History. that if he hoped for mercy he must descend from the throne which he had unjustly seized.* From 1099. A. D. 1204. Assault After this declaration, they prepared to cross the Bosphorus to the European shore: the whole body of the Chivalry being divided into six corps or battles, two composed of Flemish Knights with their attendant archers under Count Baldwin and his brother, three of French Crusaders led respectively by the Counts of Blois and St. Paul, and the Lord of Montmorency, and the sixth or reserve of Italians and Germans under the Marquis of Montferrat. The Knights and Sergeants embarked in the palanders, with their horses ready saddled and caparisoned; the Venetian galleys took them in tow; and in this order, they stood across the strait towards the European suburb of Galata, which commands the entrance of the port. The Greek cavalry were drawn out on the beach in far superior force to oppose their landing: but when the Knights, as soon as the water reached only to their girdles, leapt from the vessels, lance in hand, the enemy immediately fled; and the horses being brought on shore, the cavaliers mounted, pursued the flying squadrons, and captured the Impeand capture rial camp without striking a blow. On the following of the port. morning, after a faint sally by the Greeks, the assailants entered the town of Galata with the fugitives; the chain which from thence secured the mouth of the harbour was broken; and the whole Venetian fleet entering the port of Constantinople in triumph, the remains of the Imperial navy either fell into their hands, or were driven on shore and burnt.† Siege of the city. Though the port was thus captured, the gigantic works, by which the city itself was completely enclosed and separated from the suburbs, might still bid defiance to the efforts of the Crusaders but their courage and confidence were unbounded; though their numbers were insufficient to observe more than a single front of the walls, they determined to commence a regular siege; and this magnanimous resolution presents the singular and amazing example of the investment of the largest and strongest Capital in the world by a few thousand men. The perils and the hardihood of this extraordinary enterprise were enhanced by the privations under which it was prosecuted. Of flour and salt provisions, the confederates had a supply but for three weeks left; clouds of Greek cavalry confined their few foragers to the camp; and their only fresh meat was obtained by the slaughter of their own horses. Delay was therefore far more to be dreaded than the resistance of the enemy; and the preparatory operations of the siege were urged with superhuman exertions. The possession of the harbour determined the point of attack; and against the walls on that side, two hundred and fifty great projectile and battering engines were planted. When by incredible labour the ditch had been filled up and some impression made upon the defences, the French and assault by Venetians agreed to attempt a simultaneous assault: the former from their approaches against the land faces; the latter from their galleys upon the fronts which overlooked the port. Standing upon the raised deck of his vessel, with the gonfalon, or great banner of St. Mark, floating over his head, the venerable Doge himself led the naval attack; and such was the ardour excited by his presence, his voice, and his example, that the line of galleys was boldly rowed to the beach under the walls; General the French and Venetians. * Villehardouin, No. lviii-lxxxi. Ibid. No. lxxxii. Nicetas, (in Alexio,) lib. iii, c. 10. to A. D. 1204. But meanwhile the attack on the land side had been less successful; every gallant effort of the French Chivalry to scale the walls through the imperfect breaches Its repulse. had been repulsed by the assistance of some Pisan colonists and the valour of the Varangian, or Anglo-Saxon and Danish guards, ever the firmest support of the Byzantine throne; and the numerous cavalry of the Greeks, pouring from the gates, threatened to surround and overwhelm the scanty array of the exhausted Crusaders. The Doge learning their danger, after setting fire to the quarter of the city which he had entered and which was thus reduced to ashes, drew off his triumphant forces to the succour of his fainting allies; and the pusillanimous Greeks, without daring a closer or prolonged encounter, disgracefully retired within the shelter of their walls. The confederates passed the succeed. Restoration ing night in eager rather than anxious suspense: but of Isaac II. (Angelus) such was the terror with which the usurper Alexius was to the Byseized at the balanced success of the conflict that, under zantine cover of the darkness, he basely fled from his Capital throne. with a part of the Imperial treasures. On the discovery of his absence, the trembling Nobles of the palace drew his blind and captive brother Isaac from the dungeon to the throne; and when morning dawned, the leaders of the Crusaders were astonished by an embassy from the restored Emperor, announcing the revolution, desiring the presence of his son, and inviting them also to receive his grateful acknowledgments.† saders with The first proceeding of the confederates on the receipt Alliance of this message was to depute two Barons and two Ve- of the Cranetians to wait upon the Emperor with their felicitations, and with a less welcome demand for the fulfilment of the engagements which his son had contracted in his name. While he admitted that their services were entitled to the highest recompense which was his to bestow, Isaac heard with consternation the extent of the conditions which he was required to ratify the payment of two hundred thousand marks of silver; the employment of the Imperial forces in the service of the Crusade; and the submission of the Greek Church to the spiritual authority of the Pope. But the immediate subscription of the Emperor to these onerous terms was peremptorily insisted upon, and, however reluctantly, obtained; on the return of the envoys to the camp, Isaac and young Alexius was permitted to make his triumphant entry into the city, attended by the Latin Chiefs; and jout Eme the joint coronation of the aged Emperor and his son, rors of the which was joyfully celebrated, seemed to announce a East. On the subject of the Anglo-Saxon emigrations which filled the ranks of the Varangian guards of the Byzantine throne, see p. 666 of this volume. Du Cange, indeed, (notes on Villehardouin, No. lxxxix., &c.) labours to prove that these Varangians came from the Northern continent of Europe only: but the words of Villehardouin are explicit, Anglois et Danois; it is not probable that a French Knight could have confounded their race; and his statement is in agreement with the fact, that impatience of the Norman tyranny had, ever since the epoch of the Conquest, driven nultitudes of the bolder spirits among the oppressed English to seek a more honourable existence in foreign Countries. + Villehardouin, No. lxxxii.-xcix. Danduli, Chron. p. 321, 322. Nicetas, (in Alexio,) lib. iii. ad fin, Vita Innocent. III. c. 91. p. 533, 534. his son Alexius, From A. D. 1099. to A. D. 1204. History. peaceful conclusion to the recent struggle. This fallacious promise of concord between two Nations so mutually obnoxious as the Latins and Greeks, was of short duration. To satisfy the rapacious demands of their deliverers, the Emperors, in the low state of the Byzantine treasury, were compelled to make many grievous exactions from their subjects; the warlike Franks cared not to conceal their insolent disdain for a pusillanimous people; and above all, the veneration of the Greeks for the peculiar forms and doctrines of their faith-the only symptom of virtuous feeling which, discernible as it is throughout the long annals of their degradation, may command some share of our respect-was outraged by the undisguised design of subjugating their Church Disaffection to the Papal yoke. From the very altar of the Caprovoked in thedral of St. Sophia, the Patriarch of Constantinople the Greeks. was compelled, at the dictation of the Crusaders, to proclaim the spiritual supremacy of the Roman Pontiff; and the people were required to subject their consciences to the doctrines and discipline of a Church, which they had ever been taught to regard with horror as schismatic and heretical. By these measures, their political and religious antipathy was extended to the young Emperor, as the ally and creature of the detested foreigners; and the conduct of Alexius himself did not tend to win the favour, or to command the respect, of his offended subjects. While the boisterous orgies and rude freedoms, which marked the social intercourse of the Western Nations, shocked the superior refinement or ceremonial pride of the Greeks, the young Emperor, regardless alike of the difference in national manners and of his own dignity, continued to visit the quarters, and to share in the debaucheries and gaming, of the Franks. In one of these carousals, he suffered the diadem to be snatched in sportive or contemptuous familiarity from his head. and exchanged for the coarse woollen cap of some low reveller; and the contempt as well as the aversion of his subjects was not unjustly provoked against the unfeeling or thoughtless boy, who could thus basely, in the eyes of insolent Barbarians, sully the lustre and dishonour the majesty of his Imperial Crown.* Alexius inluces the Crusaders defer heir dearture. Through all these causes, Alexius soon found that he had become so odious to his Countrymen, as to render the continued presence of his Latin allies indispensable to the security of his throne; and he endeavoured by the promise of further rewards to induce them to postpone their departure, and the prosecution of their Crusading vows, until the following Spring. He found them little loth to accede to his terms. On the first restoration of Isaac, indeed, the Latin Barons had given some signs of pursuing the original purpose of their confederacy; had sent a defiance to the Sultan of Egypt; and had deprecated the anger of the Pope at their repeated disobedience, by entreaties for pardon and by assurances that thenceforth their arms should be devoted exclusively to the sacred service of Palestine. The Venetians also had condescended to solicit a reconciliation with the Holy See; and Innocent was so well satisfied with the prospect of bringing the Greek Church under his dominion, and so rejoiced to recognise the slightest symptom of penitence in those stubborn Republicans, that he extended absolution to them as well as to their more submissive Baronial confederates. But in truth, both * Nicetas, in Isaacum et Alexium Angelos, c. 1—3. Villehardouin, No. xcix.-ci. VOL. XI. the Doge and his noble allies were by this time almost equally ready to disregard the Papal displeasure and the objects of the Crusade for their personal profit; and Alexius seems to have experienced little difficulty in purchasing their continued services until the Spring, as soon as he had quieted their consciences by repeating the condition, that he would then accompany them to Egypt with the recruited forces of his Empire.* Annals of the East. From A. D. 1099. to A. D.. 1204. feud. the flames. To occupy the interval, and enforce the recognition of Great part his disputed authority over the Imperial territories, the of ConstanMarquis of Montferrat, with a body of the confederate tinople burned in a Chivalry, successfully conducted the young Prince in an expedition through the Thracian Provinces; but during this absence, the hatred of the people of the Capital was fatally aggravated by the misconduct of the Latins. Though, for the prevention of feuds, a separate quarter had been assigned to the strangers in the suburb of Galata or Pera, some Flemings and Venetians, during a visit to the city, attacked a commercial colony of Musulmans, which had long enjoyed the protection of the Byzantine Emperors. The Infidels, though surprised, defended themselves bravely; the Greek inhabitants assisted them, while some Latin residents aided the aggressors; and during the conflict, the latter set fire to a building, from whence the flames spread with Frightful such frightful rapidity, that, before they could be ex- ravages of tinguished, a third part of the magnificent city was reduced to ashes. During eight days, the conflagration raged over above a league in extent from the port to the Propontis; immense quantities of merchandise and other valuable property were destroyed; and thousands of families were reduced to beggary. The Latin Chiefs expressed their vain sorrow for a calamity which, as produced by the unbridled license of their followers, it should rather have been their care to prevent: but the suffering and exasperated Greeks were little disposed to credit Exasperatheir sincerity. Moreover, as some of the Italian settlers tion of the in the Capital had instigated or shared the outrage, the vengeance of the sufferers was specially directed against the ingratitude of these foreigners who had long been naturalized among them; and to the number of fifteen thousand persons, the whole Body were compelled to abandon their dwellings, and to consult their safety by flight to the suburban quarters of the Crusaders.† Greeks. between From this epoch the national animosity of the Greeks Mutual and Latins mutually increased to a deadly height; and hatred when the young Emperor returned to his Capital, he them and found the rupture incurable, and his own position such, the Latins. that he was scarcely permitted to choose between the party of his subjects and that of his allies. By the Greeks, he was more than ever abhorred as the tool of their oppressors; by the Latin Chiefs, without consideration for the difficulties which oppressed his government, his hesitation in fulfilling the pecuniary conditions of the alliance was resented with suspicion and menaces. Not deigning to admit the public distresses, which the late conflagration had grievously aggravated, as any excuse for delay in the collection and payment of their promised reward, the confederate leaders suddenly adopted the most violent counsels; and an embassy was sent, in the name of the Doge of Venice and of the Renewal of Barons of the army, to defy the two Emperors in their hostilities. own palace. After fearlessly delivering their haughty * Vita Innocent. III. p. 534. Villehardouin, No. ci.-ciii. + Nicetas, in Isaac. et Alex. p. 272-274. Villehardouin, No. cvii.-cviii. 51 to A. D. 1204. Revolution in Constantinople. two Em. * Such was the unhappy condition of the Nation and the times, that the only man among the Greeks who had courage and ability to undertake the defence of his Country, was placed in the odious light of a traitor and an usurper. Alexius Angelus Ducas, surnamed Mourzoufle, from his shaggy eyebrows, a Prince allied by blood to the Imperial House, had been the chief instrument in urging the vacillating young Emperor to resist the haughty demands of the Latins; and in the war of skirmishes which now ensued, his personal valour and energy were invidiously contrasted with the weakness.or reluctance of his Sovereign. The seditious populace of Constantinople demanded the deposition of Isaac and his son, whom they stigmatized as the secret friends of the invaders; and after the prudence of several members of the nobility had induced them to decline the proffered dignity of the purple, a young Patrician, named Nicholas Canabus, was tempted by his vanity to accept Mourzoufle the Byzantine crown. But the valour of Ducas had deposes the meanwhile gained the suffrages of the Varangian guards; the Imperial puppet of the hour was displaced without resistance; Isaac and his son were persuaded to seek 1204. safety in flight, and were betrayed into a dungeon, in which the former soon expired of grief and terror; and the more deserving patriot or successful conspirator was unanimously called to the throne. From the hour in which Ducas assumed the insignia of Empire, a new impulse was given to the Byzantine councils: the walls of the Capital were guarded with active discipline; many sallies were at least boldly directed; two attempts, frustrated only by the intrepidity and skill of the Venetian sailors, were made to burn the Latin fleet; and if it had been possible to nerve the hearts of the Greeks in the national cause, its ruin might yet have been averted by the spirit of their leader. But in every encounter before the walls and in the adjacent country, Ducas was deserted by the cowardice of his new subjects; he found it necessary to negotiate with the invaders; and when they insisted on the restoration of the deposed Emperor, he attempted to remove that obstacle to an accommodaAnd mur- tion, since Isaac was already dead, by the murder of his remaining prisoner Alexius.† perors. A. D. ders Alexius. Second siege of Constantinople by the Cru saders. When the intelligence of this event reached the camp of the Crusaders, the causes of resentment which had separated them from the young ally and companion of their voyage, were forgotten in commiseration and horror at his untimely and cruel fate. They passionately swore to revenge his death upon a perfidious usurper and Nation; and the crime of Ducas served only to exasperate the enmity, while it inflamed the ambition, of these formidable assailants. Conceiving themselves now released from all obligations of forbearance towards a race so inhuman and treacherous as the Greeks, and easily adopting the convenient doctrine that it was a * Villehardouin, No. cix.-cxii. Nicetas, ubi suprà. Villehardouin, No. cxiii.-cxix. Vita Innocent. III. p. 534, 535. Nicetas, in Isaac. et Alex. c. 4, 5. in Mourzuflum, c. I. Yet if Nicetas (p. 280.) may be credited, in preference to the Latin authorities who do not notice such a transaction, the Crusading Barons, by the advice of the Doge of Venice, were still willing to have granted peace to the usurper for fifty thousand pounds of gold: but mutual distrust broke off the negotiation. From A. D. 1099. to A. D. 1204 religious duty to punish their murder of a Prince by the Annals of conquest and dismemberment of his Empire; the Doge the East. and confederate Barons proceeded to sign a Treaty of partition by which, in the hardy confidence of valour, and undaunted by the disparity of their force to the perilous magnitude of the enterprise, they anticipated the result of their astonishing achievements. It was agreed that, after liquidating, out of the booty to be captured, the pecuniary claims of Venice for the expenses of the armament, the remainder should be equally shared between the troops of the Crusaders and the Republic; that the existence of the Empire should be preserved, and one of the confederate Barons raised to its throne, but with only a fourth of its present territories for the support of his title; and that, of the remaining three-fourths, one moiety should be surrendered in full sovereignty to Venice, and the other divided into Imperial Fiefs among the Nobles of the Crusade.* The Winter had been consumed in desultory conflicts General or in necessary preparation: but, with the return of assault, Spring, the confederates having completed the arrangement of their daring project, proceeded to put it into execution. To prevent a repetition of the failure in the last attack upon the walls from the separation of their forces, it was determined that the assault of the Capital should be attempted from the port alone; and the Venetian fleet being distributed into six divisions, to correspond with the former arrangement of the Chivalry into as many battles, one body of Knights embarked in the palanders of each squadron with their horses and followers, In this order the whole armament crossed the harbour, and assaulted the same line of defences, against which the Venetians had before successfully exerted their efforts. But, though the depth of water permitted the vessels to approach near enough to the walls for the combatants, on the ramparts and on the drawbridges and rope aders which were let down from the upper works of the galleys, to fight hand to hand; the insecure footing of the assailants on these frail and floating machines, and the firm vantage ground and superior numbers of the besieged, rendered the combat so unequal, that the former, after astonishing feats of valour, were finally repulsed at every point. Instructed but not intimidated by this failure, the Ve netians now undertook to supply their allies with the means of approaching the walls in steadier array; the large vessels were strongly lashed together in pairs to increase their stability and impulsive force; and three days having been spent in preparation and refreshment, the assault was again given with resistless vigour and happier fortune. From sunrise to noon, the slow advance of the and capt heavy line of vessels was retarded by vollies of missiles of the citywhich were showered from the walls; the recent success April 12 of the Greeks had animated their spirit into a courageous resistance; and the issue of the conflict still hung in dangerous suspense: when a strong breeze, suddenly springing up from the North, all at once drove the double galleys with propitious violence against the walls. The names of the two linked vessels-the Pilgrim and the Paradise-having on board the martial Bishops of Soissons and Troyes, which first touched the walls, were repeated with loud shouts as an omen of Divine aid; the panic-stricken Greeks fled from their posts; four Epistola Balduini, in Vitá Innocent. III. p. 536. Danduli, Chronicon, (in notis,) p. 326. From A. D.' 1099. to A. D. 1204. History. towers with a long line of rampart were escaladed and carried; and three gates being burst open, the Knights led their horses on shore from the palanders, mounted, and swept through the streets of Constantinople in battle array. In the mazes of a vast Capital, indeed, their cavalry might have been useless, their feeble numhers might have been lost and overpowered; in the hands of a brave people, every house might have been defended, every church and palace and massive building converted into an impregnable fortress. So conscious were the victors of their danger, that they immediately began to fortify the first quarters which they had seized; passed the night under arms; and setting fire to the streets in their front, produced a new conflagration, which in a few hours consumed another portion of the city equal in extent, according to the confession of their Chronicler, to any three towns in France. But these precautions were needless against an enemy, whom neither patriotism nor despair, neither the ruin of their Country and fortunes, nor the violence with which the icentious passions of a ferocious soldiery menaced their own lives and the honour of their women, could rouse Flight of to one generous or manly effort. The Emperor Ducas, Mourzoufle. finding it impossible to animate his craven subjects with any portion of his own spirit, abandoned them to their fate, and retired from the city with his family. After his flight, the brave efforts of two other illustrious Greeks, Theodore Ducas and Theodore Lascaris,-the latter of whom was destined subsequently to re-establish and sustain the fortunes of his Country,-proved for the time equally ineffectual; a suppliant train bearing crosses and images sought the quarters, to implore the mercy of the Crusaders for the fallen Capital; and when morning dawned the Latin Chiefs, who had anticipated that the reduction of the whole city would still cost them at least the labour of a month, found themselves the masters of the Eastern Empire.* Pillage of ConstantiПople. Con But while they gladly accepted the submission, they were deaf to the abject prayers of the Greeks. stantinople was abandoned to a general pillage, during which the miserable inhabitants witnessed and endured every extremity of horror. Yet even the brutal and licentious soldiery were surpassed in cruelty by the Latin residents who had been recently expelled from the city; and chiefly by whose revengeful malice two thousand of the unresisting Greeks were wantonly murdered in cold blood. Insult and sacrilege were added to rapine and debauchery; the churches and national worship of the Greeks were defiled and profaned; and by the followers of a Crusading army was strangely enacted at Constantinople the same impious scene, which another European Capital was to exhibit to modern times, of enthroning a painted strumpet in a Christian Cathedral. The worst vices were freely perpetrated by the rabble of the camp and Latin suburbs: but attempts were made to control the privilege of rapiae for the general benefit of the victors; on pain of excommunication and death all individuals were commanded to bring their booty to appointed stations for a public division; and though some incurred the penalty of disobedience, and *Villehardouin, No. cxx.-cxxx. Epistola Balduini in Vitâ Innocent. III. p. 535, 536. Nicetas, in Murzuflum, c. 2. This "Goddess of Reason" of the XIIIth Century was seated on the throne to represent the office and person of the Patriarch, while drunken revellers in ribaldrous songs and dances mocked the chants and ceremonies of the Greek worship. Nicetas p. 303. From many more successfully secreted their spoils, the quan- Annals of tities of treasure which were collected exceeded the the East. most greedy or sanguine expectation. After satisfying the claims of the Venetians, the value of the share which fell to the French Crusaders is estimated, by their Chronicler, at four or five hundred thousand marks, besides ten thousand horses; and another eye-witness declares that, by the division of the booty, the poorest of the host were rendered wealthy.* It A. D. 1099. to A. D. 1204. But the gain of the adventurers, however enormous, Destruction bore a small proportion to the destruction and waste of of the remains of property by which their victory was attended. ancient would be vain to estimate the wealth of Ages which had letters and been consumed in three conflagrations, or spoiled in the art. wantonness of a sack. But every scholar and love. of the Arts must deplore the irreparable loss of those relics of the literature and sculpture of Classical Antiquity, which perished in the fall of Constantinople. Her libraries, still containing many precious remains of the best Ages of Greece and Rome, which have not been preserved to our times, were now abandoned to the flames by the ignorant indifference of the barbarian conquerors: but their malevolence or cupidity was more actively exercised in the destruction of those beauteous monuments of which Constantine had robbed the ancient seat of Empire to enrich his new Capital. In the furious violence of conquest or in mere wanton love of destruction, the statues of marble were mutilated or thrown down from their pedestals: but those of bronze were melted, with insensible and sordid avarice, to afford a base coin for the payment of the soldiery. This barbarous abuse of the right of conquest was probably the work of the rude Barons of France: for the more refined Venetians, with better taste if not with less injustice, converted a portion of their spoil into a national trophy; and removed to St. Mark's Place in their Capital those four celebrated horses of bronze which, at the distance of six Centuries, still present the most striking memorial of the glory and ruin of the once mighty Republic.t After the division of their booty, the leaders of the Partition of confederate host assembled to consummate the more the Empire important work of partitioning an Empire. For the pre- among the liminary business of nominating one of their number to conquerors. fill the spoliated throne of the Cæsars, six persons of each nation, French and Venetian, were appointed under one of the provisions of the existing Treaty; and this Council now balanced the claims of the Marquis of Montferrat, hitherto the chosen leader of the Crusade, and of the Count of Flanders: for though the superior merits of the Doge to either were generously suggested by the French electors, his own Countrymen, with the patriotic jealousy of republican freedom, declared the Imperial dignity incompatible with the office of the first magis trate of their commonwealth. The final choice of the Council fell upon the Count of Flanders, determined, perhaps, by his descent from Charlemagne, his alliance by blood to the King of France, and the anticipated repugnance of the French Barons to obey an Italian Sovereign. As soon as this decision of the electors Flanders, was announced, Baldwin was raised upon a buckler, first Latin Emperor of Villehardouin, No. cxxx.-cxxxv. Vita Innocent. III. p. 536 the East. Nicetas, in Murzuflum, ad fin. -538. Baldwin of From 1099. A. D. 1204. History. according to the Byzantine custom, by his brother Barons and Knights, borne on their shoulders to the church of St. Sophia, invested with the purple, and exhibited to the Greeks as their new Emperor. His rival, and now his vassal, the Marquis of Montferrat, was consoled by the possession of Macedonia and great part of Proper Greece with the regal title; and the remaining Barons shared, by lot or precedence of rank, the various Provinces of the Empire in Europe and Asia which remained at their choice, after the stipulated appropriation of three-eighths of the whole to the Venetian Republic. Besides that proportion of the Capital itself, Venice thus obtained the sovereignty of Crete, of most of the Islands in the Ionian and Ægean Seas, and of a long chain of maritime ports on the continent from the capes of the Adriatic to the Bosphorus. While the Republic, in virtue of this partition, arrogated to her venerable Doge and his successors the proud and accurate title of lords of one-fourth and oneeighth of the Empire of Romania, to the new Sovereign of Constantinople had been reserved in immediate sovereignty only one-fourth of the Byzantine dominions; and on all sides the narrow and inadequate limits of his throne were surrounded by vassals, who only nominally acknowledged, and by enemies who wholly denied the legality of his reign.* Aspect of the Latin Empire. The eagerness of the Latin adventurers to occupy their several allotments of the territorial spoil, discovered the total insufficiency of their divided strength to secure the work of conquest, which they had so daringly achieved. The dispersion of the French Barons, each attended by no more than a few score of lances, over the vast Provinces of the Empire, betrayed to the subjugated Nation the weakness of their conquerors while the impolitic contempt by which the Greeks of all ranks found themselves excluded from employments and honours in the Latin Court, increased their impatience to escape from a yoke, which they still wanted courage or concert Escape of to break. By degrees, therefore, from the Capital and the Greeks its neighbouring Provinces on the European shores, the from the conquered noblest born and the bravest of the Greeks withdrew Provinces. into less accessible quarters of the dismembered Empire to range themselves under the standards of native leaders. In Europe, for a moment after the fall of Constantinople, the Imperial title was still arrogated by the two fugitive usurpers, the elder Alexius Angelus and Ducas Mourzoufle; and between them an apparent reconciliation was effected. During his short reign, Ducas had endeavoured to strengthen his pretensions to the Imperial dignity by seizing the hand of a daughter of Alexius; * Villehardouin, No. cxxxvi.-cxl. Danduli, Chron. lib. x. c. 3. Du Cange, Hist, de Constantinople sous les Empereurs Français, lib. i. From A. D. 1099. to A. D. and being now driven out of Adrianople on the advance Annals of of the Latins, he obtained, through the tender of allegi- the East. ance to his father-in-law, a promise of such protection as his camp could afford. But he had no sooner placed himself in the power of Alexius, than that tyrant, even more perfidious than impotent, caused him to be deprived of his eyes and thrust from the camp. In this sightless and horrid condition, as he was endeavouring 1204. to escape across the Hellespont into Asia, Mourzoufle Fate of was arrested by the Latins; brought to trial for his own Mourzoufle worst crime, the murder of young Alexius; and con- and Alexius demned to be cast, alive and headlong, from the lofty Angelus. summit of the Theodosian pillar at Constantinople upon the marble pavement beneath.* The execution of this dreadful sentence on him was soon followed by the captivity of his betrayer Alexius, who was surprised by Boniface of Montferrat and transported to an Italian dungeon. By the fate of these two usurpers, the principal support of the National cause of the Greeks devolved upon a young hero, who might maintain, in right of his wife, the hereditary claims, while he spurned the base qualities of the Angeli; and in whom the valour of Ducas was unsullied by the guilt of treason and murder. This was Theodore Lascaris, who had also married a daughter of Alexius Angelus; and whose gallant devotion to his Country had already been signalized in the two sieges of Constantinople. Retiring, after the fall of the Capital, across the Bosphorus into the recesses of Bithynia, and being joined by the most generous and congenial spirits of his Nation, he there organized a resistance against the Latin adventurers, which not only prevented them from ever gaining a secure establishment in the Asiatic Provinces of the Empire, but prepared their expulsion from their European conquests. But the fate both of the Latin and Greek Dynasties, which for sixty years were to dispute the sceptre of the Eastern Empire, will reclaim our future attention in another place; and the connection of the History of the Crusades with the Revolutions of Constantinople closes at the period before us. In the division and enjoyment of a conquered Empire, End of the the confederate Barons who had embraced the service FOURTH of the Cross now seemed as completely to have forgot. CRUSADEten the original object of their expedition, as if it had never been undertaken for the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre; and the vain trophies of a victory, not over Paynim but Christian enemies-the gates and chain of the harbour of Constantinople-sent by the new Emperor of the East to Palestine,† were the only fruits of the Fourth Crusade which ever reached the Syrian shores. |