The Latins of Constantinople were on all sides encompassed and pressed: their sole hope, the last delay of their ruin, was in the division of their Greek and Bulgarian enemies; and of this hope they were deprived by the superior arms and policy of Vatatzes, emperor of Nicæa. From the Propontis to the rocky coast of Pamphylia, Asia was peaceful and prosperous under his reign; and the events of every campaign extended his influence in Europe. The strong cities of the hills of Macedonia and Thrace were rescued from the Bulgarians; and their kingdom was circumscribed by its present and proper limits, along the southern banks of the Danube. The sole emperor of the Romans could no longer brook that a lord of Epirus, a Comnenian prince of the West, should presume to dispute or share the honours of the purple; and the humble Demetrius changed the colour of his buskins, and accepted with gratitude the appellation of despot. His own subjects were exasperated by his baseness and incapacity; they implored the protection of their supreme lord.
After some resistance, the kingdom of Thessalonica was united to the empire of Nicæa; and Vatatzes reigned without a competitor from the Turkish borders to the Adriatic Gulf. The princes of Europe honoured his merits and power; and had he subscribed an orthodox creed, it should seem that the pope would have abandoned, without reluctance, the Latin throne of Constantinople. But the death of Vatatzes, the short and busy reign of Theodore, his son, and the helpless infancy of his grandson John, suspended the restoration of the Greeks.
The young prince was oppressed by the ambition of his guardian and colleague, Michael Palæologus, who displayed the virtues and vices that belong to the founder of a new dynasty. The emperor Baldwin had flattered himself that he might recover some provinces or cities by an impotent negotiation. His ambassadors were dismissed from Nicæa with mockery and contempt. The captivity of Villehardouin, prince of Achaia, deprived the Latins of the most active and powerful vassal of their expiring monarchy. The republics of Venice and Genoa disputed, in the first of their naval wars, the command of the sea and the commerce of the East. Pride and interest attached the Venetians to the defence of Constantinople; their rivals were tempted to promote the designs of her enemies, and the alliance of the Genoese with the schismatic conqueror provoked the indignation of the Latin church.
CONSTANTINOPLE RECOVERED BY THE GREEKS (1261 A.D.)
[1261 A.D.]
Intent in this great object, the emperor Michael visited in person and strengthened the troops and fortifications of Thrace. The remains of the Latins were driven from their last possessions; he assaulted without success the suburb of Galata; and corresponded with a perfidious baron, who proved unwilling or unable to open the gates of the metropolis. The next spring his favourite general, Alexius Strategopulus, whom he had decorated with the title of Cæsar, passed the Hellespont with eight hundred horse and some infantry, on a secret expedition. The weakness of Constantinople, and the distress and terror of the Latins, were familiar to the observation of the volunteers; and they represented the present moment as the most propitious to surprise and conquest. A rash youth, the new governor of the Venetian colony, had sailed away with thirty galleys, and the best of the French knights, on a wild expedition to Daphnusia, a town on the Black Sea, at the distance of forty leagues; and the remaining Latins were without strength or suspicion. They were informed that Alexius had passed the Hellespont; but their apprehensions were lulled by the smallness of his original numbers, and their imprudence had not watched the subsequent increase of his army. If he left his main body to second and support his operations, he might advance unperceived in the night with the chosen detachment. No sooner had Alexius passed the threshold of the Golden Gate, than he trembled at his own rashness; he paused, he deliberated, till the desperate volunteers urged him forward, by the assurance that in retreat lay the greatest and most inevitable danger. Whilst the cæsar kept his regulars in firm array, the commons dispersed themselves on all sides; an alarm was sounded, and the threats of fire and pillage compelled the citizens to a decisive resolution. The Greeks of Constantinople remembered their native sovereigns; the Genoese merchants their recent alliance and Venetian foes; every quarter was in arms; and the air resounded with a general acclamation of “Long life and victory to Michael and Joannes, the august emperors of the Romans!”
Their rival, Baldwin, was awakened by the sound; but the most pressing danger could not prompt him to draw his sword in the defence of a city which he deserted, perhaps, with more pleasure than regret. Constantinople was irrecoverably lost; but the Latin emperor and the principal families embarked on board the Venetian galleys and steered for the isle of Eubœa, and afterwards for Italy, where the royal fugitive was entertained by the pope and the Sicilian king with a mixture of contempt and pity.
From the loss of Constantinople to his death, he consumed thirteen years, soliciting the Catholic powers to join in his restoration; the lesson had been familiar to his youth, nor was his last exile more indigent or shameful than his three former pilgrimages to the courts of Europe. His son Philippe was the heir of an ideal empire; and the pretensions of his daughter Catharine were transported by her marriage to Charles of Valois, the brother of Philippe le Bel, king of France. The house of Courtenai was represented in the female line by successive alliances, till the title of emperor of Constantinople, too bulky and sonorous for a private name, modestly expired in silence and oblivion.[f]