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, which soon took from them all that victory had bestowed. They exercised their power with violence, and conciliated neither their subjects nor their neighbours. Joannice [Johannitsa, John, Kalojan, or Calo-John], 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.
Coat of Mail of the Eleventh Century
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 Hæmus 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 Hadrianopolis 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.
Every city besieged by the Greeks was ignorant of the fate of the other cities confided to the defence of the Latins; communications were interrupted; in the provinces sinister rumours prevailed, which represented the capital in flames, all the cities given up to pillage, and all the armies of the Franks dispersed or annihilated. When the report of these disasters reached Constantinople, Baldwin assembled the counts and barons. The crusaders who were engaged in warlike expeditions on the other side of the Bosporus received orders to abandon their conquests, and to return immediately to the standards of the main army. Baldwin waited for them several days, but as he was impatient to begin the war, and wished to astonish the enemy by the promptitude of his proceedings, he set out at the head of the knights that remained in the capital, and, five days after his departure, appeared before the walls of Hadrianopolis.
The leaders of the crusade, accustomed to brave all obstacles, were never checked nor restrained by the small number of their own soldiers, nor the multitude of their enemies. The capital of Thrace, surrounded by impregnable ramparts, was defended by a hundred thousand Greeks, in whom thirst of vengeance supplied the want of courage. Baldwin mustered scarcely eight thousand men around his banners. The doge of Venice soon arrived with eight thousand Venetians. The Latin fugitives came from all parts to join this small army. The crusaders pitched their tents, and prepared to lay siege to the city. Their preparations proceeded but slowly, and provisions were beginning to fail them, when the report reached them of the march of the king of the Bulgarians. Joannice, the leader of a barbarous people, himself more barbarous than his subjects, was advancing with a formidable army. He concealed his ambitious projects and his desire for vengeance under an appearance of religious zeal, and caused a standard of St. Peter, which he had received from the pope, to be borne before him. This new ally of the Greeks boasted of being a leader of a holy enterprise, and threatened to exterminate the Franks, whom he accused of having assumed the cross for the purpose of ravaging the provinces and pillaging the cities of Christians.
The king of the Bulgarians was preceded in his march by a numerous troop of Wallachians and Comans, whom the hopes of pillage had drawn from the mountains and forests near the banks of the Danube and Borysthenes. The Comans, more ferocious than the nations of Mount Hæmus, drank, it was said, the blood of their captives, and sacrificed Christians on the altars of their idols. Like the warriors of Scythia, accustomed to fight whilst flying, the Wallachian horsemen received orders from Joannice to provoke the enemy, even in their camp, and to endeavour to draw the heavy cavalry of the Franks into an ambuscade. The barons were aware of this danger, and forbade the crusaders to quit their tents, or go beyond their entrenchments. But such was the character of the French warriors, that prudence, in their eyes, deprived valour of all its lustre, and it appeared disgraceful to shun the fight in the presence and amidst the scoffs of an enemy.
DEFEAT OF THE LATINS
[1205 A.D.]
Scarcely had the barbarians appeared near the camp, when the sight of them made even the leaders themselves forget the orders they had issued only the night before. The emperor and the count of Blois flew to meet the enemy, put them to flight, and pursued them with ardour for the space of two leagues. But all at once the barbarians rallied, and in their turn charged the Christians. The latter, who believed they had gained a victory, were obliged to defend themselves in a country with which they were unacquainted. Their squadrons, exhausted by fatigue, were surprised and surrounded by the army of Joannice; pressed on all sides, they made useless efforts to recover their line of battle, but had no power either to fly, or resist the barbarians. The count of Blois fell, covered with wounds, and his faithful squire died by his side.