The crusaders had been able to destroy the Byzantine monarchy but were not able to reconstruct it with profit to themselves. They had to combat not only with the Greeks, but all the various people they had helped to emancipate. In fact, their domination only served to awake and fortify Greek patriotism. “They did great good in Byzantium, both to Hellenism and religion; social distinctions were abolished” (Sathas)—if not abolished, at any rate modified.
In the countries that the Latins held longest, as in the Morea, a certain fusion took place between conquerors and conquered. Nicetas, Acropolitas, Pachymeres gave the name of gasmuli to the creole issue of the two races. The French dynasties of Athens and the Morea tended to Hellenism; the princes learned the language of their subjects. Greek stratiota and French cavaliers were treated as on equal footing; they respected the pronoiai of the Hellenic cities as privileged and exempt from the Latin communities. There was a great logothete and a proto officer of Achaia as there had been a grand steward (seneschal) of Romania. In the French schools the Greeks learned afresh the meaning of civic liberty and the dignity of a warrior-landowner.[c]
It will be necessary now to cast a glance back at the rise of that Greek power which had recovered itself thus effectually after the retirement in 1204 of Theodore Lascaris and his founding of a kingdom in Nicæa.[a]
FOOTNOTES
[81] One edition of Villehardouin[b] makes the plunder of Constantinople amount to 500,000 silver marks, equivalent to 24,000,000 francs; if we add to this sum the 50,000 marks due to the Venetians, and deducted before the division, and the part which they had in the division itself, we shall find the total amount of booty 50,400,000 francs [about £2,100,000, or $10,500,000]. As much, says the modern historian who supplies us with this note, perhaps, was appropriated secretly by individuals. The three fires which had consumed more than half the city had destroyed at least as much of its riches, and in the profusion that followed the pillage, the most precious effects had lost so much of their value, that the advantage of the Latins probably was not equivalent to a quarter of what they had cost the Greeks. Thus we may suppose that Constantinople, before the attack, contained 600,000,000 francs of wealth [£25,000,000 or $125,000,000].
[82] [Gibbon[f] puts the loss at 120.]
[83] [Lavisse and Rambaud[c] quote his words, “He absolved the debt of the flesh while he was held in prison” (debitum carnis exsolverat dum carcere teneretur). His two daughters inherited Flanders and Hainault.]
[84] [According to Finlay[g] he “appears to have died about the year 1218.”]
