In the thirteenth century the chivalrous house of Courtenai, by the assistance of the heroes of the Crusades, mounted the throne of Constantinople, and the ancestors of the Earl of Devon produced three emperors, who reigned in succession over the Oriental portion of the Roman empire. The ancient dynasty of the Comneni, being expelled from the dominions over which they had presided for centuries, fled for refuge into various lands. Alexius, the son of Manuel and grandson of Andronicus Comnenus, obtained the government of the duchy of Trebizond, which extended from the unfortunate Sinope to the borders of Circassia. He seems to have reigned in peace. The acts of his son, who succeeded him, are as unknown as his name, which has not even descended to posterity. The grandson of Alexius was David Comnenus, who, with an assurance and presumption which is almost ludicrous, took upon himself the style and title of Emperor of Trebizond. Puffed up with vanity and self-conceit, this feeble prince enjoyed for a short period the imperial dignity which he possessed only in name. The erection of this quaint and ridiculous Christian empire appears to have made a great sensation among the knights and troubadours of the fifteenth century. The geographical knowledge of those days was confined to few, and the empire of Trebizond, like that of Prester John, whose extent and situation were equally apocryphal, formed the theme of many a fabulous adventure and many a romance, which served to beguile the evening hours by the firesides of the castles and convents of England and France. Fairies and wizards, ogres and giants, peopled the realms of fancy in this distant empire. Lovely princesses were rescued from the thraldom of paynim castellans, and followers of Mahound and Termagaunt, by valiant Christian knights armed with cross-hilted swords, and lutes, and talismans, the gift of benignant fairies, whose existence was only to be found in the imaginations of the unknown but delightful authors of the romances of chivalry, and the poems and ballads of the trouveurs and troubadours.
The truths were not so agreeable as the fictions of “the good old times.” As it happens to be in my power to do so, I present the reader with a portrait of the mighty emperor, as he appeared on the occasion which I am about to describe. His dress consisted of a tight gown of scarlet silk; round his neck, down the front of his gown, and round the bottom of it, were bands of gold about four inches wide; these were edged with pearls, and ornamented with large rubies and emeralds in rows down the centre of each band of gold. On his arms, above the elbows, were golden armlets, and round his wrists gold bracelets, all set with colored precious stones. His girdle, of the same pattern, and about three inches wide, had a hanging end about two feet long, which the Byzantine emperors, for some undiscovered reason, seem always to have carried over the left arm. In his right hand he bore a golden sceptre, about three feet long, with a largish cross at the top, set with enormous pearls. On his head he wore a close golden crown, of which the top (that part made of velvet in the crown of England) was also of metal, like a helmet. From this crown a fillet set with pearls hung down on each side of his face to his beard, which was of some length. Scarlet silk hose and golden sandals completed the imperial costume, except that he rejoiced in two round ornaments of gold and jewels, each the size of a plate, which were affixed to his robe on the outside of the thigh.
The costume of the empress was very similar, only her crown was open at the summit. She, contrary to female custom, wore no girdle, while over her shoulders hung a mantle of a dark color, embroidered all over with gold. The emperor wore no mantle, although this garment is usually considered as an essential part of the royal costume. Such was the appearance of David Comnenus, Emperor of Trebizond, when he gave audience to the embassadors from foreign powers, seated on a golden throne at the summit of a high flight of steep golden steps, surrounded by his court and his officers (conspicuous among whom appeared the lictors with silver axes, for, as in the third century the Romans affected the usages of the Greeks, in the fifteenth century the Greeks followed the customs of the Cæsars—so prone is human nature to revere the ancient ceremonies of by-gone days), puffed up with vanity at his own glorious position, and placed in awful majesty upon his golden throne in the chamber of audience, whose walls were painted to look like porphyry, and the ceilings colored with figures on a gold ground in imitation of mosaic, an ornament too expensive for the resources of the empire. The chamberlains and heralds with a loud voice announce the arrival of an envoy from the high and mighty lord the Soldan Mehemet II.; upon which the twelve lictors round the throne lifted up their voices, and cried out, “Semper bibat imperator:” the letter v not being found in the Greek alphabet, vivat was spelt with a beta, β; and being pronounced as it was spelt, the sense of the exclamation was a good deal compromised.
The solemn envoy from the Soldan stalked into the hall, followed by a grisly retinue clothed from head to foot in armor, partly composed of steel plates inlaid with sentences from the Koran in gold letters, and partly completed with flexible chain mail. Their helmets had conical summits, almost like a low church steeple, while instead of plumes they displayed a rod of steel, from which fluttered a small crimson flag from the summits of their casques. The letter from the Soldan, inclosed in a bag of brocade, was handed to the important emperor, who, on breaking the seal, read the following words:
“Wilt thou secure thy treasures and thy life by resigning thy kingdom, or wilt thou rather forfeit thy kingdom, thy treasures, and thy life?”
But a short time before, such was the terror occasioned by the name of the redoubted Sultan Mehemet II., who had just planted the victorious crescent over the cross of St. Sofia, that Ismael Beg, the Mohammedan Prince of Sinope, who derived an enormous revenue from the copper-mines in his principality, immediately surrendered his dominions on a summons of a like import with the above, although at that period Sinope was defended with strong fortifications, 400 cannons, and 12,000 men.
David Comnenus descended from his golden throne in the year 1461, and with his family was sent, apparently as a prisoner, to a distant castle, where, being accused of corresponding with the King of Persia, he and his whole race were massacred by the orders of his furious conqueror. With him ended the illustrious dynasty of the Comneni, and the history of the independent state of Trebizond, which has since those times remained a remote, and till lately an almost unexplored province of the Turkish empire.