THE DESTRUCTION
OF
THE GREEK EMPIRE

The Destruction of the Greek
Empire and the Story of the
Capture of Constantinople by
the Turks

BY
EDWIN PEARS, LL.B.
Knight of the Greek Order of the Saviour and Commander of
the Bulgarian Order of Merit
Author of ‘The Fall of Constantinople: being the
Story of the Fourth Crusade’
WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1903
All rights reserved

PREFACE

My object in writing this book is to give an account of the capture of Constantinople and the destruction of the Greek empire. In order to make the story intelligible and to explain its significance I have given a summary of the history of the empire between the Latin conquest in 1204 and the capture of the city in 1453, and have traced the progress during the same period of the race which succeeded in destroying the empire and in replacing the Greeks as the possessors of New Rome.

It may be objected that the task which I have set before me has already been accomplished by Gibbon, and that, as his chapter on the last siege of the city is carefully compiled and written with a brilliancy of style which he has nowhere surpassed, there is no need for any further study of the subject. My answer is twofold: first, that an important mass of new material is now at the disposal of any one who wishes to retell the story, and second, that Gibbon told it with a bias which makes it desirable that it should be retold.

The historian of the ‘Decline and Fall’ had less than half the material before him which is now available, and the story of the siege deserves telling with more accuracy and completeness than either the authorities available to him or the scope of his monumental work permitted. It is true that Professor J. B. Bury, the latest editor of Gibbon, has, by the aid of scholarly notes and of careful research, enabled the reader to become possessed of many of the details regarding the siege which have recently become known, but he would be the first to admit that there is ample room for a fuller history of the siege than that given in the ‘Decline and Fall’ even with the aid of his valuable notes.[1] Gibbon himself regretted the poverty of his materials and especially that he had not been able to obtain any Turkish accounts of the siege.[2] The only eye-witnesses whose narratives were before him were Phrantzes, Archbishop Leonard, and Cardinal Isidore. If we add to their narratives the accounts given by Ducas and Chalcondylas together with what Gibbon himself calls ‘short hints of Cantemir and Leunclavius,’ we have substantially all the sources of information which were available when the ‘Decline and Fall’ was written.

The new sources of information regarding the siege brought to light since Gibbon’s day enable us to gain a much more complete view of that event and of the character of its principal actors than was possible at the time when he wrote. Several Continental writers have taken advantage of some at least of the new stores of information to rewrite its story,[3] but I may be allowed to claim the good fortune of being the first Englishman who has even attempted to write a narrative of that event with the whole or even with any considerable portion of the new material before him.

Before, however, proceeding to indicate what the new sources of information are, I must say something regarding the second reason I have assigned why those interested in the account of an event which marks the end of an epoch of great traditions and of a civilisation on ancient rather than on modern lines should not remain satisfied with Gibbon’s account of it. Though he claimed to examine the authorities before him with philosophical impartiality, the writers known to him belonged to the Roman Church, and he was influenced unconsciously by their representations. These writers wrote under the influence of the most bitter theological controversies. They are imbued with a spirit of rancour towards those Greeks (that is, towards the great majority of the population) who had not accepted the Union with the Church of Rome which had been decreed at Florence. Their testimony throughout their narratives is for the most part that of violent partisans. But even if Gibbon, when dealing with the disputes between the great historical Churches, had been in possession of statements of the Greek case, his contempt for both Churches was too great to allow him to do justice to the questions which divided them, questions which nevertheless, as they prevented the united action of Europe to resist the Turkish invasion, were among the most important of the time. His habit of thought as an eighteenth century theist did not allow him to attach sufficient weight to the theological aspect of the struggle between the East and the West. Everything that smelt of the cloister was hateful. The theological questions themselves were not worth discussion. The disputants were in his view narrow-minded, ignorant, and superstitious. The refinements of the definitions of the Double Procession were useless, trivial, or ridiculous. Religious zeal or enthusiasm was a thing to be condemned—was the mark of fanaticism and always mischievous. In this attitude of mind Gibbon was neither better nor worse than the majority of his philosophical contemporaries. He differed from them in being able to bequeath to future generations a work of monumental learning, in which his and their reading of the progress of Christianity in the Eastern empire was destined to have a long and deservedly great reputation. His research and eloquence, his keen sarcasm, his judicial manner, and the powerful influence of the ‘Decline and Fall’ were employed to discredit Christianity rather than to try to discover amid the fierce wranglings of theologians over insoluble problems what was their signification for the history of the time of which he was treating and in the development of the human mind. He began with a period in which the emperor is worshipped as Divinity and traced the establishment of Christianity as a national faith among Pagan subjects until in a diversified form it became accepted by all; but he did this without affording us any help to see how the human mind could accept the first position or what were the movements of thought which led to the evolution of the questions which agitated men’s minds in the later period.

The century in which he and his contemporaries lived was for them one of hostility to Christianity rather than of investigation, the period of Voltaire, who could only see in Byzantine history ‘a worthless repertory of declamation and miracles, disgraceful to the human mind’ rather than of the Continental and English writers of the modern historical school. Happily, in the twentieth century those who look upon Christianity with an independence as complete as that of Gibbon recognise that insight can only be obtained by sympathetic investigation, that for the right understanding of history it is essential to put oneself in the place of men who have attached importance to a religious controversy, to consider their environment and examine their conduct and motives from their point of view, if we would comprehend either the causes which have led such controversy to be regarded as important or the conduct of the controversialists themselves. The absence in Gibbon of any sympathetic attempt to understand the controversies which play so large a part in his great drama of human history renders him as unsatisfactory a guide in regard to them as a writer of English history during the period of Charles the First would be who should merely treat with contempt the half religious, half political questions which divided Englishmen. While the objection I have suggested to Gibbon’s attitude would apply generally to his treatment of religious questions, I have only to deal with it in reference to the period of which I am treating. When writing of this period Gibbon did not realise that the religious question was nearly always a political one, and that union with Rome meant subjection to Rome. But unless it be realised how completely the citizens of Constantinople and the other great cities of the empire were engrossed with semi-religious and semi-political questions, no true conception of the life of the empire can be formed; for these questions were of interest not merely to Churchmen but to all.

Among the documents brought to light during the last fifty or sixty years which have contributed to our better knowledge of the siege the most important are the ‘Diary’ of Nicolo Barbaro and the ‘Life of Mahomet’ by Critobulus.

Barbaro belonged to a noble Venetian family. He was present in Constantinople throughout the siege, kept a journal[4] of what he saw and heard, and, though full of prejudices against Genoese, Greeks, and Turks, contrives to tell his story in a manner which carries conviction of its truthfulness. His narrative conveys the impression of an independent observer who had no object in writing except to relate what he knew about the siege. While probably written from day to day, the diary bears internal evidence of having been revised after he had left the city. Its language is old-fashioned colloquial Venetian and has often puzzled Italians whom I have called in to my aid.

The original manuscript of the diary was preserved in Venice by members of the Barbaro family until 1829. After various adventures it came in 1837 into the possession of the Imperial and Royal Marciana Library in Venice. In 1854 it was entrusted to Enrico Cornet, and was published by him for the first time in 1856.

Critobulus, the author of the ‘Life of Mahomet the Second,’ was a man of a different type. Nothing is known of him beyond what is contained in his Life of Mahomet.[5] He describes himself as ‘Critobulus the Islander.’ After the capture of Constantinople, when the archons of Imbros, Lemnos, and Thasos feared that the Turkish admiral would shortly approach to annex these islands, messengers were sent to the admiral and succeeded, by offering voluntary submission and by paying him a large bribe, in avoiding the general pillage which usually followed a Turkish conquest. Shortly afterwards, Critobulus took service under the sultan and was made archon of Imbros. In this capacity he received the submission of Lemnos and other places. He continued to hold this office for at least four years. Book III. of his history contains (inter alia) an account of what he himself did as the servant of Mahomet. Probably he went to reside in Constantinople in 1460. His history covers the first seventeen years of Mahomet’s reign. It is dedicated to the sultan and is followed by an apology to his fellow Greeks for having written it. While open to the charge of not allowing himself an altogether free hand in revealing the faults and cruelties of his master, Critobulus claims that he has taken great pains to know the truth of what he relates. As he wrote a few years after the siege and at leisure, his narrative does not show the signs of haste which mark many of the shorter narratives of that event: such, for example, as those of Leonard, of the Podestà of Pera, of Cardinal Isidore in the ‘Lamentatio,’ and of others. As he continued to belong to the Orthodox Church and to the Greek as opposed to the Roman party in that Church, his history is free from the denunciations of his fellow Christians for having refused the union agreed to at Florence. The writer’s characteristics as a Greek, but also as a servant of the sultan, show themselves in his work. He expresses sympathy with his own people, extols their courage, and laments their misfortunes. But in places his biography of the sultan reads like the report of an able and courageous official. His training and experience in the work of government, his service under Mahomet, and perhaps something in the nature of the man, make his narrative sober and methodical and impress the reader with the idea that the author felt a sense of responsibility for the truthfulness of what he was writing. While the narratives of Phrantzes, Chalcondylas, and Ducas recount some of the incidents of the siege more fully than that of Critobulus, the latter gives more details on others and supplies valuable information which none of them have given. His Life of Mahomet is by far the most valuable of the recently discovered documents, and, as will be seen, I have made use of it as the nucleus of my narrative of the siege.

The manuscript of Critobulus was discovered by the late Dr. Dethier less than forty years ago in the Seraglio Library at Constantinople. It was transcribed by him and also by Herr Karl Müller and was published by the latter in 1883 with valuable notes.[6]

Two other works of importance unknown to Gibbon were due respectively to Tetaldi and Pusculus. Each of these authors took part in the defence of the city. Tetaldi, who was a Florentine soldier, tells us of his escape from the slaughter immediately following the capture, and of his being picked up out of the water by a Venetian ship.[7]

Pusculus was a citizen of Brescia. Though his account of the siege is given in Latin verse, it contains many details of value of what he himself saw which are not to be found elsewhere. His poem was never altogether lost sight of, but until its publication by Ellisen,[8] in 1857, with a useful introduction, its historical value had not been recognised. The MS. from which Ellisen made his copy is dated 1470.

The late Dr. Dethier, who devoted much time and intelligent study to the topography and archæology of Constantinople, compiled four volumes of documents relating to the siege, many of which were previously unknown. Two of them were printed about 1870, but they can hardly be said to have been published, and are only to be procured with difficulty. The remaining two contain, besides Critobulus, the ‘Threnos,’ Hypsilantes, an Italian and a Latin version of the ‘Lamentatio’ by Cardinal Isidore, an Italian version of Leonard’s report to the Pope, and other documents of interest to which I refer in my pages. These volumes were printed by the Buda-Pest Academy but never published. I am indebted, however, to that learned body for a copy.

I append a list of documents (other than the four principal which I have described) relating to the siege now available to the historical student which were unknown to Gibbon:

1. Zorzo (or Zorsi) Dolphin (or Zorsi Dolfin), ‘Assedio e presa di Constantinopoli nell’ anno 1453.’ This is mainly a translation from Leonard, but the author claims to have added what he heard from other eye-witnesses of the siege. It was published by G. M. Thomas in the ‘Sitzungsberichte’ of the Bavarian Academy in 1868. Another version is given by Dethier in his collection of documents relating to the siege, a collection which I refer to simply as Dethier’s ‘Siege.’

2. ‘Rapporto del Superiore dei Franciscani presente all’ assedio e alla presa di Constantinopoli.’ This report was made immediately after the siege and has long been published, but apparently was not known to Gibbon. Dethier also published it in his ‘Siege.’

3. ‘Epistola Ang. Johannis Zacchariae,’ Podestà of Pera, written within a month of the capture of the city, was first published in 1827. The version revised by Edward Hopf and Dr. Dethier is the one used by me.

4. Montaldo’s ‘De Constantinopolitano excidio’ is reproduced in Dethier’s ‘Siege,’ and contains useful hints by an eye-witness.

5. Christoforo Riccherio, ‘La Presa de Constantinopoli,’ first published in Sansovino’s ‘Dell’ Historia Universale,’ was republished with notes in Dethier’s ‘Siege,’ and is a valuable and brightly written narrative.

6. Θρῆνος τῆς Κωνσταντινουπόλεως, was first published by Ellisen in ‘Analekten,’ Leipzig, 1857. If the author was in Constantinople during the siege, he has not given a single item of information which is of value to the historian. His long wail is curious and interesting, but otherwise useless.

7. The Θρῆνος of Hierax the Grand Logothetes, or ‘History of the Turkish Empire,’ though only written near the end of the sixteenth century, has valuable topographical hints. It was translated by H. E. Aristarchi Bey, the present Grand Logothetes, from a MS. existing in the Monastery of the Holy Sepulchre at the Phanar, and edited by Dethier.

8. ‘Libro d’ Andrea Cambini Florentino della Origine de’ Turchi et Imperio delli Ottomanni.’ I am not aware whether [xiv] this has been published at a later date than the copy in my possession, which was printed in Florence in 1529. It was then published by the son of the writer, and Book II., which treats of the siege, suggests that the author has gained his information from spectators of the siege. It contains many useful statements.

9. ‘A Slavic Account of the Siege,’ published by Streznevski, is judged by Monsieur Mijatovich, on account of its peculiar idioms, to have been written by a Serbian or Bulgarian. He speaks of it as the ‘Slavonic Chronicle.’ A translation and a slightly different version was published by Dethier as the ‘Muscovite Chronicle.’ Though the narrative has been largely added to by subsequent hands, there is reason to believe that it was written by an eye-witness of the siege.

10. Another Slavic version is conveniently spoken of as the ‘Memoirs of the Polish Janissary.’ Its author, after serving with the Turks and, according to his own statement, being present at the siege, withdrew to Poland. The original MS. was first published in 1828.

The Turkish authors available who speak of the siege are:

11. Sad-ud-din, ‘The Capture of Constantinople from the Tajut-Tevarikh (1590),’ translated into English by E. J. W. Gibb (Glasgow, 1879). This work professes to be based on the accounts of earlier Turkish historians.

12. ‘Tarich Muntechebati Evliya Chelibi,’ a translation of which is given in the elder Mordtmann’s ‘Eroberung.’

13. Ahmed Muktar Pasha’s ‘Conquest of Constantinople and the Establishment of the Ottomans in Europe,’ brought out only in 1902, on the anniversary of the present sultan’s accession.

14. An Armenian ‘Mélodie Élégiaque,’ written by a monk named Philip, who was present at the siege. This was printed in Lebeau’s ‘Histoire du Bas-Empire.’ Dethier published the original version in Armenian.

I gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to Dr. Mordtmann’s studies of the archæology and topography of Constantinople,[9] and to Professor A. van Millingen’s ‘Byzantine Constantinople’[10] a work which is the most careful study of the history of those parts of the walls and other portions of the city treated of which has yet been published. I must also tender him sincere thanks for many suggestions made in the course of friendly intercourse and in the discussion of matters of mutual archæological interest, and for permission to reproduce his map of Constantinople. All future writers on the topography and archaeology of Constantinople will be under obligations to Dr. Mordtmann and Professor van Millingen, who have worthily continued the work of Gyllius and Du Cange.

A few words must be added as to the title of this book. Why, it may be asked, should it be the ‘Destruction of the Greek Empire’? Why not follow the example of the late Mr. Freeman, and of his distinguished successor, Professor J. B. Bury, and speak of the ‘Later Roman Empire’? My plea is one of confession and avoidance.

I admit that when Charles the Great, in 800, became Roman Emperor in the West the imperial territory of which the capital was Constantinople may correctly be spoken of as the Eastern Roman Empire. But I avoid condemnation for not adopting this name and for not calling the empire Roman by pleading that I am reverting to the practice of our fathers in the West during many centuries, and by defending their practice. The Empire has sometimes been described as Byzantine and sometimes as the Lower Empire. But these names are undesirable, because the first has a vague and doubtful meaning, since no two writers who employ it use it to cover the same period; and the second has a derogatory signification which the researches of Freeman and Professor Bury, Krumbacher, Schlumberger, and other modern writers, have shown to be undeserved. The name ‘Roman’ has more to recommend it. The Persians and the Arabs knew the empire simply as Roman, and the overwhelming reputation of Rome led them to speak even of Alexander the Great as ‘Iskender al Roumy.’ The name of Rome, or Roum, given to Roumelia, and found in other places as far east as Erzeroum, had been applied when the Latin element dominated the empire. The tradition of Rome passed on to the Turks, and the inhabitants of the empire were and are to them I-roum or Romans. The Byzantine writers usually called themselves Romans. But the term Roman can hardly be applied to the empire without distinguishing it as Eastern, and while it is true that down to 1453 the empire was Roman in name, there is some danger in employing the term of forgetting how far the New Rome and its territory had become Hellenised, and that a large portion of the population preferred the name Greek. There had been a long struggle within the empire itself between those who wished to adopt the latter designation and those who desired to call it Roman. The inhabitants of Greece were indeed for centuries preceding and during the Crusades disloyal subjects of Constantinople. Even during the reign of Heraclius (610 to 641), they insisted upon being called Hellenes rather than Romans. From that time onwards a contest was continued as to whether the name of Greek or Roman should be applied to the population. The influence of the Greeks henceforth was constantly working to Hellenise the empire. In the reign of Irene, at the time when the Western Roman Empire commenced to have a separate existence, Greek influence was especially strong. Lascaris, four centuries later, when he made his stand at Nicaea after the Latin conquest, spoke of the empire as that of Hellas. On the recovery of the city under Michael, the Church generally employed the term Roman, but declared that Greek and Roman might be employed indifferently. Various writers speak of the Latins as Romans and of the Byzantines as Hellenes.[11] Manuel Bryennius represents the preacher in St. Sophia as calling upon his hearers to remember their Greek ancestors and to defend their country as they had done. At times the people were appealed to as the descendants alike of Greeks and Romans.

As being a continuation of the Roman Empire whose capital was New Rome, the empire is correctly called Roman, and the name has the advantage of always keeping in view the continuity of Roman history. It was the Eastern Roman Empire which declined and fell in 1453. But if we admit that the empire continued to be Roman till 1453, it must be remembered, not only that its characteristics had considerably changed, but that to the men of the West it had come to be known as the Greek Empire. Latin had been as completely forgotten as Norman French was by English nobles in the time of Edward III. Greek had become the official language, as did English in our own country. The inscriptions on the coins since the time of Heraclius are in Greek. The Orthodox Church, which aided as much as even law in binding the inhabitants of the country together, employed Greek, and Greek almost exclusively, as its language, and, although the great defenders of the term Roman as applied to the population are found among its dignitaries, the Church was essentially Greek as opposed to Roman, both in the character of its thought and teaching and in the language it employed. Hence it is not surprising that to the West during all the middle ages, the Empire was the Greek Empire, just as the Orthodox Church was the Greek Church.[12] The Empire and the Church were each alike called Greek to distinguish them from the Empire and Church of the West. It is in this general use of the word Greek that I find my justification for speaking of the capture of Constantinople, and the events connected with it, as the Destruction of the Greek Empire.[13]

I have only in conclusion to call the attention of the reader to one or two matters connected with the authorities which I quote. I must plead that my residence in Constantinople has not allowed me to refer to the uniform series of Byzantine authors available in the great public libraries of Western Europe. My edition of Phrantzes is that published in the Bonn series; Pachymer, Cantacuzenus, Chalcondylas, Ducas, and their contemporaries, are quoted from the Venetian edition of the Byzantine writers edited by Du Cange. My references to Archbishop Leonard are almost always to the version in the collection of Lonicerus. Dr Dethier, however, published a contemporary Italian version which has certain important variations, and to this I have occasionally referred. The editors of other authorities are mentioned in the notes to the text.

I have sometimes abstained from discussing the trustworthiness of my authorities, but have said once for all that their statements, especially in regard to the numbers they represent as engaged in battle, of victims slaughtered or captured, and the like, can rarely be regarded as satisfactory. The means of controlling them seldom exist. Even in the case of Sir John Maundeville, I have quoted him without hinting that a doubt of his very existence has been uttered. Whether he lived and was or was not a traveller, or whether his book was, as has been suggested, a kind of mediæval Murray’s Guide, does not in the least affect the statements which I have reproduced from it. The work of sifting the evidence, new and old, to ascertain its value has been long and tedious, and I must leave to other students of the same period to say whether I have succeeded in selecting what is of use and in rejecting only what is valueless. To have attempted a critical examination of every important statement which I quote would have extended my book to an inordinate length, and in regard to most of them the reader will not find much difficulty in arriving at his own conclusions as to their trustworthiness.

Edwin Pears.

Constantinople, February 1903.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

Approximate Restoration of the Land Walls ofTheodosius the Second between the Golden and Second Military Gates		Between pages [240–1]
Present Condition of a Portion of the LandwardWalls from photograph by M. Irenian of Constantinople.
Mahomet the Conqueror from painting by Bellini.		Between pages [388–1]
Mahomet the Conqueror from medallion by Bellini in the British Museum.

MAPS

Map illustrating Progress of Turks during 13th., 14th., & 15th. Centuries.

DESTRUCTION
OF
THE GREEK EMPIRE

CHAPTER I

THE LATIN EMPIRE (1204–1261) AND ITS STRUGGLES WITH AND FINAL OVERTHROW BY THE GREEKS OF NICAEA

The later Roman Empire and its capital Constantinople never recovered from the blow inflicted by the Fourth Crusade in 1204. A huge filibustering expedition had been gathered together at Venice under pretext of making an attack upon the Saracens in Egypt. Under the leadership of Boniface, Marquis of Montferrat, and Dandolo, the famous doge of Venice, the expedition had been diverted from its purpose, and, in spite of the strongest possible protests by Innocent the Third, had attacked Constantinople. The strength of the empire had been weakened by a hundred and fifty years’ resistance to the hordes of Asia, during which it had served as the bulwark of Europe. Its reputation had been lessened by thirty years of dynastic wars, during which the government had allowed its fleet to decay so that it was unable to resist the Venetians and Crusaders. The result was that, for the first time in its long history, the city was captured. There then followed the plunder and division of its enormous wealth—a large part of which found its way to the West, while perhaps a still larger portion was destroyed—the appointment of a Latin emperor in Constantinople, and the partition of such portions of the empire as could be occupied among the conquerors.

Baldwin, 1204–1205.

Baldwin, a Belgian, was elected emperor. An arrangement for the division of the spoil had been made by the leaders before the attack on the city, and this seems to have been fairly carried out. To Baldwin were assigned the two imperial palaces in Constantinople and one fourth of all that should be captured within the city and throughout the empire. The remaining three fourths were to be divided equally between the Crusaders and the Venetians. The difficulties of the conquerors began with this further division of the spoil. The task of parcelling out the empire was almost hopeless.Difficulties regarding division of empire. It was next to impossible to accomplish such a partition, even on paper, because of the ignorance of the Western conquerors of the empire they had destroyed. Its extent was so great, the difficulty of communication so extreme, and ignorance of geography so profound, that the conquerors did not know what there was to divide. They sent into the provinces to obtain information as to the revenues and general condition of the country so that the partition might be fairly made; but, without waiting for the information, they proceeded to divide up the countries and provinces which they imagined to be within the empire. In their happy ignorance they drew lots for Alexandria and for the various countries along the north shore of the Mediterranean as well as for Georgia, Persia, and Assyria. They competed for the possession of Konia itself, the capital of the Seljukian Turks.

It was still more difficult to make a partition which should represent territory which could come at once into the occupation of the Crusaders. The one system of land tenure with which they were acquainted was the feudal. The lands of the empire must therefore be divided into fiefs and the barons and persons of higher and of lower degree must have grants according to their rank. But though Constantinople was in the possession of the men of the West, they held no more of the remainder of the empire than was within the actual sight of the barons and the comparatively small bodies of retainers who were under them. The Greeks—or, as the subjects of the later empire still generally called themselves, the Romans—had no intention of recognising either the lordship of the barons who had become their feudal superiors or the overlordship of Baldwin. They knew nothing of a feudal system, and recognised the representatives of the late empire as having a first claim to their service. They were ready to follow almost any leader against men whom they knew only as invaders, belonging to a different race, speaking a different language, and professing a form of Christianity which was hateful to them because the conquerors tried to impose it upon them.

The difficulties of the Latin empire were both internal and external.

Dissensions among leaders.

The men from the West soon found that they were too few to hold the country. Some of the Crusaders had insisted upon leaving the city in order to proceed to the Holy Land in fulfilment of their vows and to avoid the censure of Innocent. Others were anxious to return home with their share of the spoils. ‘Never since the world was created,’ says Villehardouin the historian, who took an active part in the capture of the city, ‘was there so much booty gained in one city. Each man took the house which pleased him, and there were enough for all. Those who were poor found themselves suddenly rich.’ If they remained they had hardships to face which as the possessors of newly obtained wealth they would rather avoid. As soon as new dangers appeared the numbers of those who wished to get away increased. During the very first year of Baldwin’s reign, his army on its retreat from an expedition against the Bulgarians found at Rodosto seven thousand men at arms who had quitted the capital and were leaving the country. It was in vain that a cardinal and the leaders sent by the army, among whom was Villehardouin himself, implored them even with tears to remain, for ‘Never,’ said these leaders, ‘would they be able to succour a country in so great a need.’[14] The most favourable answer that they could obtain was that a reply would be given on the morrow. The deserters set sail in the night without even giving the promised response to the prayer made to them.

The internal difficulties were increased by the jealousy which existed between the leaders of the Latins themselves. All through the journey to Constantinople before the capture of the city, the Crusaders and Venetians had mistrusted each other. Boniface, the leader of the Crusade, considered himself ill treated because he had not been named emperor. Though defeated, he had a large number of adherents. To him had been assigned territory in Asia Minor. He applied to exchange it for the kingdom of Salonica, alleging that as he had married the widow of the Emperor Isaac, who was the sister of the King of Hungary, he would be at Salonica in a better position to aid the emperor. His request was granted. Baldwin, however, did not trust him, and, apparently under the impression that it was the intention of Boniface to establish an independent sovereignty, insisted on accompanying him to his newly acquired capital. To this course Boniface objected so strongly that when the emperor started for Salonica, Boniface not only refused to accompany him but went off towards Adrianople, captured Didymotica, and laid siege to the former city. The Greeks flocked to his standard, possibly being induced to do so by the belief that as he had married the widow of Isaac he was entitled to their allegiance.

As soon as Dandolo, Count Louis, and the other nobles who had remained in Constantinople heard what Marquis Boniface was doing, they at once took counsel in ‘parlement’ as to the measures to be adopted: ‘for,’ says Villehardouin, ‘they thought that they would lose all the conquests they had made.’ They decided to send a knight to Boniface without delay, and the historian was himself chosen for the mission. He went at once to Adrianople and succeeded in persuading the marquis to submit the questions between him and the emperor to the arbitration of Dandolo and Count Louis, and for the present to cease hostilities. Meantime the emperor had occupied Salonica. As soon as he heard of the siege of Adrianople he at once hastened to its relief and ‘pour faire tout le mal qu’il pourrait au marquis.’ On the way he met the messengers from the city, who besought him to submit his case, as Boniface had consented to do, to arbitration, at the same time plainly telling him that Dandolo, Count Louis of Blois, and the other barons would not tolerate war between him and Boniface. The emperor hesitated and consulted his council. Some of the members urged that the message was an outrage and advised resistance. Violent language (‘grosses paroles’) was used, but the emperor, who was unwilling to risk the hostility of so strong a combination as Dandolo and Louis, gave way to the extent of stating that he would undertake not to attack Boniface until he went to Constantinople, although he would not pledge himself to refer the questions between them to arbitration. Shortly after, when a peace was patched up between them, it was under conditions which show that neither party trusted the other. Villehardouin undertook to hold Didymotica until he knew by a trusted messenger that Salonica had been handed over to Boniface.

Nor were the external differences which at once presented themselves less serious. The history of Constantinople and the Latin empire during the period between 1204 and 1260 is indeed that of a series of struggles between Baldwin and his successors on the imperial throne, on the one side, and the leaders of the Greek race who had refused to recognise the authority of the invaders, on the other.

Opposition of Greek population.

The Western barons seemed to have thought that with the conquest of the capital the whole empire would fall to their lot. They were soon undeceived. In Macedonia and in Epirus Greek leaders appeared, who rallied to them all who were indisposed to accept new rulers. At Trebizond on the Black Sea, and at Nicaea, the once famous city of the Creed, the Greeks flocked from the capital and its neighbourhood, and soon there were rulers of these cities who assumed the title of emperor.

Empire of Nicaea. Theodore Lascaris, 1204–1222.

The most important of those who refused to accept the Latin rule was Theodore Lascaris. He had been the last of the Greek nobles to leave the city when the invaders captured it. He made his way to Nicaea, and was followed by many Greeks. Able, courageous, and patriotic, he was soon recognised by the notables as the fittest man to have rule among them, and, though without hereditary claim to the imperial throne, he aspired to be emperor and was accepted as best suited to receive that dignity. Two years after the capture of Constantinople, a new patriarch was elected, who consented to live at Nicaea and who amid as much ceremony as if the coronation had taken place in St. Sophia placed the crown on the head of Theodore in the church of the same name at Nicaea. The prudence and judgment of the new emperor did much to rally the best of his countrymen around him, and justified the choice made in electing him to the imperial throne. The Greek priests flocked to the city from all parts of Western Asia Minor as well as from Thrace.

Nevertheless, his task was beset with difficulties. He had enemies on all sides, pretenders of his own race, the Latin emperor and the sultan of the Seljukian Turks. The latter, whose capital was at Konia, had no idea of allowing any neighbour to become formidable. A Greek pretender held the country to the west of Nicaea. The Latin emperor and barons chose to regard Theodore as a rebel because he would not make submission. After unsuccessful attempts against him by Baldwin and his successor, Theodore was allowed in 1207 to remain in possession of Ismidt (the ancient Nicomedia) and Cyzicus for a period of two years. He employed the period in strengthening and extending his empire. At the end of it, Henry the brother of Baldwin, whom he succeeded as emperor, made an alliance with the sultan of the Seljukian Turks: that is to say, the Crusaders who had justified themselves to Innocent the Third for attacking a Christian city on the ground that the Greek emperors had allowed the Moslems to have a mosque within the city, now found themselves under the necessity of joining forces with the infidel to attack a Christian prince.

Upon the declaration of war by the sultan, Theodore pushed forward into the valley of the Meander, and a battle was fought which, if the Byzantine authorities are to be trusted, was decided in single combat between the two sovereigns. The sultan was killed, and the empire of Nicaea was saved. The Emperor Henry, however, when he heard of the extent of the loss in Theodore’s army exclaimed, ‘The Greek is not conqueror: he is ruined.’

So far from being ruined, his success caused many Greeks to flock into his empire from Constantinople. When, in 1214, the Emperor Henry again declared war, Theodore was ready for him; and as the Greeks in Epirus had commenced a vigorous attack on the crusading barons in Macedonia, Henry was glad to make a peace which left Theodore undisputed master of a territory bounded on the west by a line from Heraclea on the Black Sea to Ismidt, thence to Cyzicus and to the coast just north of Pergamos. The fruitful valleys of the Meander, the Cayster, and the Hermus marked his boundaries on the south-west.

Theodore died in 1222. The first duty of the Greeks when driven out of Constantinople was to make themselves secure against the conquerors and to prevent the progress of the crusading armies into Asia Minor. This duty had been effectually done by Theodore. During the eighteen years of his reign he had made his capital and its beautiful neighbourhood the rallying-place of what was best in the Greek-speaking populations of Asia Minor and of Thrace. He had checked the progress of the crusaders into Asia Minor and had left to his successors the task of working for the recovery of Constantinople.

Henry succeeds Baldwin, 1205–1216.

Meantime, the history of the Latin conquerors of Constantinople had been one of almost continuous disaster. The first Emperor Baldwin had been lost in an encounter with the Bulgarians near Adrianople in April 1205, and was probably killed. As his fate remained doubtful, his brother Henry acted as regent for a year and was then crowned emperor. Shortly after the commencement of his reign in 1207, Boniface, Marquis of Montferrat and King of Salonica, was killed in a skirmish. Henry seems to have realised that in a policy of conciliation towards the Greeks lay the only hope of the continuance of his empire. He made peace with the Bulgarians and concluded an arrangement with both the emperor of Nicaea and the Greek prince who had made himself recognised as despot in Epirus. He employed Greeks in the public service. He refused to take part in the persecution of the Greeks who would not obey the decrees of the pope’s legate. He allowed them to employ the Greek language in their services, and restrained the pretensions of the Roman priests. Unfortunately for the Latin empire, the reign of the chivalrous Henry lasted only ten years.

Peter succeeds, 1217–1219.

He was succeeded by Peter of Courtenay, who was invited by the barons to occupy the throne in the absence of male heirs of Baldwin and his brother Henry. Peter left France with 140 knights and 5,500 men at arms, whom he had obtained with the aid of his royal kinsman, Philip Augustus. The reports of the rich plunder which had been obtained in the capture of the city had already induced many French knights to leave their native lands to take service in the empire, but the detachment with which Peter crossed the Alps was the largest which had left the West for such purpose.

The Venetians bargained to transport them across the Adriatic on condition that they would assist in recovering Durazzo from Theodore, the Greek despot of Epirus. After a useless assault on that city, Peter started with his followers on a journey across the peninsula to Salonica. He and his host were soon lost amid the mountains of Epirus. Their provisions were exhausted. They found the passes fortified, and their only chance of life was to surrender to Theodore, who had held the country in defiance of the regent who was governing in the name of the son of Boniface. Peter was detained in captivity, and his death is as mysterious as that of the first Latin emperor. He probably perished in prison in 1218.

Robert, 1219–1228.

Peter’s successor, Robert of Courtenay, succeeded in finding his way to Constantinople, though not across Macedonia, accompanied by a number of troops furnished at the request of Pope Honorius the Third. His reign was a series of disasters. He made a treaty of peace with Theodore of Nicaea in order that he might devote all his attention to the defeat of the other Theodore, the despot of Epirus. The latter had been denounced by the pope for his detention of Peter and of the legate who accompanied him. Honorius indeed had invited the princes of the West to undertake a crusade for their deliverance. When, however, the legate was released, Peter seems to have been forgotten. The despot Theodore made a well-concerted attack upon Salonica, captured it, and was proclaimed emperor in 1222. Robert led all his forces against this new claimant for the imperial title and was badly beaten. Theodore pushed on to Adrianople and hoisted his standard on the walls of that city almost without opposition.

There were thus in 1222 four persons claiming to be emperors, and occupying separate portions of what had been twenty years earlier the Roman Empire in the East. These were Robert at Constantinople, Theodore at Nicaea, another Theodore at Salonica, and Alexis at Trebizond.

Nicaea, success of John Ducas Vataces, 1222–1254.

The history of the next forty years (1222–1261) is that of the strengthening of the Greek empire at Nicaea and the decadence and downfall of the other so-called empires, and especially of that of the Latin Crusaders in Constantinople. The successor of Theodore Lascaris was John Ducas Vataces, who during a reign of thirty-three years fortified his position at Nicaea and increased the prosperity of his empire. He restricted the boundaries of the Latin territory in Asia Minor to the peninsula formed by a line parallel to the Bosporus from Ismidt to the Black Sea. He rendered property and life safe, and in consequence the Greek population continued to flock into his territory. Even French soldiers in considerable numbers quietly slipped away from Constantinople to take service with Vataces. At the commencement of his reign he was attacked by the newly appointed emperor, Robert of Courtenay, and in the combat which ensued not only was Vataces successful, but the last of the knights who had taken part in the capture of the city were left dead on the field. Until Robert’s death in 1228, Nicaea had few troubles with the Latin empire.

Latin empire. John of Brienne, 1228–1237. Baldwin II., 1237–1261.

Robert’s successor was a boy of eleven, who continued nominally emperor under the title of Baldwin the Second for upwards of thirty years, but the Latin knights wisely placed power in the hands of John de Brienne. Indeed, the crusading leaders seem throughout the whole Latin occupation to have assumed a large measure of the imperial authority. The period is contemporary with that of the barons who resisted King John in England, and who continued to assert their independence under the reign of Henry the Third. The French barons in Constantinople had much of the same spirit, with the additional incentive to independence that, as the emperors were of recent creation, the glamour which had already gathered about the kingly office in England and France was absent. The emperor was indeed nothing more than primus inter pares, and his own designs were often set aside for those of his associates. No one can doubt that they acted wisely in appointing John de Brienne, but even he, with all his experience and caution, failed as his predecessor had done when he attacked Nicaea.

The courage and ability of the old Crusader, who was already eighty years of age, hardly retarded the decay of the Latin empire. Its needs were great, and accordingly Baldwin the Second was sent on a visit to the pope and to the Western courts to obtain further supplies of men and money. Indeed, the greater part of his reign was Baldwin visits France, occupied by three of such journeys. His first visit to France was in 1237. Hardly had he arrived in Paris when he learned the death of John de Brienne. The messenger who brought the tidings told a terrible story of the distress in the imperial city. The barons and soldiers[15] dared not venture outside the walls. The supply of food had run so short that many of the gentlemen of France who were charged with its defence disguised themselves and escaped by sea or, notwithstanding that the country was full of dangers, endeavoured to make their way by land to their own country. The peril was so great that Baldwin was assured that if aid were not sent the city could not resist an attack. Upon these tidings Baldwin did his utmost to obtain aid. He was received with honour wherever he went, but he received little else. In 1238, he paid a visit to England. On his landing at Dover he was asked and England. how he presumed to enter the country without the permission of its independent sovereign, Henry the Third. Henry had had enough trouble with Crusaders. John de Brienne, who had been in England, had obtained aid from the king and had been honourably received. On his return to France he had joined with Philip Augustus against England. Henry, however, sent word to Baldwin that as he had arrived without troops he might come on to London. After receiving this permission he paid a visit to the king and finally left England with the miserable sum of seven hundred marks.

Pope supports Latin empire.

The pope had taken Baldwin’s cause greatly to heart. He enjoined all Christian princes to give him aid. He ordered the leading archbishops of the West to publish a new Crusade against the Greek schismatics. He directed part of the Peter’s pence to be given for the furtherance of the Crusade and ordered that the money which St. Louis with pious zeal had extorted from the Jews as obtained by usury should be employed for the same purpose. He begged the king to direct that one third of the revenues of the churches should be thus employed, and he wrote to the king of England with a similar request. In 1238 John de Bethune started from France with men and money. The expedition, however, came to grief. Its leader died at Venice and the army melted away, very few ever arriving at the Bosporus.

Decay of Latin empire.

The character of the news from Constantinople continued constantly to be more and more distressing. The revenue was yearly decreasing. The money obtained in Europe was already spent, and the knights were driven to desperate expedients to obtain more. Copper was torn from the domes of the churches and other public buildings to be converted into coin. Empty houses were pulled down to supply fuel. The sacred relics, which in the eyes of the Crusaders constituted not only the most valuable treasures of the city but the talisman of its safety, were sold to meet pressing needs.Sale of relics. The Sacred Crown of Thorns had been pledged for a sum of about seven thousand pounds, and when the time came for redeeming it, the Latins were not able to find the money. A Venetian endeavoured to obtain it in order to add to the prosperity of the Bride of the Seas, but Baldwin, possibly out of gratitude to Saint Louis of France, and with the object of obtaining a larger sum, preferred that it should be sent to France. After considerable difficulty and many negotiations, the sacred relic was redeemed and taken with solemn procession from Venice to Paris, where the king himself, clothed in penitential garments and barefoot, went out to meet it and to accompany it to its temporary resting-place. This was in 1239. Baldwin received from Louis, in recompense of his labour to obtain so valuable a prize, the sum of ten thousand marks.

Nor was this the only relic which the crusading empire was obliged to convert into money. A large portion of the true cross, the lance, the sponge, and other objects, the parting with which must have cost Baldwin and his barons many a regret, were also sent to France in order to raise money.[16]

By July 1239 Baldwin had collected in the West all the money and forces available and started for Constantinople. The number of his army was greatly exaggerated by the rumours which preceded it and greatly alarmed the Greeks at Nicaea. He arrived at Constantinople at the end of Prosperity of Nicene empire. December. John Vataces, in consequence of these rumours and as a precaution, allied himself with the Bulgarians. The armies of the two states attacked Constantinople. The Venetians saved the city by arriving in time to make it necessary to raise the siege. Then the Bulgarians made friends with the Latins and allowed a band of Comans (or Tur-comans) who had been driven over the Danube by the Mongols to pass through Bulgaria and take service with the Latins. The emperor of Nicaea could, however, play a similar game, and he induced a band of the same race, who formed excellent light cavalry, to settle on the banks of the Meander and in Phrygia.

John Vataces succeeded, partly by force, partly by persuasion, in inducing the despot of Salonica to abandon the title of emperor and to recognise Nicaea as the true representative of the former empire of Constantine. Vataces thereupon became acknowledged ruler of the kingdom of Salonica from the Aegean to the Adriatic.

Decay of Constantinople.

Meantime the wealth and population of Constantinople were diminishing every day. Its commerce had almost gone. What was left was in the hands of the Venetians. No taxes could be levied on the poverty-stricken population. The Greeks of the country around Constantinople, who had been the food-producers and the source of revenue to the merchants of the capital, fled from the constant harass of war and invasions, now by Latins, now by Bulgarians, and now by Greeks, into Asia Minor, where they could labour in the fields or trade in peace and quietness.

The population in other parts of the country were in like straits. The continual money difficulties among the Latin knights and the Crusaders generally caused a widespread spirit of lawlessness. Necessity compelled them to live on the country they were passing through, and wherever they were under the command of a weak ruler, pillage was common and almost unchecked. Before men thus lawless, poor peasants fled in alarm across the Marmora to be not only among their own people but where life and property were secure.

As illustrating the lawlessness among the Latin nobles, a story told of the Emperor Robert himself is significant. He was engaged to marry the daughter of Vataces, a marriage which promised obvious advantages to the Latin empire. He preferred, however, a lady who was affianced to a knight of Burgundy. Her mother had acquiesced in her throwing over her fiancé in favour of the young emperor. The Burgundian and his friends forced their way into the palace, threw the mother into the sea, and brutally disfigured the face of the girl. The barons approved of the deed, and the king went whining to the pope to condemn the wrong-doers, since he himself was powerless to avenge the insult offered to him.

Under such conditions of lawlessness, capital fled the country. The Latin government had once more to resort to every possible device for raising money, and the ornaments of the churches and other public buildings were sent to the melting-pot or to auction.

While disaster and decay marked the condition of things in Constantinople, Nicaea continued to increase in prosperity. The city itself, in a healthy situation on the beautiful lake of Ascanius, had under the rule of John Vataces already become wealthy. Taxes were light because the revenue was not squandered, and the emperor had carried into the public expenditure the same habits of carefulness which he displayed in the management of his own private estates. It is recorded of him, as an illustration of his thrift, that on presenting the empress with a coronet decked with jewels he explained to her that it had been bought with money exclusively obtained from the sale of eggs produced on his own estates. He paid especial attention to agriculture, and, though distinguished as a warrior, set the example of attending personally to his farm, his flocks and herds, the cultivation of his fields, and the welfare of his labourers. We may excuse his sumptuary laws for the reason that the object was to check the luxury of the nobles and to encourage home manufactures. When he died, in 1254, after a reign of thirty-three years, Nicaea had deservedly obtained the reputation of being the chief city of all Greek-speaking people, whether in Europe or in Asia, the city to which the people lifted up their eyes in confidence of a speedy return to the queen city on the shores of the Bosporus.

Theodore II. of Nicaea, 1254–1258.

The reign of Theodore Lascaris the Second, son of John Vataces, lasted only four years, and though he lacked the ability of his father, and was a sufferer from epilepsy, the empire of Nicaea continued to prosper. His military administration was able and successful. He continued the policy of Vataces in endeavouring to induce or to compel all the Greeks in the Balkan peninsula to come under his rule. It may be fairly said of him that on his death, in 1258, the position of Nicaea was stronger than on his accession.

During these two prosperous reigns in the Greek empire that of the Crusaders had continued to go from bad to worse. In spite of the anathemas of the popes against those who should attack Constantinople, the Bulgarians and the Greeks made war upon it whenever they thought the opportunity favourable. In spite of the exhortation of the popes to Western Europe to furnish men and money, and of the fact that both were furnished, the empire grew weaker in men and its financial situation became worse.

We have seen that Baldwin returned to Constantinople with an army which is said to have numbered 30,000 men, and which in any case was sufficiently large to alarm the Nicene emperor. But these reinforcements seem to have been a burden rather than an advantage, and the chief of the crusading empire had to shock Christian Europe by consenting to give his niece in marriage to the sultan of Konia in order to secure an alliance with him against the Greek emperor. Second visit of Baldwin to West.Baldwin’s necessities again compelled him to visit France. He was once more received with honour, and at the Council of Lyons, in 1245, he was given the position of supreme honour, and was placed on the right hand of the pope. All, indeed, that the sovereign pontiff could accomplish in favour of his guest in this Council was done. An alliance which the Emperor Frederick had made with John Vataces was denounced, and the head of the Holy Roman Empire was solemnly excommunicated. While nothing was said about the alliance with the Seljukian Turk, Frederick was condemned for allowing his daughter to be married to a schismatic Greek. Large sums were ordered to be contributed by the dignitaries of the Church and by the religious orders for the succour of the empire. St. Louis again gave Baldwin a welcome, and entertained him at his court during nearly two years while aid was being collected. The pope gave power to absolve from sins those who should join the Crusade or contribute to the support of the empire. But, as Matthew Paris says, his empire nevertheless daily decayed. It was not till 1248 that Baldwin returned to his impoverished capital. Perhaps the lowest depth of degradation was attained by him when in 1259 his necessity was so great that he was obliged to put his only son in pledge to certain Venetian nobles as security for the payment of what he had borrowed. The unfortunate lad was taken to Venice, and his father was unable to redeem him until after the recapture of Constantinople.

Before the death, in 1258, of Theodore Lascaris the Second, the ruler of Nicaea was acknowledged emperor, not merely throughout the northern part of Asia Minor, but in the kingdom of Macedonia, and even in a considerable portion of Thrace.John Ducas Emperor of Nicaea, 1258–1260. His successor, John, was a boy. John’s guardian was Michael Palaeologus, who was proclaimed emperor in January 1259–60. Seeing that there was some disorder in Nicaea, occasioned by the disputes between those in favour of the boy, who, in the ordinary course of succession, would have been emperor, and those who had recognised that the times were too critical to allow him to reign, and had Michael Palaeologus.consequently followed Michael, the Latin emperor, Baldwin, judged the moment opportune to stipulate for concessions. Accordingly he sent a mission to Nicaea to learn what Michael would give in order to avoid war. The historian Acropolitas, who was at Nicaea at the time, records what passed. The emperor mocked the ambassadors. They asked that he should surrender Salonica. The reply was that that city was the emperor’s birthplace; how could he part with it? They suggested Seres. The emperor responded that what they were asking was neither just nor decent, since he had received it from his father. ‘Give us, then, Bolero.’ But that was the emperor’s hunting-ground, and could not be spared. ‘What, then, will you give us?’ ‘Nothing whatever,’ replied the emperor. ‘But if you want peace with me, it is well, because you know me, and that I can fight. Pay me part of the tribute collected at Constantinople, and we shall be at peace.’ No better terms were to be had, and the ambassadors left.

Michael probably understood that his refusal would be followed by war. He therefore visited the fortifications already gained in Thrace by the Greeks, strengthened them, and within a few months the Latin empire was reduced to the occupation of Constantinople and a small strip around it. In the following year, 1260, Michael’s general, Strategopulus, was entrusted with the command in Thrace. He stormed Selymbria (the modern Silivria), and tried but failed to capture Galata, which was already in the occupation of the Genoese. Thereupon a truce was made for one year.

Seeing that the Venetians, whose great power in the Levant dates from the fall of Constantinople in 1204, in which they had played so important a part, still maintained their connection with the empire on the Bosporus and, indeed, continued to be the principal source of such strength as it possessed, Michael, to the great indignation of the pope and the West, made an alliance with their rivals, the Genoese, an alliance which was the foundation of their supremacy in trade in the Black Sea.

Capture of Constantinople by the Greeks.

It is not impossible that Strategopulus had been sent into Thrace in 1260 rather to form a judgment of the chances of capturing the city than of making war. It is quite possible, as suggested even by Pachymer, that the attempt on Galata was a mere feint in order that he might get into communication with friends in the capital. In consenting to give a year’s truce, however, Michael seems to have been sincere. Accordingly, when, in 1261, he again sent Strategopulus into Thrace it was with instructions that he was not to attack the city. He had with him only 800 men, but as he passed through the country behind Constantinople the Greek settlers (Volunteers, as they are called, (Θεληματάριοι), who had friends in the city, flocked to him, and urged that he would never have a better chance of capturing it than at that time. The last detachment of troops which had come from France had left the city, with the Venetian fleet, upon an expedition into the Black Sea to capture Daphnusia. Constantinople might be surprised in their absence. In spite of the imperial orders, the chance was too good to be missed. He brought his men to the neighbourhood of the capital, and hid them near the Holy Well of Baloukli, situated at about half a mile from the Gate of the Fountain,[17] one of the important entrances into the city through the landward walls. His volunteers had not deceived him when they stated that they had friends in the city. Probably every Greek was a secret sympathiser.

George Acropolitas, who died in 1282, and whose account, therefore, must have been written while the events were fresh in his memory, gives the most trustworthy version of what happened. He says: ‘But as Strategopulus had some men near him who had come from the city and were well acquainted with all that had passed there, from whom he learned that there was a hole in the walls of the city through which an armed man could easily pass, he lost no time and set to work. A man passed through this hole; another followed, then others, until fifteen, and perhaps more, had got into the city. But, as they found a man on the walls on guard, some of them mounted the wall and, taking him by the feet, threw him over. Others having axes in their hands broke the locks and bolts of the gates, and thus rendered the entry easy for the army. This is how the Cæsar Strategopulus, and all the men he had with him, Romans and Scythians (for his army was composed of these two peoples), made their entry into the city.’[18] Probably there were few inhabitants in that quarter, and the advance to the principal part of the city might be made in the dark. At dawn the invaders pushed on boldly, met with a brave resistance from a few—a resistance which they soon overcame—and the rest of the French[19] defenders were seized with panic and fled. While the city was thus passing once more into the hands of the Greeks, the French and Venetian ships were coming straggling down the Bosporus, on their return from Daphnusia, which they had failed to capture. Accordingly, the army of Strategopulus and his volunteers set fire to the dwellings in the French and Venetian quarters in the city and to their villas on the European shore of the Bosporus near Galata. While the foreigners were occupied in saving their own property and their women and children from the fire, Strategopulus strengthened his position in the city.

Flight of Baldwin II.

The weak and incapable Baldwin was at the palace of Blachern when the Greeks entered the city. Afraid to pass through the streets where the fighting was going on, he entered a boat, made his way down the Golden Horn, and took refuge among other fugitives with the Venetian fleet.

End of Latin empire.

His flight was on July 25, 1261, and with it ends the history of the Latin empire in Constantinople. It had been established by perjured Crusaders and filibustering Venetians who were justly anathematised by Innocent the Third. It had always been a sickly plant in a foreign and uncongenial soil, and, though popes and kings had made quite remarkable exertions to make it grow, it never even gave a sign of taking root. The empire had succeeded, as Innocent predicted that it would, in making the Greeks loathe the members of the Latin Church like dogs, and in rendering the union of the two Churches impossible. The Crusaders, as Innocent had likewise foretold, had seized an empire which they could not defend.[20] Their expedition had broken up the great machine of Roman government which had been working steadily and, in the main, well for nearly a thousand years. It had done irreparable mischief unaccompanied by any compensatory good. In the course of two generations, the barons who had taken part in the capture had died, and though among those who, at the bidding of successive popes and of St. Louis, replaced them there must have been many actuated by worthy motives, none among them have left any evidence whatever of statesmanship or of those qualities which have enabled nations to conciliate or to assimilate the people whom they have conquered. In sixty years the peasants might have become content to acknowledge a change of rulers had they been allowed to till their fields in peace: the traders might have forgotten the hostility of their fathers if they had been permitted to exercise their industry in security; but the continued and ever increasing exactions of their masters forbade them to forget that they were under alien rulers. All that were worthy in the city had sought refuge elsewhere: the priests, the students with their priceless manuscripts, and the traders had escaped to Nicaea or to Trebizond. The oppressors had seen themselves deserted and the limits of the empire restricted almost to the boundaries of the city. The Latin empire, which had never been formidable, had become an object of contempt. When, however, its last emperor slunk away as a fugitive from his imperial city, he was hardly more contemptible than when he was present as a mendicant at the court of St. Louis or of Henry the Third. His empire deserves only to be remembered as a gigantic failure, a check to the progress of European civilisation, a mischievous episode, an abortion among states, born in sin, shapen in iniquity, and dying amid ignominy.

CHAPTER II

CONDITION OF AND DIFFICULTIES IN RECONSTRUCTING THE EMPIRE: DIFFICULTIES ARISING (A) FROM ATTEMPTS BY LATINS TO RECOVER THE EMPIRE, (B) FROM CATALAN GRAND COMPANY.

Condition of capital on Baldwin’s flight.

When Constantinople was captured by the Crusaders and Venetians it was adorned with the accumulated wealth of centuries and decorated with art treasures for which not only Greece but the whole Roman Empire had been ransacked. When the city was recaptured by the Greeks it was a desolation. Houses, churches, and monasteries were in ruins; whole quarters were deserted. Heaps of rubbish marked where extensive fires had consumed houses which no one cared to rebuild. The imperial palace itself was in so disorderly and filthy a condition that it was some time before it could be occupied. In place of a large population of the most educated and highly civilised people in Europe, was a miserably small number of Greeks who had been reduced to poverty with a number of foreign and principally French colonists. While the foreign captors had plundered the city and carried off the bronze horses of Lysippus and innumerable other objects of art and value to Western Europe, they and their successors during the fifty-eight years of occupation had, in their contemptuous ignorance of the art of a conquered people, destroyed probably more than had been taken away as plunder.

The Queen City, which during many centuries had preserved her inviolability and had largely for that reason become the treasure-house of the empire and even of a large part of the Western world, had lost her reputation as a place of safety. Amid the devastation in Egypt, in Syria, and in Asia Minor, marked and mainly caused by the advances of the Saracens and Seljukian Turks, by the struggles of the Crusaders, and the destruction of the ancient civilisations of Eastern Asia Minor occasioned by the westward movements of Asiatic hordes, the merchant had known only of one city where his merchandise was safe and where he could trade in security.

Loss of its commerce.

The stream of commerce between the East and the West which had flowed through the Bosporus had been diverted into other channels, and the great emboloi and warehouses were lying empty or in ruins. Tana or the Azof, which had been the starting-point of a great caravan route through Bokhara, Samarcand, and Balkh, now no longer contributed largely to the commerce of Constantinople. Such of its trade as was not sent overland to Western Europe was held by the Venetians, and at a somewhat later period by the Genoese or other Italians, and scarcely contributed at all to the wealth of the capital. The Danube became during the thirteenth century the highway between the Black and the North Seas. The city which had been the great centre for the collection and distribution of the furs, the hides, the caviare and dried fish, the honey, wax, and other produce which the Russian merchants collected and stored for the use of the West, was now studiously avoided. The Western traders who had met those from Novgorod, Tchernigov, and Kief at Constantinople now found their way to the mouth of the Dnieper and arranged for the transit of their goods so as to avoid the pirates whom the Latin rulers of Constantinople were unable to suppress, or the exactions levied upon their merchandise if they came within the power of the ancient capital. Trade which had come to Constantinople along the ancient roads through Asia Minor had either ceased to exist or had been diverted into other channels. The confidence arising from a sense of security which through a long series of years had attracted commerce could not be restored and in fact was never regained. The loss of her trade took from Constantinople the only external source of revenue. The restored empire had thus to depend almost exclusively upon the contributions which it could levy upon the long harassed and impoverished peoples who recognised its rule.

The recapture of the capital, though an epoch-marking event, was only one step towards the restoration of the empire. It never really was restored. It never recovered the commanding position which it had occupied during even the worst periods of its history since Constantine. Its existence from 1261 to its capture by the Turks in 1453 is one long struggle.

Difficulties of restored empire.

The capital had been a centre which had kept well in touch with even the remote corners of the empire. In it had been the seat of government, the highest law courts presided over by the ablest jurists, the continuators of the work of Justinian, whose labour had formulated the law of all continental Europe. There also was the centre of the theological and religious life of the empire and the seat of the administration. Unhappily, during the sixty years of Latin rule the whole framework of this administration had been broken up. A new plan of government had to be devised. The new officials of the emperors were called upon to govern without rules, without experience, and without traditions. The forms of provincial and municipal government were hardly remembered, and there were no men trained in affairs to breathe life into them.

The influences at work in the capital had bound the empire together, but they had been exercised through local administrations. The result now was that the government became centralised: that is, that matters which previously would have been dealt with in the provinces by men with local knowledge had to be dealt with in the capital by men who were necessarily under many disadvantages. The effort of its rulers after the city was recaptured was not merely to restore to it the territory which had acknowledged its sway, but to administer good government directly from its capital.

Unfortunately, the desolation wrought in Constantinople was reproduced throughout every portion of what had been the empire before the Latin conquest. The country had been everywhere impoverished and the population diminished by successive raids of Crusaders or pretenders.

From foreign states.

Nor were the external difficulties of the restored empire less alarming. When Michael the Eighth entered the recaptured city he found anarchy throughout his European territory and neighbouring states eager to enlarge their boundaries at his expense. The Bulgarians were a formidable power, whose dominions were not divided from his own by any natural boundary. The Serbians had utilised the period of the Latin occupation to gather strength and were rising once again to importance. The crusading families who had obtained fiefs in Greece and the southern portion of Macedonia still retained their independence. Genoese and Venetians, while struggling against each other for the favour of the emperor, were each on the alert to obtain territory as well as trading privileges at his expense.

From hostility towards Roman Church.

One of the most serious evils inflicted on the empire by the Latin occupation was the fierce antagonism it had created in the Orthodox Church towards that of the elder Rome. We have seen that Innocent had foreseen this result, but even he, great statesman though he was, could hardly have anticipated that the hatred aroused would be of so long a duration. When the city had been captured a Latin patriarch had been appointed, the union of the Churches had been forced upon clergy and people, and the Church, which had always considered itself the equal if not the superior of Rome, was relegated to a position of inferiority. All attempts at reunion were henceforward regarded not merely from the point of view of religion, but from that of patriotism. Union was part of the heritage of bondage. Union meant voluntary submission to the foreign Church which had been able to impose its rule during two generations. Union, therefore, in the minds of a majority of both clergy and laity had to be resisted as a badge of slavery.

Though the Latin empire had perished, there still remained a Latin emperor or pretender, and he and his descendants, with the support of successive popes and aided by adventurers from France, Italy, and Spain, made many and constant attempts to regain the position which had been lost. For upwards of a century after the city’s recapture there was a general scramble by the European neighbours of the empire and Western powers for adjacent territory. The dominions of the emperor were large and sparsely populated, and offered an irresistible temptation to neighbouring states. More formidable, however, than all other enemies were the Turks. Though they had been attacked in the rear and were for a while rent by internal dissensions, they were steadily increasing: adding constantly by conquests to the territory over which their emirs ruled, and increasing in numbers by the never-failing stream of immigrants and born warriors coming into Asia Minor from Central Asia.

From Michael’s usurpation.

Among the first difficulties encountered in the reconstruction of the empire must be noted that arising from the irregularity of Michael’s own position. It is worthy of note, not merely as a difficulty, but as showing the independent spirit of the Orthodox Church. The reader will have ample evidence of the inflexibility of its resistance on questions of dogma, but the very commencement of the reign of Michael illustrates how it was prepared to make a vigorous stand even against the deliverer of the empire on the simple ground of righteousness. We have seen that Michael had no legal claim to the throne. The de jure heir was John, a child of eight years when his father, Theodore Lascaris, died. His guardians were Michael, who had been made Grand Duke, and Arsenius the Patriarch. When a year afterwards, in 1261, the city was recaptured, it was expected by some persons of influence that Michael would either simply act as regent or associate John with him as co-emperor as soon as he became of age. Michael, however, in the same year, blinded the boy, so as to render him incapable of ascending the throne.[21] Arsenius the Patriarch, as soon as the cruel deed became known, called a meeting of the bishops and boldly pronounced against the emperor a formal sentence of excommunication. None of the bishops opposed. They did not attempt to depose him. One can only conjecture why they hesitated. Possibly it was because they considered it expedient that he should remain on the throne, or it may be that they regarded such a step as beyond their jurisdiction. The emperor was alarmed, feared the consequences of excommunication among the troops, but feared probably still more the spiritual penalties which would follow the sentence. He preferred, says Pachymer,[22] to die rather than to live burdened with the anathemas of the Church. He sought out friends of the patriarch and begged them to use all their influence to have the penalties removed. He urged that penance should be imposed, and professed himself ready to undergo any which might be deemed necessary to atone for his fault. The patriarch replied that, even if he were threatened with death, he would never remove the excommunication. The emperor went himself to visit Arsenius, and in the conversation asked whether it was his wish that he should abdicate, unbuckling his sword as he did so. When, however, the patriarch stretched out his hand to receive it, the emperor put it back. The patriarch remained firm. The emperor complained bitterly to his friends of the conduct of Arsenius, and threatened that, as his own Church would not grant him absolution, he would have recourse to the pope, who would be more conciliatory. Years passed and Arsenius constantly refused to give way. Every means thought of by the emperor of conciliating him had failed, and he at length determined to have him deposed. But threats and promises were equally unavailable. He had called together the bishops on several occasions and complained that it was impossible for him to govern the country unless he was relieved of so heavy a burden.[23] On the last of these occasions he claimed that by the law of the Church every Christian had a right to absolution on doing penance, and he asked whether such laws were to be construed less favourably for princes than for other sinners. He submitted that the patriarch had treated him not only unjustly but illegally, and concluded by inviting the bishops to depose Arsenius.

Once more he sent to ask the patriarch whether or not he would grant absolution, and once more Arsenius refused. Upon this, as the bishops would not consent to declare that he was not justified in maintaining the anathema, the emperor had Articles of Accusation drawn against him. The charges were not altogether of a trivial character. He accused him of having shortened the prayer for the emperor in matins; of having ordered the omission of the Trisagion; of having conversed in a friendly manner with the sultan of the Seljukian Turks; of having allowed him and other Mahometan companions to bathe in a bath belonging to the Church, where there were crosses; of having ordered a monk to administer the Sacrament to the sultan’s children, although he was not certain that they had been baptised.

An assembly of bishops was convoked to examine the charges. The patriarch replied by objecting to the meeting of the court in the palace, refused to appear, and promised to send his answer to the charges in writing. Pachymer recounts in some detail how the emperor endeavoured to obtain absolution by a trick, and how Arsenius on discovering it asked him if he thought he could deceive God. The emperor in reply insisted that some of the charges should be pressed on to hearing and obtained a majority of votes condemning the patriarch.[24]

The patriarch was thereupon exiled.

His successor, Germanus, removed the anathema, but doubts arose in the emperor’s mind whether the removal was valid. After a few months Germanus was persuaded by the emperor to retire, and in his place the nominee of Michael, a certain Joseph, was named. The new patriarch was a courtier, and probably knew that the principal reason for his election was that absolution might be effectively and publicly given. The emperor allowed Joseph a month within which to consider the best means of granting him absolution, and then all was arranged. On the great feast of Candlemas, February 2, 1267, there was a notable function in Hagia Sophia for the removal of the anathema. The ceremony was a long and solemn one, the patriarch and the bishops, and probably the emperor and his suite, having had to pass the whole night in the church. The great church was crowded with worshippers or spectators. When the liturgy was completed the emperor, who had thus far remained standing surrounded by his guards and senators, drew near the Holy Gates[25] behind which stood the bishops. Then, uncovered, he prostrated himself to the ground at the feet of the patriarch, publicly confessed his sin, and humbly demanded pardon. While he was thus prostrate, the patriarch, and after him each of the bishops, read the formula by which he was absolved from the crime committed against the young emperor. When all had thus given absolution, the emperor rose, was admitted to Holy Communion, and, says Pachymer, henceforward treated John with every kindness. The point, however, to be noted is that even the emperor, strong-willed usurper as he was, was not merely afraid of the terrors of the Church, but found it extremely difficult to bend it to his will so as to obtain the removal of its sentence for an unjust act, although there were many obvious advantages to the state in complying with the emperor’s wish.

Difficulties arising from attempts by Latins to recover the Empire.

From the first year of his accession Michael the Eighth set himself the task of diverting from the empire the attacks of Western states. It was not to be expected that Baldwin and the statesmen of the West would settle down resignedly to the loss of a Latin empire. During many years their attempts to regain the city constituted the most pressing danger to the empire and contributed more than any other cause during Michael’s reign to render it unable to hold its own against the encroachments of the Turks. To Michael, as to all other statesmen in Europe, the representative of the West was the pope. To satisfy the pope was to appease Western Europe, to divert attacks from the empire, and to cause aid to be sent against the Moslems. But the pope, on the accession of Michael, was doubly offended: first, because the Latin empire had been overthrown, and second, because the prospect of union between the two Churches was put back. Several years had to pass and many struggles had to be borne before the pontiffs reconciled themselves to the final disappearance of that Latin empire the foundation of which the great statesman Pope Innocent the Third had dreaded.

Attempts at reconciliation with Roman Church.

Michael, while resisting all attacks made or favoured by the pope, saw the desirability of being reconciled with him so as, if possible, to induce him not to lend his support to the efforts of Baldwin to recover the city. With this object he never lost an opportunity, even at the cost of alienating the sympathies of his own people and being denounced by his own ecclesiastics, of endeavouring to gain the pontifical favour by attempting to bring about the Union of the Churches.

It is remarkable that from his accession until the end of his reign these attempts fill a part of all contemporary histories quite disproportionate to what at first sight appears their importance. It is even more remarkable that during the whole period between the capture of the city by Michael and the Moslem siege in 1453 the dominant question of interest was that of the Union of the Churches. The fact that the representative of Western Europe was the sovereign pontiff accounts to a great extent, though not altogether, for the prominent part played by the religious question in nearly all the negotiations between the later emperors and the West. Not even the constant and almost unceasing struggle with the Turks occupies so much attention as do the negotiations with Rome, the embassies, the Councils, and the ever-varying tentatives to bring the two Churches into reconciliation. No true conception of the life of the empire can be formed unless it is realised how completely its citizens were occupied with these semi-religious, semi-political questions. On one side the popes were almost constant in their attempts, now to compel the Eastern Church to come in, now to persuade it; on the other, the emperors, while fully cognisant of the importance of diverting Western attacks and, at a later period, of receiving aid against the common enemy of Christendom, had constantly to meet with the dogged and unceasing opposition and bitter hostility of the great mass of their subjects to purchasing help at the price of union with the Latin Church.

A struggle began immediately on the accession of Michael and soon became a curiously complicated strife. The pope in 1262 proclaimed a Crusade against him and against the Genoese, who still remained allied with him. The pontiff characterised Michael as a usurper and a schismatic, and granted the same indulgences to those who took up arms or contributed to the expenses of the expedition against him as to those who fought for the deliverance of the Holy Land. He urged St. Louis to collect tithes for the same purpose.[26] Michael, on the other hand, while preparing to resist invasion and strengthening the city walls, increasing his fleet, and raising new levies, yet sought to satisfy the pope by offering to do his utmost to bring about the Union of the Churches. Possibly owing to the emperor’s representations, Urban the Fourth countermanded the proposed expedition, diverting it against the Tartars who were then invading Palestine. He sent friars to Constantinople to exhort the emperor to carry out his proposal for reunion. His successor, Clement, was, however, a man of a different spirit and replied to the promises of Michael that they were only fair words intended to prevent him from aiding the dethroned Baldwin. While Michael had undoubtedly this object in view, he seems to have been sincere in his desire for Union. One of his objections to the patriarch Arsenius was that he would have nothing to do with the Latins. The Greek priests clamoured to such an extent against the patriarch who succeeded Arsenius, because he was believed to be willing to follow the emperor’s example in working for Union, that he was compelled to resign.

As time went on, the Venetians, whose influence in the city had fallen with the Latin empire, began to lose hope of seeing Baldwin re-established on the throne, and in 1267 sent to make peace with Michael. Gregory the Tenth threatened the doge with anathema if he even made a truce with him. The emperor endeavoured, though in vain, to appease the wrath of the pope by obtaining the intervention of Louis of France. Gregory, whom Michael had congratulated on his accession upon the death of Clement, was more conciliatory. He sent legates to the capital to treat once more on Union. Pachymer gives a vivid account of the negotiations which followed, an account from which it is difficult to doubt the sincerity of the emperor’s wish for reconciliation or the persistence of the opposition which he had to encounter. He states[27] that the emperor followed the example of John Ducas of Nicaea, that he sent many embassies to Rome, and that his real object was to obtain from the popes protection for the Greeks. Gregory assured him that no time was so favourable as the present for putting an end to the Greek schism. The emperor on his side did his utmost to persuade the patriarch and the bishops to aid him. The Latin delegates themselves were men of piety who showed every possible respect for the Greek rite. They were invited to discuss the differences between the dogmas of the two Churches. In their interviews with the bishops they claimed that the Filioque clause which constituted the great point of discussion was a divine mystery which was impenetrable, that while the difference between the Latin formula which declared that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son was not really at variance with the Greek that He proceeded from the Father by the Son, they ought to be content with the reasons which the Latins adduced for inserting it in the Creed. The bishops met these observations with a rugged non possumus. Their Creed was what had been consecrated by the usage of centuries. It was dangerous for any one Church to add to the Symbols even words which were not contrary to the Catholic faith. The bishops openly declared that, whatever the threats of the emperor might be, they would hold to the ancient formula.

News of an expedition to restore the Latin empire came pouring in, and the emperor determined to have his own way and to conciliate the pope. In an assembly in which the patriarch, bishops, and other ecclesiastics took part he spoke at great length in favour of reconciliation. The patriarch appointed Veccus, a man famous for his eloquence and learning, to reply to him. His reply is summed up by Pachymer: ‘There are heretics who are so called. There are some who are not heretics and are not so called. There are some who are called but are not heretics, and lastly there are others who are not called but are heretics, and it is in this latter class that the Latins must be placed.’

The emperor dismissed the assembly and was violently angry against Veccus, whom he accused of having acted with bad faith. Having failed in substantiating a formal charge, he arbitrarily sent him prisoner to the Tower of Anemas. While in prison, however, Michael furnished him with books which favoured the Latin case, and, says Pachymer, as he was a man of singular simplicity and of sincere love for the truth he became disposed towards reconciliation. He was released. The emperor pressed the patriarch and the bishops to find a modus vivendi with the Latins, and was now aided by Veccus, who had discovered that the sole fault of the Western Church was that it had solely upon its own authority added the obnoxious clause to the Creed. The patriarch and the bishops, however, were obdurate. By dint of persecution, by requiring them to pay arrears of rent for their monasteries and houses, he sought to force them to come to an arrangement. He called another assembly and finally succeeded in obtaining a declaration from them with which for the time he was forced to be content. In this very assembly, however, one of the aged bishops besought him not to press the Union, assuring him that even if the dignitaries signed no one else would accept it. The Arsenites and the Josephites, as the followers of the two ex-patriarchs who would not comply with the emperor’s wish were called, had with them the great mass of the citizens, and the aged dignitary was probably right when he stated[28] that if the emperor persisted, civil war would be the consequence.

Meantime the emperor, who could not or would not understand this bitter opposition to his desires, was aware that negotiations were going on between Charles of Anjou, king of Sicily (whose daughter had married the son and heir of Baldwin, the ex-emperor), and the Venetians for an attack upon his territories and the restoration of the Latin empire. Michael sent costly presents to the pope, and once more declared his determination to bring about Union, and asked his indulgence. Once more he sent delegates to the pope, who in return ordered Charles to facilitate their passage through his dominions and to postpone hostilities. The emperor insisted on Union, and in the following year, 1274, he and some of the bishops sent other delegates to Lyons to complete a formal reconciliation. On their arrival in that city they pronounced during the celebration of Mass the obnoxious clause. Gregory the Tenth declared that they had come voluntarily to submit themselves, to make the Roman confession of faith, and to recognise his supremacy. After George Acropolitas had read the emperor’s profession, and the envoy of the bishops theirs, a Te Deum was sung and the Union proclaimed. But whatever the pope or the emperor might wish or even do, the Eastern Church was not prepared to ratify a reconciliation. The patriarch still refused to yield. He had gone as far as he intended to go and declared that he would abdicate if the Union were accomplished. Thereupon he was deposed by the synod. Immediately afterwards the pope’s name was introduced into the public prayers, but with the result that the breach between those in favour of Union and those opposed to it became wider. The emperor pertinaciously persevered, and with his consent Veccus, who had now gone over to the emperor’s side, was named patriarch.

On the return of the delegates from Lyons, preaching friars were sent to Constantinople by Innocent the Fifth. On his death, in 1276, his successor, John the Twenty-fifth, sent nuncios, who were received with great honour, and Michael, in return, together with the patriarch sent delegates to confirm the Union. They arrived, however, in Rome after the death of John. In 1277 Michael and his son Andronicus, the heir to the throne, who was now of full age, formally confirmed the Union of the Churches. Thereupon there began a struggle with those who opposed it. The patriarch Veccus excommunicated its adversaries, mentioning the leaders by name. John the Bastard, the despot of Epirus, who was the foremost, at once called a Council and submitted the question to its decision. This Council anathematised alike the emperor, the pope, and the patriarch. Some of the nobles and officers sent against John openly declared for him as the defender of the ancient faith.

The new pope was convinced that the emperor was doing his utmost to bring about Union, and in consequence refused permission to Charles of Anjou to send an expedition against him. When his nuncios arrived, in 1279, in the capital, they learned that, in spite of the emperor and the patriarch, the clergy and people would not accept Union. The nuncios were taken to the prisons and saw nobles, even of the emperor’s own family, as well as many others, loaded with chains on account of their opposition on this question to the imperial wish. They were convinced of the emperor’s good faith, but no definite statement could be obtained from the bishops. Non possumus remained the expression of their attitude.

When, however, Martin the Fourth learned from the nuncios what was the position in Constantinople, he seems either to have lost all hope of bringing about Union by persuasion, or possibly to have thought that his predecessor had been deceived by Michael; for in 1281 he excommunicated the emperor and all the Greeks as schismatics. By so doing he became free to assist in organising the long-threatened expedition for the restoration of the Latin empire. Michael in reply simply contented himself with the omission of the pope’s name from the prayers.

Martin followed up his excommunication by joining in a league with Charles of Anjou and the Venetians in order to replace Michael by Philip, the son of Baldwin the Latin emperor. In the following year the pope in renewing his excommunication gave the emperor until May 1, 1282, within which to submit himself under pain of being deposed.

Michael’s position was desperate. He had alienated his own subjects; he had risked his throne, imprisoned his nearest relations, had tried bribes, intrigues, flattery, and force. Worse than all, he had been forced to allow the various hordes of Moslems in Asia Minor—Turks, Kurds, and Tartars—to encroach on the territory of the empire at a time when, if he had had a free hand, a serious check might have been put to their progress. All was in vain. His failure with the popes was now as complete as with his own people. The threat of an expedition under Charles of Anjou was so serious that he sent thirty thousand ounces of gold to Peter of Aragon to assist him in defeating Charles and diverting his expedition from the Bosporus. He became irritable and melancholy at the obstinacy of his subjects and punished them with unreasonable severity and great cruelty.[29]

Death of Michael VIII.The pope’s expedition was, however, put an end to by the Sicilian Vespers in March 1282. The forces of Charles of Anjou found other employment than an expedition to Constantinople. In December of the same year Michael died.[30]

Reign of Andronicus II., 1282–1328.

During the long reign of Andronicus the Second (1282 to 1328), the son and successor of Michael, the party which the latter had headed in favour of Union with Rome fell to pieces. The older emperor’s disappointment probably hastened his death. Veccus the patriarch within a few months was forced to withdraw to a monastery. His writings in favour of Union were burned. He was put upon his trial before a synod and saved himself by signing a declaration against further attempts at reconciliation with the Latin Church. The ex-patriarch Joseph was brought back in triumph, and a persecution at once commenced of those who had favoured the emperor’s plans.

This hostility to the Unionist party was contemporaneous with a short period during which the fear of an attack to reestablish a Latin empire had lessened. The attention of the pontiff was directed towards sending aid to the king of Armenia, who had been for years making a brave defence against his Moslem assailants. But the attempt at Union and the re-establishment of a Latin empire was not forgotten. In 1287 Nicholas the Fourth endeavoured to accomplish these objects while allowing the Greek emperor to remain on the throne. He favoured, and perhaps suggested, a marriage between Michael, the eldest son of Andronicus, and Catherine of Courtenay, the granddaughter of Baldwin. Her other grandfather, Charles of Anjou, king of Sicily, claimed the imperial throne on her behalf.[31] The proposal of marriage had much to recommend it to the emperor, because it appeared to be a means of putting an end to the attempts to regain the imperial throne by the deposed family. The arrangements were broken off because Andronicus would not agree to recognise the pope’s supremacy, without which the pontiff refused his consent. Considering the attitude of the Greek ecclesiastics, there can be little doubt that if the emperor had agreed to the pope’s demand the already strained relations between the Orthodox and the Roman parties would have become dangerous to the state, would have probably brought about civil war, and might have cost Andronicus his throne. The question after long negotiations was settled in 1295 by the marriage of Michael with the sister of the king of Armenia.

Popes favour project for reestablishing Latin empire.

The popes thereupon took a bolder course. They had seen the futility of the efforts to obtain Union by negotiation with the emperor, and now supported a series of attempts to recapture Constantinople and to place upon the throne a descendant of the last Latin emperor, Baldwin the Second. If the recapture could be accomplished, the Union so dear to Rome could be brought about by force.

In 1301 Catherine of Courtenay married Charles of Valois, brother of the king of France.[32] The marriage was a political one, its object being to give the hand of Catherine to a Western prince of sufficient standing to arouse an enthusiasm in all the West in favour of the restoration of the Latin empire. Charles at once entered into a treaty with the Venetians for the conquest of Constantinople, and arranged to recognise the assignment of certain portions of the empire which had already been made to other descendants of Baldwin. A Venetian was designated by the pope as Latin patriarch of Constantinople. Eighteen Venetian ships went to the capital, and were sufficiently powerful to force the emperor to grant trading concessions. Charles of Anjou and Frederic of Aragon bound themselves to aid in the attempts to recapture Constantinople.

It was in presence of this threatened attack, which appeared to be far the most serious which had been contemplated since the city’s recapture, that the emperor invited a certain Roger de Flor and his band of Spanish mercenaries, who came to be known as the Catalan Grand Company, to come to his aid.

Within the city itself great efforts were made, in presence of the common danger, to unite the theological factions. The patriarch, who had pronounced an anathema against the emperor, consented to withdraw it. The truce, however, between the ecclesiastics was unfortunately of short duration. As time passed, and the much-vaunted expedition did not present itself, the old rancours again showed themselves.

Indeed, the expedition to place Charles of Valois on the imperial throne made slow progress. In 1305 his brother, the king of France, gave it his support. Once more the pontiff invited the Venetians to follow the example of Dandolo and aid in the conquest of the city. It was not, however, till the end of 1306 that a treaty of alliance was made between them and Charles. The result which might have been anticipated followed when the news was received in the capital. The Latin monks, who up to this time had been tolerated within the city, were expelled, and the party in favour of Union almost entirely disappeared. Meantime the preparations for the expedition continued.

In 1308 its titular head, Charles of Valois, allied himself with the Servians. Charles himself was ready, but apparently not eager, for the enterprise. The Venetians desired speedy action; but the Western nobles only feebly responded to the pope’s demand, although it was supported by the king of France. Charles of Anjou was not ready. In the course of the next year Catherine of Courtenay died, and partly on account of her death, and probably also because he despaired of leading a successful enterprise, Charles of Valois abandoned the design of capturing Constantinople. He, however, transferred what he considered his rights to the throne to his son-in-law, Philip of Tarentum.

The Venetians resigned themselves to a position which would allow them once more to trade with the empire, and in 1310 concluded a truce with its ruler for ten years.

Philip now prepared to organise an attempt against Constantinople, and once more the pope, in 1313, weakened the position of the Latin party in Constantinople by calling upon Frederic, king of Sicily, to aid the new pretender. The king of France undertook to furnish five hundred men-at-arms, and money to pay them for a year, and called upon Louis of Burgundy to furnish another hundred. The undertaking, however, languished, and when Philip of France died, in 1314, no one, except Philip of Tarentum, seemed to have any further interest in it. He leagued himself with the king of Hungary in 1318, and two years later purchased certain rights in the principality of Achaia and what was still spoken of in the West as the kingdom of Thessalonica. But no favourable opportunity came to him, and in 1324 the doge of Venice notified the emperor that the princes of the West had no intention of attacking the imperial city. The notification turned out correct, for, until his dethronement, in 1328, Andronicus was no longer troubled with tidings of expeditions against Constantinople from Western Europe.

The Catalan Grand Company. Expedition Against Constantinople.

Meantime it is necessary to return to the invitation which Andronicus had given to Robert de Flor to come to his aid. This aid was intended nominally against the Turks, but really against the expedition which Charles of Valois was preparing, with the sanction of the pope and the help of the Venetians and of all men who would respond to the pope’s exhortation, to assist in restoring a Latin emperor to Constantinople. The invitation brought into the empire a band of auxiliaries from the West which, in its weakened condition, was almost as mischievous and ruinous to the empire as any expedition openly directed against its existence could have been. The evil inflicted upon the empire by the band of mercenaries invited for its defence was indeed so manifold that the story deserves telling with considerable detail.

As already stated, Philip, the son of Baldwin, the last Latin emperor, had married the daughter of Charles of Anjou, king of Sicily. Charles promised, in 1278, to send an expedition to Constantinople, but the pope, seeing the efforts which Michael continued to make for Union, refused his sanction. Two years later, however, a new pope entered into a treaty with Venice and Naples to attack the empire, and Charles undertook to send eight hundred cavaliers to claim what he considered the rights of his granddaughter. A body of troops was sent across the Adriatic to assist the Albanians, who were fighting against the emperor. The invaders were utterly defeated, and the empire was saved from the attack of Charles by the disorganisation produced by the Sicilian Vespers in 1283, a massacre in which 8,000 Frenchmen perished.

In the twenty years that followed, a body of Spanish mercenaries played a prominent part in the Sicilian troubles. Spain had been engaged for three hundred years in a long and almost continuous struggle against the Moors. Fathers had dedicated their sons in successive generations to the defence of Christianity and their country, and the result was already to have formed a nation of brave and disciplined soldiers, such as Western Europe had not seen since the best days of the Roman empire. Peter of Aragon had supplied a band of such soldiers to fight against France in Sicily and Calabria.

In 1301 the marriage of Catherine of Courtenay, daughter of Philip, and granddaughter of Baldwin the Second, with Charles of Valois, son of Philip the Second of France, and brother of the king, put an end to the troubles in Sicily with the French.

Now that, in 1302, peace was concluded in Sicily, their employers were anxious to be rid of the now useless mercenaries; for, though their courage, their recklessness of danger, and their prowess were indisputable, their lawlessness, their cruelty to the inhabitants of the country where they were encamped, and their insubordination, even to their own officers, were no less remarkable. Moreover, Frederic of Sicily was unable to pay them, and they had already commenced to pay themselves by general plunder. Unaccustomed to work, and used only to a life of rapine, they were ready to take service under any leader who appeared able to offer them good chances of pillage; but woe to the country to which they were sent, and to the cause which they promised to serve!

Among their leaders was a German named Robert Blum, whose name became changed or translated to Roger de Flor. He was a typical instance of the worst kind of soldier of fortune of the middle ages. He entered the order of the Templars, but was degraded because he betrayed the Christians in return for bribes from the Moslems. Then he turned pirate, and sought foreign service. The French refused to have anything to do with him. He had therefore gone over to the enemy, and the king of Sicily made him vice-admiral. He robbed for his master wherever he could find anything to steal. If he met an enemy, he took all he could carry away, without acknowledgment; if a friend, he took what he wanted, and gave acknowledgments of a very doubtful value, which were to be paid by the king of Sicily at the end of the war.

When the Sicilian war was over, the Grand Master of the Temple urged the pope to insist that Roger de Flor should be surrendered for punishment. Roger learned that such a demand was about to be made[33] and anticipated extradition by taking service with the Greek emperor, nominally to fight against the Turks, promising to bring with him a body of Spanish troops. The alarm of Andronicus at the report of the expedition of Charles of Valois against him was great. It looked as if all Western princes were about to enter upon a new crusade for the recapture of Constantinople. Hence he was prepared to welcome aid from any source.

In 1303 Roger de Flor arrived at Constantinople with a fleet of seven ships and eight thousand men, who are described by Pachymer as Catalans and Amogavares, the latter being adventurers from other parts of Spain than Catalonia. This band was soon spoken of as the Catalan Grand Company.

Roger was accompanied by Fernand Ximenes, who was also at the head of a large body of retainers who were desirous of taking service under the emperor. The reputation which Roger de Flor bore as the most daring of soldiers caused him to be eagerly welcomed by the emperor, who conferred upon him the title of Grand Duke and hoped much from his services. His reckless followers knew only one virtue—that of courage. Their first adventure showed, however, the spirit of lawlessness which existed in his army. The emperor had borrowed a large sum of money from the Genoese which Roger alleged that he had employed in raising new troops. When the Genoese applied to Roger for payment it was refused. The emperor sent a high official to arrange the difficulty, and the Catalans cut him in pieces. The Grand Company were at this time encamped outside the city walls in the neighbourhood of the present Eyoub. They seized the monastery of St. Cosmas and held it as a fortress. The Genoese erected barricades on the shore of the Golden Horn, and a struggle took place between the two in which many were killed on both sides.

Shortly afterwards the Spaniards were induced to cross the Marmora to Cyzicus, and a quarrel ensued between them and the Alans, one of the first of many Asiatic tribes who had pushed their way into the valley of the Danube, and a band of whom had been taken into the imperial service. The son of the leader of the Alans was killed, and his soldiers vowed vengeance. Roger de Flor then pushed on to attack the Turks. He was seen at his best when he met the enemy. He raised the siege of Philadelphia and defeated the various armies sent against him, killing, it is said, thirty thousand Turks and driving the rest of them out of Lydia and Caria. But he was almost as terrible to the Christians whom he had been sent to protect as he was to the Moslems. His progress through Asia Minor was marked by constant plunder. Pachymer says that those subjects of the emperor who fell into his hands after they had escaped from the enemy had thrown themselves out of the smoke into the fire. Those who gave up their property had difficulty in saving their lives. The remark is made on the occasion of Roger’s visit to Philadelphia, which he pillaged as if it had been an enemy’s city. He treated Pergamos and Ephesus in the same way. His ships plundered the islands of Chios, Lemnos, and Mytilene. The inhabitants of Magnesia resisted his exactions, and he therefore laid siege to the city and did his utmost to capture it. It was in vain that the emperor sent orders to raise the siege and to attack Turks and not Christians. The Alans who were with him urged obedience and withdrew when Roger refused. It was only after a long siege that he recognised that he was unable to capture the city and abandoned the attempt. In retreating he plundered the Greeks as remorselessly as he did the Turks against whom he had been sent. ‘Notwithstanding,’ says Pachymer, ‘that the emperor had prepared all that was needed for the support of Roger and his army, the peasants were robbed of everything they possessed and were left without either seed-corn or oxen for ploughing. At the news of his coming many abandoned their farms and took refuge in the islands. He appropriated to his own use the tithes and other taxes which should have gone to the emperor.’ Indeed there appears no reason to doubt the assertion that this adventurer had now formed the intention of carving out a kingdom for himself. It is possible indeed, and is in conformity with his conduct, that from the first he had entertained such an intention. From this time until his death he became the enemy of the emperor whom he had come to aid.

When the Greek troops heard of the outrages on their countrymen they asked the emperor to be led against the Catalans instead of against the Turks. But the emperor himself was unwilling to break with Roger and his army, or even that they should be distant from the city so long as he expected the arrival of the great expedition intended for its capture. He still also cherished the hope that the services of the Grand Company might be employed against the Turks in case the expedition from the West did not arrive. While he was hesitating, Berenger of Catalonia arrived with new reinforcements in nine large vessels, and soon he and Roger presented themselves at the imperial court. Roger urged the emperor to subsidise Berenger, and in reply to the question why the latter had come answered, because he had heard of the liberality of the emperor’s payments. In a formal assembly he reproached Roger with the lawlessness of his troops, with the injury he had done to the Greeks, and especially with the burden of expenses he had cast upon the empire. Finally, however, he consented to receive Berenger and to assign to him a portion of the tithes for the maintenance of the Catalan armies.

When, shortly after, a deputation of Catalans was sent to the emperor demanding further pay, he replied by emptying in their presence sacks full of letters complaining of exactions by the Spaniards. In spite of these complaints and of the exactions and lawlessness of the Grand Company, he appears to have been unwilling to lose their services. He recounted the money payments he had made, but promised to give them more than they had asked if only they would at once return to attack the enemy in Asia. The deputation knew the emperor’s anxiety and desire to keep his own troops for the defence of the city against the expedition of Charles, and therefore refused to return without further payment. All argument was useless. Berenger was dissatisfied with the offers made to him personally and sailed away from the Golden Horn during the night for Gallipoli, which city was held by his countrymen. Roger pleaded in vain for more money to be paid at once. It was not there to be given. The tension between the Spaniards and the emperor became so great that the latter sent orders to his son Michael, encamped near Apros, to be ready against an attack by the Catalans.

Some months later, in 1307, Roger went to Adrianople under pretence that he wished to pay his respects to Michael at Apros and to take leave of him, as he declared he was about to quit the country. Pachymer, probably reflecting the popular belief, states that his real object was to learn the number of men in the Greek army and what were his chances in an attack upon it. Michael received him in a friendly manner, but the Alans in his service had not forgotten the vengeance they had vowed against him for having at Cyzicus killed the son of George their leader, and as Roger was entering the audience chamber he was stabbed by George Assassination of Roger de Flor.himself. Upon news of the assassination, the Catalans fled to Gallipoli, putting men, women, and children to the sword during their flight. Michael followed them and laid siege to the city, but Berenger persuaded the Emperor Andronicus to grant the besieged time and so arranged matters that the Spaniards were able to take ship and escape. They made their way once more across the Marmora to Cyzicus, but the inhabitants stoutly resisted, and the besiegers left for Perinthos, where they killed every man they could lay hands on. When the news reached the capital the inhabitants demanded vengeance on those of the Catalans who had remained there and, taking the law into their own hands, burned their houses. The patriarch, who had in vain attempted to check their fury, with difficulty saved his own life.

Outrages by the Grand Company.

The Spaniards were now at open war with the Greeks, and even Andronicus would have been glad to get rid of them. They attacked the seafaring population at Rhegium, now called Buyuk Chekmeji, burnt several men, impaled their children, and massacred those whom they had employed to carry off their booty. Their progress was checked for a while by the arrival of sixteen Genoese ships. As the Genoese had had trouble with the emperor, the Spaniards were in hopes of their aid, but the former sent secretly into the city from their fleet to learn the truth about the situation, heard the Greek version of the differences, and then declared for the emperor. The Genoese and imperial fleets attacked the Spaniards, who were led by Berenger, defeated them, captured their leader, and subsequently sent him prisoner to Italy.

Gallipoli was, however, still in the hands of the Catalans Turkish auxiliaries enter Europe.and an attempt to buy the aid of the Genoese to relieve it failed. Michael endeavoured to capture it. Both armies had secured Turkish allies. A decisive battle was fought near Apros, in which the Spaniards were successful. They followed up their victory by ravaging the neighbouring country, and in this they were joined by a band of Turks who had been invited to join them and by Alans who had quitted the imperial service.

The country between Constantinople and Adrianople was laid waste, all the inhabitants abandoning their houses to save their lives. The garrison of Catalans in Gallipoli in like manner ravaged the western part of Thrace; men were killed, women and children, flocks and herds were carried off. The women and children were taken to be sold to, or to be held as slaves by, the Turks.

The emperor, unable either to employ or to defeat the Spaniards and being hard pressed by the Turks in Asia Minor, endeavoured now to buy them off. An embassy was sent to them, but the conditions demanded were impossible, and thereupon the scenes of violence were renewed. Bands of Spaniards and their Turkish allies made incursions in the country behind Constantinople as far as Chorlou, laid siege to Rodosto, and killed all whom they found outside the walls. Those who could escape took refuge in Constantinople. Pachymer states that the Spaniards claimed to have killed five thousand of these peasants. Adrianople was besieged and, though it was not captured, the army of the Alans, who had once more joined the Greeks, was defeated, the vineyards around the city were rooted up and the fertile country converted for the time into a desert. When the emperor again made an effort to buy the Spaniards off he found their terms higher than ever, on account of their success. They not only demanded heavy payments for services never performed, but that the Emperor should pay ransom for the towns, the fortresses and prisoners captured by them.

The two divisions of Spaniards, one under Rocafert, who had been appointed to succeed Roger, and the other under Fernand Ximenes, were now acting separately, and while the negotiations were going on the former set out for Constantinople. They were, however, resisted by the imperial troops and compelled to retire. They continued under Rocafert to devastate Thrace. As they themselves received no food from abroad nor tilled the ground in Thrace and had already devastated the country, they were at length forced to retreat from want of provisions to Gallipoli.

Dissension in the Grand Company.

Happily, serious divisions arose between the Spaniards themselves. A large number of them refused to recognise Rocafert who had been named leader with the consent of Ximenes. On the other hand, Rocafert declared that as he had conquered the country he had no intention of abandoning the leadership. The influence of Guy, the nephew of the king of Sicily, who had brought with him another detachment of foreign freebooters in seven large ships and who counted upon utilising the Grand Company for the re-establishment of the Latin empire in his own family, was unable to settle the differences between the two parties, and they were soon at open war with each other. On one side was Rocafert, on the other were Guy, Ximenes, and Berenger, who had been released by the Genoese.

In view of an attack by the imperial troops and of the necessity of finding provisions, a peace was patched up between the two Spanish factions, and they started in a body to attack Salonica and plunder Macedonia. The six thousand Spaniards were accompanied by three thousand Turks. Rocafert’s division led. The van of the second division reached the camping ground of the first before it had been completely evacuated, and the two armies at once began fighting each other. Berenger hastened to put an end to the quarrel and was killed by Rocafert’s brother. Ximenes was captured. Rocafert was now the sole leader. He attempted to capture Salonica but failed. He then retreated in order to return to Thrace: but his position was growing weak. He appealed to a French admiral, who had arrived in the northern Aegean as the precursor of the expected great expedition from the West, for his intervention with the Spaniards who distrusted him, but the admiral seized and carried him off to the king of Naples, where he was thrown into prison and starved to death.

When the partisans of Rocafert in the Grand Company learned of what they regarded as the treachery of the French admiral, they murdered their officers under the belief that they were parties to the capture. They elected new leaders, marched into Thessaly, and took service with the descendants of the crusading barons who had carved out territories for themselves in that province and in Greece. It is unnecessary to follow them there. It is sufficient to say that the Greek army had dogged their movements, had fought well, had Its end, 1315.defeated them in many engagements, and that what may be regarded as the last struggle with the Grand Company took place in 1315.

Disastrous results from attempts to restore empire.

The devastation caused by the attempts from the West to re-establish the Latin empire culminating in the disorders caused by the Grand Company was such that the empire’s chances of recovering its strength were enormously diminished. The fall of the city in 1204 had been followed by the destruction of the organisation in Asia Minor for resisting the progress of Asiatic hordes towards Europe. One may conjecture that the great statesman Innocent the Third, who had foreseen some of the evil effects which would inevitably follow from the success of Dandolo and Montferrat, would have realised the necessity of aiding Constantinople in making such resistance. Unfortunately, Innocent’s successors were less statesmanlike. Instead of seeking to strengthen the Greeks in Constantinople by condemning the wild lawlessness of the Spaniards, their dominating idea was to restore the Latin empire, so as to force the members of the Orthodox Church to enter into Union. The results of all their attempts were altogether disastrous. The empire was weakened on every side. Its component parts had always been loosely bound together. Long distances in ages of badly constructed roads had prevented the development of loyalty as a bond of union. The traditional attachment to the autocrat at Constantinople had been shaken by the change of dynasties. Peasants living far away from the capital, who had no other desire than to till their lands in peace, were ready to accept the rule of a Serbian or a Bulgarian, of a powerful rebel against the empire or even of the Turks themselves, provided they were undisturbed. Those who were in the neighbourhood of the capital were in worse plight. The development of trade and commerce had been hindered. Thrace had become a desolation. During five years the Spaniards had lived on the country and only deserted it when there remained nothing further to plunder. The thriving communities extending along all the northern shores of the Marmora from the city to Gallipoli were impoverished or destroyed. Flourishing vineyards and oliveyards were abandoned. The fishing and shipping communities ceased to find occupation. Great numbers of the inhabitants were exterminated.

The richest city in Europe had become poverty-stricken. The coinage, which for centuries had served as the standard for the whole Western world, had been debased in order to find money to pay foreign mercenaries. Worse than all, while the empire had been employed in resisting these invaders from the West, the Bulgarians, Serbians, and, far more important than either, the Turks had gained strength and had enormously enlarged their territories.

To the Catalan Grand Company must be attributed the introduction of the first body of Turks into Europe. It might have been expected that the traditions of Spaniards would have influenced them sufficiently to have refused Moslem aid, that Western Europe would have raised the cry of treason to Christendom when it learned that bands of Turks had been engaged to fight against a Christian though a schismatic emperor; but the filibusters who had been invited into the empire for the defence of Christendom thought only of plunder, and Western Europe was either indifferent or thought there was little to choose between schismatics and Moslems.

The attempts to restore the Latin empire had failed, but the emperor and his people were in presence of a much more formidable enemy than the West had furnished. The Asiatic hordes whom the city had successfully resisted for a century and a half before its capture were now constantly encroaching on imperial territory. As these hordes were destined to be the destroyers of the Empire, I propose next briefly to notice their origin and history.

CHAPTER III

THE TURKS: THEIR ENTRY INTO ASIA MINOR: NOT AT FIRST EXCLUSIVELY MAHOMETAN: THEIR CHARACTERISTICS: OTHMAN FOUNDS A DYNASTY: PROGRESS OF MOSLEMS IN EUROPE AND ASIA MINOR: CAPTURE OF BROUSA IN 1326.

The great central plains of Asia, stretching almost without an interruption from the Caspian Sea to China, have during all historical time produced hardy races of nomad warriors. On the three occasions in their history when they have found skilful leaders, their progress as conquerors has been epoch-marking. Twice their progress has been westward. Mounted warriors and hordes of foot soldiers made their way towards the Euxine, some going to the north and others to the south of that sea. The first of these waves of Genghis Khan moves westward.population thus moving westward was that led by Genghis Khan, a Mongol belonging to the smallest of the four great divisions of the Tartar[34] race. His followers were, however, mainly Turks, the most widely spread of these divisions.[35] He had established his rule before 1227, the year in which he died, from the Sea of Japan to the Dnieper. He and his immediate successors ravaged a greater extent of territory than any other conqueror. Like Alexander the Great, he and they advanced with regularly organised armies, with apparently no other object than conquest and plunder. Their victories facilitated the migration of his own subjects into the newly conquered territories and hastened the departure of large bodies of men, who fled before the terrible massacres which marked the progress of their ever victorious armies.

A branch of the same great horde, under the leadership of Subutai, destroyed Moscow and Kiev in a campaign conducted with striking ability and ending in 1239, and settled in Russia. Poland, aided by French Knights Templars and the Grand Master of the Teutonic order, had put forward all her strength to resist the same division of the all-devouring army, while another wing attacked the Hungarians with half a million of men.

Their entry into Europe was in such numbers and the excesses of cruelty committed by them were so alarming that their advance everywhere created terror. The Tartars—coming from Tartarus, as some of the Crusaders believed—were so little known, says Pachymer, that many declared they had the heads of dogs and fed upon human flesh.[36] Seen nearer, they were less formidable as individuals, though infernal, terrible, and invincible as an army.

In 1258, the year before the recapture of Constantinople and the destruction of the Latin empire by the Greeks, Houlagou, the grandson of Genghis Khan, captured Bagdad, and deposed the last of the Bagdad caliphs. He extended his conquests over Mesopotamia and Syria to the Mediterranean. Damascus and Aleppo were sacked. Houlagou sought to ally himself with the Crusaders in order to overthrow the Saracens and the sultan of Egypt.

The Seljukian Turks.

When Houlagou turned his attention to Asia Minor, he found among the Christian populations a division of the Turkish race known as Seljuks, whose sultan resided at Konia, and called himself sultan of Roum.[37] He attacked and inflicted injuries upon them from which they never recovered. It is difficult to state precisely what were the boundaries of the Seljuks and of other Moslem or partly Moslem peoples in Asia Minor and Syria, during the thirteenth century, and this difficulty arises from the fact that their boundaries were continually changing. The Saracens held certain places in Syria, but there was a Christian prince in Antioch; there were cities occupied by the western Knights Templars, a Christian prince in Caramania and a king of Lesser Armenia. There were Turcomans at Marash and in the hill country behind Trebizond, and Kurds invaded Cilicia in 1278. A large tract of country around Konia was ruled over by the Seljuks. No natural boundary marked the extent of territory occupied by any of these peoples or in Asia Minor by the Roman emperor.

It is certain, however, that the entry of the armies of the followers of Genghis Khan, continually renewed by the arrival of new hordes from Central Asia, changed the distribution of the peoples and spread terror everywhere at their approach. Even at Nicaea, within sixty miles of Constantinople, the rumour in 1267 of the arrival of a Tartar army caused a terrible panic.[38] Two years later the Tartars attacked the Saracens in Syria, whither they had been invited for such purpose by the Christians, defeated them, and carried off a rich booty. For a while they were a terror alike to Moslems and Christians. As from the followers of Genghis Khan there ultimately came the race of Ottoman Turks who conquered New Rome and its empire, it is desirable to consider them somewhat carefully.

Characteristics of Asiatic invaders.

It is important to note that the first hordes who came in with the great conqueror and those who followed for at least a century were not Mahometan fanatics. Some of their leading generals were indeed Christians. Genghis himself had married a Christian wife. Mango Khan (1251–1259), one of his successors, is described by Maundeville, who visited Palestine in 1322, as ‘a good Christian man, who was baptized and gave letters of perpetual peace to all Christian men,’ and sent to win the Holy Land to put it into the hands of the Christians and destroy the law of Mahomet.[39] His great successor, Houlagou, was the husband of the granddaughter of the famous Prester (or Presbyter) John, the king of a Christian state in Central Asia, visited by Marco Polo.[40] The army led by Houlagou contained Mahometans, but it contained also Christians, Buddhists, and professors of other creeds. Central Asiatics had up to the time which concerns us not developed any violent religious animosity. Christians, Moslems, and Buddhists dwelt together in harmony.

Not fanatical.

It is probably correct to say that the races of the great plains of Asia have never been religiously disposed. Mr. Schuyler, who was a keen observer, remarked, less than a generation ago, that the people which had been recently conquered by Russia in Central Asia were classified as to their religion with extreme difficulty. A few declared themselves Christians. The remainder were indiscriminately inscribed as Moslems, but very few among them really knew anything about the religion of Islam and did not even consider themselves as Moslems.[41] The fierce fanaticism which the early followers of Mahomet displayed and which led them within a century after his death to make the most wonderful and enduring series of conquests which have ever been accomplished by a people whose sole bond of union was religion was not shown by the followers of Genghis. They preferred to fight the Saracens and to aid the Christians rather than to do the reverse. We shall see that when, a century and a half later, another great invasion from Central Asia took place, its leader Timour the Lame’s greatest activity was directed against the Mahometans, and that he demanded from them the restoration to the Christian emperor of the cities which they had captured.

It is true that in the interval between the two invasions under Genghis Khan and Timour, the Turkish invaders, who had remained in Asia Minor, caught much of the fanatical spirit. But there are many indications which show that this spirit was of slow growth.[42] As their struggles with neighbouring and Christian peoples compacted them into a warlike nation, they all came to accept the religion of Mahomet, and as they became better acquainted with the tenets of the most war-inspiring religion in the world, they held to them tenaciously, and developed the hostility towards Christians which the spiritual pride of believers who consider themselves the elect of heaven, and their religion outside the range of discussion, always engenders. But during the development of their power in Asia Minor, many years passed before they isolated themselves, and were isolated from the Christians, on account of their religion. Their princes sought marriage with the princesses of the imperial and other noble Christian families. We obtain light only incidentally upon the relations between the professors of the two creeds at the period shortly after the recapture of Constantinople by the Greeks. But such as we do obtain confirms the statement that the Asiatic settlers took their religion very easily. In 1267 certain charges were brought, as we have seen,[43] by the Emperor Michael against the patriarch, which give us a glimpse of interest. The relation is made by Pachymer, who was himself one of the clerks of the court. The patriarch was accused, not only of having conversed familiarly with a Turkish sultan, of having allowed him and his companions to use the bath attached to the church, around which were the Christian symbols, but of having ordered a monk to administer the Sacrament to the children of the sultan without having been assured that they were baptized. He was charged, further, with having said the Litanies with the sultan and his followers. The patriarch replied to the two first with contempt; if the Turks had used the church bath, no harm had been done. As to giving Communion, he declared that he had been duly certified that the children had been baptized.[44] Witnesses asserted that it was true that the accused had said the Litanies with the sultan, and that he had allowed him to sit by his side during celebration, but added that they did not know whether the sultan was a Christian or not! Other persons were found who declared that he was not a Christian. The sultan, hearing of the proceedings, sent to ask, either in jest or seriously, that the emperor would give him the sacred relics which he wore round his neck, and offered to eat ham as a proof that he was not a Moslem. Pachymer adds that in thus professing his readiness to worship the relics and to eat the forbidden flesh, the sultan caused the proceedings against the patriarch to fail. As it appeared that there were eminent ecclesiastics in the court who really believed that the sultan of the Turks was a Christian, those who desired the condemnation of the patriarch tried to turn the question by suggesting that, whether he was Christian or not, it was certain that members of his suite, who had been present when Communion was administered, were unbelievers.[45] That the sultan should have been present at a Christian service at all, that his children should have been allowed by him or his Moslem followers to communicate, and that his children were baptized, or believed to be baptized, show that, whether they were Christians or not, the fanatical spirit which animated the Moslems of an earlier period, or the Turks a century later, was not present among these representatives of the Asiatics who had entered the country as followers of Genghis or his immediate successors.

Permanent characteristics of Turkish race.

The characteristics of the Turk have remained singularly like those possessed by his ancestors. The Turkish soldiers who had come in with Genghis, and the hordes of those who followed during a century, had been for the most part wandering shepherds, and the nomadic instinct still continued, and still continues, in the race, notwithstanding that there has been a considerable admixture of other races. The tent of their leader was larger than that of his followers, and its entrance came, in the course of time, to be known as The Lofty Gate, or The Sublime Porte. The shepherd warriors, who were destined to destroy the empire of the New Rome, had few of the desires, habits, or aspirations of civilisation. Commerce, except in its simplest form of barter, was and has always been almost unknown to them. Among the Turks of a later period the disinclination to change the traditional habits of the race is to some extent due to the indifference or contempt felt for trading communities by a race of conquerors; though, perhaps, incapacity to hold their own as traders against the peoples they subdued has had a larger share in producing their aversion to commerce. The furniture of their huts is even yet only such as would have been found in their felt tents. They have no desire to possess the ordinary utensils which Europeans of every race consider either as the necessaries of life or as adding largely to its comfort. They have never taken kindly to agriculture. Surrounded by fertile land, the Turk will till only enough to supply him with the barest necessaries of life, and the traveller in the interior of Asia Minor is to-day, as he has been for centuries, astonished to see that Turkish peasants who, as the owners of large tracts of fertile land, capable of producing almost any fruits or vegetables, and of supporting even a large number of cattle, may be accounted wealthy, are yet content to live upon fare and amid surroundings at which the ordinary European peasant, and even the Turks’ own neighbours of different races, would express their dissatisfaction.[46]

We get few glimpses of the domestic life and manners of the Turks during the first two centuries of their emigration into Asia Minor. But such as we gain show them, in peace and war, to possess the same characteristics as distinguish their descendants at the present day. When not under the influence of their religion they are peaceful, kindly disposed, and truthful. In the hospitality of the tent or hut they are irreproachable. They possess little, but that little is at the disposal of the traveller. Judged by Western ideas, they are lazy, and lacking in intelligence. In the ordinary business of life they are singularly destitute of energy. They have learned, like their fathers, to be content with the poverty amid which they were born. They have not sufficient capacity to desire knowledge nor aspiration to make them discontented. If, as I believe the evidence to indicate, the ancestors of the present Moslems in Asia Minor were during the thirteenth and half of the fourteenth century but little under the influence of religious fanaticism, their easy-going, dolce far niente character may well be taken as sufficient explanation of the passing over into Turkish territories of many Christians who desired to escape from the heavy taxation under the rule of the Christian emperors.

Constant stream of immigrants from Central Asia.

In describing the movement of the Asiatic races into Asia Minor and Europe, but especially of the advance of the Turkish hordes who came after the death of Genghis, two facts ought never to be lost sight of. The first and most important is that from a period even preceding the recapture of the city in 1259 down to one within the memory of living men there was a constant stream of immigrants from Central Asia westward. The numbers of the immigrant settlers were thus steadily being increased. Probably at no time has the Turkish race been as prolific as the Christian races of Asia Minor, and the latter would long ago have outnumbered the conquering race had the stream of immigration been dammed. The second fact to be noted is that a constant settlement of the conquered lands was being All conquests followed by settlement.made, a settlement which, although possibly as nomadic and uncertain as that of the Kurds and Yuruks of to-day, was yet a real occupation of the country at the expense of Christian populations, who were either massacred or dispersed. It is in the nomadic character of the newcomers, in the wasteful character of their occupation of the country, in the substitution of sheep and cattle industry for agriculture, in their want of intelligence, and in their expulsion and persecution of the Christian population, that the explanation is to be found of the destruction and, in some cases, complete abandonment of cities still populous and flourishing when they were captured: cities like Ephesus, Nicaea, and a hundred others, whose ruins meet the traveller everywhere throughout Asia Minor. The Turk has at all times been a nomad and a destroyer. He has never been a capable trader or even agriculturist.

When the armies led by Genghis Khan and his successors retired, armies which were well disciplined and well led, many of his soldiers or their followers remained and took service with the Seljukian Turks. Others formed separate communities. One of the chiefs who thus settled in Asia Minor was Ertogrul or Orthogrul, the father of Osman or Othman, the founder of the Ottoman dynasty.

During Ertogrul’s life, the Seljuks had been greatly harassed by the newer invaders. Pachymer states that on the arrival of the Tartars the sultan of Konia (the ancient Iconium) was surrounded by enemies, and that he had sought the protection of the emperor. He had invited also the aid of the sultan of Egypt, known to the Crusaders as the sultan of Babylon, against the Tartars, by whom he was hard pressed. Three or four years after this sultan’s death in 1277, Ertogrul died. His son Osman or Othman by his courage and ability gave his followers the leading place among the Turks in Asia Minor and firmly established the dynasty named after him. He began his career by coming to an agreement with some of the other Moslem chiefs to divide the territory occupied by the Seljuks and themselves in Asia Minor into eight portions. Thereupon the combined forces of the old and new Turks commenced a series of attacks upon neighbouring territory. During the next twenty years, their success was almost unchecked. In 1282, they laid siege to Tralles (the present Aidin), and, though opposed by the son of Michael the Eighth, were able to capture and destroy the city.[47] A short time afterwards they obtained a fleet and took into their service a large number of sailors who had been discharged by the emperor from motives of economy. Twelve years later, Othman and Ali, chief of another Turkish band, pushed their raids northward and even crossed the river Sangarius and spread desolation throughout the Asiatic provinces of the Empire, before they could be driven back. Two years later, they laid waste the country between the Black Sea and Rhodes.

Othman, first Ottoman Sultan, 1299–1327.

In 1299, Othman took the title of Sultan. In 1302, he and other Turkish leaders inflicted a serious defeat upon the imperial troops and a band of Alans on the river Sangarius near Sabanja. The defeat was shortly afterwards turned into a rout and the subjects of the empire with the Alans were driven to seek shelter in Ismidt, the ancient Nicomedia. The confines of the empire were narrowed, and Othman established himself near Brousa and the neighbouring city of Nicaea, and came to an arrangement for division of the newly acquired territory with the other Turkish chiefs.

Alarmed for a while at the news that the emperor was to receive help from the West, the Turks soon renewed their attacks upon imperial territory, and the Greek population almost everywhere fled before them. They attacked the wealthy cities on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor and occupied several of the islands of the Archipelago. Pachymer states[48] that they had inundated the country north of Pergamus so completely that no Roman dared entertain the hope of keeping his property, and all fled before the flood of invaders: some to the city of Pergamus, others to Adramyttium or Lampsacus, while others again crossed the Dardanelles into Europe.

The reign of Othman is contemporaneous with one of the great periods of immigration from Central Asia. The numbers of the Turks were yearly augmented by such hordes that the Greek writers continually use metaphors derived from the torrent, from floods and inundations, to describe their overwhelming force.

Entry of Turks into Europe, 1306–7.

It was partly in order to resist this flood of invasion that the Catalan Grand Company had been invited to aid the emperor, but after having won several victories over the Turks, the lawlessness of the Spaniards forced the emperor to recognise that his Western auxiliaries were of no value for checking the progress of the enemy. The Christians of Asia Minor flocked to the capital to avoid the Company almost as much as to escape from the soldiers of Othman. Worse than all, to these Christians of Spain must be ascribed the introduction of the Turks into Europe. At the invitation of the Company, a band of them, as we have seen, crossed the Dardanelles to aid in attacking the empire which Roger and his Catalans had come to defend. About the same time, another band of Turks landed in Greece for the purpose of pillage. These invasions are epoch-marking, since from this time (1306–7), Europe was never entirely free from the presence of Turks.

Their progress in Asia Minor.

Their great progress was, however, more marked in Asia Minor. In 1308, one of the divisions of Turks not under Othman captured Ephesus, which surrendered to avoid massacre. The city still retained something of its ancient glory. Its famous church of St. John, from the ruins of which the traveller may still gain an idea of its former magnificence, was plundered, and its immense wealth in precious vessels and deposits became the prey of the victors. Many of the inhabitants were cruelly massacred, notwithstanding their submission, and the remainder were driven away as fugitives to find the means of living where they could or to starve. Other places under the rule of Constantinople were attacked, and though many victories were gained—for the imperial troops fought well—the Turks were constantly gaining cities and territory from the Christians. It was in vain that the emperor entered into league with bands of Tartars or with other Turks to attack the armies of Othman, for the forces of this skilful leader were too numerous to be subdued. Brousa had to purchase peace from him. Othman failed, however, to capture Rhodes, which was bravely defended by the military knights from the West, and a monk named Hilarion at the head of the imperial troops gained some successes. The imperial troops succeeded also in 1310 in defeating a certain Mahomet whose dominions were in Caramania. But even with the aid of a band of Tartars who had allied themselves with the emperor, who was in command of twenty thousand of the imperial troops, little could be done to check Othman’s steady progress.

Meantime in Europe, on the north shore of the Marmora, the band of Turks who had been associated with the Grand Company, but who did not acknowledge the rule of Othman, besieged Ganos and laid waste the surrounding country. The troubles which arose a few years later between the Emperor Andronicus the Second and young Andronicus, enabled the Turks steadily to encroach on the empire in Asia Minor, and their introduction as partisans in the civil war which went on in 1322 familiarised them and probably Othman himself with inroads into the country between Constantinople and Gallipoli.[49]

So far we have been concerned almost exclusively with those portions of the Asiatic army and the hordes which followed it which came westward to the south of the Black Sea. But it must be noted that the body of invaders of the same race who had come westward to the north of that sea, and who had attacked Russia, Poland, and Hungary, had constantly received additions to their numbers. This northern division was possibly more numerous than the Turks in Asia Minor. As early as 1265, a certain Timour, the ruler of Tartars who were in occupation of territory on the Volga, had sent twenty thousand men to aid the Bulgarians against the Empire. Bulgarians and Tartars together had occupied all the passes into Thrace, and the emperor had saved himself with difficulty. In 1284, ten thousand Tartars came southward into Thrace from the great host which were in Hungary. In 1300, the Turks who had entered the Crimea were driven out by another horde of Tartars who had occupied South Russia. The number and strength of these invaders continued constantly to increase. Their power indeed remained firmly established in South Russia until long after the conquest of Constantinople. They had no special sympathy with the Ottoman Turks, and were ready, as were the Alans, to fight either for the emperor or against him. Cantacuzenus mentions that in 1324 one hundred and twenty thousand of them entered Thrace and were beaten in detail by his friend the young Andronicus.

Capture of Brousa, 1326.

Weakened by having to meet this huge northern army, for huge it must have been, although the number of the invaders is probably exaggerated,[50] the young emperor was forbidden or was unable to go to the relief of Brousa when, two years afterwards, Othman laid siege to that city. Its surrender in 1326 is a convenient mark of the progress made by the Ottoman Turks.

Their great leader, Othman, died in the following year.

CHAPTER IV

DYNASTIC STRUGGLES IN EMPIRE: APPEALS TO POPE FOR AID; REIGNS OF ANDRONICUS THE SECOND, JOHN CANTACUZENUS AND JOHN; REPEATED FAILURE OF EFFORTS BY POPES TO INDUCE WESTERN POWERS TO ASSIST IN CHECKING MOSLEM ADVANCE.

When, in 1320, the Emperor Michael the Ninth died, the empire was already threatened by large and ever-increasing armies of Asiatics, both on the north and on the south. Those on the south were steadily being incorporated into the group ruled over by Othman.

The sixty years which had passed since the expulsion of the Latins had nevertheless done something, though not much, towards restoring the empire. Territory had been recovered. The walls of the capital had been repaired. The population had begun once again to look to the emperor at Constantinople as their natural ruler.[51]

Distressed condition of the empire.

On the other hand the ravages of war had been terrible. The population of those portions of the Balkan peninsula which were under the rule of the empire had greatly diminished. Thousands had been murdered by the Catalan Grand Company and their allies during their successive devastations of the country. Land had gone out of cultivation. In Asia Minor many of the Christian inhabitants had voluntarily submitted to the Turks to save their lives or to obtain protection. The demand for soldiers to serve the national cause against the many enemies who attacked the empire, and the demands for money which was needed for the conduct of the defence, induced the peasants both in Europe and Asia to escape into neighbouring territories where such demands were less rigorous. The wealth of the empire had largely diminished. The great need of the country was peace. Peace and security for life and property were absolutely essential if the empire were to be restored to prosperity. The people were wearied of strife, and there are indications which point to a general indifference as to what became of the empire as a state. The peasant wanted to till his land and reap his harvest in peace, the nobles to gather their revenues in peace. The means of communication between the provinces and the capital were too few to enable the mass of the people to take an interest in what was passing in the capital. They had come to regard it not so much as their protector but as the place from whence emanated new exactions, new demands for military service, and general harassment.

Unfortunately, the dynastic struggles which were destined to come strengthened this desire for peace, increased the indifference as to who was their emperor, and still further weakened the empire.

The greatest misfortune which the struggle with the Spaniards had brought about was the introduction of the Turk into Europe. We have seen that each side, Orthodox emperors and Catholic invaders, had allied themselves with bands of Turks and other barbarians, who had overrun Thrace and Macedonia. The destruction of the population, the raiding of their cattle, and the laying waste of fertile lands offered at once a facility and an incentive to the Moslem invaders to remain in Europe. Indeed, from the first entry of the Turks bands of nomads of that race began to occupy portions of the desolated country.

For the next hundred and thirty years—that is, until the Moslem conquest—the history of the empire is, so far as its rulers are concerned, largely one of confused struggle during which no man of conspicuous ability came to the front. To account for this confusion it should be noted that there was no rule of succession to the throne which was regarded as inviolable, and that, even among the nobles and in the Church, public opinion had little force except upon religious questions. A few men in the city took an interest in political questions; the great mass of the peasants took none. Representative institutions did not exist. The reigning emperor, though in theory absolute, was largely controlled by irresponsible and unorganised nobles. When a majority of them agreed to support a rival candidate they were sufficiently powerful to have their own way. The result was that dynastic struggles where each rival for the throne was supported by a party of patricians were frequent, and these struggles contributed very largely to weaken the empire.

Quarrels between Andronicus the Second and his grandson.

On the death of the co-Emperor Michael the Ninth, his father, Andronicus the Second, still occupied the imperial throne. Being now well advanced in years, he desired, on the death of his son, to break through the engagement by which Andronicus, his grandson, the son of Michael, should become with him joint occupant of the throne. The relations between the two men were far from friendly. While insisting that his grandson should present himself at the court, the old emperor refused for four months to speak to him. The grandson, usually known as Young Andronicus, was supported by a powerful party and had no intention of abandoning what he considered to be his rights. In order to get rid of him, the emperor formally brought a charge of treason and sought to put him upon his trial, but Cantacuzenus, the most distinguished noble, and his other friends rallied to the palace in such force that the elder Andronicus was alarmed. In presence of the patriarch and the nobles on whom he could rely, the emperor accused his grandson of continual disobedience, and proceeded as if to pass sentence. ‘This is why’ he began—but here Young Andronicus stopped him, asking to be allowed to defend himself. The scene as described by his great friend and most powerful supporter, Cantacuzenus, is a striking one. The young man is seated on the chair and in the place assigned to accused persons. He admits amid the silence of the court that he has disobeyed his grandfather in such trivial matters as going out hunting, attending races, and the like, but claimed that he had done nothing against the emperor’s interest, and asked to be sent before independent judges. The old man tried to shout him down, and roared out that he believed he was not even a Christian. Young Andronicus replied with spirit and claimed that he should be tried. ‘If you have made up your mind to condemn me without hearing, do with me what you like and at once. If not, judge me according to law.’ That was a reply which still appealed to all men in the city of Justinian.

When the emperor had shouted at his grandson, the friends of Young Andronicus, who had been near but in hiding, believing he was condemned, came forward for his defence. A courtier warned the emperor of their presence, telling him, says Cantacuzenus, that they were ready to do all that was necessary for his grandson’s safety. Thereupon the emperor retired and sent word that he would pardon him. A reconciliation was patched up, but it was only temporary. After the lapse of a few weeks grandfather and grandson were again openly hostile to each other. The young man was forbidden to enter the capital, where he had many supporters, and the two emperors remained enemies for years. In 1326 two officers in command of the towers above the Romanus Gate enabled him to effect a surprise. The gates were opened and the elder Andronicus became virtually a prisoner until his death. The contest between them had lasted upwards of six years.

In 1328 the elder emperor abdicated and entered a monastery, and two years afterwards the burial of a monk named Anthony marked the end of the life of Andronicus the Second. Andronicus the Third was now the sole occupant of the throne, which he held until his death in 1341.

Reign of Andronicus the Third, 1328–1341.

During these thirteen years (1328–1341) war was constantly being waged against the Turks. The emperor himself was always in delicate health, and died at the age of forty-five. He continued his great friendship until his death with Cantacuzenus, and invited him, even as early as 1329, to occupy the throne as co-emperor, and the offer was renewed.[52] Cantacuzenus, notwithstanding that he was pressed to accept by the only noble near him in rank, Apocaukus, who afterwards became his great enemy, refused. The emperor, however, continued to treat him as a friend, and was constantly accompanied by him on his various expeditions.

Appeals for aid to the pope.

Like every emperor from the recapture of Constantinople down to 1453, Andronicus turned his attention to the West and sought to obtain aid against the Turks, even at the price of coercing his people into a Union with Rome. The Turks had invaded Macedonia and attacked Euboea and Athens. As the southern portion of the Balkan peninsula was still ruled in part by the descendants of the crusading barons and by the remnant of the Catalans, there was reason to believe that the pope would be ready to arouse the West against the common enemy of Christendom. Accordingly the emperor took advantage of the passage of Dominican missionaries through Constantinople from Tartary to convey to Pope John the Twenty-second his desire for Union and his request for aid. The pope replied by sending preachers and by urging the emperor to do all he could to accomplish his part. His successor in 1335 grew alarmed at the attacks made by the Turks by sea on various places in the Mediterranean, and finding that the Catalans had seized Athens from Gautier de Brienne, who held it as his duchy, he excommunicated them. He invited Andronicus to join the king of France and Naples in a Crusade against the Turks which the Venetians and the Genoese had promised also to aid. The emperor gladly gave his consent and sent a number of ships, but the needs of Cyprus, which was being attacked by the Saracens, were decided to be more pressing than those of the empire, and the Crusade was not proceeded with. Andronicus in 1339 sent Barlaam, the author of many controversial works, to the pope, at that time in Avignon. On his arrival he pointed out that the Turks had seized the seats of four metropolitan sees, and he suggested that as a condition of the Union of the Churches the Turks should be expelled from Asia Minor. The pope recognised the desirability of such an attempt as keenly as many of his successors, but saw that the condition was impossible.

Death of Andronicus the Third. Reign of John (1341 to 1391), Cantacuzenus (1342 to 1355.)

Andronicus on his death, in 1341, left a son, John Palaeologus, who was then nine years old. His mother, Anne of Savoy, was a woman of ability and energy. Cantacuzenus was associated with her as regent. He held the dignity of Grand Domestic, and in the later years of his life wrote a clear and able statement of the history of his own times. He had been, as we have seen, the intimate friend of Andronicus and his great supporter when the grandfather of the same name endeavoured to exclude him from the throne. He had been named by his friend and patron as the guardian of John, but the widow of the emperor was from the first jealous of her co-guardian and never worked sympathetically with him. He tells us that from the death of Andronicus he was constantly urged to occupy the imperial throne and that he as constantly refused. He undoubtedly possessed the confidence of a large majority of the nobles. There was a general recognition that, in the existing state of the empire, it was unwise to leave the government in the hands of a boy and of a foreign princess. Ducas expressly states that Cantacuzenus ultimately allowed himself to be proclaimed emperor because his friends urged him to take the reins of government from the hands of a woman and a child and because the empress and the senate were unjust and unfair to him.[53] In 1342 he was proclaimed joint emperor under the style of John Cantacuzenus.

During the thirteen years of his reign, which lasted till 1355, the history of the empire is in the main one of civil war and consequent decadence. Distrusted by Anne, the mother of the boy emperor, his difficulties were increased by the turbulent character of his ward, whom his mother could not, or would not, restrain from wilfulness which led him even in early youth into debauchery. The result was that during the whole of Cantacuzenus’s reign there was a constant strain between the elder emperor, on the one side, and the empress and her son on the other. Cantacuzenus states that Apocaukus, the noble next to himself in rank, had suggested to him that he should assume imperial authority and that he had rejected the suggestion as treason to the empress and her sons and to the memory of the emperor. But Apocaukus, with the support of the patriarch, soon formed a party, nominally for the empress and her son, really against Cantacuzenus. The patriarch himself claimed to be the guardian of the infant John, excommunicated those who abandoned him, and even Cantacuzenus himself.[54] The account given by the emperor of his reluctance to accept the crown might be regarded with distrust if Nicephorus Gregoras, who after he had become a bitter enemy wrote his history of the events of the reign, were not on this point in substantial accord with Cantacuzenus. Even before his accession the troops, according to Gregoras, declared that they would recognise no other regent than the Grand Domestic, and proposed to make the oath of fidelity to the young emperor and his mother conditional upon the recognition of Cantacuzenus as tutor of John and regent of the empire.

In presence of the opposition of Anne, Cantacuzenus offered to resign, but the empress desired that he should remain, probably fearing revolt in case his resolution was carried into effect. Among much which is doubtful, it is clear that he had the confidence of the army and that the empress had not.

Civil war soon broke out between the new emperor and the partisans of John and his mother. Apocaukus was named governor of Constantinople by Anne and excited the population against Cantacuzenus apparently with the intention of having himself elected emperor by a popular vote.

Meantime the rivalries of these two nobles allowed foreign enemies to make progress. Two divisions of Turks were ravaging the empire in one direction, while a band of Tartars who had crossed the Danube had advanced as far as Didymotica. Stephen of Serbia had already marched southwards and was rapidly consolidating the strength of his country. In 1344 the discontent at the civil war had become so great that the nobles insisted that the empress Anne and Apocaukus should send an embassy to Cantacuzenus to make peace. When this attempt failed, Apocaukus, according to Cantacuzenus, endeavoured on two occasions to have him assassinated. Driven thus to extremities, the emperor promised his daughter Theodora in marriage to the Turk Orchan, the son and successor of Othman, who thereupon sent an army of five thousand men to assist in the struggle against the partisans of John.

Apocaukus had thrown into the prisons of Constantinople the partisans of his rival and had ordered them to be treated with unusual barbarity. He was then incautious enough to venture into prison among them. They fell upon him, slew him, stuck his head upon a spike, and showed it to the citizens. Next day, however, at the instigation of his widow, the prisoners were all killed.

Marriage of Sultan Orchan and the daughter of the emperor.

In 1346 Orchan was married to Theodora, the daughter of Cantacuzenus. Her father had stipulated that she should be allowed to remain a Christian, and the agreement was not violated. She was delivered at Selymbria to the escort of Turkish cavalry which had been commissioned to accompany her. Amid much pomp and ceremony, with music, torches, and display of various kinds, the first imperial princess of the Orthodox Church was handed over to the eunuchs of her barbarous lord. We may pass over the father’s excuses for consenting to this marriage, which doubtless appeared to many of his subjects a gross act of wickedness. All that they amount to is that he believed the necessities of state required him to obtain the aid of Orchan and that it could not be obtained in any other way.

Marriage of the emperor John to another daughter of Cantacuzenus.

The next year, a much more promising marriage took place, namely that of his daughter Helen with the young emperor John Palaeologus. It had been brought about in the following manner. Cantacuzenus had approached the capital, and though the empress had been warned that he was in the neighbourhood, she had taken no precaution to prevent his being admitted, believing, indeed, that the story of his being near was an invention to gain time so as to prevent the condemnation of a new patriarch who was known to be a partisan of Cantacuzenus and was then on his trial before a Council of the Church. The friends of Cantacuzenus were in possession of the Golden Gate and opened it to him and his band of a thousand trusted followers. He marched in triumph to the Palace of Porphyrogenitus. The empress, as soon as she heard of the entry, shut herself up in the Palace at Blachern and called to her aid the Genoese of Galata. When the latter saw that the population were on the side of her rival, they refused to aid her. John advised his mother to treat, and after considerable hesitation she consented and articles of peace were agreed to. An amnesty was to be granted by both sides, and John was during ten years to permit Cantacuzenus to be the dominant ruler. Thereupon the latter proposed that his daughter Helen should become engaged to John, and, though the young man was unwilling, his mother accepted the arrangement. Helen was thirteen years old and her proposed husband fifteen.

Peace and prosperity appear to have been anticipated from the cessation of civil war which it was hoped this marriage would produce. Europe, if not, as Gibbon asserts, ‘completely evacuated by the Moslems of Asia,’[55] was yet at peace with the empire. Within its borders all parties were supposed to be reconciled, and at the church of Blachern (the bema of Hagia Sophia having been destroyed by an earthquake) a remarkable coronation service was held in May 1347. Two emperors, namely the young John Palaeologus and John Cantacuzenus, and three empresses—Helen, wife of the Palaeologus, Irene, wife of Cantacuzenus, and Anne of Savoy, the dowager—were crowned with unusually elaborate ceremonial. The bystanders, however, noted that the jewels were many of them false and the trappings of far less value than had previously been displayed on similar occasions.

Ducas notes that the young emperor, who had been forced to marry the daughter of Cantacuzenus, instead of taking part in the manly exercises of arms which were still practised by the youth of the empire, plunged into debauchery and soon disgusted his adherents by his drunkenness and by the depravity of his private life. The narrative of Gregoras declares that John complained bitterly of having been insulted by his father-in-law, and the statement is probably true that, seeing his debauchery, Cantacuzenus urged him to lead a better life and devote himself to duty.[56]

Pressed as he was for money in every direction, Cantacuzenus endeavoured to obtain it by a popular vote. The notice of the incident is almost unique in the later history of the empire and on that account merits attention. Cantacuzenus himself tells its history. Finding that the state had been greatly weakened by civil war, that the treasury was empty, the cities reduced to poverty by domestic divisions or by the invasions of the various foreign enemies who had ravaged the country, and his own private fortune expended, he determined to summon a meeting in Constantinople of the wealthy classes in order that they should contribute to the public necessities. He expressly states that he had no intention of making a levy by force. In the meeting thus called together there were representatives of all ranks—soldiers, shopkeepers, artisans, heads of monasteries, and priests. Cantacuzenus in addressing it declared that he had no desire to act against the Palaeologi but recognised that the civil war had exhausted the treasury, and promised that the money collected would be employed and his efforts directed against the attacks of Serbians, Bulgarians, and Turks. He added that it was not he who had sought the alliance of the Turks, though he had given his daughter in marriage to Orchan, but that the aid of these barbarians had been forced upon him by his enemies within the empire. The partisans of John had been the first to ask the Turks for assistance. They had delivered cities to the Turks, had paid them, and had made it necessary that he, in his own defence, should ask for their alliance. He concluded by urging the great assembly to consider in what manner means might be found of preserving the empire.[57]

The nobles returned answer that they recognised the necessity of contributing for the safety of the state, and advised that every person should give what was in his power. The emperor, believing that he had accomplished his purpose, then dismissed the assembly.

Very little result appears to have been produced. Nor does the voluntary taxation appear to have yielded any considerable sum. In the meeting itself there were many who were opposed to Cantacuzenus personally, and within a short period the animosity between the partisans of the two emperors became as rancorous as ever. Among the most violent of his own partisans was his son Matthew, who, under the belief that Anne, the empress-dowager, was conspiring against his father, boldly took possession of several cities.

Wearied out by constant struggle, Cantacuzenus states that he wished to abdicate and retire to a monastery, and that his wife approved of his design. His writings show that he felt great interest in the discussion of theological questions. The part which he himself took in several religious controversies, the anxiety that he underwent to have the excommunication against him annulled, first by the Patriarch John and afterwards, ‘for greater safety,’ by John’s successor,[58] Isidore, his negotiations with the pope for Union, and many other circumstances, show that the withdrawal to a monastery was a not unnatural development of his life.

While he was making preparations to carry his design into execution, news came of the progress of Stephen of Serbia, which forced him to postpone it. Salonica, ‘one of the eyes of the empire,’ was in danger of surrendering to Stephen. The partisans of the Palaeologi among the population of that city were numerous. The neighbouring country was, however, under the power of the great Serbian, and unless Stephen were checked without delay the city would be given over to him. The old emperor sent word to his followers to remain steadfast, promising that he would come to their relief. In order to do so, he took a step which is sometimes incorrectly treated as the first important introduction of the Turks into Europe.[59] He induced his son-in-law, Orchan, to send a body of twenty thousand cavalry, under his son Suliman, across the Dardanelles to march against Stephen. The emperor left the capital as soon as he had heard that the Turks had crossed the straits to co-operate with them, and took his co-emperor John, who was obnoxious to the Turks, with him. For some reason which is not clear, the Othman or Ottoman Turks withdrew after they had crossed the Maritza, but the two emperors with another body of Turks went to Salonica and put an end to any design to surrender it. This was in 1349.

The history of the empire during the next six years is a medley of incidents, due to the hostility between the two emperors. John refused to address his elder colleague as emperor, and even proposed to join Stephen of Serbia, whose power in the Balkan peninsula was now greater than that of any other ruler. The Bulgarian king, appealed to by Cantacuzenus to enter into alliance against Stephen, refused his co-operation, and shortly after joined the Venetians to attack the empire.

Genoese and Venetians.

Cantacuzenus asked for the aid of the Genoese, who joined him in order to resist the Venetians. The rivalry during this reign between the two republics of Venice and Genoa was great. Each was at the height of its power, and the commerce and dominions of the empire were the principal objects of their rivalry. A hundred and fifty years earlier there had been colonies of Amalfians, Pisans, Anconans, Ragusans, and even Germans, within the walls of the city. All these had disappeared,[60] and Genoa the Superb and Venice, Queen of the Seas, were the sole Italian competitors for domination in or a share of the empire. At the period with which we are concerned they were about equally matched in strength, and the two brave republics were constantly fighting the battles of their great duel in the waters of the Greek empire. Within a few months the Genoese were alternately the allies and the enemies of Cantacuzenus. In 1350 a fleet of fourteen Venetian galleys, and another of Catalans, prevented the Genoese from entering the Bosporus. Two years later another formidable fleet of Venetian galleys joined one of twenty-six Spaniards in order to attack the Genoese. After Pisani, the Venetian admiral, had rested his men for two days on the island of Prinkipo, he joined the imperial ships at Heptaskalion, and with a fleet of sixty-eight vessels attacked the Genoese. The fleet of the latter, numbering seventy ships, was at Chalcedon, and tried to intercept the enemy when they endeavoured to make their way to the Golden Horn. In a battle which was fought at the mouth of the Bosporus while a strong south wind was blowing with a heavy sea—a battle which continued all night—both sides lost heavily. Eighteen Genoese ships were sunk. Pisani withdrew to Therapia, with a loss of sixteen ships. Galata, held by the Genoese, was not attacked, on account of the prevalence of Black Death,[61] or possibly because he heard that seventy or eighty other galleys were on their way to aid the Genoese.

Immediately afterwards the Genoese joined with the Turks, and transported across the Bosporus a body of them to attack Constantinople. Cantacuzenus, in consequence, was obliged to make peace with his rivals in Galata by allowing them to include a large portion of additional territory within new walls,[62] as well as to take possession of Selymbria and Heraclia in Thrace. The Genoese thereupon once more became his allies. Orchan was ready to assist him, and again promised to send twenty thousand Turks to resist the party of John.

Once more Cantacuzenus endeavoured to come to terms with his colleague. The latter had also endeavoured to gain the aid of Orchan, but failed. John’s reply to the overture of his father-in-law was again to refuse to recognise that he had any right to the title of emperor. The followers of the rival emperors, Cantacuzeni and Palaeologi, were more bitter in their opposition than the leaders themselves, and the former in 1353 proclaimed Matthew, the son of Cantacuzenus, co-emperor with his father.

It is clear from the statement of Cantacuzenus himself that, as John grew older, his own party became weaker. The hopes of the people and of the nobles for a peaceful reign had been disappointed. Instead of having peace, the country had been disturbed by civil war. Serbia and Bulgaria had both recovered strength. The Turks had encroached on the imperial territories.

The emperor’s greatest offence was rightly considered to have been the employment of Turkish auxiliaries, and the permission granted to the captors to sell the captured Christians as slaves, or the inability to prevent them from doing so.[63] The patriarch Philotheus remonstrated with him on this account, and Cantacuzenus declares that he received the admonition as the voice of God, and promised to conform to it.[64] Probably because he recognised that his own popularity was waning, he had allowed his eldest son, Matthew, to be associated with him in the government, but though the son displayed great activity, and gathered round him a strong party, both he and his father were condemned by the popular judgment.

The account given by Cantacuzenus is that he was asked by the nobles to nominate his successor, that he deferred giving his answer, but went to consult the patriarch, who retired to a monastery and after a week sent word that he would not return to the court nor to his church unless the emperor would swear never to proclaim his son Matthew. Thereupon Cantacuzenus called together the senate, who declared for Matthew. Cantacuzenus protests that in the struggle going on between John, his son-in-law, and Matthew he was always neutral, but that as the nobles wanted the latter he consented to name him as his colleague and successor. Thereupon Matthew was allowed to wear the purple buskin and the other imperial insignia. His name, as well as that of his father and Anne, the mother of John, was mentioned in the public prayers, while that of John was omitted.[65] The patriarch, however, remained obdurate. Matthew had not yet been consecrated. An assembly of bishops declared that, notwithstanding the patriarch’s opposition, he ought to be asked to perform the ceremony. The answer of Philotheus was to decree excommunication against any one who should attempt to lay upon him such a duty. The patriarch was threatened with dismissal. He replied that he would be glad of it, and was dismissed accordingly.[66]

The great anxiety of Cantacuzenus until, and even after, his abdication was to see his son recognised as emperor. Matthew, however, fell into the hands of John, who generously offered him his liberty on condition that he would renounce all claim to the throne. Cantacuzenus states that he counselled his son to accept this offer. After some hesitation he took his father’s advice. Articles of peace were accepted, and among the stipulations it was provided that Matthew might wear any buskin he liked except in purple. It was a relief to both parties when John saved himself from the reproaches of his father-in-law by leaving for Italy and Germany. His party appears to have increased in strength during his absence.[67]

He remained abroad for two years. On his return he encountered at Tenedos a Genoese adventurer, with a considerable number of followers, who was on the look-out for an island which he might seize as the Venetians had seized Chios. John proposed to employ the adventurer to aid him in becoming sole emperor. They came together to Constantinople, where the citizens had already risen in revolt against Cantacuzenus, who had in consequence to shut himself up in the Blachern Palace with a foreign guard. During the night John’s friends asked to be admitted at the postern of Hodegetria, pretending that they were merchants with a cargo of olive oil, and that the sea was rising and dangerous. They promised the guardians that if they were admitted half the cargo should be paid for the favour. They rushed the postern as soon as it was open, and two thousand men entered the city, took possession of the walls, and made a demonstration in favour of John. When morning broke, the Hippodrome was crowded with citizens, and the city in Cantacuzenus submits and retires to Mount Athos, 1355.a tumult. Cantacuzenus apparently lost his head, entered the monastery of Peribleptis, and assumed the habit of a monk. He at once made submission to his young rival, asked and, after some weeks, received permission to retire to Mount Athos, and there passed nearly twenty-five years in the composition of his voluminous History. He died in 1380.

Cantacuzenus, like his predecessors, looked to the West and especially to the pope to aid him in checking the progress of the Turks. Throughout the whole of his reign the attempts to obtain aid from the West and to bring about the Union of the Churches, two objects which had become inseparable, are constant. The zeal with which successive popes sought to obtain the Union found a ready response in Cantacuzenus.

News travelled slowly from the Levant to Italy, but such as reached the West made it known, not merely that Moslems were encroaching on Christian territory; that the victories obtained in the great crusades had largely become fruitless; that almost every inch of territory which had been won in Syria at the sacrifice of so many lives and so much treasure had been captured by the infidels, but that the Christian populations had been everywhere treated with the barbarity that has always followed Moslem conquest. The history indeed of Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor had been a long series of massacres, culminating perhaps in that of Egypt where in 1354, when the Christians were ordered to abjure their faith and to accept Mahometanism and refused, a hundred thousand were put to death.[68]

Attempts by pontiff (a) to resist Moslems, (b) to effect union.

Under such circumstances, Clement the Sixth was not less anxious than his predecessors had been to check Moslem progress. Encompassed as he was with a host of difficulties, and insecure even in his own position, he constantly kept before him the desirability of attaining the two results which for nearly three centuries were prominent objects of papal policy: resistance to the Mahometans and the Union of the two great Christian Churches. In 1343, the year after his appointment to the pontifical throne, he persuaded the queens of Sicily and Naples to send a fleet with one fitted out by himself against the Turks. Two years later he urged all Christians to aid in the defence of Caifa and, in return for their services in defending that city, permitted the Genoese to trade with the infidels at Bagdad. When he learned that the Christian expedition which he had authorised was massacred by the Turks near Smyrna, he proclaimed a crusade and appealed to Edward the Third of England not to prevent Philip of France from taking part in it by making war against him, an appeal which was unsuccessful and which was followed six months later by the victory of Crécy. In the same year Clement sent two nuncios into Armenia to persuade the members of the ancient Church of that people to enter into union with Rome. In 1347 he wrote to congratulate Stephen of Serbia on his having expressed the desire to enter the Roman Communion.

During the early years of the reigns of John and Cantacuzenus, Clement does not appear to have had direct communication with Constantinople. He had apparently a dislike to or prejudice against the elder emperor, for in 1345 he wrote to the dauphin of France not to treat with Cantacuzenus but only with the Dowager Empress Anne.[69] He had seen with indignation the employment of Turks by Cantacuzenus against his enemies and considered him a usurper of the throne which ought to be occupied only by John, the son of a mother whose predilections in favour of Union were well known. His information, according to the emperor’s narrative, was derived from an Italian lady who had lived with the Empress Anne and whose sympathy would naturally be with the cause of her mistress.

Cantacuzenus determined to explain to the pontiff his own position, to justify his conduct and at the same time to offer his aid in any expedition that might be formed for attacking the Mahometans and to express his desire to accomplish the Union of the Churches.[70]

Accordingly he sent a deputation to Clement consisting of the protovestarius and an Italian in his service who was known to the pope. On their arrival they had long interviews with Clement and were astonished at his detailed knowledge of the condition of the empire. According to Cantacuzenus, the pope expressed great satisfaction at the clemency shown by him to his enemies and especially at the marriage between his daughter and John, in which he saw the prospect of a united empire and one which would be able to aid in resisting the Moslems. Clement sent the deputation back to Constantinople accompanied by two bishops as nuncios distinguished alike by their piety and learning. They arrived in the capital in 1347. After expressing the satisfaction of the pope for the emperor’s moderation towards his enemies and his kindness towards Anne, the nuncios declared that the pontiff was even more zealous than any of his predecessors for an attack upon the Turks and that he had already endeavoured to induce the Italian princes to join in an expedition by promising them aid in men and money, but that his zeal was still further increased by the offer of the emperor to aid in such undertaking. If in addition to this he could procure the reconciliation of the Churches, he would gain the approval not only of the pope but of God and His angels.

Cantacuzenus in his reply expressed his thanks to the pontiff for his promised aid against the infidels and in reference to the Union of the Churches declared that he would willingly die if by his death he could secure the object for which both ardently longed. He pointed out, however, that the differences between the Churches related to doctrine, and that Catholic teaching recognised that these could only be settled by a Council of the whole Church. He himself could accept no new dogmas nor force others to accept them before they had been definitely accepted by a Council. He therefore suggested that one should be called, being confident that its deliberations and its decisions would receive divine guidance. As the pope could not come to Constantinople and Cantacuzenus could not go to Rome, the emperor proposed that the Council should be summoned to meet in some maritime city, midway between the two capitals.