Macedonia, twelve days' journey from the capital, where he might be supported by the neighbouring powers of his brother-in-law the king of Hungary. His progress was hailed by the voluntary or reluctant acclamations of the natives; and Greece, the proper and ancient Greece, again received a Latin conqueror 12, who trod with indifference that classic ground. He viewed with a careless eye the beauties of the valley of Tempe; traversed with a cautious step the straits of Thermopyla; occupied the unknown cities of Thebes, Athens, and Argos; and assaulted the fortifications of Corinth and Napoli 13, which resisted his arms. The lots of the Latin pilgrims were regulated by chance, or choice, or subsequent exchange; and they abused, with intemperate joy, their triumph over the lives and fortunes of a great people. After a minute survey of the provinces, they weighed in the scales of avarice the revenue of each district, the advantage of the situation, and the ample or scanty supplies for the maintenance of soldiers and horses. Their presumption claimed and divided the long-lost dependencies of the Roman sceptre: the Nile and Euphrates rolled through their imaginary realms; and happy was the warrior who drew for his prize the palace of the Turkish sultan of Iconium. 14 I shall not descend to the pedigree of families and the rent-roll of estates, but I wish to specify that the counts of Blois and St. Pol were invested with the duchy of Nice and the lordship of Demotica 15: the principal fiefs were held by the service of constable, chamberlain, cup-bearer, butler, and chief cook; and our historian, Jeffrey of Villehardouin, obtained a fair establishment on the banks of the Hebrus, and united the double office of marshal of Champagne and Romania. At the head of his knights and archers, each baron mounted on horseback to secure the possession of his share, and their first efforts were generally successful. But the public force was weakened by their dispersion; and a thousand quarrels must arise under a law, and among men, whose sole umpire was the 12 Villehardouin (No. 159, 160. 173-177.) and Nicetas (p. 387-394.) describe the expedition into Greece of the Marquis Boniface. The Choniate might derive his information from his brother Michael, archbishop of Athens, whom he paints as an orator, a statesman, and a saint. His encomium of Athens, and the description of Tempe, should be published from the Bodleian MS. of Nicetas (Fabric. Bibliot. Græc. tom. vi. p. 405.), and would have deserved Mr. Harris's inquiries. 13 Napoli di Romania, or Nauplia, the ancient seaport of Argos, is still a place of strength and consideration, situate on a rocky peninsula, with a good harbour (Chandler's Travels into Greece, p. 227.). 14 I have softened the expression of Nicetas, who strives to expose the presumption of the Franks. See de Rebus post C. P. expugnatam, p. 375-384. 15 A city surrounded by the river Hebrus, and six leagues to the south of Adrianople, received from its double wall the Greek name of Didymoteichos, insensibly corrupted into Demotica and Dimot. I have preferred the more convenient and modern appellation of Demotica. This place was the last Turkish residence of Charles XII. sword. Within three months after the conquest of Constantinople, the emperor and the king of Thessalonica drew their hostile followers into the field; they were reconciled by the authority of the doge, the advice of the marshal, and the firm freedom of their peers. 16 Revolt of &c. the Greeks, A. D. 1204, Two fugitives, who had reigned at Constantinople, still asserted the title of emperor; and the subjects of their fallen throne might be moved to pity by the misfortunes of the elder Alexius, or excited to revenge by the spirit of Mourzoufle. A domestic alliance, a common interest, a similar guilt, and the merit of extinguishing his enemies, a brother and a nephew, induced the more recent usurper to unite with the former the relics of his power. Moursoufle was received with smiles and honours in the camp of his father Alexius; but the wicked can never love, and should rarely trust, their fellow-criminals: he was seized in the bath, deprived of his eyes, stripped of his troops and treasures, and turned out to wander an object of horror and contempt to those who with more propriety could hate, and with more justice could punish, the assassin of the emperor Isaac and his son. As the tyrant, pursued by fear or remorse, was stealing over to Asia, he was seized by the Latins of Constantinople, and condemned, after an open trial, to an ignominious death. His judges debated the mode of his execution, the axe, the wheel, or the stake; and it was resolved that Mourzoufle 17 should ascend the Theodosian column, a pillar of white marble of one hundred and forty-seven feet in height. 18 From the summit he was cast down 16 Their quarrel is told by Villehardouin (No. 146-158.) with the spirit of freedom. The merit and reputation of the marshal are acknowledged by the Greek historian (p. 387.), μέγα παρὰ τοῖς τῶν Λατίνων δυναμένου στρατεύμασι: unlike some modern heroes, whose exploits are only visible in their own memoirs." 17 See the fate of Mourzoufle, in Nicetas (p. 393.), Villehardouin (No. 141-145. 163.), and Guntherus (c. 20, 21.). Neither the marshal nor the monk afford a grain of pity for a tyrant or rebel, whose punishment, however, was more unexampled than his crime. 18 The column of Arcadius, which represents in basso relievo his victories, or those of his father Theodosius, is still extant at Constantinople. It is described and measured, Gyllius (Topograph. iv. 7.), Banduri (ad. 1. i. Antiquit. C. P. p. 507, &c.), and Tournefort (Voyage Du Levant, tom. ii. lettre xii. p. 231.). [Compare Wilken, note, vol. v. p. 388. M.] * William de Champlite, brother of the count of Dijon, assumed the title of Prince of Achaia: on the death of his brother, he returned, with regret, to France, to assume his paternal inheritance, and left Villehardouin his "bailli," on condition that if he did not return within a year, Villehardouin was to retain the investiture. Brosset's Add. to Le Beau, vol. xvii. p. 200. M. Brosset adds, from the Greek chro VOL. VI. E nicler edited by M. Buchon, the somewhat unknightly trick 'by which Villehardouin disembarrassed himself from the troublesome claim of Robert, the cousin of the count of Dijon, to the succession. He contrived that Robert should arrive just fifteen days too late; and with the general concurrence of the assembled knights was himself invested with the principality. Ibid. p. 283. M. Theodore Lascaris, emperor of Nice, A. D. 1201 -1222. headlong, and dashed in pieces on the pavement, in the presence of innumerable spectators, who filled the forum of Taurus, and admired the accomplishment of an old prediction, which was explained by this singular event. 19 The fate of Alexius is less tragical: he was sent by the marquis a captive to Italy, and a gift to the king of the Romans; but he had not much to applaud his fortune, if the sentence of imprisonment and exile were changed from a fortress in the Alps to a monastery in Asia. But his daughter, before the national calamity, had been given in marriage to a young hero who continued the succession, and restored the throne, of the Greek princes. 20 The valour of Theodore Lascaris was signalised in the two sieges of Constantinople. After the flight of Mourzoufle, when the Latins were already in the city, he offered himself as their emperor to the soldiers and people; and his ambition, which might be virtuous, was undoubtedly brave. Could he have infused a soul into the multitude, they might have crushed the strangers under their fect their abject despair refused his aid; and Theodore retired to breathe the air of freedom in Anatolia, beyond the immediate view and pursuit of the conquerors. Under the title, at first of despot, and afterwards of emperor, he drew to his standard the bolder spirits, who were fortified against slavery by the contempt of life; and as every means was lawful for the public safety, implored without scruple the alliance of the Turkish sultan. Nice, where Theodore established his residence, Prusa and Philadelphia, Smyrna and Ephesus, opened their gates to their deliverer: he derived strength and reputation from his victories, and even from his defeats; and the successor of Constantine preserved a fragment of the empire from the banks of the Mæander to the suburbs of 19 The nonsense of Gunther and the modern Greeks concerning this columna fatidica, is unworthy of notice; but it is singular enough, that fifty years before the Latin conquest, the poet Tzetzes (Chiliad, ix. 277.) relates the dream of a matron, who saw an army in the forum, and a man sitting on the column, clapping his hands, and uttering a loud exclamation.* 20 The dynasties of Nice, Trebizond, and Epirus (of which Nicetas saw the origin without much pleasure or hope), are learnedly explored, and clearly represented, in the Familiæ Byzantine of Ducange. The dukes rors of Nicomedia, and at length of Constantinople. Another portion, distant and obscure, was possessed by the lineal and empeheir of the Comneni, a son of the virtuous Manuel, a Trebizond. grandson of the Tyrant Andronicus. His name was Alexius; and the epithet of great* was applied perhaps to his stature, rather than to his exploits. By the indulgence of the Angeli, he was appointed governor or duke of Trebizond 21 †: his birth gave him ambition, the revolution independence; and, without changing his title, he reigned in peace from Sinope to the Phasis, along the coast of the Black Sea. His nameless son and successor is described as the vassal of the sultan, whom he served with two hundred lances: that Comnenian prince was no more than duke of Trebizond, and the title of emperor was first assumed by the pride and envy of the grandson of Alexius. In the West, a The desthird fragment was saved from the common shipwreck by Epirus. Michael, a bastard of the house of Angeli, who, before the revolution, had been known as an hostage, a soldier, and a rebel. His flight from the camp of the marquis Boniface secured his freedom; by his marriage with the governor's daughter, he com pots of " Except some facts in Pachymer and Nicephorus Gregoras, which will hereafter be used, the Byzantine writers disdain to speak of the empire of Trebizond, or principality of the Lazi; and among the Latins, it is conspicuous only in the romances of the xivth or xvth centuries. Yet the indefatigable Ducange has dug out (Fam. Byz. p. 192.) two authentic passages in Vincent of Beauvais (1. xxxi. c. 144.), and the protonotary Ogerius (apud Wading, A. D. 1279, No. 4.). This was a title, not a personal appellation. Joinville speaks of the "Grant Comnenie, et sire de Traffezzontes." Fall. merayer, p. 82. — M. make out a triumphant case as to the assumption of the royal title by Alexius the First. Since the publication of M. Fallmerayer's work (München, 1827). M. Tafel has published, at the end of the opuscula of Eustathius a curious chronicle of Trebizond by Michael Panaretas (Frankfort, 1832). It gives the succession of the emperors, and some other curious circumstances of their wars with the several Mahometan powers. — M. On the revolutions of Trebizond under the later empire down to this period, see Fallmerayer, Geschichte des Kaiserthums von Trapezunt, ch. iii. The wife of Manuel filed with her infant sons and her treasure from the relentless enmity of Isaac Angelus. Fallmerayer conjectures that her arrival enabled the Greeks of that The successor of Alexius was his sonregion to make head against the formidable in-law Andronicus I. of the Comnenian Thamar, the Georgian queen of Teflis, family, surnamed Gidon. There were p. 42. They gradually formed a dominion five successions between Alexius and John, on the banks of the Phasis, which the according to Fallmerayer, p. 103. The distracted government of the Angeli neg- troops of Trebizond fought in the army lected or were unable to suppress. On of Dschelaleddin, the Karismian, against the capture of Constantinople by the Alai-eddin, the Seljukian sultan of Roum, Latins, Alexius was joined by many noble but as allies rather than vassals, p. 107. fugitives from Constantinople. He had It was after the defeat of Dschelaleddin always retained the names of Cæsar and that they furnished their contingent to Barλeus. He now fixed the seat of his em- Alai-eddin. Fallmerayer struggles in vain pire at Trebizond; but he had never to mitigate this mark of the subjection of abandoned his pretensions to the Byzantine the Comneni to the sultan, p. 116. — M. throne, ch. iii. Fallmerayer appears to Theodore Lascaris, emperor of Nice, -1222. headlong, and dashed in pieces on the pavemen of innumerable spectators, who filled the forum admired the accomplishment of an old predic explained by this singular event. 19 The fate tragical: he was sent by the marquis a captive t to the king of the Romans; but he had not mi fortune, if the sentence of imprisonment and from a fortress in the Alps to a monastery i daughter, before the national calamity, had bee to a young hero who continued t restored the throne, of the Greek prir AD. 1201 of Theodore Lascaris was signalised i Constantinople. After the flight of the Latins were already in the city, he offer emperor to the soldiers and people; and his an be virtuous, was undoubtedly brave. Could he into the multitude, they might have crushed their feet their abject despair refused his retired to breathe the air of freedom in A immediate view and pursuit of the conquero at first of despot, and afterwards of emperor, h the bolder spirits, who were fortified against tempt of life; and as every means was lawful implored without scruple the alliance of the 1 where Theodore established his residence, Pi Smyrna and Ephesus, opened their gates t derived strength and reputation from his vic his defeats; and the successor of Constantine of the empire from the banks of the Mæan 19 The nonsense of Gunther and the modern Greeks co is unworthy of notice; but it is singular enough, that conquest, the poet Tzetzes (Chiliad, ix. 277.) relates the an army in the forum, and a man sitting on the col uttering a loud exclamation.* 20 The dynasties of Nice, Trebizond, and Epirus (of without much pleasure or hope), are learnedly explored, Familiæ Byzantine of Ducange. |