshal of Champagne, established the authority of the Latins in the Peloponnesus. After having driven the troops of Michael Comnenus to the mountains of Epirus, he occupied, without fighting, Coronea and Patras, and met with no resistance except in the canton of Lacedæmonia. The conquered lands and cities were given to the barons, who rendered fealty and homage to the king of Thessalonica and the emperor of Constantinople.[152] Greece then beheld lords of Argos and Corinth, grand sieurs of Thebes, dukes of Athens, and princes of Achaia. French knights dictated laws in the city of Agamemnon, in the city of Minerva,[153] in the country of Lycurgus, and in that of Epaminondas. Strange destiny of the warriors of this crusade, who had quitted the West to conquer the city and lands of Jesus Christ, and whom fortune had conducted into places filled with the remembrances of the gods of Homer and the glory of profane antiquity!

The Crusaders were not allowed to felicitate themselves long upon their conquests. Possessors of an empire much more difficult to be preserved than invaded, they had not the ability to master fortune, who soon took from them all that victory had bestowed. They exercised their power with violence, and conciliated neither their subjects nor their neighbours. Joannice, king of the Bulgarians, had sent an ambassador to Baldwin, with offers of friendship; Baldwin replied with much haughtiness, and threatened to compel Joannice to descend from his usurped throne. When despoiling the Greeks of their property, the Crusaders shut out from themselves every source of prosperity, and reduced men to whom they left nothing but life, to despair. To fill up the measure of their imprudence, they received into their armies the Greeks, whom they loaded with contempt, and who became their implacable enemies. Not content with reigning over cities, they were desirous of subjugating hearts to their will, and awakened fanaticism. Unjust persecutions exasperated the minds of the Greek priests, who declaimed with vehemence against tyranny, and who, reduced to misery, were listened to as oracles and revered as martyrs.

The new empire of the Latins, into which the feudal laws had been introduced, was divided into a thousand principalities or lordships, and was nothing but a species of republic, governed with great difficulty. The Venetians had their particular jurisdiction, and the greater part of the cities were regulated by turns by the legislation of Venice and the code of feudalism. The lords and barons had among themselves opposite interests and rivalries, which, every day, were likely to bring on discord and civil war. The Latin ecclesiastics, who had shared the spoils of the Greek Church, did not at all conciliate peace by their example, but carried the scandals of their dissensions even into the sanctuary. It was their constant wish and endeavour to exalt the laws and authority of the court of Rome over those of the emperors. Many of them had usurped the fiefs of the barons, and as the fiefs they possessed were exempted from military service, the empire thus became weakened in its natural defences.

The delicious climate and the riches of Greece, with the long sojourn at Constantinople, enervated the courage of the conquerors, and fostered corruption among the soldiers of the cross. The nations in the end ceased to respect the power and the laws of those whose morals and manners they despised. As the Latins had separated, some to go into Greece, and others into Asia Minor, the Greeks, who no longer beheld great armies, and who had sometimes resisted their enemies with advantage, began to fancy that the warriors of the West were not invincible.

In their despair, the conquered people resolved to have recourse to arms; and, looking around them to find enemies for the Crusaders, they implored the alliance and protection of the king of the Bulgarians. There was formed a widely-extended conspiracy, into which all entered to whom slavery was no longer tolerable. All at once the storm burst forth by the massacre of the Latins; a war-cry arose from Mount Hemus to the Hellespont; the Crusaders, dispersed in the various cities and countries, were surprised by a furious and pitiless enemy. The Venetians and French, who guarded Adrianople and Didymatica, were not able to resist the multitude of the Greeks; some were slaughtered in the streets; others retired in disorder, and, in their flight, beheld with grief their banners torn down from the towers, and replaced by the standards of the Bulgarians. The roads were covered with fugitive warriors, who found no asylum in a country which lately trembled at the fame of their arms.